this gets better and better. what did the 'past three days' mean? the image of the hell hounds chasing a person is funny.
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this gets better and better. what did the 'past three days' mean? the image of the hell hounds chasing a person is funny.
Reference to a famous saying (spouse and I) believe to have originated with Benjamin Franklin:Quote:
Originally Posted by cogs
"After three days, fish and visitors start to stink."
There were so many stellar entries in the Autumn Poetry Contest, I didn't vote on the one submitted by yours truly, but here 'tis --a variation on the sonnet, 12 instead of 14 lines and instead of iambic pentameter, iambic hexameter (clumsily rendered, perhaps):
“Does a leaf get lonely when it watches its neighbors fall?” –John Muir (Quoted in Our National Parks: America’s Best Idea)
Anthropomorphism in Autumn
Can winter’s omens shake slim aspens with cold fears?
Would mountain peaks yearn to suckle an infant in the sky?
Do geese compare this trip to those of other years?
Are airborne tufts of milkweed aware of where they'll fly?
Would fading flowers cause the meadow’s heart to ache?
Does a maple ever dream of a future April bed?
Might the October moon want to get a rake
to whisk occluding clouds away from its clearer head?
Do nettles itch to snag crisp days on bristled burrs?
Could wildlife somehow imagine a poorer patch,
to contemplate nature’s bliss and brutal spurs,
while wretchedly singular, from the universe detached?
Oh that is such a good poem Aunty. I almost voted for it too. There were lots of good ones to choose from. I must admit the title threw me, but the poem was extremely engaging. That last stanza was excellent. :)
Quote:
Do nettles itch to snag crisp days on bristled burrs?
Could wildlife somehow imagine a poorer patch,
to contemplate nature’s bliss and brutal spurs,
while wretchedly singular, from the universe detached?
*loved it! maybe personalize the wildlife with an individual, is a minor suggestion. wow... i love the aspens shaking and the moon raking(rhyme). goto *
cogs has a point, now that I think of it. This was my personal favorite in the contest, AuntShecky.
Thank you, dear readers. Here is a short link to another
important quotation from John Muir, to which the last line of the ditty refers:
http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_...misquotes.html
Everybody’s Everybody
Everybody’s every color,
a multi-grain cake of yeast.
Everyone’s a hundred percent Jewish,
and a Moslem facing east.
Everybody’s an Asian
speaking Swahili in the rain.
Everybody’s an Amer-Indian
with ancestors from Spain.
Everybody’s an atheist
who reads the Good Book every day.
Everybody’s Irish-Northern-Catholic,
and everyone’s a little bit gay.
Everybody needs a place to sleep
after he hugs his kids at night.
Everybody wants to eat and drink,
but nobody – really – wants to fight.
Everybody on this elevator
feels the plunging down the chute.
That’s why everybody gets the shaft,
no matter whom they persecute.
Each of us is born a unique scion
from the same old piece of wood.
Every body will die some day,
but every body’s good.
Everybody’s everyone,
and Everyone is good.
Enjoyable!! The poem is really solid. This stanza hit home:
That really pulls everything together.Quote:
Each of us is born a unique scion
from the same old piece of wood.
Every body will die some day,
but every body’s good.
I don't know if you meant but it echos the Leonard Cohen song, "Everybody Knows." Here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yG5e1oaen-M.
By the way you have a typo in the fourth line. It should be "muslim" not "moslim."
Holy Mother! And I do mean Holy Mother, Father, Child and Cousin! Who cares that this is GOOD poetry? It's way more than that, more like GREAT HUMANITY!Quote:
Originally Posted by AuntShecky
Auntie! I mean Auntie! I'll have whatever you're having...
I loved the variation of this piece. It was my favorite. I expecially liked this line:Quote:
Originally Posted by AuntShecky
Quote:
Do nettles itch to snag crisp days on bristled burrs?
You need to send Everybody's Everybody to the UN. It should be posted in all the school classrooms of the world.
It is important hearty stuff but it's light and less filling the way Everyone makes India Pale Ale.
Wonderful poem, Auntie! I couldn't not read it several times.
I second that (those)!!!!! Inspired and inspirational!
It makes me feel happy inside. :)
Wish List
-Exoneration
-Vindication
-Justification
-Communication
-Compilation
-Dedication
-Validation
-Re-forestation
-a long vacation
-less frustration
-more elation
-less putrefaction
-more elevation
-a white carnation
-and a robust potation
(less filling– tastes great!)
