Brrr. I love cummings at his best, but he's only a short step away from bullying with this kind of simplistic, proto-hippie anti-intellectualism. Pay no attention, kids. Syntax is important!
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Brrr. I love cummings at his best, but he's only a short step away from bullying with this kind of simplistic, proto-hippie anti-intellectualism. Pay no attention, kids. Syntax is important!
I think you're right, and I was attempting to be blatantly pedantic. On first reading I just didn't see the gravity of the poem, after a closer reading, it's a little better, but not a favorite of mine.Quote:
Originally Posted by Isagel
Since there aren't many of us who are willing to post poems daily, I think we will change the rules to have more flexibility:
'Same person cannot post poems within 5 days.'
the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls
the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls
are unbeautiful and have comfortable minds
(also, with the church's protestant blessings
daughters, unscented shapeless spirited)
they believe in Christ and Longfellow,both dead,
are invariably interested in so many things-
at the present writing one still finds
delighted fingers knitting for the is it Poles?
perhaps. While permanent faces coyly bandy
scandal of Mrs. N and Professor D
....the Cambridge ladies do not care,above
Cambridge if sometimes in its box of
sky lavender and cornerless, the
moon rattles like a fragment of angry candy
by E. E. Cummings
I love the closing lines:
Very pretty. But frankly I have no idea what this poem is about. For the non-Americans, there is a Cambridge in Massachusetts.Quote:
....the Cambridge ladies do not care,above
Cambridge if sometimes in its box of
sky lavender and cornerless, the
moon rattles like a fragment of angry candy
And it is where Harvard is, isn't it? ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
Whether British or American, they are both university towns. :)Quote:
scandal of Mrs. N and Professor D
No idea at all? None?Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
Here's one by George Oppen, with no title, just a number from his Discrete Series
2
...........Thus
Hides the
Parts -- the prudery
Of Frigidaire, of
Soda-jerking ---------
Thus
Above the
Plane of lunch, of wives
Removes itself
(As soda-jerking from
the private act
Of
Cracking eggs);
big-Business
I was thinking... he really didn't need to be discrete here, could have expanded on it. I mean, not too much, because then we would know what its about. Why does this remind of Andy Warhole?
Expanded? No, I don't think he needed to.
Not sure I've totally 'cracked' it myself, but I think it's all there, so to speak. Start at the beginning, work through to the end, go back to the beginning again. What hides the parts? The parts of what? big-Business. Down at the soda counter, we can believe we're just living a life, even that we're free. None of this is as innocent as it seems.
I'm interested in the use of capitalisations - which I've reproduced faithfully.
The Bookburning (Die Bücherverbrennung)
When the Regime ordered that books with dangerous teachings
Should be publicly burnt and everywhere
Oxen were forced to draw carts full of books
To the funeral pyre, an exiled poet,
One of the best, discovered with fury, when he studied the list
Of the burned, that his books
Had been forgotten. He rushed to his writing table
On wings of anger and wrote a letter to those in power.
Burn me, he wrote with hurrying pen, burn me!
Do not treat me in this fashion. Don't leave me out. Have I not
Always spoken the truth in my books? And now
You treat me like a liar! I order you:
Burn me!
Bertolt Brecht
What a lovely poem Shanna - My avatar shows the inevitable response of the authorities. :D
Somehow this poem seems appropriate to how I feel right now.
Quote:
Bright Star, Would I Were Steadfast as Thou Art by John Keats
Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art--
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--
No--yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever--or else swoon to death.
Thank you Virgil. That is a poem I have long loved. I'm glad I stopped in to read it before going to bed tonight.
from Pippa Passes
The year's at the spring
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hill-side's dew-pearled
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn;
God's in his Heaven -
All's right with the world!
Robert Browning
Love the way the rhythm complements the theme. Great image in "dew-pearled." Browning was probably looking for a rhyme for "world" and stumbled on a great image.
