Gagoots Posted June 9, 2009 Share Posted June 9, 2009 At the risk of ridicule and of ruining my reputation, I submit to you: the Poetry thread. Post your favorite poets, and/or their works. Oh, and please refrain from any "nantucket" style posts. I am probably going to regret this, but what the hell. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gagoots Posted June 9, 2009 Author Share Posted June 9, 2009 I'll start: A Wind Has Blown The Rain Away and Blown - E.E. Cummings a wind has blown the rain away and blown the sky away and all the leaves away, and the trees stand. I think i too have known autumn too long (and what have you to say, wind wind wind Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Otter Posted June 9, 2009 Share Posted June 9, 2009 THE TYGER (from Songs Of Experience) By William Blake Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare sieze the fire? And what shoulder, & what art. Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand? & what dread feet? What the hammer? what the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? what dread grasp Dare its deadly terrors clasp? When the stars threw down their spears, And watered heaven with their tears, Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee? Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gagoots Posted June 9, 2009 Author Share Posted June 9, 2009 THE TYGER (from Songs Of Experience) By William Blake Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare sieze the fire? And what shoulder, & what art. Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand? & what dread feet? What the hammer? what the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? what dread grasp Dare its deadly terrors clasp? When the stars threw down their spears, And watered heaven with their tears, Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee? Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? I have songs of innocence and experience on my bookshelf. My son is eight, and loves this poem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vicious89x Posted June 9, 2009 Share Posted June 9, 2009 Pablo Neruda. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gagoots Posted June 9, 2009 Author Share Posted June 9, 2009 Pablo Neruda. Awesome. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
war ensemble Posted June 9, 2009 Share Posted June 9, 2009 HOWL For Carl Solomon I I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machin- ery of night, who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz, who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tene- ment roofs illuminated, who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war, who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull, who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burn- ing their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall, who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York, who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after night with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, al- cohol and **** and endless balls, incomparable blind; streets of shuddering cloud and lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the mo- tionless world of Time between, Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops, storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brook- lyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind, who chained themselves to subways for the endless ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine until the noise of wheels and children brought them down shuddering mouth-wracked and battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance in the drear light of Zoo, who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford's floated out and sat through the stale beer after noon in desolate Fugazzi's, listening to the crack of doom on the hydrogen jukebox, who talked continuously seventy hours from park to pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brook- lyn Bridge, lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills off Empire State out of the moon, yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars, whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days and nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the Synagogue cast on the pavement, who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic City Hall, suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grind- ings and migraines of China under junk-with- drawal in Newark's bleak furnished room, who wandered around and around at midnight in the railroad yard wondering where to go, and went, leaving no broken hearts, who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing through snow toward lonesome farms in grand- father night, who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telep- athy and bop kabbalah because the cosmos in- stinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas, who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking vis- ionary indian angels who were visionary indian angels, who thought they were only mad when Baltimore gleamed in supernatural ecstasy, who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Okla- homa on the impulse of winter midnight street light smalltown rain, who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston seeking jazz or sex or soup, and followed the brilliant Spaniard to converse about America and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship to Africa, who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving behind nothing but the shadow of dungarees and the lava and ash of poetry scattered in fire place Chicago, who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the F.B.I. in beards and shorts with big pacifist eyes sexy in their dark skin passing out incom- prehensible leaflets, who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism, who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union Square weeping and undressing while the sirens of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also wailed, who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked and trembling before the machinery of other skeletons, who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight in policecars for committing no crime but their own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication, who howled on their knees in the subway and were dragged off the roof waving genitals and manu- scripts, who let themselves be ****ed