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Poetry ABCs

A platform to express and share your enthusiasm and passion for poetry. What are your treasured poems and poets? Don't hesitate to showcase the poems you've penned yourself!
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Saffron

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K

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K
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Kokinshu

The Kokinwakashû (or the Kokinshû for short), the 'Collection of Japanese Poetry Ancient and Modern', was the first of the 21 anthologies of waka compiled at imperial command (chokusenshû). The idea of an imperial waka anthology as a 'modern' successor to the Man'yôshû was first mooted by Emperor Uda (867-931; r. 887-897), and eventually commissioned by Emperor Daigo (885-930; r. 897-930). He gave the commission to Ki no Tsurayuki, Ki no Tomonori, Ôshikôchi no Mitsune and Mibu no Tadamine, who chose about 1,111 poems, completing the anthology between 915 and 920.

See: http://www.temcauley.staff.shef.ac.uk/kokinshu.shtml

What is said
Brings dread, in this land:
In scarlet
Colours, don't go out,
Die from your desire though you might.

By Lady Otomo


Willow’s branches:
Blue and twisted threads.
Time and again, in spring
The ruffled flowers
Have unraveled.

By Ki no Tsurayuki
I've always found it rather exciting to remember that there is a difference between what we experience and what we think it means.
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MaryLupin

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Kenning

a conventional poetic phrase used for or in addition to the usual name of a person or thing, esp. in Icelandic and Anglo-Saxon verse, as “a wave traveler” for “a boat.”

Origin:
1880–85; < ON; see ken1 , -ing 1

From dictionary.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_kennings

where battle-sweat or slaughter-dew means blood
and wave-rider means boat
I've always found it rather exciting to remember that there is a difference between what we experience and what we think it means.
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MaryLupin

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Ghost Chant, et alii Yusef Komunyakaa

Daydream the old Indian medicine man
who boards the Greyhound
at midnight outside Jackson Hole
& sits next to you,
the fat belly of life,
a lilacbush in May,
the smoke that curls
back up to eat itself.
Daydream a mongrel dog
who yelps at the footsteps of your sister.
the coyote-goddess’ lonely hill
to climb with the moon,
a stone vase
with a copperhead inside.
Daydream a mountain lion
riding air—to dismiss
the half song
of this machine’s forgetfulness.
a white ceramic Ferris wheel
surrendering sacks of grain,
the eccentric black book
that gnaws off your hands.
Daydream the viper & Easter lily.
A fifth of Ronrico
on the poet’s night table,
morning’s empty bottle,
a grunt-song that spins
itself from flesh]at the top of a spiral staircase,
the talking drum
the center of water.
Daydream a mermaid peering into the four windows
of a lighthouse, the fandango
like a rooster struggles out of golden grass
with its head cut off.
Faust’s old greed & sick hair,
a gas leak
with twenty padlocks on your one door.
Daydream lies rot in the mouth,
a black Mercedes-Benz
& brass knuckles,
an old man who has seen too much
in a dark alley, the killer’s face
in seven mirrors on each wall,
hemlock in a silver chalice,
the shadow of a grave
beneath your slow feet.
I've always found it rather exciting to remember that there is a difference between what we experience and what we think it means.
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MaryLupin

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Cottonwood by Melissa Kwasny

Wagachun, the Sioux say
for the rustling leaves
of cottonwood
which die for us, which drop
one by one
like yellow finches
among the hundred green.

The sky smears as it fades
Onto the gray wood
Of the porch.
Tree light. Fire light.
Even at noon, it crosses us.

Everything is falling.
Birds swim through dry waves.
The leaves
Point to earth
As Sioux lodges do to heaven.

They tie themselves to this tree
And now,
Must dance free of it,
This tree
They have chosen, this tree
They pretend they’ve captured.