Since no one's puitting any out, I'll grab this opportunity. This is an anonymous tenth century Welsh poem, translated into modern English.
Quote:
Spring Song (Anonymous, translated by Wesli Court)
Earthspring, the sweetest season,
Loud the birdsong, sprouts ripple,
Plough in furrow, ox in yoke,
Sea like smoke, fields in stipple.
Yet when cuckoos call from trees
I drink the lees of sorrow;
Tongue bitter, I sleep with pain--
My kinsman come not again.
On mountains, mead, seaborne land,
Wherever man, wends his way,
What path he take boots not,
He shall not keep from Christ's eye.
A very interesting and thought provoking poem with an unusual pattern. It would appear the author has a reason to be sad in the spring, something about a kindsman.
Something nice and uplifting for a Friday morning....
Quote:
Paradise Motel
by Charles Simic
Millions were dead; everybody was innocent.
I stayed in my room. The President
Spoke of war as of a magic love potion.
My eyes were opened in astonishment.
In a mirror my face appeared to me
Like a twice-canceled postage stamp.
I lived well, but life was awful.
there were so many soldiers that day,
So many refugees crowding the roads.
Naturally, they all vanished
With a touch of the hand.
History licked the corners of its bloody mouth.
On the pay channel, a man and a woman
Were trading hungry kisses and tearing off
Each other's clothes while I looked on
With the sound off and the room dark
Except for the screen where the color
Had too much red in it, too much pink.
:lol: What does that all mean?
I think it's trying to say that humans are animals.
Since I missed Virg.'s poem yesterday, I thought I'd say I enjoyed it. Makes me wish I could read the original Welsh...say tenth century Welsh isn't anything like Old English is it? Well...probably not, but the translation of the Welsh poem reminds me of a lot of the things I've read in early medieval English poetry.
'I lived well, but life was awful'
There's the key. Come on Virgil, try a bit harder!
I don't know what any Welch sounds like unfortunately. I would imagine it would sound Gaelic, but then I don't know. I would wonder how much of the welch was infleuenced by Latin prior to Anglo-Saxon conquest and then by Germanic languages after that. The translator does have old English in mind. The translated poem has a Gerard Manly Hopkins feel to it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Petrarch's Love
You're right. I was blinded by the last stanza with the red and the pink! :DQuote:
Originally Posted by blp
I think I preferred the previous poem.
capture my mind in your eyes
It can be seen if you look deep
Like looking through a face to find a lie
Test my madness by being blind
But only blind to my exterior
You have to look far into my eyes
Then you'll see my thougts and fears
See that my anger has came from love
My pride has been smashed yet I still don't care
I've banished my demons
Now I just need A reason to keep them away
any opinions on this poem
smoothherb
This thread is for estabished, published poems. The personal poetry forum is for our poetry.
Orion
Far back when I went zig-zagging
through tamarack pastures
you were my genius, you
my cast-iron Viking, my helmed
lion-heart king in prison.
Years later now you're young
my fierce half-brother, staring
down from that simplified west
your breast open, your belt dragged down
by an oldfashioned thing, a sword
the last bravado you won't give over
though it weighs you down as you stride
and the stars in it are dim
and maybe have stopped burning.
But you burn, and I know it;
as I throw back my head to take you in
an old transfusion happens again:
divine astronomy is nothing to it.
Indoors I bruise and blunder,
break faith, leave ill enough
alone, a dead child born in the dark.
Night cracks up over the chimney,
pieces of time, frozen geodes
come showering down in the grate.
A man reaches behind my eyes
and finds them empty
a woman's head turns away
from my head in the mirror
children are dying my death
and eating crumbs of my life.
Pity is not your forte.
Calmly you ache up there
pinned aloft in your crow's nest,
my speechless pirate!
You take it all for granted
and when I look you back
it's with a starlike eye
shooting its cold and egotistical spear
where it can so least damage.
Breathe deep! No hurt, no pardon
out here in the cold with you
you with your back to the wall.