in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy, who blew and were blown by those human seraphim, the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean love, who balled in the morning in the evenings in rose gardens and the grass of public parks and cemeteries scattering their semen freely to whomever come who may, who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath when the blond & naked angel came to pierce them with a sword, who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden threads of the craftsman's loom, who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of beer a sweetheart a package of cigarettes a can- dle and fell off the bed, and continued along the floor and down the hall and ended fainting on the wall with a vision of ultimate **** and come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness, who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning but prepared to sweeten the snatch of the sun rise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked in the lake, who went out whoring through Colorado in myriad stolen night-cars, N.C., secret hero of these poems, ****sman and Adonis of Denver-joy to the memory of his innumerable lays of girls in empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses' rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or with gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely pet- ticoat upliftings & especially secret gas-station solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too, who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and picked themselves up out of basements hung over with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemploy- ment offices, who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on the snowbank docks waiting for a door in the East River to open to a room full of steamheat and opium, who created great suicidal dramas on the apartment cliff-banks of the Hudson under the wartime blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall be crowned with laurel in oblivion, who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of Bowery, who wept at the romance of the streets with their pushcarts full of onions and bad music, who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in their lofts, who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded by orange crates of theology, who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations which in the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish, who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht & tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable kingdom, who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for an egg, who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade, who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccess- fully, gave up and were forced to open antique stores where they thought they were growing old and cried, who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinis- ter intelligent editors, or were run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality, who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually hap- pened and walked away unknown and forgotten into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alley ways & firetrucks, not even one free beer, who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of the subway window, jumped in the filthy Pas- saic, leaped on negroes, cried all over the street, danced on broken wineglasses barefoot smashed phonograph records of nostalgic European 1930s German jazz finished the whiskey and threw up groaning into the bloody toilet, moans in their ears and the blast of colossal steam whistles, who barreled down the highways of the past journeying to each other's hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude watch or Birmingham jazz incarnation, who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity, who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who came back to Denver & waited in vain, who watched over Denver & brooded & loned in Denver and finally went away to find out the Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes, who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying for each other's salvation and light and breasts, until the soul illuminated its hair for a second, who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for impossible criminals with golden heads and the charm of reality in their hearts who sang sweet blues to Alcatraz, who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky Mount to tender Buddha or Tangiers to boys or Southern Pacific to the black locomotive or Harvard to Narcissus to Woodlawn to the daisychain or grave, who demanded sanity trials accusing the radio of hyp notism & were left with their insanity & their hands & a hung jury, who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism and subsequently presented themselves on the granite steps of the madhouse with shaven heads and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding in- stantaneous lobotomy, and who were given instead the concrete void of insulin Metrazol electricity hydrotherapy psycho- therapy occupational therapy pingpong & amnesia, who in humorless protest overturned only one symbolic pingpong table, resting briefly in catatonia, returning years later truly bald except for a wig of blood, and tears and fingers, to the visible mad man doom of the wards of the madtowns of the East, Pilgrim State's Rockland's and Greystone's foetid halls, bickering with the echoes of the soul, rock- ing and rolling in the midnight solitude-bench dolmen-realms of love, dream of life a night- mare, bodies turned to stone as heavy as the moon, with mother finally ******, and the last fantastic book flung out of the tenement window, and the last door closed at 4. A.M. and the last telephone slammed at the wall in reply and the last fur- nished room emptied down to the last piece of mental furniture, a yellow paper rose twisted on a wire hanger in the closet, and even that imaginary, nothing but a hopeful little bit of hallucination ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and now you're really in the total animal soup of time and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed with a sudden flash of the alchemy of the use of the ellipse the catalog the meter & the vibrat- ing plane, who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space through images juxtaposed, and trapped the archangel of the soul between 2 visual images and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun and dash of consciousness together jumping with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before you speechless and intel- ligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet con- fessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought in his naked and endless head, the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown, yet putting down here what might be left to say in time come after death, and rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the suffering of America's naked mind for love into an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
