May 15, 2018, 04:15 am
The Raven by E. A. Poe
What are your favourite poems?
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May 15, 2018, 04:15 am
The Raven by E. A. Poe
May 15, 2018, 11:03 am
In a previous post, I mentioned that Szymborska's poems are a good deal more than Marianne Moore's. That doesn't in anyway mean that hers' is a lesser body (of work). She has a way with words, her metaphors are razor-sharp and unique. In lines such as:
"the mind feels its way as though blind, walks along with its eyes on the ground" and "It has memory's ear that can hear without having to hear" shows the aptness of metaphor and in these: "efforts of affection attain integration too tough for infraction." shows serious wordsmithery. Here's a short and sweet poem (with a catchy ending): The Past is Present If external action is effete and rhyme is outmoded, I shall revert to you, Habakkuk, as when in a Bible class the teacher was speaking of unrhymed verse. He said - and I think I repeat his exact words "Hebrew poetry is prose with a sort of heightened consciousness." Ecstasy affords the occasion and expediency determines the form. - Marianne Moore
Jun 08, 2018, 09:47 am
My favourite sonnet from my most-favoured poet :
When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain, Before high-pilèd books, in charactery, Hold like rich garners the full-ripened grain; When I behold, upon the night’s starred face, Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, And think that I may never live to trace Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance; And when I feel, fair creature of an hour! That I shall never look upon thee more, Never have relish in the faery power Of unreflecting love! – then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till love and fame to nothingness do sink. - John Keats It was written in 1818 (as the Complete Poems informs me) a full year before, [Ode] To Autumn, which scholars attest and assert to be one of the few "perfect" poems in English Literature. Keats' fears (though not his Being) came to nought.
Sep 09, 2018, 10:38 am
As I have mentioned before, Robert Frost is a complicated figure. In Modern English Poetry, when the interest in "rhyming" has seriously been weakened, we must look back to the past practitioners for notable examples. Here's one :
Acquainted with the Night I have been one acquainted with the night. I have walked out in rain - and back in rain. I have outwalked the furthest city light. I have looked down the saddest city lane. I have passed by the watchman on his beat And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain. I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet When far away an interrupted cry Came over houses from another street, But not to call me back or say good-bye; And further still at an unearthly height, One luminary clock against the sky Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right. I have been one acquainted with the night. - Robert Frost
Sep 12, 2018, 03:23 am
As T.S. Eliot had said somewhere, "a poet is not necessarily going to all the trouble (while composing a poem) not to communicate, but to relieve himself of the burden" a statement to which A.R. Ammons had a pertinent reply (in this thread: The Quotes Thread - Pg 3 - #22). Very much in the same vein, a poem from another past master:
The Pardon My dog lay dead five days without a grave In the thick of summer, hid in a clump of pine And a jungle of grass and honey-suckle vine. I who had loved him while he kept alive Went only close enough to where he was To sniff the heavy honey-suckle smell Twined with another odor heavier still And hear the flies' intolerable buzz. Well, I was ten and very much afraid In my kind world the dead were out of range And I could not forgive the sad or strange In beast or man. My father took the spade And buried him. Last night I saw the grass Slowly divide (it was the same scene But now it glowed a fierce and mortal green) And saw the dog emerging. I confess I felt afraid again, but still he came In the carnal sun, clothed in a hymn of flies, And death was breeding in his lively eyes. I started in to cry and call his name, Asking forgiveness of his tongueless head. ... I dreamt the past was never past redeeming But whether this was false or honest dreaming I beg death's pardon now. And mourn the dead. - Richard Wilbur, Collected Poems 1943-2004 (There is a small error in the only available epub version of Wilbur's poems on the internet. The misprint/typo is in the last line of the above poem where "mourn the dead" is garbled into German.)
Sep 17, 2018, 13:09 pm
(This post was last modified: Sep 17, 2018, 13:16 pm by Arzoo. Edited 1 time in total.)
Recently, saw in a newsletter how the ever-burgeoning ReptiCons are supposedly (esp. South Florida) leading to owls and pretty much everything being devoured (see Audubon.org, for a detailed report) more than ever. However, owls are not always so susceptible, as this poem from A.R. Ammons shows. It immediately came to my mind, it is based on a historic event in the Amazons as seen and reported by a Naturalist.
