Poetry!

[silverchris9]

Let's talk about poetry! Who's your favorite poet?

Mine is technically Walt Whitman, but I have a very love-hate relationship with Walt Whitman because he steals all my ideas before I have them (see: Harold Bloom). But every time I read anything by Whitman it is really just like a superhuman experience. He's magnificent. Everything he rights is absolutely crammed with energy and life, and furthermore, somehow he has all this energy in a very outward manner, a very extroverted manner. It's the marriage of this intensely interior, powerful consciousness with this extroverted character that is the outward luminosity (like an emanation) of this inward energy. Rough Walt, the speaker of many of the poems, is just astounding as a representation or figure of the incredible electrifying nuclear power that whitman has as a writer, and that as an achievement is really more spectacular that I have proper vocabulary to say.

I also really love Shakespeare's sonnets. He's not as extroverted as Whitman, but he's magnificent and energetic. Like Hamlet, he creates mighty opposites (in the rival poet) where there are none, because who could be mighty as a poet in comparison to Shakespeare? Cervantes? Dante? Milton? Homer? I can't think of any more. It perplexes me that Shakespeare is a better writer than Whitman, that Shakespeare has more of that energy that's so obvious and plain on the face of Whitman, he just doesn't spread it so openly, he keeps it more subtle, expressing it through representation rather than lights and flashes and noise.

When we write about Whitman, we perspectivize him. I see him as noise, noise, noise. But we're really just trying to grapple with this extraordinary influx of life, and this emotional aggression (to borrow a socionics term) that forces you to feel the fire just by reading him. I feel like the entirety of American poetic tradition is like an excited electron transferring from carrier to carrier trying to harness the energy that Walt Whitman first ignited and first took inside himself, trying to harness America, rather than letting it just release all at once, because the all at once release would be a massive explosion, and it might just kill us all.

[redbaron]

but I have a very love-hate relationship with Walt Whitman because he steals all my ideas before I have them

lol

[DirectorAbbie]

I'm a big fan of Lewis Carol and Author Unknown.

[717495]

When I was born, I was black.

When I grew up, I was black.

When I'm sick, I'm black.

When I go out in the sun, I'm black.

When I die, I'll be black.


But you;
When you were born, you were pink.

When you grow up, you are white.

When you get sick, you are green.

When you go out in the sun, you are red.

When you go out in the cold, you are blue.

When you die, you turn purple.

And you dare to call me colored?

[Rubicon]

Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought--
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Calloh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

[Rubicon]

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones:
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault;
And grievously hath Caesar answer'd it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest,--
For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honorable men,--
Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome,
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once,--not without cause:
What cause withholds you, then, to mourn for him?--
O judgment, thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason!--Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.

[redbaron]

yeah, I remember The More Loving One from college. Great poem. My favorite poet right now is Rainer Maria Rilke. I'll post something later.

[silverchris9]

I've fallen head over heals for Auden. I even had part of this poem in my sig a while back.
In Memory of W.B. Yeats

By mourning tongues
The death of the poet was kept from his poems.

But for him it was his last afternoon as himself,
An afternoon of nurses and rumours;
The provinces of his body revolted,
The squares of his mind were empty,
Silence invaded the suburbs.
The current of his feeling failed: he became his admirers.

Now he is scattered over a hundred cities
And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections;
To find his happiness in another kind of wood
And be punished under a foreign code of conscience.
The words of a dead man
are modified in the guts of the living.

This is one of his best poems, imo. Section three is the first bit of poetry I ever memorized. The more loving one is wonderful too. I think Auden was ILI, btw. Or maybe ESI. Hmmmm... pretty sure about gamma though.

@Rubicon. Ahhhh... Shakespeare. People talk about him being difficult to read, but honestly, except for the reference to the "Luprecal" (which is not at all essential to understanding the speech), that speech is 100% comprehensible, and is much more accurate to current speech patterns, to the way real people speak, than 99% of Hollywood dialogue. "And Brutus is an honorable man."

I went to get some Whitman to post, but I started tripping on him instead. He's raw urge, completely raw urge. Perpetually extended longing, meaning that he never let himself forget a thing. My memory is in my flesh, winter afternoons.

But for some short whitman

AS Adam, early in the morning,
Walking forth from the bower, refresh’d with sleep;
Behold me where I pass—hear my voice—approach,
Touch me—touch the palm of your hand to my Body as I pass;
Be not afraid of my Body.

