Forum / National Poetry Month

Joani Reese
Apr 01, 10:52pm

Just wanted to say this month makes me irrationally happy. What, truly, is your favorite poem of all the poems you have ever read? Is it even possible to make that choice? I am torn between The Wasteland and The Iliad. Anyone else have just one? Post it here. Mine are a bit long, sadly, so no one will read them if I post them anyway, but I would like to discover some new poems. Gimme some sugar, and happy National Poetry Month.

"APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain..."

"Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles, son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans..."

Dolemite
Apr 01, 11:09pm

(same as last year's...)

In My Craft or Sullen Art

In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms,
I labor by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.

Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art.

--Dylan Thomas

Joani Reese
Apr 01, 11:16pm

"their arms / Round the griefs of the ages..." Thanks, Matt. Thomas brought me to poetry. I want "Do Not Go Gentle" read at my funeral. That's all.

Dolemite
Apr 01, 11:20pm

the choppy backward-leaning beat of the above, like scuddering heels in the dirt of solitary truth and creation...

just destroys me

for now and forever more.

Joani Reese
Apr 01, 11:43pm

Stumbled across a poem of Thomas' years ago that he wrote at fourteen. Holy god. It was better than anything I could have ever written. I hated him a little then, but now I am thankful he existed.

Sally Houtman
Apr 02, 12:38am

The Dylan Thomas poem is amazing.

Last year I chose an Emily Dickenson. As I've read her over and over since my teens, I'll tip my hat to her again, but with a different selection.
.....

This World is not Conclusion.
A Species stands beyond--
Invisible, as Music--
But positive, as Sound--
It beckons, and it baffles--
Philosophy--don't know--
And through a Riddle, at the last--
Sagacity, must go--
To guess it, puzzles scholars--
To gain it, Men have borne
Contempt of Generations
And Crucifixion, shown--
Faith slips--and laughs, and rallies--
Blushes, if any see--
Plucks at a twig of Evidence--
And asks a Vane, the way--
Much Gesture, from the Pulpit--
Strong Hallelujahs roll--
Narcotics cannot still the Tooth
That nibbles at the soul--
.....
(the electronic anthology I have doesn't have titles attached to the poems, so don't know the title of that one, or if she even gave them titles).

Jerry Ratch
Apr 02, 01:01am

Alone
By Jack Gilbert

I never thought Michiko would come back
after she died. But if she did I knew
it would be as a lady in a long white dress.
It is strange that she has returned
as somebody’s dalmation. I meet
the man walking her on a leash
almost every week. He says good morning
and I stoop down to calm her. He said
once that she was never like that with
other people. Sometimes she is tethered
on the lawn when I go by. If nobody
is around, I sit on the grass. When she
finally quiets, she puts her head in my lap
and we watch each others eyes as I whisper
in her soft ears. She cares nothing about
the mystery. She likes it best when
I touch her head and tell her small
things about my days and our friends.
That makes her happy the way it always did.

Joani Reese
Apr 02, 01:05am

Jerry-- Never read that poem. It's a great one--how unusual and surreal but full of love and care. Thanks. I need to buy one of Gilbert's books.

Joani Reese
Apr 02, 01:07am

Sally-- She never titled any of her work. They're numbered though, or editors simply use the first lines. After her death, some pushy friends and family "fixed" all her punctuation and revised her poems to be more acceptable to the masses, including changing wording. Ugh. Thank god cooler heads prevailed, and a new edition put them back exactly as the artist had intended them to be, in all their strange and wondrous glory.

John Riley
Apr 02, 01:10am

Everyday it changes. Tonight I have this one on my mind.

Epigrams: On my First Son
By Ben Jonson

Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
My sin was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy.
Seven years tho' wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
O, could I lose all father now! For why
Will man lament the state he should envy?
To have so soon 'scap'd world's and flesh's rage,
And if no other misery, yet age?
Rest in soft peace, and, ask'd, say, "Here doth lie
Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry."
For whose sake henceforth all his vows be such,
As what he loves may never like too much.

Sally Houtman
Apr 02, 01:12am

Not sure which edition I have, but the poems are untitled and seem quite rough and raw. That's how I like 'em. Thanks, JP.

Joani Reese
Apr 02, 01:15am

These lines always hurt me; so beautiful and full of everything: ""...Here doth lie /
Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry..."