war ensemble Posted June 9, 2009 Share Posted June 9, 2009 II What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagi- nation? Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unob tainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks! Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy judger of men! Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgment! Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stun- ned governments! Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a canni- bal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb! Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows! Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long streets like endless Jehovahs! Moloch whose fac- tories dream and croak in the fog! Moloch whose smokestacks and antennae crown the cities! Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen! Moloch whose name is the Mind! Moloch in whom I sit lonely! Moloch in whom I dream Angels! Crazy in Moloch! ****sucker in Moloch! Lacklove and manless in Moloch! Moloch who entered my soul early! Moloch in whom I am a consciousness without a body! Moloch who frightened me out of my natural ecstasy! Moloch whom I abandon! Wake up in Moloch! Light streaming out of the sky! Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! invisible suburbs! skeleton treasuries! blind capitals! demonic industries! spectral nations! invincible mad houses! granite ****s! monstrous bombs! They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven! Pave- ments, trees, radios, tons! lifting the city to Heaven which exists and is everywhere about us! Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies! gone down the American river! Dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole boatload of sensitive bull****! Breakthroughs! over the river! flips and crucifixions! gone down the flood! Highs! Epiphanies! De- spairs! Ten years' animal screams and suicides! Minds! New loves! Mad generation! down on the rocks of Time! Real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all! the wild eyes! the holy yells! They bade farewell! They jumped off the roof! to solitude! waving! carrying flowers! Down to the river! into the street! III Carl Solomon! I'm with you in Rockland where you're madder than I am I'm with you in Rockland where you must feel very strange I'm with you in Rockland where you imitate the shade of my mother I'm with you in Rockland where you've murdered your twelve secretaries I'm with you in Rockland where you laugh at this invisible humor I'm with you in Rockland where we are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter I'm with you in Rockland where your condition has become serious and is reported on the radio I'm with you in Rockland where the faculties of the skull no longer admit the worms of the senses I'm with you in Rockland where you drink the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Utica I'm with you in Rockland where you pun on the bodies of your nurses the harpies of the Bronx I'm with you in Rockland where you scream in a straightjacket that you're losing the game of the actual pingpong of the abyss I'm with you in Rockland where you bang on the catatonic piano the soul is innocent and immortal it should never die ungodly in an armed madhouse I'm with you in Rockland where fifty more shocks will never return your soul to its body again from its pilgrimage to a cross in the void I'm with you in Rockland where you accuse your doctors of insanity and plot the Hebrew socialist revolution against the fascist national Golgotha I'm with you in Rockland where you will split the heavens of Long Island and resurrect your living human Jesus from the superhuman tomb I'm with you in Rockland where there are twenty-five-thousand mad com- rades all together singing the final stanzas of the Internationale I'm with you in Rockland where we hug and kiss the United States under our bedsheets the United States that coughs all night and won't let us sleep I'm with you in Rockland where we wake up electrified out of the coma by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls col- lapse O skinny legions run outside O starry spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is here O victory forget your underwear we're free I'm with you in Rockland in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea- journey on the highway across America in tears to the door of my cottage in the Western night Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
war ensemble Posted June 9, 2009 Share Posted June 9, 2009 The JN censor doesn't like Mr. Ginsberg. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gagoots Posted June 9, 2009 Author Share Posted June 9, 2009 Thanks War, Howl is something I've always been meaning to pick up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
war ensemble Posted June 9, 2009 Share Posted June 9, 2009 Thanks War, Howl is something I've always been meaning to pick up. It'd be handy to read it, then look up the references online, and reread it in my opinion if you have time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gagoots Posted June 9, 2009 Author Share Posted June 9, 2009 It'd be handy to read it, then look up the references online, and reread it in my opinion if you have time. Will do. I read "On The Road" last year, and should have followed up with Howl. It would be nice to read it in Washington Square Park on a bench by the Arch. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arsis Posted June 9, 2009 Share Posted June 9, 2009 I prefer prose over poetry. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
