30 replies to this topic

[Mike]

We used to have a poetry thread but it looks like it's gone the way of all things.

I've been waiting for an age for a new collected edition of James Fenton's poems to come out, and finally got one today. He's a great poet, and an interesting guy, and there are some gems in his work, including this one, which I have loved for a long time now:

[Ulf Imwiehe]

I really, really love Keri Hulme's poetry. My favorite poem of hers is Lost Possessions. So bleak, so hurtful, so beautiful. Mark Z. Danielewski's Only Revolutions is fantastic as well. Don't be fooled by false advertising. This is most definitely no 'road novel', it's an epic poem unlike any other.

[njerry]

His verse is vastly overshadowed by the pulp fiction he wrote, but Robert E. Howard is actually one of my favorite poets; often brooding and melancholy, but almost always evocative and emotional. Quite like Edgar Allan Poe, another favorite of mine.

[Arjan Dirkse]

Nearby Leiden is the city of poetic walls:



In translation:

Hidden things - Konstantis Kavafis

From all I've done and all I've said
let them not seek to find who I've been.
An obstacle stood and transformed
my acts and way of my life.
An obstacle stood and stopped me
many a time as I was going to speak.
My most unobserved acts,
and my writitings the most covered --
thence only they will feel me.
But mayhaps it is not worth to spend
this much care and this much effort to know me.
For -- in the more perfect society --
someone else like me created
will certainly appear and freely act.

This is a favorite, by the Chinese poet Li Po:


Amidst The Flowers A Jug Of Wine - Li Po



Amidst the flowers a jug of wine,
I pour alone lacking companionship.
So raising the cup I invite the Moon,
Then turn to my shadow which makes three of us.
Because the Moon does not know how to drink,
My shadow merely follows the movement of my body.
The moon has brought the shadow to keep me company a while,
The practice of mirth should keep pace with spring.
I start a song and the moon begins to reel,
I rise and dance and the shadow moves grotesquely.
While I'm still conscious let's rejoice with one another,
After I'm drunk let each one go his way.
Let us bind ourselves for ever for passionless journeyings.
Let us swear to meet again far in the Milky Way.




and just as an aside: what the heck is going on with the fonts????

Edited by Arjan Dirkse, 10 June 2012 - 12:12 AM.

[stephanie familiar]

i love poetry.
as a little girl, i used to spend all day sitting in the library just flipping through all the books.


a part of frank o'hara's mayakovsky was read on men men and i fell in love with stanza 4.


4
Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.

The country is grey and
brown and white in trees,
snows and skies of laughter
always diminishing, less funny
not just darker, not just grey.

It may be the coldest day of
the year, what does he think of
that? I mean, what do I? And if I do,
perhaps I am myself again.

[Nicholas Taggart]

[T Masters]

Yay! It's back.

This is what Wallace says:

Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame.
Take the moral law and make a nave of it
And from the nave build haunted heaven. Thus,
The conscience is converted into palms,
Like windy citherns hankering for hymns.
We agree in principle. That's clear. But take
The opposing law and make a peristyle,
And from the peristyle project a masque
Beyond the planets. Thus, our bawdiness,
Unpurged by epitaph, indulged at last,
Is equally converted into palms,
Squiggling like saxophones. And palm for palm,
Madame, we are where we began. Allow,
Therefore, that in the planetary scene
Your disaffected flagellants, well-stuffed,
Smacking their muzzy bellies in parade,
Proud of such novelties of the sublime,
Such tink and tank and tunk-a-tunk-tunk,
May, merely may, madame, whip from themselves
A jovial hullabaloo among the spheres.
This will make widows wince. But fictive things
Wink as they will. Wink most when widows wince

Edited by T Masters, 10 June 2012 - 06:39 AM.

[T Masters]

Hi All,

I am considering using this Ezra Pound poem as a pre-amble for a work-in-progress.

A Song Of The Degrees

I
Rest me with Chinese colours,
For I think the glass is evil.

II
The wind moves above the wheat-
With a silver crashing,
A thin war of metal.

I have known the golden disc,
I have seen it melting above me.
I have known the stone-bright place,
The hall of clear colours.

III
O glass subtly evil, O confusion of colours !
O light bound and bent in, soul of the captive,
Why am I warned? Why am I sent away?
Why is your glitter full of curious mistrust?
O glass subtle and cunning, O powdery gold!
O filaments of amber, two-faced iridescence!


