Ugh, it was obvious! Guess I was looking hard for the number eight and not paying attention to the sounds of words, which isn't too smart considering this is poetry.

On Styx and 70s vs 80's , following from Wikipedia ... "Pieces of Eight is the eighth studio album and second concept album by Styx, released September 1, 1978."

Their biggest releases came earlier, like Grand Illusion. But of course they remained popular in the 80's, at least with those who didn't succumb to disco and new wave.

Love The Oven Bird. My ten is a simple poem from A.E. Housman that would be topical right now if not for a very early spring this year.
It also has the most involved arithmetic yet!

II. Loveliest of trees, the cherry now


LOVELIEST of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten, 5
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room, 10
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

Eleven is very challenging! And I almost thought I didn't have an 11 and then remember! This one has lots of numbers - as advertised by the title.


Numbers

Mary Cornish

I like the generosity of numbers.
The way, for example,
they are willing to count
anything or anyone:
two pickles, one door to the room,
eight dancers dressed as swans.

I like the domesticity of addition--
add two cups of milk and stir--
the sense of plenty: six plums
on the ground, three more
falling from the tree.

And multiplication's school
of fish times fish,
whose silver bodies breed
beneath the shadow
of a boat.

Even subtraction is never loss,
just addition somewhere else:
five sparrows take away two,
the two in someone else's
garden now.

There's an amplitude to long division,
as it opens Chinese take-out
box by paper box,
inside every folded cookie
a new fortune.

And I never fail to be surprised
by the gift of an odd remainder,
footloose at the end:
forty-seven divided by eleven equals four,
with three remaining.

Three boys beyond their mothers' call,
two Italians off to the sea,
one sock that isn't anywhere you look.

I agree, Eleven is a bit challenging. Here's my 'eleven' ... found not in the words but in the meter ... does that count?

For Once, Then, Something

Others taught me with having knelt at well-curbs
Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
Deeper down in the well than where the water
Gives me back in a shining surface picture
Me myself in the summer heaven godlike
Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.
Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,
Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,
Something more of the depths--and then I lost it.
Water came to rebuke the too clear water.
One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple
Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom,
Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness?
Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.

Robert Frost

Sure - a creative solution always works for me.

I like "Numbers," and "For Once,Then, Something," is one of my favorite Frosts. I could find only song lyrics by Jack Frost. I think I've heard of him.

Number Eleven

Plane crash in the desert, everybody walked away
Suitcase open to the breeze, light lifting up pretty heavy
So we climbed out, looked around us
Your shirt stuck to your skin
Wreckage shimmered under sky, nothing on the horizon
I know you can keep me warm
Have you ever seen the evening, the way it opens up
Lie down under a wing, we breathed in everything
I know you can keep me warm
The stranger in me shuddered, your eyes were partly closed
My hand deep in the still white sand, the stars dropped down so near
And I hope they never find us, just to disappear
We left it all behind us, now you'll find us here

I like Jack Frost 'Number Eleven', a plane crash in the desert can be a romantic situation, if you crash with the right person. Makes me wonder why he called it 'Number Eleven'?

Poor old Eleven, sandwiched between much more important numbers, ten as the base of our number system and twelve an even dozen and the number of inches in a foot (only Americans care about that now). Does anyone choose 'Eleven' as a favourite number? Nobody I know.

But as Robert Frost demonstrates, Eleven is not forgotten ... hendecasyllabic verse celebrates Eleven ... below another example in Latin and then in English.

Cui dono lepidum novum libellum
arida modo pumice expolitum?
Corneli, tibi: namque tu solebas
meas esse aliquid putare nugas.
Iam tum, cum ausus es unus Italorum
omne aevum tribus explicare cartis...
Doctis, Iuppiter, et laboriosis!
Quare habe tibi quidquid hoc libelli—
qualecumque, quod, o patrona virgo,
plus uno maneat perenne saeclo!

To whom do I dedicate this charming slim volume,
just now polished with dry pumice stone?
For you Cornellius, for you were accustomed to think
that my scribblings were something.
When already at the same time, you alone
dared to unfold the whole age of Italians in three scrolls,
learned, by Jupiter, and weighty!
For that reason have for yourself whatever this little book is,
and whatever you like, oh patron maiden,
let it last a long time, for more than one generation!

I found three poems for twelve and have decide to play my game again of guess which poem my excerpt comes from. Can you guess? This is not too hard. I will give hints if needed. The other 2 twelves were a William Cowper (very nice) and a Thomas Hardy.

