Poem of the Week - 2011

I like the John Cooper Clark poem. It reminds me of "Primitive" paintings. It sounds like song lyrics, rather than poetry (which makes sense if Clark was touring with punk bands). Anyone who has ever taken even famous and respected song lyrics and said them out loud as poetry knows that it is extremely rare that even the best lyrics can seem like decent poetry without the tune to support them. But Clark's can. They're ironic, and lyrical all at once. It's not just the irony that makes the poem good, it's also the skill with sounds and words. Even without the tune, a tune plays in one's head while reading the poem.

I agree, the poem does sound like song lyrics. It would be interesting to hear the poem back by music.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ecurb

I like the John Cooper Clark poem. It reminds me of "Primitive" paintings. It sounds like song lyrics, rather than poetry (which makes sense if Clark was touring with punk bands). Anyone who has ever taken even famous and respected song lyrics and said them out loud as poetry knows that it is extremely rare that even the best lyrics can seem like decent poetry without the tune to support them. But Clark's can. They're ironic, and lyrical all at once. It's not just the irony that makes the poem good, it's also the skill with sounds and words. Even without the tune, a tune plays in one's head while reading the poem.

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http://www.lyricszoo.com/john-cooper...cooper-clarke/

Funny you should say that. I had a look and he has done some of his stuff to music. The link takes you to a video from the Old Grey Whistle Test - a programme that was on in the 1980s in the UK. You can listen to the rather grim Beasley Street. He's got a Mancunian accent - he's from Salford near Manchester - a rough town - and the nasal voice seems to be appropriate to the subject matter.

One of my favorite poets from the 1950s is Weldon Kees. He was also a critic, filmmaker, musician and novelist. His car was found by the Golden Gate Bridge in 1955, and Kees was never seen again. Most assume he took that final plunge. Nobody knows.

His poems (I think) combine wit and despair. Here are two of them:

CRIME CLUB

No butler, no second maid, no blood upon the stair.
No eccentric aunt, no gardener, no family friend
Smiling among the bric-a-brac and murder.
Only a suburban house with the front door open
And a dog barking at a squirrel, and the cars
Passing. The corpse quiet dead. The wife in Florida.

Consider the clues: the potato masher in a vase,
The torn photograph of a Weslyan basketball team
Scattered with check stubs in the hall;
The unsent fan letter to Shirley Temple,
The Hoover button on the lapel of the deceased,
The note: "To be killed this way is quite all right with me."

Small wonder that the case remains unsolved,
Or that the sleuth, Le Roux, is now incurably insane,
And sits alone in a white room in a white gown,
Screaming that all the world is mad, that clues
Lead nowhere, or to walls so high their tops cannot be seen;
Screaming all day of war, screaming that nothing can be solved.

------------------------------------
For My Daughter
by Weldon Kees

Looking into my daughter’s eyes I read
Beneath the innocence of morning flesh
Concealed, hintings of death she does not heed.
Coldest of winds have blown this hair, and mesh
Of seaweed snarled these miniatures of hands;
The night’s slow poison, tolerant and bland,
Has moved her blood. Parched years that I have seen
That may be hers appear: foul, lingering
Death in certain war, the slim legs green.
Or, fed on hate, she relishes the sting
Of others’ agony; perhaps the cruel
Bride of a syphilitic or a fool.
These speculations sour in the sun.
I have no daughter. I desire none.

I always feel like when I am trying to understand a poem I am solving a mystery. Anyhow, this poem was fun to read, but I don't think I solved its mystery. You can tell when it was written by the fan letter to Shirley Temple. The setting is so typical American suburbs. The ordinariness of the crime scene. The clues tell the reader nothing as well as the Sleuth. He's insane form his job? "that clues lead nowhere"

I'm still trying to get at the overall idea of the poem's meaning.

Hi Ecurb. I really like the two selections you made.

Crime club is like a poetry noir, or a noir version of Phillip Larkin.

the first stanza seems to contrast the traditional fictional murder mystery elements - maid, butler, etc with the realities of everyday murder.

The final image of the sleuth screaming "nothing can be solved" seems to err more towards the irreconcilability of the "romantic 2 version of murder with the mundane reality.

The bridge between these two worlds seems to be Le Roux. I wondered why he was called this. it sounds like a sleuthy sort of name, but is just a white sauce base, which itself seems a mixture of the exotic with the mundane.

For My Daughter seems to be a poem of anxiety- the anxiety of an imagined daughter and the trials tribulations and death she will endure. His apprehension against her ignorence of this seems to be the crux of the poem.

