the most recent poem you have read

[YesNo]

This is from Edward Thomas's Poems: http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/22423/pg22423.html

TALL NETTLES

TALL nettles cover up, as they have done
These many springs, the rusty harrow, the plough
Long worn out, and the roller made of stone:
Only the elm butt tops the nettles now.
This corner of the farmyard I like most:
As well as any bloom upon a flower
I like the dust on the nettles, never lost
Except to prove the sweetness of a shower.

[danah]

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restor'd and sorrows end.
Shakespeare

[danah]

What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one’s faculties, mental and physical, but the burden of one’s memories.
Somerset Maugham

[danah]

I sent my Soul through the Invisible,
Some letter of that After-life to spell;
And by and by my Soul returned to me,
And answered, "I Myself am Heav'n and Hell"–


Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám
by Edward FitzGerald

[Lykren]

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.
How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?
A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

[Pierre Menard]

One of the great poems ^^^

[Lykren]

Definitely. I love the way, among many other things, it leaps from describing a single moment in the first half to encompass worlds of philosophy in the second. I'm never quite sure how specific the intention is behind that second half, but perhaps the slight vagueness of it, the poem's 'white rush' of fluid muscularity among carefully selected details, is itself part of the answer. To me at this moment, it seems as if the poem is dealing with questions of free will, and of the curious and uncertain boundary which demarcates interactions between the universe and the self.

[NikolaiI]

The Will, by John Donne. I would post it here but it's a little lengthy. . . Very interesting poem.

http://www.poetseers.org/the-great-p...ill/index.html

[Lykren]

In Praise of Limestone - W. H. Auden (too long to post here).

This difficult poem presents its readers with a unity it reaches by contrasting (and thereby stripping of perceived ideal features) a limestone landscape with various landscapes of clay, gravel, granite, and a forest. Here the peculiarity of the diction, the slight shifts in register to and from formality, and the seemingly flighty nature of the imagery, accompany a typically Auden-esque form of insight that combines obscurity with a summative effect that communicates extraordinarily well; see the last lines:

when I try to imagine a faultless love
Or the life to come, what I hear is the murmur
Of underground streams, what I see is a limestone landscape.

Certainly a poem worth many re-readings.

[NikolaiI]

I'm reading The Cloud, by Percy Shelley, and various ones by Sri Aurobindo.

http://www.internal.org/Percy_Bysshe_Shelley/The_Cloud


Well, this one - A God's Labour, by the latter

http://intyoga.online.fr/labour.htm

[Pierre Menard]

Definitely. I love the way, among many other things, it leaps from describing a single moment in the first half to encompass worlds of philosophy in the second. I'm never quite sure how specific the intention is behind that second half, but perhaps the slight vagueness of it, the poem's 'white rush' of fluid muscularity among carefully selected details, is itself part of the answer. To me at this moment, it seems as if the poem is dealing with questions of free will, and of the curious and uncertain boundary which demarcates interactions between the universe and the self.

Yes, I'm not entirely sure the specific meaning behind the second half but I've come to somewhat of a similar conclusion as well. I think the first half with it's imagery presents the feelings of a physical struggle, which leads into the feelings of an existential/philosophical struggle in the second half, largely based around struggling with notions of free will against fate or a predestined ending (I think using 'Agamemnon' is important here) and struggling too with the idea of a cold indifferent ("indifferent beak") universe. This is what I love about poems like this though, they're endlessly re-readable and offer themselves to different interpretations and feelings.

I also just really love the imagery too.

[Lykren]

Yes, the imagery! Not only that, but the way he simultaneously pairs and opposes the imagery with the thought underneath it gives it a monumental, statuesque flair, making those philosophical undertones seem so well-fitted to the image.

[Pierre Menard]

Clear Night - Charles Wright


Clear night, thumb-top of a moon, a back-lit sky.
Moon-fingers lay down their same routine
On the side deck and the threshold, the white keys and the black keys.
Bird hush and bird song. A cassia flower falls.

I want to be bruised by God.
I want to be strung up in a strong light and singled out.
I want to be stretched, like music wrung from a dropped seed.
I want to be entered and picked clean.

And the wind says “What?” to me.
And the castor beans, with their little earrings of death, say “What?” to me.
And the stars start out on their cold slide through the dark.
And the gears notch and the engines wheel.


Charles Wright is a fantastic contemporary poet.

[bewitched]

why not post or share you most recent poem you have so far.
it would be good to read it too

i'm alone but this word is so familiar
how long is it gonna be
for me to feel so inferior
i really wish that he could see
that my pain is interior
if only he could see....


i'm alone but this word is my friend
i wonder how is it gonna be
when i reach the end
i really wish he'd listen to me
i can no longer defend
if only he could see...


i'm alone but this word is everything i've got
i'm really not gonna be
some one i am not
i really wish he knew me
instead of locking me in a cot
if only he could see.....


but he 'll never see through me..

[Pompey Bum]

Hello bewitched. I missed you somehow, but welcome to the site! Your poem is nice but so sad. Be sure to say hi in the introductions thread (where I will probably welcome you again). Remember, just because "he" is being a jerk to you doesn't mean that the rest of us will. Welcome again!