Poem of the Week '10

[Il Penseroso]

List of poems available in this thread:

LXII. Terence, this is stupid stuff by A.E. Housman

The Drunken Boat by Rimbaud

anyone lived in a pretty how town by ee cummings

The Forsaken by Duncan Campbell Scott

Seeing For A Moment by Denise Levertov

The Thought Fox by Ted Hughes

'The Imperfect Enjoyment' by John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester

Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape by John Ashbery

Mr Bleaney by Phillip Larkin


For the new year's week, and discussion:

LXII. Terence, this is stupid stuff
A.E. Housman

‘TERENCE, this is stupid stuff:
You eat your victuals fast enough;
There can’t be much amiss, ’tis clear,
To see the rate you drink your beer.
But oh, good Lord, the verse you make, 5
It gives a chap the belly-ache.
The cow, the old cow, she is dead;
It sleeps well, the horned head:
We poor lads, ’tis our turn now
To hear such tunes as killed the cow. 10
Pretty friendship ’tis to rhyme
Your friends to death before their time
Moping melancholy mad:
Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad.’

Why, if ’tis dancing you would be, 15
There’s brisker pipes than poetry.
Say, for what were hop-yards meant,
Or why was Burton built on Trent?
Oh many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse, 20
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God’s ways to man.
Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think:
Look into the pewter pot 25
To see the world as the world’s not.
And faith, ’tis pleasant till ’tis past:
The mischief is that ’twill not last.
Oh I have been to Ludlow fair
And left my necktie God knows where, 30
And carried half way home, or near,
Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:
Then the world seemed none so bad,
And I myself a sterling lad;
And down in lovely muck I’ve lain, 35
Happy till I woke again.
Then I saw the morning sky:
Heigho, the tale was all a lie;
The world, it was the old world yet,
I was I, my things were wet, 40
And nothing now remained to do
But begin the game anew.

Therefore, since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure 45
Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure,
I’d face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good.
’Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale
Is not so brisk a brew as ale: 50
Out of a stem that scored the hand
I wrung it in a weary land.
But take it: if the smack is sour,
The better for the embittered hour;
It should do good to heart and head 55
When your soul is in my soul’s stead;
And I will friend you, if I may,
In the dark and cloudy day.

There was a king reigned in the East:
There, when kings will sit to feast, 60
They get their fill before they think
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
He gathered all the springs to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more, 65
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
They put arsenic in his meat
And stared aghast to watch him eat; 70
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up:
They shook, they stared as white’s their shirt:
Them it was their poison hurt.
—I tell the tale that I heard told. 75
Mithridates, he died old.

[GypsyDream]

I am new to litnet and have been checking out the different forums. I wanted to comment on the poem I just read since I enjoy that particular one.
I have read that poem by A.E. Housman before- nice. I love the comarison made between ale and poetry or verse. He, in a sense, seems to make the poem more "brisk" by stating that "there's brisker pipes than poetry". I had not read Housman before this poem. It did make me more interested in his work.

[Sapphire]

A.E. Housman is a great poet, in my eyes. It is just... some of his poems are so long - it is easy to remember only parts of it. As for the above poem, I could have sworn that it was only these lines:

Therefore, since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure
Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure,
I’d face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good.

Hence missing all the rest Oops... glad that's changed now. At least for another year

I have to admit though: I don't quite see the use of the last verse, the one about the King. It's an interesting story in itself - the poisener being poisened by its own poison. But what has it got to do with melancholic poetry and the idea that there is more evil than good in this world?

[Alexander III]

Lets try and get this thread going again !

Rimbaud - The Drunken Boat



As I was floating down unconcerned Rivers
I no longer felt myself steered by the haulers:
Gaudy Redskins had taken them for targets
Nailing them naked to coloured stakes.

I cared nothing for all my crews,
Carrying Flemish wheat or English cottons.
When, along with my haulers those uproars were done with
The Rivers let me sail downstream where I pleased.

Into the ferocious tide-rips
Last winter, more absorbed than the minds of children,
I ran! And the unmoored Peninsulas
Never endured more triumphant clamourings

The storm made bliss of my sea-borne awakenings.
Lighter than a cork, I danced on the waves
Which men call eternal rollers of victims,
For ten nights, without once missing the foolish eye of the harbor lights!