-gratification
-celebration
-bebop-ulation
-jubilation
-congratulations
-adulation
Affirmation!
Christmas is coming and you've been very very good! I think you'll get it all!
Absolutely, once the list is checked twice and undergoes the summation.Quote:
Originally Posted by ~Sophia~
This reply begins with a thank you to all of the readers of this thread so far, especially those who posted such flattering replies.
Please believe that I accept your attention and comments with gratitude, and, though I risk sounding like a stand-up comedian who tries to defuse all of his insulting jokes by ending with the comment -- "You've been a wonderful audience and I mean that most sincerely."
I don't deserve any of this praise, and I mean that sincerely as well.
Let me backtrack a little. Even though I really am grateful for your comments, I have to, as Desi commanded Lucy to do, "'splain" myself.
Explaining, expanding, or otherwise commenting on one's own work is a "no no" in literary circles. At best, it sounds defensive; at worst, it pegs the writer as a mealy-mouthed, attention-starved bore (and "boor.")
Even so, the opinions, sentiments, philosophies implied in all of the ditties above are not necessarily those of the author. The speaker and/or the "I" of the poem is usually not yours truly, and despite what pundits have been telling us since September of Aught One, it is still the Age of Irony. For instance, I, personally am not as materialistic as the speaker in # 9 above, although I am an American. #48 ("Everybody's Everybody") could have been written by an incorrigibly earnest undergraduate female or have an entirely different meaning if had come from a frat boy mocking her idealism. Maybe it's the voice of a seventh-grader, who is too young to know what the world is really like but old enough to know what he'd like it to be. Beats me-- and I wrote the damn thing!
"Don't trust the teller, trust the tale," D. H. Lawrence famously said. All we have is what's on the page.
We're all familiar with critics who rail about "the heresy of paraphrase," because with good verse, one can never separate the content from the form. Well, the title of this thread is "anti" poems, and I don't see myself as astute as Cleanth Brooks. ("Cleanth"-- how's that for a name for one's first-born?) Even so, critics such as Brooks know more than I, and they always will.
Here's a case in point. As John Kilgore says in this excellent article:
http://www.eiu.edu/~ipaweb/pipa/volume3/kilgore.htm
it's deadly to try to speculate on a poet's intentions. Again, all we have is what's on the page, but we might have to read it more than a couple of times to glean what's there.
For instance, Prof. Kilgore (a name's the same as a Kurt Vonnegut character) says that in their efforts to get students to "like" poetry by making it "relevant" to the lives of adolescents, teachers unwittingly do a disservice to the original poet, the poem, and to the teachers themselves. Imagine the topic of Frost's "The Road Not Taken" as an example of "peer pressure!" And it's interesting to note that Kilgore states that no one ever "complains" about "bad" poetry-- not principals, not parents, not students.
One more thing about that article I couldn't ignore is the obvious notion that I could try to move heaven and earth and spend 24/7 writing verse for the rest of my life (give or take, with the shadow of what the news is calling "Ukrainian Super Flu" waiting in the wings) yet never, EVER produce a poem as good as "The Road Not Taken." And that's a fact, Jack!
If I may be so bold to suggest that even poets themselves, as in Browning's famous quotation, might not be aware of the actual "reason" they're writing a particular piece. If there is a message, maybe we should just call Western Union (or we would, if we were all still living back in 1935.)
There wasn't really any message in #55, which arose from attempting to have each line end with the same rhyming sound (more or less) as well as -- forgive me, Mssrs. Brooks et al. -- to defy the rule against writing verse containing "abstractions," the occasional white carnation aside. Sometimes, however, when we say we want certain materialistic items, what we really wish for are the abstractions: self-esteem, success, praise, attention, etc.
And, the "message" in this particular reply is: again, thank you for your comments, but if, after reading this, you might want to go back and edit or delete them, certainly I wouldn't blame you.
Still, thank you.
Really.
Who deserves what praise or how much of it - or for that matter how much fault-finding - must have been an issue from early in our species history! But consider that it may give someone pleasure to praise you, would you really deny them that pleasure?Quote:
Originally Posted by AuntShecky
Auntie, I must say I've been amiss in not stopping here. I assumed everyone starts up a new thread for each new poem. You on the other hand collate them here under one roof. I shall make it a point to go back and read them and stop by more often.
