The Hot 100

Saffron · Thu Apr 22, 2010 4:14 pm

The final count down: Poems 100-1

Saffron · Mon Jan 31, 2011 10:15 pm

I thought I'd better pull this little thread out of the mothballs and give a good airing before we get started with it.

DWill · Mon Jan 31, 2011 10:48 pm

Good idea. Then I'll be sure to see it and not miss the hand-off (right?) It'll take some speeding up, some doubling up on certain days, to get through by, say, mid April. We might consider skipping The ancient Mariner, or read the Reduced Shakespeare version of it (which we'd have to write, actually). Or, the haiku of Coleridge's long poem.

Penelope · Tue Feb 01, 2011 4:36 am

Please don't miss anything out!!

I wanted to put a post on here so that I'd get my email prompt because last time you started a new thread, I didn't.

What I wanted to say was, how lovely that we, from this thread seem to have gravitated towards the other thread about prayer being for slackers. Is it that 'poetry' is for slackers too?

Or is it that we are just friends and automatically cluster? Beware, you others! It's the attack of the Mutant Ninja Cyber Poets!!! :ninjajig:

Saffron · Tue Feb 01, 2011 7:21 am


	Penelope wrote: Please don't miss anything out!! What I wanted to say was, how lovely that we, from this thread seem to have gravitated towards the other thread about prayer being for slackers. Is it that 'poetry' is for slackers too?

I do think poetry and prayer or being prayerful does go together.


	Quote: Or is it that we are just friends and automatically cluster? Beware, you others! It's the attack of the Mutant Ninja Cyber Poets!!!

I love to read your posts! You almost always sneak in a laught or two. :lol:

oblivion · Tue Feb 01, 2011 9:33 am

Oooooh, I love both the Mutant Ninja Cyber Poets as well as the Kaiku version of Coleridge! Thanks, you two!

DWill · Tue Feb 01, 2011 9:59 am

My cheatin' heart. I've come up with a clever way to get us home on time, and that is to start the last 100 now. We can whittle off about 10 days in this manner, going in parallel fashion for a week or so with 200-101. I know it might be booed as a sleazy trick, but from the safety of my nook here in Berryville, I'll take the risk!

100. "The Listeners," by Walter De La Mare. I like this. What an effective mood he creates with this little mystery poem. 3 dings.

IS there anybody there?' said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champ'd the grasses
Of the forest's ferny floor:
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Traveller's head:
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
'Is there anybody there?' he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Lean'd over and look'd into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplex'd and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirr'd and shaken
By the lonely Traveller's call.
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
Their stillness answering his cry,
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
'Neath the starr'd and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head:--
'Tell them I came, and no one answer'd,
That I kept my word,' he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone.

Penelope · Tue Feb 01, 2011 10:06 am


	Quote: DWill said: My cheatin' heart. I've come up with a clever way to get us home on time, and that is to start the last 100 now. We can whittle off about 10 days in this manner, going in parallel fashion for a week or so with 200-101. I know it might be booed as a sleazy trick

Good Idea, that man!!

The Listeners:

We always had to learn Walter de la Mare poems at junior school so I always think of his poetry as childlike - but I like it. 2 dings

oblivion · Tue Feb 01, 2011 12:06 pm


	DWill wrote: My cheatin' heart. I've come up with a clever way to get us home on time, and that is to start the last 100 now. We can whittle off about 10 days in this manner, going in parallel fashion for a week or so with 200-101. I know it might be booed as a sleazy trick, but from the safety of my nook here in Berryville, I'll take the risk!

Fine with me! And, this provides me with a good excuse to cheat......I had never heard of de la Mare (typed with red cheeks and downward cast eyes), so this is what I came up with:

Matt Buckley (11/22/2009 9:06:00 AM)

The traveller has come to fulfil a duty. He had left something and promised to come back to it. It seems that a great time has passed. The air is still and the hall is empty (a hall that was probably filled some time ago with activity) What ever he left behind, he could now not summon. The sleeping group, could not be stirred. He has had communication with the listeners in the past - when the promise was made. The listeners are now sleeping and won't wake.

The traveller is actually searching for a lost unbridled imagination, for creativity. It is now gone, and he heads back to the logic-driven reality. One of Walter's main obsessions was with the ingenuity and vision of the child, and how over time, this is lost. In the traveller's journey to revisit or recover this way of existince, he can't stir it. He leaves and re-assures his soul that he tried ('tell them I came, and no one answered') . We often say that the soul has windows: note how the traveller peers into the window and sees nothing; no one is there to greet. Why the 'throng' no-longer responds 'perplexes' him. The listeners (the unbridled imagination) are present, but lie sleeping; discarded and left behind. There is a deathly feel, but it not the death of physical beings, these beings are not 'from the world of men'.

