Poetry?

Saffron · Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 4:58 am Post subject:

Is this the Lana Turner poem?

Poem (Lana Turner has collapsed!)
by Frank O'Hara

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

Saffron

ralphinlaos · Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 5:17 am Post subject:

Yes, Saffron, that's the one; I sure had the title wrong, didn't I? I was positive it was "Lana Turner Died Today;" I still can't remember it being "collapsed."

I guess, as President Camacho says, I should Google before I post. No wonder DWill couldn't find it on the internet.

Now Margaret Mead - that was a life fully lived, wasn't it?

Ralph

Saffron · Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 6:36 am Post subject:

Saffron · Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 7:01 am Post subject:

And what of H. D. Thoreau, DWill? Have any favorites?

I like this:

My Life Has Been the Poem

My life has been the poem I would have writ,
But I could not both live and utter it.

Saffron

DWill · Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 7:22 am Post subject:

Wow, this is humming! Indigo, I most certainly was NOT making fun of you! Could it be, though, that 20-year-olds don't go around saying someone is full of beans, and therefore you didn't know that was a good thing?

I think Book World did some good selecting there, don't you Saffron? I continue to be impressed by your ingenuity. Of course you would be able to find the Lana Turner poem, and wasn't it something? I was going to bring up the interesting contrast from the first group of postings, modern vs. the traditional verse forms. It appeared that Ralph and I (both of an age) tended toward the traditional, whereas you, Theomanic, and I'm sure Indigo, might pull from the moderns. I realize that we probably all can go both ways.

But since I've always liked to memorize, the Romantic poets and their descendents have appealed to me. Generally, rhymes make learning the poems easier. But also I find that the pre-moderns shoot for the Big Effects, not just in the sound, but in the meanings. I guess I like the slight melodrama of those poems, and the fact that the meaning is usually close to the surface helps me out. The modern poets go for smaller effects, but I don't mean that disaparagingly. They've quit trying to expose general truths in terms of morals or philosophy, are subjective and idiosyncratic, are generally not self-dramatizing even though they speak often about themselves. (Yeats, whom I love, is one I think of as a master self-dramatizer.) This is a very broad, general assessment, I realize.

I like that early Yeats poem, too, Ralph; it's great. I like a number from that period.
"Brown Penny" is a good one for memory.

I whispered, "I am too young."
And then, "I am old enough";
Wherefore I threw a penny
To find out if I might love.
"Go and love, go and love, young man,
If the lady be young and fair."
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny
I am looped in the loops of her hair.

O love is the crooked thing,
There is nobody wise enough
To find out all that is in it,
For he would be thinking of love
Till the stars had run away
And the shadows eaten the moon.
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
One cannot begin it too soon.

"The Stolen Child," "When You are Old," "Who Goes with Fergus," "The Two Trees," "The Song of the Wandering Aengus" (set to music by Judy Collins and very beautiful), and "The Man Who Dreamed of Faeryland"--these are others he published before 1900 that I like a lot. He was a Pre-Raphaelite during this time, not the grander poet he was to become.

Right now, I'm supposed to be studying for a certification exam, and the material is unbelievably boring, as far away from poetry as it is possible to get. So this discussion has been like a tonic, the best distraction. Thanks!
DWill

DWill · Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 10:37 am Post subject: A classic--probably out of print

I can't resist. On the lighter side of poetry, the way lighter side, we have the slender volume "Big League Poets", by Mikhail Horowitz, published by Lawrence Ferlinghetti's City Lights Books. The conceit here is to picture the big-time poets (all males, unfortunately) as baseball players. There are pictures of the players with poets' heads set on top. It's juvenile, I guess. But at least there is a connection between baseball and poets, in that if poets like any of the sports, I think it's likely to be baseball. Donald Hall, for one, was a big fan; John Updike also is.

Excerpts:

A centaur-fielder for the Trojan Horsemen, HOMER was the father of Big League Poetry: inventing the epic poem and the epic clout (which still bears his name today) with one great swing of his wine-dark bat.

As every schoolboy doubtless knows, LONG JOHN MILTON pitched for Paradise, and Paradise Lost.