Gary Hardaway
Apr 02, 03:24am

Crusoe in England by Elizabeth Bishop

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/177903

Too long to post here. I hope the link suffices.

Gary Hardaway
Apr 02, 03:27am

A shorter poem- by Sylvia Plath

Edge

The woman is perfected
Her dead

Body wears the smile of accomplishment,
The illusion of a Greek necessity

Flows in the scrolls of her toga,
Her bare

Feet seem to be saying:
We have come so far, it is over.

Each dead child coiled, a white serpent,
One at each little

Pitcher of milk, now empty
She has folded

Them back into her body as petals
Of a rose close when the garden

Stiffens and odors bleed
From the sweet, deep throats of the night flower.

The moon has nothing to be sad about,
Staring from her hood of bone.

She is used to this sort of thing.
Her blacks crackle and drag.

Charlotte Hamrick
Apr 02, 04:01am

I love "Diving Into the Wreck" by Adrienne Rich. There's a beautiful interpretation of it on You Tube. Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co0CGv9K5SI

Frankie Saxx
Apr 02, 11:19am

Today my favorite is Algernon Charles Swinburne's "The Garden of Proserpine"

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174555

Ask me again tomorrow.

Sam Rasnake
Apr 02, 02:25pm

One of the three or four most important poems in my life - a piece by Yosa Buson (trans. Robert Hass):

Washing the hoe—
ripples on the water;
far off, wild ducks.

Joani Reese
Apr 02, 03:21pm

This one, of course, is a predictable choice, but it still moves me every time I read it. It is a poem for all human time:

The Second Coming
by W. B. Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

David Ackley
Apr 02, 06:01pm

Yeats's "Peacock," would be my clear choice, ("What's riches to him
that has made a great peacock
with the pride of his eye...") but I've posted that one here enough times.

Here are the first two plus verses of the Larkin poem that froze me when I read it this past year.

Ambulances

Closed like confessionals, they thread
Loud noons of the cities, giving back
None of the glances they absorb.
Light glossy grey, arms on a plaque.
they come to rest at any kerb:
All streets in time are visited.

Then children strewn on steps or road,
Or women coming from the shops
Past smells of diferent dinners, see
A wild white face that overtops
Red stretcher-blankets momently
As it is carried in and stowed,

And sense the solving emptiness
That lies just under all we do
And for a second get it whole,
So permanent and blank and true.
..."

If you like a slug of the old existential chill.

Joani Reese
Apr 02, 09:11pm

"And sense the solving emptiness
That lies just under all we do..." Oh yes. The solving emptiness. I love Yeats. I would give him the blue and the dim and the dark cloths...

Jim V
Apr 02, 10:16pm

"Gangnam Style" by PSY.

Joani Reese
Apr 02, 10:26pm

Well, I suppose if we're going to include song lyrics, there are one or two I could think of that might make better poetry. For example:

"The Last Time I Saw Richard"

The last time I saw Richard was Detroit in '68
And he told me all romantics meet the same fate someday
Cynical and drunk and boring someone in some dark cafe
"You laugh," he said, "You think you're immune,
Go look at your eyes, they're full of moon
You like roses and kisses and pretty men to tell you
All those pretty lies, pretty lies
When you gonna realize they're only pretty lies
Only pretty lies, just pretty lies"

He put a quarter in the Wurlitzer
And he pushed three buttons and the thing began to whirr
And a bar maid came by in fishnet stockings and a bow tie
And she said, "Drink up now it's gettin' on time to close"
"Richard you haven't really changed," I said,
"It's just that now you're romanticizing some pain that's in your head
You got tombs in your eyes, but the songs you punched are dreaming
Listen, they sing of love so sweet, love so sweet
When you gonna go get yourself back on your feet?
Oh love can be so sweet, love so sweet."

Richard got married to a figure skater
And he bought her a dishwasher and a coffee percolator
And he drinks at home now most nights with the TV on
And all the house lights left up bright
I'm gonna blow this damn candle out
I don't want nobody comin' over to my table
I got nothing to talk to anybody about
All good dreamers pass this way some day
Hidin' behind bottles in dark cafes, dark cafes
Only a dark cocoon before I get my gorgeous wings and fly away
Only a phase, these dark cafe days.

--Joni Mitchell BLUE

Jim V
Apr 03, 12:35am

Nice try, but PSY rulz!