Sweeter than the flesh of sour apples to children,
The green water penetrated my pinewood hull
And washed me clean of the bluish wine-stains and the splashes of vomit,
Carring away both rudder and anchor.

And from that time on I bathed in the Poem
Of the Sea, star-infused and churned into milk,
Devouring the green azures; where, entranced in pallid flotsam,
A dreaming drowned man sometimes goes down;

Where, suddenly dyeing the bluenesses, deliriums
And slow rhythms under the gleams of the daylight,
Stronger than alcohol, vaster than music
Ferment the bitter rednesses of love!

I have come to know the skies splitting with lightnings, and the waterspouts
And the breakers and currents; I know the evening,
And Dawn rising up like a flock of doves,
And sometimes I have seen what men have imagined they saw!

I have seen the low-hanging sun speckled with mystic horrors.
Lighting up long violet coagulations,
Like the performers in very-antique dramas
Waves rolling back into the distances their shiverings of venetian blinds!

I have dreamed of the green night of the dazzled snows
The kiss rising slowly to the eyes of the seas,
The circulation of undreamed-of saps,
And the yellow-blue awakenings of singing phosphorus!

I have followed, for whole months on end, the swells
Battering the reefs like hysterical herds of cows,
Never dreaming that the luminous feet of the Marys
Could force back the muzzles of snorting Oceans!

I have struck, do you realize, incredible Floridas
Where mingle with flowers the eyes of panthers
In human skins! Rainbows stretched like bridles
Under the seas' horizon, to glaucous herds!

I have seen the enormous swamps seething, traps
Where a whole leviathan rots in the reeds!
Downfalls of waters in the midst of the calm
And distances cataracting down into abysses!

Glaciers, suns of silver, waves of pearl, skies of red-hot coals!
Hideous wrecks at the bottom of brown gulfs
Where the giant snakes devoured by vermin
Fall from the twisted trees with black odours!

I should have liked to show to children those dolphins
Of the blue wave, those golden, those singing fishes.
- Foam of flowers rocked my driftings
And at times ineffable winds would lend me wings.

Sometimes, a martyr weary of poles and zones,
The sea whose sobs sweetened my rollings
Lifted its shadow-flowers with their yellow sucking disks toward me
And I hung there like a kneeling woman...

Almost an island, tossing on my beaches the brawls
And droppings of pale-eyed, clamouring birds,
And I was scudding along when across my frayed cordage
Drowned men sank backwards into sleep!

But now I, a boat lost under the hair of coves,
Hurled by the hurricane into the birdless ether,
I, whose wreck, dead-drunk and sodden with water,
neither Monitor nor Hanse ships would have fished up;

Free, smoking, risen from violet fogs,
I who bored through the wall of the reddening sky
Which bears a sweetmeat good poets find delicious,
Lichens of sunlight [mixed] with azure snot,

Who ran, speckled with lunula of electricity,
A crazy plank, with black sea-horses for escort,
When Julys were crushing with cudgel blows
Skies of ultramarine into burning funnels;

I who trembled, to feel at fifty leagues' distance
The groans of Behemoth's rutting, and of the dense Maelstroms
Eternal spinner of blue immobilities
I long for Europe with it's aged old parapets!

I have seen archipelagos of stars! and islands
Whose delirious skies are open to sailor:
- Do you sleep, are you exiled in those bottomless nights,
Million golden birds, O Life Force of the future? -

But, truly, I have wept too much! The Dawns are heartbreaking.
Every moon is atrocious and every sun bitter:
Sharp love has swollen me up with heady langours.
O let my keel split! O let me sink to the bottom!

If there is one water in Europe I want, it is the
Black cold pool where into the scented twilight
A child squatting full of sadness, launches
A boat as fragile as a butterfly in May.

I can no more, bathed in your langours, O waves,
Sail in the wake of the carriers of cottons,
Nor undergo the pride of the flags and pennants,
Nor pull past the horrible eyes of the hulks.

[bhamtya]

a poem on death......
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Under night close
Death rose to greet me.
I turned; looked back,
Though nothing beckoned –
No one cried or mourned.

Scorned by all
– My fellow race –
I shed the byes to empty space, then
Gazed upon the stony face
Of Death anon, and
So chose our treaty.