Also, some Stevens, giving the entire history of Western religion in one stanza:

Jove in the clouds had his inhuman birth.
No mother suckled him, no sweet land gave
Large-mannered motions to his mythy mind.
He moved among us, as a muttering king,
Magnificent, would move among his hinds,
Until our blood, commingling, virginal,
With heaven, brought such requital to desire
The very hinds discerned it, in a star.
Shall our blood fail? Or shall it come to be
The blood of paradise? And shall the earth
Seem all of paradise that we shall know?
The sky will be much friendlier then than now,
A part of labor and a part of pain,
And next in glory to enduring love,
Not this dividing and indifferent blue.

[DirectorAbbie]

Old King Cole had an army of ten,
with an army of twelve to fight.
He called for his sword and he called for his plan, then
his three captains came in fright.

'We have no plan," the first one said,
"but we hope to remedy that."
"We would have walked, but I say instead
that we all ride in on a cat."

"That won't work," the second digressed,
"our weapons are faulty, I'll bet."
"Swords are no match for what we faced
the last time this foe was met."

The third captain said, with an impish smirk,
"Our mounts and our blades are fine."
"The only plan which will truly work
is sneaking up on them from behind."

King Cole thought to himself for a while,
then he explained their approach.
'We'll crush this foe with neither weapon nor guile.
Is it so hard to step on a roach?"

[silverchris9]

I finally read the second part of Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction today ("It Must Change"). I am intellectually aware that it is as true as the first part. But the first part is so much more powerful and life-alteringly electric. The first section of the first part ("It Must Be Abstract") very literally changed my life:

Begin, ephebe, by perceiving the idea
Of this invention, this invented world,
The inconceivable idea of the sun.

You must become an ignorant man again
And see the sun again with an ignorant eye
And see it clearly in the idea of it.

Never suppose an inventing mind as source
Of this idea nor for that mind compose
A voluminous master folded in his fire.

How clean the sun when seen in its idea,
Washed in the remotest cleanliness of a heaven
That has expelled us and our images . . .

The death of one god is the death of all.
Let purple Phoebus lie in umber harvest,
Let Phoebus slumber and die in autumn umber,

Phoebus is dead, ephebe. But Phoebus was
A name for something that never could be named.
There was a project for the sun and is.

There is a project for the sun. The sun
Must bear no name, gold flourisher, but be
In the difficulty of what it is to be.

It is this incredibly simplicity and non-floridness, this dry logic that disguises its own figurativeness, it's awe-inspiring persuasiveness, that makes this so captivatingly... still. It's really one of the best parts of Stevens' oeuvre. To be "abstract" is to participate in the music.

@Abbie, those poems you're posting are very Ne, as in "let's see what we can do! Wheeee!" Are they Lewis Caroll?

[Rubicon]

"And Brutus is an honorable man."

Yeah - best line. :-) Have you seen Marlon Brando do it? I think the movie sucks, but I like the way he gives that speech. I think his voice is a bit hoarse though, because he gets a bit squeaky. lol

[Quote Unquote]

Hearing this is really great.

[Quote Unquote]

[Airman]

an improvisation with some meaning for me, written for some girl somewhere.

Mercy Sun,
ease all my guilt
this night again could see me killed
You and me, are we not one?

I feel today is not my time to finally Be
for a princess awaits for me in southern skies
I cannot go into the bright and naked light
please let me stay, don´t set me free

I saw her face so suddenly
she appeared in red, her eyes showed suffering
still she smiled, and green eyes shone kings
amidst her nightmare´s cries

It is now clear,
I must stay well and alive
now I care about her - my dear
I want to see her face with a smile

And if my love
is rewarded with bitter tears
I must go on through the years
for there´s a princess, heaven´s high

[DirectorAbbie]

Silverchris, the poem I posted was by me.

[silverchris9]

Silverchris, the poem I posted was by me.

huh. Well, I liked it (obviously, since I thought it was by Lewis Caroll).

Hope you're not offended by me saying your poetry has "wheee! look what we can do!" qualities. But if you are, sorry.

Anyway, since we're all posting our own poetry:


Praise is the price o’ th’ unrevealed time—
‘Tis coming soon—in which we shall erase
Our previous statements. (First revision of
The Testament of Earth.) Fear thee not,
And be not frightened should, i’ th’ coming days
Our kingly state seem low, crack-backed and crooked—
The day is coming soon! The boon from that
Bright morning rights you all the wrongs we did
And what in us has seemed sin shall not seem so.

