The Poetry Thread.

[Congratulations]

Poem

Lana Turner has collapsed!
I was trotting along and suddenly
it started raining and snowing
and you said it was hailing
but hailing hits you on the head
hard so it was really snowing and
raining and I was in such a hurry
to meet you but the traffic
was acting exactly like the sky
and suddenly I see a headline
LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!
there is no snow in Hollywood
there is no rain in California
I have been to lots of parties
and acted perfectly disgraceful
but I never actually collapsed
oh Lana Turner we love you get up

Frank O'Hara

[izzarina]

heh. pattable.

I had a good laugh at that myself....

Must investigate Ogden a bit further.

Slan,
D.

I went to my favorite used book store yesterday (the one I really should avoid when I'm in a hurry...and I was in a hurry yesterday), and found a book of his poetry, as well as The Dubliners. I think I could have spent my life savings if I'd stayed in there longer, but I had to run...that's probably a good thing. Oh well....but I was happy with the two gems I came away with

[s1m0n]

No time like the present for posting this beautifully cryptic Stevie Smith poem:

Conviction (II)

I walked abroad in Easter Park,
I heard the wild dog's distant bark,
I knew my Lord was risen again, -
Wild dog, wild dog, you bark in vain.

[fearfaoin]

Code: Select all

in Just-
spring     when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame baloonman

whistles    far    and wee

and eddyandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old baloonman whistles
far     and      wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's
spring
and
    the
        goat-footed

baloonMan     whistles
far
and
wee

- e e cummings

[fearfaoin]

Susie Asado, by Gertrude Stein

Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea.
....Susie Asado.
Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea.
....Susie Asado.
Susie Asado which is a told tray sure.
A lean on the shoe this means slips slips hers.
When the ancient light grey is clean it is yellow, it is a silver seller.
This is a please this is a please there are the saids to jelly.
These are the wets these say the sets to leave a crown to Incy.
Incy is short of incubus.
A pot. A pot is a beginning of a rare bit of trees. Trees tremble,
the old vats are in bobbles, bobbles which shade and shove and
render clean, render clean must.
....Drink pups.
..Drink pups drink pups lease a sash hold, see it shine and a bobolink has pins. It shows a nail.
..What is a nail. A nail is unison.
..Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea.

[I.D.10-t]

My favorite poem by e e cummings is

i sing of Olaf glad and big

[cowtime]

I love this.

Winterfolk

Winter is a rebel way up here
on the west side of this blue divide,
a reluctant refugee from his own occupied land:
in April you pass puddles of jonquils
sunning like blond girls in yellow shorts
on a south exposure,
followed by a rocky mouth baring icicle fangs
facing north, standing off spring a day longer,
with here and there a swatch of snow
like feed-sack patches on worn green sleeves.
When spring does come, it's not with a charge
but stealthily, like an Indian stalking
the sleeping occupants of an isolated cabin.
One day you look up and behold! it's spring-
until you step into shade and inhale winter air.

The older folk have been up here so long
they half believe they beat Boone and the Alamance men.
When they ride out, it's on old buffalo trails.
On summer nights they carry winter in worn pockets and snow beneath battered hats.
Let low-country intruder approach a cove,
and eyes gray as icicle fangs measure stranger
for size, honesty, and intent.
If he smuggles in warmer times and brighter blooms,
he can plant them the hell on some other farm
and leave this one to the familiar winter
of hard, honest labor,
the way God Almighty meant it to be.

John Foster West

[FJohnSharp]

yeah

[Joseph E. Smith]

This has been a favorite of mine for a very long time...

anyone lived in a pretty how town by E. E. Cummings

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

[Nanohedron]

I've recently discovered Séamus Heaney. The thing about Heaney for me is his particular music, and his way with compression, such as "heaving the cool at your neck", as in the one below, which is more directly, observationally (perhaps I mean conventionally) pastoral in what surrounds the side-track than most of his that I've read that take the pastoral as a ground.

- The Otter

When you plunged
The light of Tuscany wavered
And swung through the pool
From top to bottom.

I loved your wet head and smashing crawl,
Your fine swimmer's back and shoulders
Surfacing and surfacing again
This year and every year since.

I sat dry-throated on the warm stones.
You were beyond me.
The mellowed clarities, the grape-deep air
Thinned and disappointed.

Thank God for the slow loadening,
When I hold you now
We are close and deep
As the atmosphere on water.

My two hands are plumbed water.
You are my palpable, lithe
Otter of memory
In the pool of the moment,

Turning to swim on your back,
Each silent, thigh-shaking kick
Re-tilting the light,
Heaving the cool at your neck.

And suddenly you're out,
Back again, intent as ever,
Heavy and frisky in your freshened pelt,
Printing the stones.

[Nanohedron]

I can't resist. More Heaney, this one also "pastoral", but at a visceral one-eighty from the above:

- Death of a Naturalist

All the year the flax-dam festered in the heart
Of the townland; green and heavy headed
Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods.
Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun.
Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles
Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell.
There were dragon-flies, spotted butterflies,
But best of all was the warm thick slobber
Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water
In the shade of the banks. Here, every spring
I would fill jampots full of the jellied
Specks to range on the window-sills at home,
On shalves at school, and wait and watch until
The fattening dots burst into nimble-
Swimming tadpoles. Miss Walls would tell us how
The daddy frog was called a bullfrog
And how he croaked and how the mammy frog
Laid hundreds of little eggs and this was
Frogspawn. You could tell the weather by frogs too
For they were yellow in the sun and brown
In rain.

Then one hot day when fields were rank
With cowdung in the grass the angry frogs
Invaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hadges
To a coarse croaking that I had not heard
Before. The air was thick with a bass chorus.
Right down the dam gross-bellied frogs were cocked
On sods; their loose necks pulsed like snails. Some hopped:
The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat
Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting.
I sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kings
Were gathered there for vengeance and I knew
That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.

[izzarina]

Heaney's poetry is beautiful Excellent stuff, Nano.

[Nanohedron]

Heaney's poetry is beautiful Excellent stuff, Nano.

Yeah, I think he well deserved his Nobel Prize.

[emmline]

Can you see what's painted on this tire swing which my daughter Becca hung on campus as an exterior art installation for an art class?
(Modeling, by the way, is her sister Olivia. Becca is in The Gambia for the semester.)

Code: Select all

in Just-
spring     when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame baloonman

whistles    far    and wee

and eddyandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old baloonman whistles
far     and      wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's
spring
and
    the
        goat-footed

baloonMan     whistles
far
and
wee

- e e cummings

[cowtime]

Em that is great! and very enjoyable art-ya can't beat a tree swing.