-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright © Mark R Slaughter 2010

[Sebas. Melmoth]

John Donne, Holy Sonnets

No. 10

Death, be not proud, though some have calléd thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, not yet canst thou kill me.

From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.

Thou'art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy'or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?

One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

[Pryderi Agni]

Nice...one of my all-time favorites.

[Scheherazade]

I would like to revive this thread, which used to be one of my favorites:



* We will post a new poem every week to be discussed by our members.

* Please post a new poem only on a Monday (please wait till it is Monday in your corner of the world) and state the week the poem is posted for.

* The same person cannot post another poem within the same month/four weeks.

* When you participate in this thread, please keep in mind that there will be opinions that are different from yours. We are not here to persuade others or to make them think like ourselves but simply to share our own interpretations and views with each other.

* Any off topic posts are likely to be edited/deleted.

* PLEASE RESPECT COPYRIGHT LAWS: READ THIS BEFORE POSTING:

http://www.online-literature.com/for...ad.php?t=17515


Since we missed the Monday, for this week only, we will post the poem on a Tuesday.


anyone lived in a pretty how town

anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did

Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain

children guessed(but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more

when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone's any was all to her

someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream

stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)

one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was

all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes.

Women and men(both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain


e.e. cummings


Love Cummings' poetry (though I do not claim to understand and appreciate it as it should be); this is one of his poems that makes me ponder a lot.

[Regit]

What are some of those thoughts, if you don't mind sharing them?

[Scheherazade]

Hey, Regit. It's been ages since we saw you posting. Is it the love of this particular poem that brings you back?

What are some of those thoughts, if you don't mind sharing them?

That my grammatical knowledge and understanding of English language will never be enough to understand this poem!

It reminds me of this little poem I read when I first started learning English:

This is a little story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody.

There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it.

Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it.

Somebody got angry about that because it was Everybody's job.

Everybody thought that Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn't do it.

It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done

The main reason I keep thinking about this poem is the grammatical challenges it presents. Cummings' use of "anyone", "someone" and "noone" change their grammatical catagory. They are not pronouns anymore but act as "nouns"/"names". And he does this for other words: Eg, "never", "same" and "isn't":

they sowed their isn't they reaped their same

said their nevers they slept their dream

And in the very first line, "anyone lived in a pretty how town", "how" becomes an adjective.

Behind all this grammatical "confusion", there seems to be a lonely sole named, "Anyone", who finds the love with "noone" even though he was ignored by other men and women who (think they) are "someone" maybe?

Do we all like to think we are "someone" and treat others like "anyone"/"noone"?

[Jassy Melson]

I love all of cummings' poems because they defy analysis, which I think all true poetry does.

[Scheherazade]

I love all of cummings' poems because they defy analysis, which I think all true poetry does.

That might be the case for most of Cummings' poetry (not sure what you mean by "true poetry") but it is a lot of fun to try.

[L.M. The Third]

It reminds me of this little poem that I read when I first started learning English:

This is a little story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody.

There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it.

Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it.

Somebody got angry about that because it was Everybody's job.

Everybody thought that Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn't do it.

It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done

Thanks for sharing that!

[Regit]

Hi Scheherazade!
Do you think that cummings meant to create a kind of grammatical code for the poem that we have to decipher in order to understand it? Or maybe he just wanted to turn words into blocks of sounds so that he can rearrange them into something like a song? Of course there is much and subtle craft in it that are still to be discussed; but I think, as you said, if we look at this poem from a grammatical point of view, it will always be difficult to understand. I don't know, but my first impression is a poet having a lot of fun playing in a childish way with concepts that are not childish at all. So to understand him, first we must also copy him and disregard grammar and just play?

[Virgil]

Hi Scheherazade!
Do you think that cummings meant to create a kind of grammatical code for the poem that we have to decipher in order to understand it? Or maybe he just wanted to turn words into blocks of sounds so that he can rearrange them into something like a song?

Hi Regit. Nice to see you again.

I'm not a big fan of cummings, mainly because there is no reason that I can see other than ideosyncratic play for the word order. It's fun, it's cute, but I don't find depth to it.

As to this poem, I think the central thrust is to capture the scope of life by setting emotions and desires and the movement of life beside the movement of nature: "they sowed their isn't they reaped their same" set against "autumn winter spring summer". In addition, the emotions and desires seem relatively trivial and petty and it seems that the characters seem to miss the importance of life.