I get the impression that he would not be able to stand the anxiety of having a daughter, and that, although it seems cruel to some imagined daughter - listing all the grim possibilities, he is really insulating himself against the feeling of great aniety a daughter would engender.

I like both the poems. I think I'll take a look at his other stuff.

Here's a link to some of Kees' poems. I own his "Complete Poems" (although I don't have it now, because my son stole it).

http://www.poemhunter.com/weldon-kees/

I recommend all the "Robinson" poems. Robinson is sort of a strange alter ego for Kees. Here's one other favorite that isn't on poem hunter:


The Patient is Rallying
By Weldon Kees

Difficult to recall an emotion that is dead,
Particularly so among these unbelieved fanfares
And admonitions from a camouflaged sky.

I should have remained burdened with destinations
Perhaps, or stayed quite drunk, or obeyed
The undertaker, who was fairly charming, after all.

Or was there a room like that one, worn
With our whispers, and a great tree blossoming
Outside blue windows, warm rain blowing in the night.

There seems to be some doubt. No doubt, however,
Of the chilled and empty tissues of the mind
—Cold, cold, a great gray winter entering—
Like spines of air, frozen in an ice cube.

I read the poem a few times over the last few days and I think some meaning finally made sense to me. Kees states that he has no daughter, but yet the poem is about a daughter. So as was already pointed about the poem must be about anxiety, if he were to have a daughter. The images are very dark, but I can respect the power of the poet's fears. It's a good poem, if you give it enough time to sink in.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ecurb

The Patient is Rallying
By Weldon Kees

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I'm so new...it's my first post. I wanted to say thanks, ecurb, for introducing me to this poet...can't wait to read all he has now. I'm enjoying how rich it is with metaphors and similies , especially the powerful "chilled...like spines of air, frozen in an ice cube" to describe the onset of the death of love-lost for her. I shivered when I read it. The poet being the patient trying to recover and the undertaker being his lover is a clever and somewhat humorous metaphor in what is a sad state of affairs...that is if I understand this poem correctly. Does, "unbelieved fanfares And admonitions from a camouflaged sky" mean his ex-lover is perceived by him to be phoney in her actions towards him now?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by blithe spirit

I'm so new...it's my first post. I wanted to say thanks, ecurb, for introducing me to this poet...can't wait to read all he has now. I'm enjoying how rich it is with metaphors and similies , especially the powerful "chilled...like spines of air, frozen in an ice cube" to describe the onset of the death of love-lost for her. I shivered when I read it. The poet being the patient trying to recover and the undertaker being his lover is a clever and somewhat humorous metaphor in what is a sad state of affairs...that is if I understand this poem correctly. Does, "unbelieved fanfares And admonitions from a camouflaged sky" mean his ex-lover is perceived by him to be phoney in her actions towards him now?

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I like the image of spines of air, frozen in an ice cube, too. The literal meaning of the "fanfares and admonitions" is that there's a thunderstorm, which makes it harder for the narrator to recall an emotion that is dead. For some reason, I always assumed the "undertaker" was a new lover for the ex -- who finally buried the affair (I have no reason for thinking this other than that it was my original reading of the poem).

I don't think the poem is about the ex-lover -- it's about the "emotions that are dead (and difficult to even recall)". The patient (the narrator) remembers the room he shared with his lover -- but doubts his own memory. He has no doubt about the present -- the chilled and empty present.

Yes, I agree that it's a poem about emotions that are dead and hard to recall. That's what I meant by "love lost"...his feelings of love (not lover lost).

But I didn't take the "patient" and the "undertaker" literally. I thought patient was a metaphor for him in his condition (he with dead emotions and empty tissues of the mind) and the undertaker was a metaphor for his ex who had buried his emotions.

Regarding the room...I saw it as him wondering, should he have stayed and tried to get along with her ("obeyed") or, ideally, was it possible that they could ever go back to that time when everything in the relationship was good (aka the room he described).

I didn't know the literal meaning of "fanfares and admonitions" meant thunderstorm. I've already learned something ^__^

Somewhat ironic title to that poem. Almost as if he is laughing rather sardonically at himself.

To A Skylark by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from Heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the golden lightning
Of the sunken sun
O'er which clouds are bright'ning,
Thou dost float and run,
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

The pale purple even
Melts around thy flight;
Like a star of Heaven
In the broad daylight
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight:

Keen as are the arrows
Of that silver sphere,
Whose intense lamp narrows
In the white dawn clear
Until we hardly see — we feel that it is there.

All the earth and air
With thy voice is loud.
As, when night is bare,
From one lonely cloud
The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.

What thou art we know not;
What is most like thee?
From rainbow clouds there flow not
Drops so bright to see
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.