As a matter of curiosity, what do you make of the poem? Emotions, reactions and analysis?

Edited by T Masters, 17 June 2012 - 09:47 PM.

[David Meadows]

From one of our greatest poets:

The more it snows
(Tiddely pom),
The more it goes
(Tiddely pom),
The more it goes
(Tiddely pom)
On snowing.
And nobody knows
(Tiddely pom),
How cold my toes
(Tiddely pom),
How cold my toes
(Tiddely pom),
Are growing.

As a matter of curiosity, what do you make of the poem? Emotions, reactions and analysis?

In all seriousness, I have no clue what it is talking about.

Rest me with Chinese colours,
For I think the glass is evil.

With no context, these are random words. There is no meaning there.

The poem sounds nice when you read it aloud, but so do random nice sounds.

[T Masters]

It's supposed to be about the comfort of other lands. And that the looking glass of the familiar leads complacency, war and ruin.
In the poem, the Sun represents a watchful knowing eye, as it knows all lands, and to know the Sun by different lands, as Pound does, is to refuse complacency.

The third stanza speaks to his confusion in allegiance to the familiar and the foreign.

There's also an alchemical element to the whole thing; which I suppose is about the (impossible?) alchemy of living both known and unknown.

Supposedly ...

Edited by T Masters, 18 June 2012 - 06:31 PM.

[David Meadows]

It's supposed to be about the comfort of other lands.

Would you have known that if you hadn't been told it? (Presuming you were told it.)

Armed with that knowledge, I can read it again and find the imagery more understandable. But I think i could have studied it forever and never worked out for myself that it was about the comfort of other lands and the sun refusing complacency and so on.

This may just show how woefully ignorant I am. But I prefer to think that the problem is in the poem, not in me

Edited by David Meadows, 18 June 2012 - 06:40 PM.

[craggy]

there once was a man from nantucket
he was a terrible poet so...he gave up

[Arjan Dirkse]

Pound did write his poems for a very small elite who all knew each other and who read all the same books and periodicals and spoke at least six different languages. I'm afraid you just don't measure up Dave.

Some of his poems are like reading Final Crisis when you've never read a single superhero comic.

[T Masters]

I guess I found what I was looking for.

I want to use the poem as a preamble for a book which is about the comfort of other lands, so, thematically, the poem fits. Maybe the poem's a little too esoteric a preamble, even after the story has been read, but maybe that's nice, too?

Do you ever read a book with a poem and the beginning and go: "That's a nice poem. I wonder what it has to do with the story though?"

[craggy]

sort of, Tim. Gotta say, it's only really Sandman that I've come across such a thing. Which isn't y'know, a proper book or anything.

[T Masters]

Beh!

I wonder about the practice of placing poems before lengthy novels and other stories. It seems quite fashionable. When did it become so?

[David Meadows]

I want to use the poem as a preamble for a book which is about the comfort of other lands, so, thematically, the poem fits. Maybe the poem's a little too esoteric a preamble, even after the story has been read, but maybe that's nice, too?

That's tricky. I think it would probably be a good poem to study, because there are obviously meanings and imagery in there that need some thought and discussion to understand. But if it relates to the themes of the book, then you might find the book is allowing the reader to get more out of the poem than vice versa!

But to be honest, if a book has a poem at the front I've probably forgotten the poem by the time I've finished the book.

But don't just rely on my take on it, I've never studied poetry properly so I probably miss tons of clever stuff

[T Masters]

Okay. One last query.

Intellectual stimuli aside, is the poem boring?

Do we prefer more modern syntax and tone?

Do we prefer no poetry?

[Arjan Dirkse]

You still talking about the Pound poem?

In general, if it's boring, it's bad poetry. Poetry is fine as it is, it just needs good writers (and good readers of course. )

[David Meadows]

Okay. One last query.

You mean three last queries

Intellectual stimuli aside, is the poem boring?

No. The words sound good when you say them out loud (poems should be heard, not read, I always think).

Do we prefer more modern syntax and tone?

We (meaning I) love old syntax.

Do we prefer no poetry?

If "we" ever prefer no poetry, it will be time to end the human race.

Edited by David Meadows, 20 June 2012 - 08:32 AM.