I'm not so sure I agree with this, though. I had a bit of the "Sleepy Hollow feeling" and felt as if perhaps the reader is meant to actually be the listener. Eerie and nice, Nathaniel Hawthorne would have loved it!
4 dings

Saffron · Tue Feb 01, 2011 5:10 pm


	oblivion wrote: I'm not so sure I agree with this, though. I had a bit of the "Sleepy Hollow feeling" and felt as if perhaps the reader is meant to actually be the listener. Eerie and nice, Nathaniel Hawthorne would have loved it! 4 dings

3 from me. I don't know what to make of the analysis of the poem. I just like the "Sleepy Hollow" feel of this poem and enjoy the rhythm of it. And a nod to Mr. Cheatin Heart, brilliant solution!

DWill · Wed Feb 02, 2011 10:07 pm

Here's a question: what would have become of W. B. Yeats if Maude Gonne had jumped into his arms: "Willie, I'm yours!" Maybe there's a lot to be said for not getting what we want. We might not have any reason today to talk about Yeats if he'd been too personally fulfilled. Come to think of it, he has a little poem on just that thought:

WORDS

I had this thought a while ago,
"My darling cannot understand
What I have done, or what would do
In this blind bitter land.'

And I grew weary of the sun
Until my thoughts cleared up again,
Remembering that the best I have done
Was done to make it plain;

That every year I have cried, "At length
My darling understands it all,
Because I have come into my strength,
And words obey my call';

That had she done so who can say
What would have shaken from the sieve?
I might have thrown poor words away
And been content to live.

But all this is by way of getting to no. 99, "When You are Old." It's a keeper, 3 dings.

WHEN you are old and gray and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face among a crowd of stars.

Penelope · Thu Feb 03, 2011 5:17 am

2 dings: for 'When you are old' - I don't know why, but I'm not so keen on the former one by Yeats.

Unrequited Love is a fruitful subject for poetry.

I like the torn apart by circumstances subject best though:

What Shall We Do?

Here now, for evermore, our lives must part.
My path leads there, and yours another way.
What shall we do with this fond love, dear heart?
It grows a heavier burden day by day.

Hide it? In all earth’s caverns, void and vast,
There is not room enough to hide it, dear;
Not even the mighty storehouse of the past
Could cover it, from our own eyes, I fear.

Drown it? Why, were the contents of each ocean
Merged into one great sea, too shallow then
Would be its waters, to sink this emotion
So deep it could not rise to life again.

Burn it? In all the furnace flames below,
It would not in a thousand years expire.
Nay! It would thrive, exult, expand and grow,
For from its very birth it fed on fire.

Starve it? Yes, yes, that is the only way.
Give it no more food, of glance, or word, or sigh,
No memories, even, of any bygone day;
No crumbs of vain regrets – so let it die.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

DWill · Thu Feb 03, 2011 5:51 pm

98. "A Narrow Fellow in the Grass," by Emily Dickinson. It's a triumph. 4 dings.

A narrow Fellow in the Grass
Occasionally rides--
You may have met Him--
did you not
His notice sudden is--

The Grass divides as with a Comb--
A spotted shaft is seen--
And then it closes at your feet
And opens further on--

He likes a Boggy Acre
A Floor too cool for Corn--
Yet when a Boy, and Barefoot--
I more than once at Noon

Have passed, I thought, a Whip lash
Unbraiding in the Sun
When stooping to secure it
It wrinkled, and was gone--

Several of Nature's People
I know, and they know me--
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality--

But never met this Fellow
Attended, or alone
Without a tighter breathing
And Zero at the Bone--*

Saffron · Thu Feb 03, 2011 6:23 pm


	DWill wrote: 98. "A Narrow Fellow in the Grass," by Emily Dickinson. It's a triumph. 4 dings. And Zero at the Bone--*

Add my 4 dings! Emily at her best. I am right with those last two line -- Zero at the bone!

oblivion · Fri Feb 04, 2011 2:45 am

Seldom that Emily would get less than 4 dings from me (though it has happened). Definitely 4! I love these lines:
a Whip lash
Unbraiding in the Sun
When stooping to secure it
It wrinkled, and was gone--

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