Like a poet hidden
In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,
Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:

Like a high-born maiden
In a palace tower,
Soothing her love-laden
Soul in secret hour
With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower:

Like a glow-worm golden
In a dell of dew,
Scattering unbeholden
Its aerial hue
Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view:

Like a rose embowered
In its own green leaves,
By warm winds deflowered,
Till the scent it gives
Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged thieves.

Sound of vernal showers
On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awakened flowers,
All that ever was
Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.

Teach us, sprite or bird,
What sweet thoughts are thine:
I have never heard
Praise of love or wine
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.

Chorus hymeneal
Or triumphal chaunt
Matched with thine, would be all
But an empty vaunt —
A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

What objects are the fountains
Of thy happy strain?
What fields, or waves, or mountains?
What shapes of sky or plain?
What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?

With thy clear keen joyance
Languor cannot be:
Shadow of annoyance
Never came near thee:
Thou lovest, but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.

Waking or asleep,
Thou of death must deem
Things more true and deep
Than we mortals dream,
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

We look before and after,
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Yet if we could scorn
Hate, and pride, and fear;
If we were things born
Not to shed a tear,
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

Better than all measures
Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures
That in books are found,
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow
The world should listen then, as I am listening now!

I guess you can tell by my name and profile comment that this is one of my favorites. Thank you for posting it, Jersea. I like it for many reasons...the metaphors of nature bring it alive beautifully, but as Shelley alludes to toward the end, no poem nor book can measure up to the unpremeditated artistic expression of joy through melody that the Skylark's song can deliver. Shelley humbly admits that he's listening to the Skylark's melody and wishes the world would listen like that to his poetry.

It's interesting that Shelley's close friend Keats wrote Ode to a Nightingale just one year previous to his To a Skylark. They're similar but Keat's is more negative and sad whereas Shelley's is positive and he even mentions that the Skylark is void of sadness in his life unlike humans. Shelley notes that humans could never express joy as completely therefore.

I also find it interesting that Shelley led such a tumultuous life with death of his children and moving constantly from place to place...and yet was able to write such a beautifully positive and joyous piece.

I sort of read Ode to a Nightgale, but am now motivated to go back and reread it. Not too long ago, I read Tender is the Night. The title is taken from Keat's poem.

My senses are overwhelmed by the beauty of these lines:

Like a poet hidden
In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,
Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:

Like a high-born maiden
In a palace tower,
Soothing her love-laden
Soul in secret hour
With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower:

Like a glow-worm golden
In a dell of dew,
Scattering unbeholden
Its aerial hue
Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view:

Like a rose embowered
In its own green leaves,
By warm winds deflowered,
Till the scent it gives
Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged thieves.

Sound of vernal showers
On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awakened flowers,
All that ever was
Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.

This poem is so easy to comprehend and such a delight to read that I can understand why it is a beloved poem. I'm glad that it was fun for you to reread. It certainly was a joy for me. Now when people say to me, "Oh do you know that poem, I can say yes, I do."

Love has its own periods of feeling and delight and failure. If you've been harm by love, then this poem will resonate with you and that spring will once more arrive soon.

I thought of this poem in terms of divine inspiration and the artistic process. Yes, love can still be another filter in which to understand the poem, since it is such a positive piece.

A Conservative
By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The garden beds I wandered by
One bright and cheerful morn,
When I found a new-fledged butterfly,
A-sitting on a thorn,
A black and crimson butterfly
All doleful and forlorn.

I thought that life could have no sting
To infant butterflies,
So I gazed on this unhappy thing
With wonder and surprise.
While sadly with his waving wing
He wiped his weeping eyes.

Said I, “What can the matter be?
Why weepest thou so sore?
With garden fair and sunlight free
And flowers in goodly store,”—
But he only turned away from me
And burst into a roar.

Cried he, “My legs are thin and few
Where once I had a swarm!
Soft fuzzy fur—a joy to view—
Once kept my body warm,
Before these flapping wing-things grew,
To hamper and deform!”

At that outrageous bug I shot
The fury of mine eye;
Said I, in scorn all burning hot,
In rage and anger high,
“You ignominious idiot!
Those wings are made to fly!”

“I do not want to fly,” said he,
”I only want to squirm!”
And he drooped his wings dejectedly,
But still his voice was firm:
“I do not want to be a fly!
I want to be a worm!

O yesterday of unknown lack
To-day of unknown bliss!
I left my fool in red and black;
The last I saw was this,—
The creature madly climbing back
Into his chrysalis.