That is my reading assumption for any work. I never assume autobiographical, though bits and pieces may, or quite likely be, be based on personal experience. But the reader has no clue and shouldn't assume he can tell. Essentially it's irrevelant.Quote:
"Don't trust the teller, trust the tale," D. H. Lawrence famously said. All we have is what's on the page.
Prince and Virgil, both of your comments are valid, as it's always a good policy not to take things at face value. We
have a tendency to think that others have the same motivation as we do, or think the same way we do.
The worst enemy of art is not a critical audience, but a complacent one. It's better for the artist to take risks than wallow in the same old, same old comfort zones.
Solid poem Auntie. I would normally wince at the word "morph" in a poem, I think it's great. Evening morphing into morning, wow, what a great image.Quote:
Originally Posted by AuntShecky
God bless the grace of this. I was especially taken with:
That sings!Quote:
Originally Posted by AuntShecky
“The whole earth is our hospital”
–T. S. Eliot
Condition: Human
From first gasp to final sigh
we claim we owe everything to the Divine,
the source of all existence, in Whom
we place our awe and lay our care.
At what ill-starred point in history
did Mammon’s blinding light
deflect our turn to gold – or
at least its lesser, yet all-consuming, ores? (1)
Amid fatigue we drive ourselves sick and sore,
devoted to the chronic, pecuniary chase.
Our sights veer from sheer survival to comfort, then
back, since relapse always stalks the cure.
Eros grabs our temporary interest,
a long desire not quite fully quenched
with quickly-quaffed, febrile doses.
We aim to love eternally, but we don’t.
For a time we delight in scions of ourselves,
reaching farther out toward deep posterity,
each of us a little Achilles, ever-striving
for legendary status, settling for ersatz fame. (2)
We do not concern ourselves with why,
preferring to act and direct the pain
of an inward gaze away. We’d rather sit
than stand, and rather move than think.
We aspire to live perfectly,
but we fail.
We never really want to die,
but we do.
(1) Matthew 6:24; Paradise Lost, I, 674
(2) Lines near the conclusion of The Iliad suggest that Achilles will achieve immortality from the stories which future ages will tell about him.
This is so glum, Aunty! but if only for "relapse always stalks the cure," I value it.
It is deep true wise... and beautifully written!
And yes:
We aspire to live perfectly,
but we fail.
We never really want to die,
but we do.
as simple as that.
Thank you Auntie's
Condition
This speaks of us truthfully as both foresaken and foresaking, nothing sure but failure and death ultimately.
In the last four lines though, it seems to say in the end there is something noble in the ways we fail in the face of death.
Thank you for all three comments.
I don't know about "glum," though. Should we only write happy stuff? Wasn't meant to be glum, merely realistic, although I am sorry, Prince, if it lowered your mood. To quote Eliot again: "Humankind cannot stand much reality." (Forgive me if I didn't quote him exactly.)
“And Nietzsche, with his theory of eternal recurrence. He said the life we've lived we're gonna live over the same way for eternity. Great. That means I'll have to sit through the Ice Capades again."
--Woody Allen
Zombies on Ice
The Zeitgeist’s lately been a blasé mix:
sensual lust chilled with a zesty twist
of fear and morbid curiosity.
The juggernaut rumbling through each zone,
which mesmerized erstwhile lighter souls,
draws zealots from Zurich to Kalamazoo.
Here hosted by our humble civic center–
which taxes built and named for the county czar
(despite bamboozling embezzlement)--
the snaky skaters to our public plaza came.
The crowd, prepared for fright but not for shock,
gasped as a zzzt-zzzt buzzed the collective spine.
Upon their entrance to the frozen floor,
as if just roused from a lazy snooze,
the stars appeared altogether in parts:
here an upward arm, there a shaky leg.
Haphazard moves belied the graceful glaze
as sheer stupor themed the choreography.
Or so it seemed. Meanwhile the denizens
of the mezzanine in the ziggurat above
steered their homage toward spicy pretzels,
their zinfandel kept warm and safe in zarfs.
A sudden subtlety caught strong gaze
as zircon-studded costumes swished a swirl.
Attention switched away from schlock to awe
as silver blades put down a zany waltz,
segueing into steps set to Zydeco,
now solving a rebus puzzle, then a maze
across a zeugma of complexity with
some to zig, others to zag.
At the climactic zenith of the act
all Hell ascended through the icy stage.
With Zen-like detachment backs climbed
up bumps of others, a Ponzi scheme of souls.
Against the bold frieze body parts flew,
but fortunately no one fell.
