Poetry?

DWill · Posted: Sat Apr 26, 2008 9:18 pm Post subject:

Right, that's a good one !("Reluctance") I had overlooked it whenever I've leafed through his collected poems. Another one-word title naming an emotion is "Bereft", one that hits right between the eyes! But there are probably 30 or so from him that I'd put near the top on a list of favorites by anybody.

That day she put our heads together,
Fate had her imagination about her,
Your head so much concerned with outer,
Mine with inner, weather.

(From "Tree at My Window)
D

ralphinlaos · Posted: Sun Apr 27, 2008 4:11 am Post subject:

Here's my contribution towards making everyone's day a brighter day -

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you -- Nobody -- Too?
Thn there's a pair of us!
Don't tell! they'd advertise -- you know!

How dreary -- to be -- Somebody!
How public -- like a Frog --
To tell one's name -- the livelong June --
To an admiring Bog!

Emily Dickinson

Saffron · Posted: Sun Apr 27, 2008 7:54 am Post subject:

Thanks Ralph. Maybe we have had enough of Robert Frost. What of Langston Hughes or Ogden Nash? Anyone ever read any of the poems from Joyful Noise by Paul Fleischman? They are written for two voices. Very beautiful to hear read aloud.

Two Haiku from Kobayashi Issa (translated by Robert Hass)
(heads up President C)

Don't worry, spiders,
I keep house
casually.

Mosquito at my ear --
Does it think
I'm deaf?

Since I have found my way to Booktalk, my house is rather casually kept!
Saffron

Saffron · Posted: Sun Apr 27, 2008 9:35 am Post subject:

Me:

Saffron · Posted: Sun Apr 27, 2008 9:40 am Post subject: The Wood-Pile

Ahha! I know! The cut wood is all the unfinished poems - I have whole book of them myself! The woodcutter is busy in the kitchen with dishes and dinners, laundry, and keeping up with the yard, not to mention the 3 daughters.

Penelope · Posted: Sun Apr 27, 2008 2:09 pm Post subject:

There was nothing to do and nothing to say
As we came to end of a dismal day
Then.....
Daddy fell into the pond!!!

And everyone's face grew merry and bright
Timothy squealed for sheer delight
And even the ducks enjoyed his plight
When Daddy fell into the pond...

Run for the Camera, quick quick, quick
He's crawling out of the duckweed.......Click!!!

Saffron · Posted: Sun Apr 27, 2008 6:58 pm Post subject:

Penelope, can you identify the poet of the delightful duck pond poem?

Saffron · Posted: Sun Apr 27, 2008 8:32 pm Post subject: Shakespeare anyone?

116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no, it is an ever fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring barque,
Whose worth's unknown although his height be taken.
Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
-- If this be error and upon me proved,
-- I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

DWill · Posted: Sun Apr 27, 2008 10:23 pm Post subject:

Saffron, are you saying that you are "Someone who live[s] in turning to fresh tasks", too? I like his poems partly because you never need to wonder what else they might mean. That is in the good old Yankee tradition. So "Stopping by Woods" was said to be about death, but why go there, is my thought.

Sonnet 116 seems unusual in that it may be one of the few in the whole group with that kind of pure idealism--at least that's my impression. So many of the rest are bitter, ironic, or even vicious. They clearly describe a real relationship (or two) in the poets's life. My fav I think would be 77, an opposite feeling from the one you gave us.

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs that shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see't the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

Will

Saffron · Posted: Sun Apr 27, 2008 10:59 pm Post subject:

ralphinlaos · Posted: Mon Apr 28, 2008 12:41 pm Post subject:

I knew I had a copy of that Lana Turner poem somewhere and I just found it. But my copy, from the Favorite Poems Project, is simply called "Poem," by Frank O'Hara. I like it very much, but am not familiar with O'Hara's works; does anyone else read him?

I think poetry must evoke an emotion in the reader in order for it to be pertinent (or interesting) to the reader. Which is why I like this one:

On A Quiet Night

I saw the moonlight before my couch.
And wondered if it were not frost on the ground.

I raised my head and looked out on the bright moon;

I bowed my head and thought of my far-off home.

by Li Po

(I wonder if this is the same Li Po who is the subject of the movie The Last Emperor)

And, for the same reasons, I like Frost's The Road Not Taken.

Ralph

Saffron · Posted: Mon Apr 28, 2008 5:50 pm Post subject:

Ralph:

Penelope · Posted: Tue Apr 29, 2008 12:38 pm Post subject:

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately Pleasure-Dome Decree
Where Alph, the sacred river ran
Through caverns - measureless to man,
Down to a Sunless Sea.

I think this is wonderful....but....

I might be very, very wrong....but I think the poem goes downhill from here.

Saffron.....I don't know who wrote 'Daddy fell into the Pond'....I will continue trying to find out....my family loved it when they were little.

Does anyone else love Eliot's 'Prufrock'?

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening spreads itself across the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table.

Let us go through certain half-deserted streets
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
and sawdust restaurants with Oyster Shells......

Oh My....I am all awash with longing....not to visit the restaurants but imagine, to be able write such evocative words.....

I so love poetry.....but then, I have measured out my life in coffee-spoons.

Penelope · Posted: Tue Apr 29, 2008 2:05 pm Post subject:

You've all got me going now:-

What about:

Under the wide and starry sky
Dig a grave and let me lie
Glad did I live, and gladly die
And I lay me down with a will.

by Robert Louis Stevenson

It is so life affirming....and death affirming....there are not many poems which are 'death' affirming. RLS was a wonderful man - the Mozart of the Poetry world imo.

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