Archival Bird

Notice how the meat
From its bones
Has shrunken and lodged
Like rocks
In the elbowed roots
Of a tree. Notice,
The feathers dissolve
And the eyes
Become sockets
And where its wings,
Still stretched,
Are a relic of flight.
I've always found it rather exciting to remember that there is a difference between what we experience and what we think it means.
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DWill

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With this letter, I have to go for an obvious one, John Keats. Taking a seminar in Keats as a grad student (it was an undergrad seminar, didn't matter) was probably the best experience I had in school. We read all of Keats' poems (not hard to do), plus a critical book and the biography by Walter Jackson Bate, which is splendid. We also read the letters, of course. Keats, as far as I can see, is an example of the totally admirable literary genius. I can't believe that Shelley wrote such a bad poem about him ("Adonais").

Two excerpts with comments (not mine) from Keats' letters, which T. S. Eliot called the finest literary letters that we have:

Excerpt 1
"As tradesmen say every thing is worth what it will fetch, so probably every mental pursuit takes its reality and worth from the ardour of the pursuer--being in itself a nothing--"

March 3, 1818
Keats typically is thinking in terms of opposites--specifically, intellect and passion; in this instance his desire for unity is achieved by his making the "mental pursuit" also a passionate or ardent pursuit. His poems are ardent mental pursuits. It should come as no surprise that Keats valued intensity or that his poems are generally intense.

**********************************************************
Excerpt 2
" . . several things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature & which Shakespeare possessed so enormously--I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason--Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half knowledge. This pursued through Volumes would perhaps take us no further than this, that with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration."

December 21, 27 (?), 1817
In this famous passage, Keats explains the concept of Negative Capability, a concept which has been frequently used by literary critics to the present day. Negative Capability (the willingness to remain in doubt or not to resolve conflicts or ambiguities) may be seen in his poetry; for instance, in the concluding questions of "Ode to a Nightingale." Appropriately, the phrase itself is an oxymoron, a joining of conflicting or opposing elements. Keats is mistaken in his description of Coleridge and misuses the word "penetralia" (there is no singular form of this word, only the plural "penetrale"); however, neither of these errors detracts from the validity of his theory.
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Saffron

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DW: I know you said the notes were not yours, but I am curious, can you explain a little the last comment about Keats being mistaken about Coleridge?
DWill wrote: Keats is mistaken in his description of Coleridge and misuses the word "penetralia" (there is no singular form of this word, only the plural "penetrale"); however, neither of these errors detracts from the validity of his theory.
Excerpt from Keats:
Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half knowledge.
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Saffron

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Now for my K post -- The last line of this poem tickles me to no end -- guess I'm in a silly mood today.

Kelp
by Jeffrey Yang

How easy it is to lose oneself
in a kelp forest. Between
canopy leaves, sunlight filters thru
the water surface; nutrients
bring life where there'd other-
wise be barren sea; a vast eco-
system breathes. Each
being being
being's link.

And a poem from Wendell Berry; it even mentions April!

Kentucky River Junction


to Ken Kesey & Ken Babbs

Clumsy at first, fitting together
the years we have been apart,
and the ways.

But as the night
passed and the day came, the first
fine morning of April,

it came clear:
the world that has tried us
and showed us its joy

was our bond
when we said nothing.
And we allowed it to be

with us, the new green
shining.

*

Our lives, half gone,
stay full of laughter.

Free-hearted men
have the world for words.

Though we have been
apart, we have been together.

*

Trying to sleep, I cannot
take my mind away.
The bright day

shines in my head
like a coin
on the bed of a stream.

*

You left
your welcome.
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Saffron

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Okay, here is a snippet from a famous K. Who can guess the name of the poem & poet?


That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
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Saffron wrote:Okay, here is a snippet from a famous K. Who can guess the name of the poem & poet?
OK I have my psychic hat on now...

I am getting music...um now the people dancing around like crazy in a TV studio....nope that's gone now...no wait....now it is a warrior on a horse...really ancient dude...wearing furs and he is riding over a vast plain...I'm getting that he's Asian maybe from the far north...nope that's gone, wait....now I'm getting that ditty "coal to newcastle"...coal, cole...nope. Lost it. Can't guess. Sorry.
I've always found it rather exciting to remember that there is a difference between what we experience and what we think it means.
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