Whole-handed cheers and roaring claps
sent the zapped-out stars to resume their sleep
upon a stack of z’s and cash, while in advance
of next week’s arrival of the pole-vaulting vampires
(who wowed SRO venues from Vegas to Valdez),
the Zamboni swept up splintered chips
and bits and crystalline shavings--
and various sundries unknown.
LOL I enjoyed z-poem.
Also, wonderful quote from Woody Allen; quite apropos.
You (and this poem) are amazzzing, Aunty! Do you constantly search for things that no one one else could do or would even contemplate attempting?
The folks stacked up on each other like a Ponzi scheme was just one piece of wit among so many.
Assuredly NOT chopped-liver (although why chopped-liver should ever be spoken of in a derogatory way beats me. I just wish that any one of my poems were as good as the chopped liver at Moishe's or the Snowdon Deli)!
No, indeed! Hardly chopped or hardly liver!
I liked this stanza best:
"At the climactic zenith of the act
all Hell ascended through the icy stage.
With Zen-like detachment backs climbed
up bumps of others, a Ponzi scheme of souls.
Against the bold frieze body parts flew,
but fortunately no one fell."
As Prince said of "a Ponzi scheme of souls...", brilliant!
You do zombies proud, Aunty!:)
Thank you, q! and. . .
This webpageQuote:
Originally Posted by PrinceMyshkin
http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_b...sages/558.html
says that "chopped liver is always served as a side dish, never a main dish. It therefore makes a good metaphor for someone who is being treated as unimportant or dispensable" (thus an appropriate phrase for your ol' sad-sacky Auntie.)
On the other hand, when one goes to a fancy-schmanzy restaurant --so I'm told -- and orders one of the most expensive appetizers on the menu, he or she will be brought a dish called "paté"-- but it's really chopped liver.
Aha! so you are pate passing yourself off as chopped liver! For shame, Aunty! :)
Nah, but it would be even more shameful if it were the other way around.Quote:
Originally Posted by qimissung
The following, which attempts to channel the spirit of "April Inventory" by W.D. Snodgrass and "The Reckoning" by Richard Wilbur -- with maybe a passing nod to the great Frank Loesser, as an entry in a recent LitNet poetry contest, is re-posted here for comments:
Hindsight
This strange myopia of mine
weakens my view in prisms of ways.
It strains my eyes when hours shine,
with its focus on the darkest days.
I can't see my way clear enough to shake
the sight of every dumb mistake.
I see more flaws than I can count.
The list gets longer. Wrongs arrange
themselves into a steep amount.
I'm blind to faults that I could change.
And I have felt at my heart’s core
a thousand needles, maybe more.
Past peers misread Marcuse off the shelves.
Aloof, I looked at them askance.
Now wealth has claimed their former selves,
while failure long since has seized my stance.
No doubt those folks have pity to share.
(Of that, this self has plenty to spare.)
The times I squandered, wasted, spent
chasing silly dreams or foolish men!
No dough, a deadbeat with the rent:
the same old me I've always been.
I could patch my wounds with duct tape and string,
or open my eyes and look at spring.
The blackbird with his rosy stripe,
the waking frogs down in the mud,
the forsythia so eagerly ripe
to welcome its early golden bud
all show that stale old winds have blown.
I'll force an April of my own,
and with each green spear that pokes its head
up through the ground that’s soft at last,
I'll soundly spank and send to bed
all the bad winters of my past.
For spring gives me another chance
to live -– without a backward glance.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It's a splendid, splendid poem! (The Snodgrass, by the way is "April Inventory") in which, throughout, your humorous self-depreciation is leavened with wisdom, nowhere more elegantly than in that final
Bravo! Bravo! Oh, Bra[obscenity]vo!!!Quote:
Originally Posted by AuntShecky
Hi Auntie,
This is really nice and I did enjoy it. The only flaw is that full stop in S2 L2. I thnk that if you fiddled a bit, lines 2 and 3 here could be tidied up to maintain the flow.
H
Thank you, Prince and Hawkman.
Actually, it dawned on me that I had confused "April Morning" (Howard Fast) with "April Inventory" last night when I was babysitting my grandson and didn't have access to a PC.
The worst of it is that I'd tried consciously to incorporate an inventory in my verse, which, by the bye, is part of a larger compilation called "Heart's Needle." Snodgrass used that title from an Irish proverb: "A daughter is like a needle in the heart."
It also makes me think, somehow, of acupuncture!