war ensemble Posted June 9, 2009 Share Posted June 9, 2009 I prefer prose over poetry. Same here, but sometimes it can be nice to chip away at some meaningful poetry. Besides, in English class it's easier to BS poetry because it's usually shorter readings. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arsis Posted June 9, 2009 Share Posted June 9, 2009 Same here, but sometimes it can be nice to chip away at some meaningful poetry. Besides, in English class it's easier to BS poetry because it's usually shorter readings. Don't B.S. and you wont have an issue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bob Posted June 9, 2009 Share Posted June 9, 2009 I'll give you two, for now: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - T.S. Eliot S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse A persona che mai tornasse al mondo, Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero, Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo. LET us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherised upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats 5 Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question … 10 Oh, do not ask, “What is it?” Let us go and make our visit. In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo. The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, 15 The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening, Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, 20 And seeing that it was a soft October night, Curled once about the house, and fell asleep. And indeed there will be time For the yellow smoke that slides along the street, Rubbing its back upon the window-panes; 25 There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; There will be time to murder and create, And time for all the works and days of hands That lift and drop a question on your plate; 30 Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea. In the room the women come and go 35 Talking of Michelangelo. And indeed there will be time To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?” Time to turn back and descend the stair, With a bald spot in the middle of my hair— 40 [They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”] My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin, My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin— [They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”] Do I dare 45 Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. For I have known them all already, known them all:— Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, 50 I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; I know the voices dying with a dying fall Beneath the music from a farther room. So how should I presume? And I have known the eyes already, known them all— 55 The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase, And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, Then how should I begin To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways? 60 And how should I presume? And I have known the arms already, known them all— Arms that are braceleted and white and bare [but in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!] It is perfume from a dress 65 That makes me so digress? Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl. And should I then presume? And how should I begin? . . . . . Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets 70 And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?… I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. . . . . . And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! 75 Smoothed by long fingers, Asleep … tired … or it malingers, Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me. Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? 80 But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter, I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter; I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, 85 And in short, I was afraid. And would it have been worth it, after all, After the cups, the marmalade, the tea, Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me, Would it have been worth while, 90 To have bitten off the matter with a smile, To have squeezed the universe into a ball To roll it toward some overwhelming question, To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead, Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”— 95 If one, settling a pillow by her head, Should say: “That is not what I meant at all. That is not it, at all.” And would it have been worth it, after all, Would it have been worth while, 100 After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets, After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor— And this, and so much more?— It is impossible to say just what I mean! But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen: 105 Would it have been worth while If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl, And turning toward the window, should say: “That is not it at all, That is not what I meant, at all.” . . . . . 110 No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two, Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use, 115 Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculous— Almost, at times, the Fool. I grow old … I grow old … 120 I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me. 125 I have seen them riding seaward on the waves Combing the white hair of the waves blown back When the wind blows the water white and black. We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown 130 Till human voices wake us, and we drown. ROAD LESS TRAVELED - Robert Frost Two roads diverged in a yellow wood And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth Then took the other as just as fair And having perhaps the better claim Because it was grassy and wanted wear Though as for that, the passing there Had worn them really about the same And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet, knowing how way leads onto way I doubted if I should ever come back I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence Two roads diverged in a wood And I took the one less traveled by And that has made all the difference Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jetophile Posted June 9, 2009 Share Posted June 9, 2009 YAY! This weekend I went to visit the Pierpont Morgan Library. What a quirky place. My Daddy used to work a few blocks away, so I'd twirl around in those stoic halls of marble when I was bored as a youngster. Damn, it's been years, and it's greatly changed. None of it bad. Nothing like SEEING original words. Dylan Thomas' 'In the White Giant's Thigh'. There'ssomething sacred about looking at the paper in the hand that wraught it. Hemingway's doggerel: 'Hang up clothes'. T.S. Eliot quipping. Beethoven's scribbles. Oscar Wilde's longing words precluding his downfall. Only nerds would love the joint, but nerds never leave disappointed. http://www.themorgan.org/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gagoots Posted June 9, 2009 Author Share Posted June 9, 2009 I didn't even know about this place. Thanks! I'm gonna check it out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jetophile Posted June 9, 2009 Share Posted June 9, 2009 I didn't even know about this place. Thanks! I'm gonna check it out.It used to be 'free' ages ago. It's a tremendous, odd, and ever evolving collection of...stuff. 