William CASEY SHAKESPEARE made every play look easy. As a shortstop for the Los Angeles Learjets, he was known as "The Speed Merchant of Venice Beach"....The Greatest Big League Poet of them all, he ended up as an umpire, and would baffle almost everybody with such ambiguous calls as "fair is foul, and foul is fair."

Walt WHITEY WHITMAN was a vagabond outfielder (and a switch-hitter as well) who sang, celebrated, and assumed himself when lilacs last in the ballpark bloomed. His magnum opus: LEAVES OF ASTROTURF.

I'll take pity on you and stop. The pictures are half the fun.
DWill

ralphinlaos · Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 12:34 pm Post subject:

DWill, that was fun - and funny. I can just picture Will Shakespeare as an umpire, but I doubt he'd last long in today's environment - especially with the little league moms and dads.

And of course Walt Whitman would be a switch-hitter. Perfect. Or as someone might say, a homer.

I didn't know Ferlinghetti headed a publishing house; good for him. If someone else won't do it, do it yourself.

What are you being certified in? I think you mentioned it once, but I forgot.

Ralph

Saffron · Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 1:30 pm Post subject: Three Cheers for DWill!

What a delightful and nourishing thread this has turned out to be!

I have encounter a minor problem (am using a friend's computer). I can not cut & paste, thereby making selective quoting a bit difficult. I'll try my best without the point of reference of quote boxes.

Will commented on my ingenuity in locating the Lana Turner poem. I am dyslexic, with some short term memory impairment (sequencing is a bitch - yes, Will I can curse if necessary), and information retrieval quirks (meaning my brain has it's own filing system and won't give me the key). In order to manage in a literate society (I do know calling USA society literate is a debatable fact) I have had to devise multiple coping strategies to be able to communicate in written English. Consequently, I have learned to work my away around all kinds of interesting road blocks when searching for information or more often than not, how to spell a word. It really has been an asset. Having a faulty filing system or really it's the retrieval part that does not work quite right, has made me make very odd associations between words, concepts, images, etc. I like to think my brain files poetically!

Will made a comment about modern v. traditional verse forms. I think I read something somewhere about Robert Frost and traditional verse form. It was kinda funny, so I will look for it. I think of modern poetry as snapshots. I'm not sure what a corollary would be for traditional verse. Anybody? By the way, Will, Frost is one of my favorite poets. I like both modern and traditional. I am just way more familiar with the modern poets. I think it has to do with what was being taught in schools when I was in HS & college.

And Brown Penny is lovely!

Saffron

Saffron · Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 9:11 pm Post subject: Lilacs in bloom

From DWill's post:

Saffron · Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 9:57 pm Post subject: R Frost on free verse

One more post from me and I promise to be quite for a bit. I found the quote from Robert Frost I referred to in an earlier post.

DWill · Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 10:23 pm Post subject:

Ralph,
The certification is for something called rehabilitation counseling and is connected to a work-related masters degree. Could you mention how you came to be lving in Laos? You might have back a ways, but I can't recall.
Saffron,
Whatever adaptations you have made, they seem to be working. I mean, look at you, changing these avatars at will to suit the theme, while I sit here stumped. Do you think the problem could be my slow computer? I always found it a good idea, whether it regards sports or the present instance, to blame my equipment. I've got a whole hedge of lilacs, but they're Persian, not as perfumed as the common and almost a purple flower, but better as a hedge plant because they stop at about 9' and don't sucker as much.

Was the Robt. Frost comment where he says that writing free verse is like playing tennis without a net? In that last Book World a novelized life of Frost is reviewed favorably, and also a book of his prose is out for the first time. He was a much tormented man, it seems. He was able to transmute the torment into poems and to say about it wistfully, "I had a lover's quarrel with the world." I might be able to say that my favorite Frost poem of all is "The Wood-Pile", which ends, "To warm the frozen swamp as best it could/With the slow smokeless burning of decay." What about you?
D

Saffron · Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 10:34 pm Post subject:

DWill:

Saffron · Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 10:42 pm Post subject:

On second thought, my most favorite RFrost is Reluctance.

I love the line:
The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping.

and the last stanza:

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?

Anybody else have a favorite Frost poem?
Saffron

Saffron · Posted: Sat Apr 26, 2008 8:51 pm Post subject: Compost

DWill:


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