Jungle Knot One morning Beebe found on a bank of the Amazon an owl and snake dead in a coiled embrace: the vine prints its coil too deep into the tree and leaved fire shoots greens of tender flame rising among the branches, drawing behind a hardening, wooden clasp: the tree does not generally escape though it may live thralled for years, succumbing finally rather than at once, in the vine’s victory the casting of its eventual death, though it may live years on the skeletal trunk, termites rising, the rain softening, a limb in storm falling, the vine air-free at last, structure-less as death: the owl, Beebe says, underestimated the anaconda’s size: hunger had deformed sight or caution, or anaconda, come out in moonlight on the river bank, had left half his length in shade: (you sometimes tackle more than just what the light shows): the owl struck talons back of the anaconda’s head but weight grounded him in surprise: the anaconda coiled, embracing heaving wings and cry, and the talons, squeezed in, sank killing snake and owl in tightened pain: errors of vision, errors of self-defense! errors of wisdom, errors of desire! the vulture dives, unlocks four eyes. - Archie R. Ammons, Corson's Inlet Note - Here's a brief explanation from Ammons himself: "Obviously the jungle knot comes at the end, when the snake and the owl are . . . You know, Beebe was a naturalist who did indeed explore the Amazon, and many other things as well. I guess all I’m trying to say is that as with the vine when it grows up the tree, there’s a kind of dependence on the part of the vine on the tree. But then if the vine is too successful it kills the tree, and so you have, naturalistically, you have forces in nature and in ourselves and in the mind and in these metaphorical representations of that . . . binds, where one kind of energy is interlocked with another kind and either one destroys the other, or one becomes dominant over the other, or if they are equally matched they destroy each other. But then there’s always a mechanism in nature that lets the knot decay. Or a vulture comes down and what was unlockable he unlocks. He takes their eyes out. And that wrestling match is over. That show is over. So that these knots of intertwined energy occur, psychically, physically, outside and elsewhere, and these are some representations of that."
Oct 13, 2018, 13:32 pm
(This post was last modified: Oct 13, 2018, 14:06 pm by Arzoo. Edited 1 time in total.)
The following ballad, although hypnotic and hallucinatory in its original tongue, i.e. German bears out more or less well in English. The closest examples will be Poe's The Bells or The Raven. Thankfully, we have a bilingual edition before us: sense and sound can be correlated easily by checking with the English in the next page. Here it is, adapted many a time (Schubert, famously), but none having as much as power and force as the text itself. It's about a father and his child riding through the mist and wood while otherworldly figures haunt and beckon the child.
Erlkönig (The Erl-King) My son, what is it, why cover your face? Father, you see him, there in that place, The elfin king with his cloak and crown? It is only the mist rising up, my son. "Dear little child, will you come with me? Beautiful games I'll play with thee; Bright are the flowers we'll find on the shore, My mother has golden robes full score." Father, O father, and did you not hear What the elfin king breathed into my ear? Lie quiet, my child, now never you mind: Dry leaves it was that click in the wind. "Come along now, you're a fine little lad, My daughters will serve you, see you are glad; My daughters dance all night in a ring, They'll cradle and dance you and lullaby sing." Father, now look, in the gloom, do you see The elfin daughters beckon to me? My son, my son, I see it and say: Those old willows, they look so gray. "I love you, beguiled by your beauty I am, If you are unwilling I'll force you to come!'' Father, his fingers grip me, The elfin king has hurt me so! Now struck with horror the father rides fast, His gasping child in his arm to the last, Home through thick and thin he sped: Locked in his arm, the child was dead. - Johann Wolfgang Goethe, 1782 Can I just add that the Schubert or any other adaption involving a baritone or a tenor completely ruins it when what is required is sort of a murmurous or susurrous quality? Its an intimate incantation not a public oration. No wonder Debussy thought Schubert had a tin ear.
Oct 15, 2018, 15:36 pm
For people with having difficulties with the night and sleep:
How to Sleep Child in the womb, Or saint on a tomb - Which way shall I lie To fall asleep? The keen moon stares From the back of the sky, The clouds are all home Like driven sheep. Bright drops of time One and two chime, I turn and lie straight With folded hands; Convent-child, Pope, They choose this state, And their minds are wiped calm As sea-levelled sands. So my thoughts are: But sleep stays as far, Till I crouch on one side Like a foetus again – For sleeping, like death, Must be won without pride, With a nod from nature, With a lack of strain, And a loss of stature. - Philip Larkin
Oct 24, 2018, 08:31 am
Five little ducks
Went out one day Over the hill and far away Mother duck said "Quack, quack, quack, quack." But only four little ducks came back. Four little ducks Went out one day Over the hill and far away Mother duck said "Quack, quack, quack, quack." But only three little ducks came back. Three little ducks Went out one day Over the hill and far away Mother duck said "Quack, quack, quack, quack." But only two little ducks came back. Two little ducks Went out one day Over the hill and far away Mother duck said "Quack, quack, quack, quack." But only one little duck came back. One little duck Went out one day Over the hill and far away Mother duck said "Quack, quack, quack, quack." But none of the five little ducks came back. Sad mother duck Went out one day Over the hill and far away The sad mother duck said "Quack, quack, quack." And all of the five little ducks came back.
Oct 28, 2018, 23:51 pm
Quote:60 yard pass |
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