It was twelve by the village clock
When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.
He heard the crowing of the cock,
And the barking of the farmer’s dog,
And felt the damp of the river fog,
That rises after the sun goes down.

This one's slightly spooky, which I think is appropriate because somehow Twelve is a spooky number (don't be scared - its only a poem!):

Twelve Tree Barrow

When the moths are flitting, and the fields are still,
'Ware the darkling shadows on the haunted hill,
'Ware the ghosts with axe and spear and flint-headed arrow,
Trooping thro' the summer night,
Trooping when the moon is bright
On the twelve Tree Barrow.

What remembrance of red streams, what furious fray,
Makes the grass grow rich and rank on the mound to-day?
You may see the dead men's bones turned by harrow,
Skulls and thighs of mighty men
Slain in bloody battle then
At the Twelve Tree Barrow.

Draw the curtain closer, bar your windows tight,
Set no foot on yonder hill, tread not there to-night.
Ill for him who dares the spear and flint-headed arrow,
When the warriors wake by night,
Trooping when the moon is white
On the Twelve Tree Barrow.

Cicely Fox Smith

Speaking of Jack Frost, he's now on the home page of booktalk with an advertisement for a book he wrote called "Why did You Name Me That?" Is that a coincidence or is it because I clicked on his song? Is it on your page too?

Honestly, I thought it was "The Highwayman," but then I searched using the second line and found that it was "The Raid of Paul Revere."

I don't have a good twelve, and may have just become the first to post a rap song. But got to stay in the game.

Twenty twelve poem


Twenty twelve is within reach

I don’t wanna rave or manic street preach

But the new agers doom date is looming

And the Mayan end point is zooming.



Now they’re calling it Ascension

Breakthrough to the nth dimension

A mighty change – can you feel it?

If you gotta problem, just heal it.



Your body’s just a vehicle – not you!

Makes you think about what you do

Makes you wonder who you are

If your body’s just like a bike or a car.



If you read this stuff straight it stinks

If you’re stoned you’ll be making more links

If you’re totally outa your head

You won’t care if you’re alive or dead.

Can you hear the gurgling, feel the grime

2012 is getting closer, the plughole of time

There’s a pull, there’s a whirling confusion

A shattering of each long-held illusion.



The projection screen we call reality is tearing

It’s time to be earth-shattering, daring

Time to change, to risk, to let it all rip,

Give yourself what you want, that baby, that trip!



Get it while you can, my lovelies, you lot

They may all be right or even if not,

You’re going to die anyway, it’s all a game

Live out your dreams, that’s why you came.

Jan Maloney

Yes, it is on my page too. I wondered if it was the same Jack Frost. In fact, I noticed the advert a few days before you posted the song and wondered who the heck he was!

I had noticed the Jack Frost book on the BT home page as well and did a double take .. poked about a bit on Jack Frost --- I think this is coincidence only and that there are two Jack Frosts. One that grew up in alabama and writes short stories and other is a singer/songwriter who's songs seem far from Alabama ... found a few pictures of the latter JF, he does not look anything like how I would picture the former JF!

Well thanks for delving into this cosmic convergence. I have noticed, as I'm sure everyone has, how ads pop up now in parallel to any search I've recently done. I don't really like it.

For 13, I can think of only one, though it's a bugbear for me. It might as well be 52 ways, for all I understand it. "O thin men of Haddam," indeed! I've been to Haddam. It's a picturesque hamlet on the Connecticut river, perfectly lovely. The shop that made my bicycle is there, in fact. But I never noticed a particular thinness in its male inhabitants.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
Wallace Stevens

I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.

XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.

XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.

Girl Scout Picnic, 1954

by June Robertson Beisch


The parade began and the Bryant Jr. High School band
marched through the streets of Minneapolis
wearing white shirts, blue trousers, playing John Philip Sousa

Lance, Jack, Sharon and myself on drums,
strapped to our knees so we could play,
arms akimbo, drumsticks held high,

drum rolls, paradiddles, rim shots, flams
while the trumpets groaned and the bystanders
cheered us on in the rain-drenched streets.

The Girl Scouts strutted ahead of us wearing
their green uniforms, berets and badges
waving the Girl Scout flag, and smiling,

We could do anything after this, we felt,
twirling our drumsticks between our fingers
Such joy seems unimaginable until I conjure it

Not even Wordsworth's memory of
a field of daffodils comes close to it
The picnic later at the Minnehaha Falls Park,

then walking home much later in the dark
still filled with the sounds of it.
To march at thirteen through the streets of Minneapolis

is to ride in triumph through Persepolis.