Adrienne Rich
Wow, very nice choice Riesa. I really like this. Nice lines:
Here a little melodramaitc, but still nice:Quote:
Indoors I bruise and blunder,
break faith, leave ill enough
alone, a dead child born in the dark.
Quote:
A man reaches behind my eyes
and finds them empty
a woman's head turns away
from my head in the mirror
Interesting poem, seems to be rather "starry" and sad.
Since no one has posted in a few days, I'll post another.
Quote:
At Melville's Tomb by Hart Crane
Often beneath the wave, wide from this ledge
The dice of drowned men's bones he saw bequeath
An embassy. Their numbers as he watched,
Beat on the dusty shore and were obscured.
And wrecks passed without sound of bells,
The calyx of death's bounty giving back
A scattered chapter, livid hieroglyph,
The portent wound in corridors of shells.
Then in the circuit calm of one vast coil,
Its lashings charmed and malice reconciled,
Frosted eyes there were that lifted altars;
And silent answers crept across the stars.
Compass, quadrant and sextant contrive
No farther tides . . . High in the azure steeps,
Monody shall not wake the mariner.
This fabulous shadow only the sea keeps.
Wonderful choice Virgil.
Thank you Hyacinth
I believe there is there has always been controversy as to the openning sentence:
Does anyone comprehend what it means? I'm baffled.Quote:
Often beneath the wave, wide from this ledge
The dice of drowned men's bones he saw bequeath
An embassy.
Virgil, I will give this a stab, but I'm really rusty at exegesis, so bear with me. :D
I view this as referring to the ocean, seen as a wide expanse from the "ledge" of land. "wide" also seems to denote distance - the ocean being far from Melville's particular "ledge".Quote:
Often beneath the wave, wide from this ledge
The "dice" of dead sailors indicate chance, and the vagaries of Fortune/Fate that caused their gamble to fail. It also echoes "The Tempest" slightly, and I do mean slightly :"those are pearls that were his eyes/his bones of coral made"(I'm probably misquoting a tetch, as I do this from memory) in that dice were once made of ivory. The bones "bequeath an embassy" - they seem to move across the wide expanse beneath the waves as an ambassador to those on land, to the living. In the next line they "beat upon the dusty shore" - carried along under the waves, but fail in their mission to reach the "ledge" of the land. The use of "dusty" seems to echo "dust to dust" - the bones seem to seek their proper place among the buried , "and were obscured" - returning under the water to the deep expanse they journeyed from, their ambassadorial mission incomplete. The lack of burial and tombstone seems to lend to their being "obscured," due to the absence of a physical memorial.Quote:
The dice of drowned men's bones he saw bequeath/an embassy
Nice poem Virgil, and very good analysis Hyacinth! You are actually quite good, and it makes sense.
No man is an island
No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
John Donne
By Jove, I think you've done it. Thanks. :thumbs_upQuote:
Originally Posted by Hyacinth Girl
I have always loved that piece of writing. Fabulous. It doesn't diminish with time.Quote:
Originally Posted by Scheherazade
Sorry, couldn't resist!Quote:
The Scales of Justice
Jeff Mondak
It's true I've fried a knight or two--
I left them lightly toasted.
But dragons' caves are private homes--
We all have warnings posted.
We dragons are a peaceful lot--
You'll often find us dancing.
Those knights should take up violin
And stop with all this lancing.
I'd never roast a blacksmith, Judge,
I'd never grill a farmer.
Those knights attacked my humble lair
With swords and suits of armor.
They came at me with weapons drawn
To slice me full of gashes,
So what was I supposed to do
But burn them all to ashes?
It's clear that this was self-defense.
You know the knights conspired.
You've got to say I'm innocent--
Or else you might be fired!
For Pendragon, the only dragon, knight, and ghost of my acquaintance. ;)
Thank you for those last two poems, especially!
Piglet
That is so cute. It is charming. I hope Pen sees it.