'Paradise Lost' on the shelves. 'First editions' of everything you can possibly think of. This old gentleman said to me, "How'd you like to have this for an office?" "I'd be afraid to breathe." "I'm a Master Librarian in Washington, D.C." Haha, c'mon! You can't make it up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jetophile Posted June 9, 2009 Share Posted June 9, 2009 There was a little girl, Who had a little curl, Right in the middle of her forehead. When she was good, She was very good indeed, But when she was bad she was horrid. -Longfellow (not that there's anything wrong with that) Yeah, that poem is all about ME. EDIT: I just have to take my hat off to toilet humor. Wadsworth. His parents should have been kicked off a cliff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CrazyCarl40 Posted June 9, 2009 Share Posted June 9, 2009 Ode on a Grecian Urn - John Keats Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness, Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, Sylvan historian, who canst thou express A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: What leaf-fring'd legend haunt about thy shape Of deities or mortals, or of both, In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? What men or gods are these? What maidens loth? What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy? Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter: therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd, Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone: Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare; Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss, Though winning near the goal - yet, do not grieve; She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair! Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed Your leaves, nor ever bid the spring adieu; And, happy melodist, unwearied, For ever piping songs for ever new; More happy love! more happy, happy love! For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd, For ever panting, and for ever young; All breathing human passion far above, That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd, A burning forehead, and a parching tongue. Who are these coming to the sacrifice? To what green altar, O mysterious priest, Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies, And all her silken flanks with garlands drest? What little town by river or sea shore, Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel, Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn? And, little town, thy streets for evermore Will silent be; and not a soul to tell Why thou art desolate, can e'er return. O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede Of marble men and maidens overwrought, With forest branches and the trodden weed; Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral! When old age shall this generation waste, Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty," - that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. -Like Bob I enjoy T.S. Eliot, although I mostly prefer the Wasteland. -I also enjoy some off Willy Shakespeare's poetry as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Otter Posted June 9, 2009 Share Posted June 9, 2009 YAY! This weekend I went to visit the Pierpont Morgan Library. What a quirky place. My Daddy used to work a few blocks away, so I'd twirl around in those stoic halls of marble when I was bored as a youngster. Damn, it's been years, and it's greatly changed. None of it bad. Nothing like SEEING original words. Dylan Thomas' 'In the White Giant's Thigh'. There'ssomething sacred about looking at the paper in the hand that wraught it. Hemingway's doggerel: 'Hang up clothes'. T.S. Eliot quipping. Beethoven's scribbles. Oscar Wilde's longing words precluding his downfall. Only nerds would love the joint, but nerds never leave disappointed. http://www.themorgan.org/ Thanks for the link. I see that they have an illuminated manuscripts exhibit running right now. A few years ago there was a similar exhibition at the NYPL. Very beautiful. I'll have to head down there someday and check it out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gg Posted June 9, 2009 Share Posted June 9, 2009 Bring me all of your dreams, You dreamer, Bring me all your Heart melodies That I may wrap them In a blue cloud-cloth Away from the too-rough fingers Of the world. ~langston hughes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sirlancemehlot Posted June 10, 2009 Share Posted June 10, 2009 From Merchant of Venice: how sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank let us sit and let the sound of music creep in our ears soft stillness and night become the touches of sweet harmony look, Jessica, see how the floor of heaven is thick inlaid with patens of bright gold there is not the smallest orb which thou beholdest but in his motion, like an angel sings, still quiring to the young eye'd cherubim. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arsis Posted June 10, 2009 Share Posted June 10, 2009 There once was a man from NantucketWho kept all his cash in a bucket. But his daughter, named Nan,Ran away with a man And as for the bucket, Nantucket. But he followed the pair to Pawtucket,The man and the girl with the bucket; And he said to the man,He was welcome to Nan, But as for the bucket, Pawtucket Then the pair followed Pa to Manhasset,Where he still held the cash as an asset, But Nan and the manStole the money and ran, And as for the bucket, Manhasset. Of this story we hear from Nantucket,About the mysterious loss of a bucket, We are sorry for Nan,As well as the man Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pragmatic Bus Posted June 10, 2009 Share Posted June 10, 2009 I like a few Haiku's by Basho Now I see her face, the old woman, abandoned, the moon her only companion Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pragmatic Bus Posted June 10, 2009 Share Posted June 10, 2009 With dewdrops dripping, I wish somehow I could wash this perishing world -Basho Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pragmatic Bus Posted June 10, 2009 Share Posted June 10, 2009 Sick on my journey, only my dreams will wander these desolate moors -Basho Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gg Posted June 10, 2009 Share Posted June 10, 2009 I opened my eyes And looked up at the rain, And it dripped in my head And flowed into my brain, And all that I hear as I lie in my bed Is the sli****y-slosh of the rain in my head. I step very softly, I walk very slow, I can't do a handstand-- I might overflow, So pardon the wild crazy thing I just said-- I'm just not the same since there's rain in my head. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