This is wonderful! Some caterpillars just don't want to be butterflies, and you cannot force caterpillars to be butterflies if they have no desire to fly, simply by screaming at them.
I must admit to being confused by the first line when I first encountered this, since I was looking for a description of the garden bed. This was probably due to my tiredness and resultant lack of mental flexibility. :)
I loved this stanza particularly for its alliterative richness:

I thought that life could have no sting
To infant butterflies,
So I gazed on this unhappy thing
With wonder and surprise.
While sadly with his waving wing
He wiped his weeping eyes.



This caterpillar brought to my mind Auden's poem 'The Unknown Citizen', which if you haven't read, might enjoy:
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15549

can i post my poem here? where shall i post? :) please reply..

Your own poetry can be posted in the Personal Poetry section:

http://www.online-literature.com/for...splay.php?f=14

it seems that the content of any image in these lines embodies a dominating theme of sadness and melancholy where the organic unity is valid and striking. for example, the poet employs images of "Dark-eyed Fanny" which emphasizes the theme of sadness and grimness, and "tears" that flow from her dark eyes signifies a need for purification and catharsis that the persona aspires to. them the transformation of images as "Down her cheaks, in bitter weepen'" as if the weapon becomes a candy with bitter flavor that intensifies her sense of sadness and grimness. the cause of these feelings seems to be a state of deception and betrayal on the part of the gender other who causes her broken heart.
the poem still needs a lot of interpretation to cover its dominant theme.
Best
Dr Abdullah Kurraz
Gaza- Palestine

Which poem are we covering? I can't tell which are comparisons and which are under discussion.

Been a while since we posted any poems in this thread. Would you like to post one, Stewed?

:)

Hm, okay. I'll have to try to think of something.

In an anthology I read a longer, more baffling poem of his which might have been better for deciphering; I didn't think I could find it on the internet, so here's this:

Hunting Horns
by Guillame Apollinaire

Our past is as noble and as tragic
As the mask of a tyrant
No tale of danger or of magic
Nothing so insignificant
Describes the pathos of our love

And Thomas de Quincy drinking his
Sweet and chaste and poisoned glass
Dreaming went to see his Ann
Let us since all passes pass
I shall look back only too often

Memories are hunting horns
Whose sound dies along the wind

What I don't understand is the middle stanza. Some more definite grammatical hook seems missing; we'd be able to tell why he's evoking de Quincy if we had a "like" or an "as though" to attach it definitely to some other part of the poem. Any recent readers of Confessions of an English Opium Eater around? I can't remember who Ann is.

The over-metaphor is love or passions tumbling through time, on the micro and macro level. He compares the love to deep history, touching on the idea of Agamemnon's mask (the mask claimed as Agamemnon's was dug up maybe 30 some odd years before the poem's composition) and the Trojan war, old epic and tragic archetypes of loss; and these are rejected on the surface, the comparison's don't cut it for the narrator, but they stay with the reader: he gives us a metaphor that's worn, that doesn't describe what he has inside, but that's still powerful enough to give an idea, and to set the elusive feeling in an idea of a deep sweep of time.

(de Quincy, and the tyrant's mask have a faint, possible connection. Helen served some narcotic drink to Telemachus and Menalaus, years after the war brought her home and years after Agamemnon's murder.)

And love is a tyrant. But now there's a metaphor closer to us and our shrivelled 21st century hearts: love as an addiction. But evoked for an emotional tone rather than argued as an equivalent; the narrator says he searches his memory the way de Quincy searched for something in the drug.

This leaves us feeling sort of passive and junkie-like, sprawled wistfully on our poetic ratty couches, and now the idea of the past re-starts, now that we're feeling like annual flowers in October. "Let us since all passes pass." I will let go because I can't let go and I will look back without trying to. We as readers are still in the feeling of stasis, and the ideas of history from the tyrant's mask and from de Quincy, join with the listless feeling, and we get a sense of of love and lovers being leaves blown down the historical lanes, ephemera.

History as a kind of tattering wind comes in at the end, with the memories dying along it. But this is the great part. The lover in the poem is almost a moored point of view; his memory, though, is alive and seeking, with almost an emotion and life of its own. Still without the substance to drown out the wind, but with more pathos, in this agency, than could have happened with our everyday idea of memory as a neutral, inert thing. Hunting horns sound archaic, in a misty romantic sort of way, and love as the chase is an old-school love metaphor; but horns dying in the wind aren't heard, they don't summon anything.

I love how gently stated the insufficiency of the old metaphors is, how it doesn't grotesquely become more important than the loneliness.

I'm not sure I'm doing this right, since I'm new, but I'm responding to the first poem posted on this thread. I was just struck by how powerful it is to suddenly have two short lines:

Hangen white,
Or wringen tight.