Dolemite
Apr 03, 12:41am

It's the End of the Wold as We Know It
(And I Feel Fine)

That's great, it starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes, an aeroplane - Lenny Bruce is not afraid. Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn - world serves its own needs, regardless of your own needs. Feed it up a knock, speed, grunt no, strength no. Ladder structure clatter with fear of height, down height. Wire in a fire, represent the seven games in a government for hire and a combat site. Left her, wasn't coming in a hurry with the furies breathing down your neck. Team by team reporters baffled, trump, tethered crop. Look at that low plane! Fine then. Uh oh, overflow, population, common group, but it'll do. Save yourself, serve yourself. World serves its own needs, listen to your heart bleed. Tell me with the rapture and the reverent in the right - right. You vitriolic, patriotic, slam, fight, bright light, feeling pretty psyched.

Six o'clock - TV hour. Don't get caught in foreign tower. Slash and burn, return, listen to yourself churn. Lock him in uniform and book burning, blood letting. Every motive escalate. Automotive incinerate. Light a candle, light a motive. Step down, step down. Watch a heel crush, crush. Uh oh, this means no fear - cavalier. Renegade and steer clear! A tournament, a tournament, a tournament of lies. Offer me solutions, offer me alternatives and I decline.

The other night I tripped a nice continental drift divide. Mount St. Edelite. Leonard Bernstein. Leonid Breshnev, Lenny Bruce and Lester Bangs. Birthday party, cheesecake, jelly bean, boom! You symbiotic, patriotic, slam, but neck, right? Right.

Joani Reese
Apr 03, 12:50am

Well, yes. R.E.M. seems to work for me too.

Jim V
Apr 03, 02:25am

In all seriousness, were I going to drop song lyrics here I would choose something by Leonard Cohen (Closing Time or The Future), Springsteen (Thunder Road or The River), or maybe Gorka (I Saw a Stranger with Your Hair or I'm from New Jersey). This would also be near the top.

The Sound Of Silence
P. Simon, 1964

Hello darkness, my old friend, I've come with talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping, left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain, still remains
Within the sound of silence

In restless dreams I walked alone, narrow streets of cobblestone
Neath the halo of a streetlamp, I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light, split the night
And touched the sound of silence

And in the naked light I saw, ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking, people hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never shared, and no one dared
To stir the sound of silence

Fool, said I, you do not know, silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words and I might teach you, take my arms then I might reach you
But my words like silent raindrops fell, and echoed in the wells of silence

And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they'd made
And the sign flashed out its warning in the words that it was forming
And the sign said the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls, and whispered in the sounds of silence
And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said "The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls
And whispered in the sound of silence

Charlotte Hamrick
Apr 03, 02:34am

Dolomite: Word! REM's "The End of the World As We Know It" is classic.

If we're talking song lyrics, I'd have to say "Because the Night" ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoGdx3I3dPE) by Patti Smith & Bruce Springsteen is way up there for me. Patti's book "Just Kids" is a fave book of mine too.

Other song lyrics I love: U2's "Electrical Storm" ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0adFYuNuns) and The Coors' "When the Stars Go Blue" ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XV_dbCF1jOA) .

I can talk song lyrics all night. :)

Gary Hardaway
Apr 03, 02:40am

"Sound of Silence" hasn't aged well at all. Sounded real cool in the late sixties, however.

Sally Houtman
Apr 03, 02:56am

I say, anything by Bob Dylan.

.....

Here, this is for James Valvis:

Twi nun nom gu wi ye na nun nom
Baby baby na nun mol jom a nun nom
Twi nun nom gu wi ye na nun nom
Baby baby na nun mol jom a nun nom
You know what I'm saying

Oppan Gangnam Style
Eh eh eh eh eh eh

Eh~ Sexy lady
Op op op op oppan Gangnam Style
Eh~ Sexy lady
Op op op op
Eh eh eh eh eh eh

Oppan Gangnam Style

.....

Op op op. You know what I'm sayin'?

Jim V
Apr 03, 06:40am

You're a very sexy lady, Sally.

Jim V
Apr 03, 06:42am

Oh no, the song I like has aged well!

Funny how something can be good once, never change at all, and then suddenly get bad.

