Poetry?

Saffron · Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2008 12:43 pm Post subject: Joyful Noise

Has anyone out there hear of Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices by Paul Fleischman? It won the 1989 Newbery Medal. It is one of my all time favorite books of poetry. It is a very unusual collection, in that the poems are written for two people to read them together. On the page they appear in two columns. As my daughters were growing up we read these often for company and for our own pleasure. I will try to type out part of one of them -- I'm not sure the formating will allow it -- let's see. When reading keep in mind that these are for two voices and part of the beauty is the rhythm at which the two voice sound out.

Water Striders

Whenever we're asked - - - - - - - - -Whenever we're asked
if we walk upon water - - - - - - - - - if we walk upon water
we answer - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - we answer

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Of course.

To be sure.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -It's quite true.
Whenever we're asked - - - - - - - - Whenever we're asked
if we walk on it often - - - - - - - - - - if we walk on it often
we answer - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - we answer
Quite often.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Each day.

Penelope · Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2008 1:39 pm Post subject:

Dear Saffron

'Joyfull Noise' is a phrase from a Psalm...which over many years has come to mean so much to me.

Make a 'Joyful Noise unto the Lord'.......

Thank you so much, Saffron.

We make a 'joyful noise' but unfortunately...we are not all singing from the same songsheet.

I say, let's all stop arguing about the 'songsheet'.

Saffron · Posted: Sun Jul 27, 2008 8:43 am Post subject:

Another poem for summer

In those days I thought their endless thrum
was the great wheel that turned the days, the nights.
In the throats of hibiscus and oleander...

—from "Insect Life of Florida" by Lynda Hull

Penelope · Posted: Sun Jul 27, 2008 2:46 pm Post subject:

Saffron - I liked that...even though I haven't ever been to Florida.

You might like to look up - Sir Edwin Arnold:-

The Light of Asia -

http://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/books/lightasi/asia-hp.htm

If you don't know this work already.

I think Thomas Hood would like it too.

Saffron · Posted: Sun Jul 27, 2008 8:22 pm Post subject:

Thanks, Penny! I will have a look soon as I've got a free minute. I heard from my daughter, the one in London, today. She reports that she is having a lovely time.

Saffron

Robert Tulip · Posted: Sun Jul 27, 2008 8:33 pm Post subject:

Saffron · Posted: Sun Jul 27, 2008 8:37 pm Post subject:

What a lovely comment, Robert! Now I want to go back to read the whole poem again. Here is the URL for anyone else that would like to.

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19717

Robert Tulip · Posted: Sun Jul 27, 2008 11:56 pm Post subject:

Thank you Saffron, it is a beautiful poem. Lynda Hull draws a connection between the daily rhythm of cicadas in summer and the deep cycles of the cosmos. When she says 'I was part of the singing, their thousand wings gauze on my body' it reads to me like a gesture to a millennial period, the thousand wings of the cicadas standing for one thousand years, echoing the image of the wheel in the opening verse. Her description of 'night, the enormous Florida night, metallic with cicadas, musical and dangerous as the human heart' invokes a natural metallic music and a wonderful communion with nature.

hegel1066 · Posted: Mon Jul 28, 2008 2:36 am Post subject: Random offerings of poesy:

Can we just post poems here? I've been reading the ones posted to my great enjoyment.

I must say that several years ago (when I was young enough to still have a good reason for it being mediocre), I used to write the occasional poem myself. I've never posted it in a forum of intelligent adults before.

What about we post some of our own, and see what we all think?

I'll even get us started! What does everyone think?

-John (hegel1066)

Penelope · Posted: Mon Jul 28, 2008 11:20 am Post subject:

Brilliant Idea - John!!!!

You go first!!!!

hegel1066

This is for Penelope, for showing interest in my idea that we should all post some of our own work. Of course, this isn't to say we shouldn't post the work of our favorite poets, too. In fact, I plan to do this myself later today.

A word of warning about this poem. When I wrote it, in 1999, I was very much under the influence of the so-called "language poets" - and mostly the work of Charles Bernstein. Bernstein's poetry is very unusual, and focuses more on the abstract quality of language and linguistic sound than it does on the meanings of words. With that, here we go:

"The Rose Is Still"

Staid were the petals of experience, as a craftless author
Thus it was painted for me, still and unabidding
A thorn, a Stoicism upon having been proven wrong.
Tempted, roused into my quotidian dealings with the Other.

Richelieu concedes with a feathery gesture;
Ontology throws me a wicked grin while it continues its course on the monkey bars.
Stationary sits on my desk, a congress of dilapidated weariness.
Amiable truth tables are black and white, and prove nothing to an eager, aggressive crimson.

Establishments falter and stumble on these soft, fleshy beds: they give easily to nouveau aggiornamento.
Stem, abstemious, fibrous, tired, verdant, this unseen step's temple
Testing the soil we tread on, our flower carefully offering its roots.

(1999)

Any comments or criticism would be highly appreciated. Let's keep it clean and nice.

-John (hegel1066)

"Poetry will never win the war on terror
But neither will error abetted by error"
- Charles Bernstein, "The Ballad of the Girlie Man"

Penelope · Posted: Mon Jul 28, 2008 4:07 pm Post subject:

Penelope · Posted: Mon Jul 28, 2008 4:59 pm Post subject:

I just thought I'd present this one:
You might beg me to stop when you can't stand any more.

TO MY GRANDSON

Oh, Brimful, Brimful Boy
Deep Pools of thought within your blue eyes
Rosey lips like sunlight flickering
Glistening mischief.......

Oh, Brimful, Brimful Boy
I weave my spells....
But you have spun me
Into a Cornucopia

hegel1066 · Posted: Mon Jul 28, 2008 5:23 pm Post subject:

Penelope -

I loved the poem! I paint his innocence very well with your diction, and you can tell that he means the world to you. It's wonderful what you do in the second stanza, how you think you have control, but then he's the one that ends up "weaving" you. How true is that of the child-adult dynamic!

Here is one of my favorites by Elizabeth Bishop: It's called "One Art."

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
So many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

---Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not hard to master
though it may look like (WRITE it!) like disaster.

-John (hegel1066)

Saffron · Posted: Mon Jul 28, 2008 5:49 pm Post subject:


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