Yes it is a man's voice. Otherwise why should the grieving woman be seen as so weak that only a god can punish her offender? The irony and ridicule are unmistakbly there although there is also a hint of sympathy for the sufferer.

Ann, in Confessions of an Opium Eater, was the woman who had looked after him, and was a companion when he had fallen on hard times. He left London for a while to sort out his finances, and arranged to meet her at the usual meeting place a a few weeks, but she never turned up. He never saw her again, despite looking in all their usual haunts.

I like the poem.

Twice by Christina Rossetti

I took my heart in my hand
(O my love, O my love),
I said: Let me fall or stand,
Let me live or die,
But this once hear me speak-
(O my love, O my love)-
Yet a woman's words are weak;
You should speak, not I.

You took my heart in your hand
With a friendly smile,
With a critical eye you scanned,
Then set it down,
And said: It is still unripe,
Better wait a while;
Wait while the skylarks pipe,
Till the corn grows brown

As you set it down it broke-
Broke, but I did not wince;
I smiled at the speech you spoke,
At your judgment that I heard:
But I have not often smiled
Since then, nor questioned since,
Nor cared for corn-flowers wild,
Nor sung with the singing bird.

I take my heart in my hand,
O my God, O my God,
My broken heart in my hand:
Thou hast seen, judge Thou
My hope was written on sand,
O my God, O my God:
Now let Thy judgment stand-
Yea, judge me now

This contemned of a man,
This marred one heedless day,
This heart take Thou to scan
Both within and without:
Refine with fire its gold,
Purge Thou its dross away-
Yea, hold it in Thy hold,
Whence none can pluck it out.

I take my heart in my hand-
I shall not die, but live-
Before Thy face I stand;
I, for Thou callest such:
All that I have I bring,
All that I am I give,
Smile Thou and I shall sing,
But shall not question much.

This poem by Christina Rossetti has always been of special importance to me, and I just thought I'd put it out there to see what everyone else thinks.

The first three stanzas in this poem are directed to the persona's love and his rejection of her, while the last three talk about the her relationship with God; how he has taken her broken heart and made something good from it.

The thing I really love about Christina Rossetti is that she puts her whole soul into her poems, and the langauge she uses to express herself really speaks to me as a person.

I like it myself just the words itself used




http://www.herfree.com/avatar2.jpg

Ya, I can see it being an effective tool for that.http://www.hergoods.info/avatar2.jpg

The Cummings poem is brilliant. I think the line you quoted undulates quite musically.http://www.hergoods.info/avatar2.jpg

Hunting Horns is a terrific poem. I enjoyed the de Quincy references.

very kool on "hunting horns" but i was lost in the second stanza third line, and was unsure of how Ann related to the drinker... was Ann someone who he had a past love but then lost somehow which is why he drinks to have his memories come back?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Paulclem

In contrst to other romantic poetry - he's offering her something, but not much. A coffee pot, a raincoat, a ford cortina, (prone to rusting I think), and that rather disgusting image of the vacuum cleaner breathing in her dust.

It's like some bloke in a pub/ bar desperately trying to think of good lines with which to chat up a woman. I think the references to Teddy Bear - Elvis - and dreamboat are cliches. He's getting desperate, and then we have the ironic devotion deep as the ocean, when it is clearly as deep as a puddle.

Just to add - he's a performance poet who used to tour with Punk bands in the 80's.

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the poet uses humor to convey his love wanting to protect to be better than the rest to stay to make things right to embrace to comfort to let her lead ; etc etc

it is a nice clichè that women enjoy he deserves credit for trying even if its just a fantasy hes inventing to "chat up" who knows maybe some of us still like flattery and to have our roles as domestics exalted i wouldnt be so hard on him

where did you see elvis named in the poem ? maybe i am missing something I am puertorican and english my second language

Quote:

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Originally Posted by rosana

the poet uses humor to convey his love wanting to protect to be better than the rest to stay to make things right to embrace to comfort to let her lead ; etc etc

it is a nice clichè that women enjoy he deserves credit for trying even if its just a fantasy hes inventing to "chat up" who knows maybe some of us still like flattery and to have our roles as domestics exalted i wouldnt be so hard on him

where did you see elvis named in the poem ? maybe i am missing something I am puertorican and english my second language

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Sorry - I missed this. The poet does all this consciously - I think it's a satirical poem about the poor effort of modern romance. The Elvis reference is I wanna be your teddy bear from the song.

I found this terriffic poem in The Guardian yesterday - they do a section called The Saturday Poem.

Terrier in Rape

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012...kinnon-terrier