Joani Reese
Apr 03, 12:06pm

Poetry
by Marianne Moore

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond
all this fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one
discovers in
it after all, a place for the genuine.
Hands that can grasp, eyes
that can dilate, hair that can rise
if it must, these things are important not because a

high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because
they are
useful. When they become so derivative as to become
unintelligible,
the same thing may be said for all of us, that we
do not admire what
we cannot understand: the bat
holding on upside down or in quest of something to

eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless
wolf under
a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse
that feels a flea, the base-
ball fan, the statistician--
nor is it valid
to discriminate against "business documents and

school-books"; all these phenomena are important. One must make
a distinction
however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the
result is not poetry,
nor till the poets among us can be
"literalists of
the imagination"--above
insolence and triviality and can present

for inspection, "imaginary gardens with real toads in them,"
shall we have
it. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,
the raw material of poetry in
all its rawness and
that which is on the other hand
genuine, you are interested in poetry.

Frankie Saxx
Apr 03, 12:23pm

Today it is Adrienne Rich's Orion:

http://books.google.se/books?id=_TZkJAvqJNEC&lpg=PA1085&pg=PA693#v=onepage&f=false

Joani Reese
Apr 03, 11:36pm

When I was about five years old, my mother used to read Eugene Field's "Little Boy Blue" to me. As an adult, I realize how odd this is, considering the theme and plot of the poem, but hell, what did I know at five? I had this memorized by six, and trotted it out whenever asked to do so. Here's the poem:

Little Boy Blue
by Eugene Field (1850-1895)

The little toy dog is covered with dust,
But sturdy and stanch he stands;
And the little toy soldier is red with rust,
And his musket moulds in his hands.
Time was when the little toy dog was new,
And the soldier was passing fair;
And that was the time when our Little Boy Blue
Kissed them and put them there.

"Now, don't you go till I come," he said,
"And don't you make any noise!"
So, toddling off to his trundle-bed,
He dreamt of the pretty toys;
And, as he was dreaming, an angel song
Awakened our Little Boy Blue---
Oh! the years are many, the years are long,
But the little toy friends are true!

Ay, faithful to Little Boy Blue they stand,
Each in the same old place---
Awaiting the touch of a little hand,
The smile of a little face;
And they wonder, as waiting the long years through
In the dust of that little chair,
What has become of our Little Boy Blue,
Since he kissed them and put them there.

Anyone else remember questionable poems they were exposed to in their youth? My position as an adult is a poem's a poem when you're little, and getting as much on you as possible is a good thing, even if it's doggerel. I didn't, however, teach this one to my children. I aimed more toward Shel Silverstein:

Where the Sidewalk Ends(1974)

There is a place where the sidewalk ends
and before the street begins,
and there the grass grows soft and white,
and there the sun burns crimson bright,
and there the moon-bird rests from his flight
to cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
and the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
we shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow
and watch where the chalk-white arrows go
to the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
and we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
for the children, they mark, and the children, they know,
the place where the sidewalk ends.

Does anyone notice a similarity of theme?

Joani Reese
Apr 04, 09:54pm

A poem written by my first poetry professor many, many years ago. Dick Allen, professor emeritus and former Connecticut Poet Laureate:

If You Get There Before I Do
by Dick Allen

Air out the linens, unlatch the shutters on the eastern side,
and maybe find that deck of Bicycle cards
lost near the sofa. Or maybe walk around
and look out the back windows first.
I hear the view's magnificent: old silent pines
leading down to the lakeside, layer upon layer
of magnificent light. Should you be hungry,
I'm sorry but there's no Chinese takeout,
only a General Store. You passed it coming in,
but you probably didn't notice its one weary gas pump
along with all those Esso cans from decades ago.
If you're somewhat confused, think Vermont,
that state where people are folded into the mountains
like berries in batter. . . . What I'd like when I get there
is a few hundred years to sit around and concentrate
on one thing at a time. I'd start with radiators
and work my way up to Meister Eckhart,
or why do so few people turn their lives around, so many
take small steps into what they never do,
the first weeks, the first lessons,
until they choose something other,
beginning and beginning their lives,
so never knowing what it's like to risk
last minute failure. . . .I'd save blue for last. Klein blue,
or the blue of Crater Lake on an early June morning.
That would take decades. . . .Don't forget
to sway the fence gate back and forth a few times
just for its creaky sound. When you swing in the tire swing
make sure your socks are off. You've forgotten, I expect,
the feeling of feet brushing the tops of sunflowers:
In Vermont, I once met a ski bum on a summer break
who had followed the snows for seven years and planned
on at least seven more. We're here for the enjoyment of it, he said,
to salaam into joy. . . .I expect you'll find
Bibles scattered everywhere, or Talmuds, or Qur'ans,
as well as little snippets of gospel music, chants,
old Advent calendars with their paper doors still open.
You might pay them some heed. Don't be alarmed
when what's familiar starts fading, as gradually
you lose your bearings,
your body seems to turn opaque and then transparent,
until finally it's invisible--what old age rehearses us for
and vacations in the limbo of the Middle West.
Take it easy, take it slow. When you think I'm on my way,
the long middle passage done,
fill the pantry with cereal, curry, and blue and white boxes of macaroni, place the
checkerboard set, or chess if you insist,
out on the flat-topped stump beneath the porch's shadow,
pour some lemonade into the tallest glass you can find in the cupboard,
then drum your fingers, practice lifting your eyebrows,
until you tell them all--the skeptics, the bigots, blind neighbors,
those damn-with-faint-praise critics on their hobbyhorses--
that I'm allowed,
and if there's a place for me that love has kept protected,
I'll be coming, I'll be coming too.

Frankie Saxx
Apr 05, 09:26am

@JP Always enjoyed Shel Silverstein as a kid. (Remember from elementary school library day, those and the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books.)

Have always liked Antigonish by Hughes Mearns for its subtle creepiness:

Yesterday upon the stair
I met a man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
Oh, how I wish he’d go away

When I came home last night at three
The man was waiting there for me
But when I looked around the hall
I couldn’t see him there at all!
Go away, go away, don’t you come back any more!
Go away, go away, and please don’t slam the door

Last night I saw upon the stair
A little man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
Oh, how I wish he’d go away

Letitia Coyne
Apr 05, 10:53am

I think the man who wasn't on the stairs was a favourite of Bowie's too:

We passed upon the stair,
we spoke of was and when
Although I wasn't there,
he said I was his friend
Which came as some surprise
I spoke into his eyes
I thought you died alone,
a long long time ago

Lxx

Gloria Garfunkel
Apr 05, 10:19pm

My favorite is the Anti-Suicide Poem called "Wait" by Galway Kinnell:

WAIT

Wait, for now.
Distrust everything, if you have to.
But trust the hours. Haven't they
carried you everywhere, up to now?
Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting.
Buds that open out of season will become lovely again.
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again,
their memories are what give them
the need for other hands. And the desolation
of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness
carved out of such tiny beings as we are
asks to be filled; the need
for the new love is faithfulness to the old.

Wait.
Don't go too early.
You're tired. But everyone's tired.
But no one is tired enough.
Only wait a while and listen.
Music of hair,
Music of pain,
music of looms weaving all our loves again.
Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,
most of all to hear,
the flute of your whole existence,
rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.

Galway Kinnell

John Riley
Apr 06, 05:40pm

One of the favorite James Schuyler poems

Korean mums

beside me in this garden
are huge and daisy-like
(why not? are not
oxeye daisies a chrysanthemum?),
shrubby and thick-stalked,
the leaves pointing up
the stems from which
the flowers burst in
sunbursts. I love
this garden in all its moods,
even under its winter coat
of salt hay, or now,
in October, more than
half gone over: here
a rose, there a clump
of aconite. This morning
one of the dogs killed
a barn owl. Bob saw
it happen, tried to
intervene. The airedale
snapped its neck and left
it lying. Now the bird
lies buried by an apple
tree. Last evening
from the table we saw
the owl, huge in the dusk,
circling the field
on owl-silent wings.
The first one ever seen
here: now it’s gone,
a dream you just remember.

The dogs are barking. In
the studio music plays
and Bob and Darragh paint.
I sit scribbling in a little
notebook at a garden table,
too hot in a heavy shirt
in the mid-October sun
into which the Korean mums
all face. There is a
dull book with me,
an apple core, cigarettes,
an ashtray. Behind me
the rue I gave Bob
flourishes. Light on leaves,
so much to see, and
all I really see is that
owl, its bulk troubling
the twilight. I’ll
soon forget it: what
is there I have not forgot?
Or one day will forget:
this garden, the breeze
in stillness, even
the words, Korean mums.
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