T0mShane Posted June 10, 2009 Share Posted June 10, 2009 I'll give you two, for now: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - T.S. Eliot S Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
T0mShane Posted June 10, 2009 Share Posted June 10, 2009 somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond by E. E. Cummings somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond any experience,your eyes have their silence: in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or which i cannot touch because they are too near your slightest look will easily unclose me though i have closed myself as fingers, you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens (touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose or if your wish be to close me, i and my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly, as when the heart of this flower imagines the snow carefully everywhere descending; nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragility:whose texture compels me with the color of its countries, rendering death and forever with each breathing (i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens;only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses) nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
T0mShane Posted June 10, 2009 Share Posted June 10, 2009 Dickinson: HE fumbles at your spirit As players at the keys Before they drop full music on; He stuns you by degrees, Prepares your brittle substance 5 For the ethereal blow, By fainter hammers, further heard, Then nearer, then so slow Your breath has time to straighten, Your brain to bubble cool,— 10 Deals one imperial thunderbolt That scalps your naked soul Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arsis Posted June 10, 2009 Share Posted June 10, 2009 Vulcanize the whoopee stick In the ham wallet Cattle prod the oyster ditch With the lap rocket Batter dip the cranny axe In the gut locker Retrofit the pudding hatch Ooh la la With the boink swatter If I get you in the loop when I make a point to be straight with you then In lieu of the innuendo in the end know my intent though I brazillian wax poetic so hypothetically I don't wanna beat around the bush Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo Marinate the nether rod In the squish mitten Power drill the yippee bog With the dude piston Pressure wash the quiver bone In the bitch wrinkle Cannonball the fiddle cove Ooh la la With the pork steeple If i get you in the loop when I make a point to be straight with you then In lieu of the innuendo in the end know my intent though I brazillian wax poetic so empathetically I don't wanna beat around the bush Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo Put the you know what in the you know where Put the you know what in the you know where Put the you know what in the you know where Put the you know what in the you know where pronto Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
T0mShane Posted June 10, 2009 Share Posted June 10, 2009 This is Just to Say William Carlos Williams I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dude Love Posted November 1, 2010 Share Posted November 1, 2010 Who rides so late through the night and wind? Es ist der Vater mit seinem Kind; It's the father with his child; Er hat den Knaben wohl in dem Arm, He has the boy safe in his arm, Er faßt ihn sicher, er hält ihn warm. He holds him secure, he holds him warm. «Mein Sohn, was birgst du so bang dein Gesicht?» – “My son, what makes you hide your face in fear?” – Siehst, Vater, du den Erlkönig nicht? Father, don't you see the Erlking? Den Erlenkönig mit Kron und Schweif? – The Erlking with crown and flowing robe? – «Mein Sohn, es ist ein Nebelstreif.» – “My son, it's a wisp of fog.” – «Du liebes Kind, komm, geh mit mir! “You dear child, come along with me! Gar schöne Spiele spiel' ich mit dir; Such lovely games I'll play with you; Manch bunte Blumen sind an dem Strand, Many colorful flowers are at the shore, Meine Mutter hat manch gülden Gewand.» My mother has many a golden garment.” Mein Vater, mein Vater, und hörest du nicht, My father, my father, and do you not hear Was Erlenkönig mir leise verspricht? – What the Erlking promises me so softly? – «Sei ruhig, bleibe ruhig, mein Kind; “Be quiet, stay quiet, my child; In dürren Blättern säuselt der Wind.» – In the dry leaves the wind is rustling.” – «Willst, feiner Knabe, du mit mir gehn? “Won't you come along with me, my fine boy? Meine Töchter sollen dich warten schön; My daughters shall attend to you so nicely. Meine Töchter führen den nächtlichen Reihn, My daughters do their nightly dance, Und wiegen und tanzen und singen dich ein.» And they'll rock you and dance you and sing you to sleep.” Mein Vater, mein Vater, und siehst du nicht dort My father, my father, and do you not see over there Erlkönigs Töchter am düstern Ort? – Erlking's daughters in that dark place? – «Mein Sohn, mein Sohn, ich seh es genau: “My son, my son, I see it most definitely: Es scheinen die alten Weiden so grau.» It's the willow trees looking so grey.” «Ich liebe dich, mich reizt deine schöne Gestalt; “I love you; I'm charmed by your beautiful form; Und bist du nicht willig, so brauch ich Gewalt.» And if you're not willing, then I'll use force.” Mein Vater, mein Vater, jetzt faßt er mich an! My father, my father, now he's grabbing hold of me! Erlkönig hat mir ein Leids getan! – Erlking has done me harm! – Dem Vater grausets, er reitet geschwind, The father shudders, he rides swiftly, Er hält in Armen das ächzende Kind, He holds in (his) arms the moaning child. Erreicht den Hof mit Mühe und Not; He reaches the farmhouse with effort and urgency. In seinen Armen das Kind war tot. In his arms the child was dead. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.