Whereof shall we speak? Of what we are willing
Or not at all. New sun. I bloom i’ th’ source.
The clumsy dramatist—hear not, my subjects, hear
Not these words I speak but to the host
Which even now encamps me—bright-eyed, leering—

[DirectorAbbie]

I'm not offended. Comparing me to Lewis Carol is complementary.

You like blank verse? Your poem seems like its motor is on the blip. Was that intentional?

My shortest poem: LOT
Abraham's nephew,
the land that he's got.
Fate was against him;
that's saying a lot.

It has quintuplet meaning...or something like that.

[munenori2]

Yusef Komunyakaa, Facing It

My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn't,
dammit: No tears.
I'm stone. I'm flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night
slanted against morning. I turn
this way--the stone lets me go.
I turn that way--I'm inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke.
I touch the name Andrew Johnson;
I see the booby trap's white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman's blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet's image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I'm a window.
He's lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman's trying to erase names:
No, she's brushing a boy's hair.

For some reason this is like the only poem I can ever remember.

[Airman]

I'm not offended. Comparing me to Lewis Carol is complementary.

You like blank verse? Your poem seems like its motor is on the blip. Was that intentional?

My shortest poem: LOT
Abraham's nephew,
the land that he's got.
Fate was against him;
that's saying a lot.

It has quintuplet meaning...or something like that.

So many beautiful poems here... touches my heart (what I have left of one).
Abbie is this poem about Abraham and his land about the Jews and their land?

[717495]

Old King Cole had an army of ten,
with an army of twelve to fight.
He called for his sword and he called for his plan, then
his three captains came in fright.

'We have no plan," the first one said,
"but we hope to remedy that."
"We would have walked, but I say instead
that we all ride in on a cat."

"That won't work," the second digressed,
"our weapons are faulty, I'll bet."
"Swords are no match for what we faced
the last time this foe was met."

The third captain said, with an impish smirk,
"Our mounts and our blades are fine."
"The only plan which will truly work
is sneaking up on them from behind."

King Cole thought to himself for a while,
then he explained their approach.
'We'll crush this foe with neither weapon nor guile.
Is it so hard to step on a roach?"

Oh my, talk about Buzz Killington.

[silverchris9]

I'm not offended. Comparing me to Lewis Carol is complementary.

You like blank verse? Your poem seems like its motor is on the blip. Was that intentional?

My shortest poem: LOT
Abraham's nephew,
the land that he's got.
Fate was against him;
that's saying a lot.

It has quintuplet meaning...or something like that.

I like your poem. It's clever. Linguistic convergence is a convenient phenomenon, no?

Airborne, the first stanza of your poem was quite pretty, and felt awfully full.

Yes, indeed, the poem should seem like its motor is on the blip, lol. The speaker is going crazy, I think. l try to make my poems representational/dramatic: speakers that are "characters" even if they're storytellers. It's not in blank verse though. It's in very loose iambic pentameter, an attempt to follow Stevens' sense of rhythm.

Rejection
If you believe God finally of kindness,
You hold to no just law.

I spoke my word in the finality of silence:
You hold to no just law.

And lifting his enormous hammer over his head
Crying and roaring and cursing to the sea-and-crags
Which were where he was born,
The one-eyed Cyclops, having just killed the gods
Roared in rage and pain and sad and sorrow
To wade in the ocean, but neither could he drown.

I am neither of myself nor am I of any other:
I am sketching in the sand.

God has blinded my vision-bright eyes, what
I am sketching in the sand

I cannot see. I am sketching in the sand.
You hold to no just law.

[DirectorAbbie]

That poem was well-done. The repetition really improved it by giving it a quality of thought with certainty. Head in the clouds, feet on the ground. It's hard to picture in my head, though.

I like your poem. It's clever. Linguistic convergence is a convenient phenomenon, no?

l try to make my poems representational/dramatic: speakers that are "characters" even if they're storytellers. It's not in blank verse though. It's in very loose iambic pentameter, an attempt to follow Stevens' sense of rhythm.

I think IEI poetry is meant to be heartfelt and dramatic while LSE poetry is meant to be pleasant-sounding and thought-provoking.

Love is impractical.
Senseless.
Obscure.
It evades me when I want it.
When I don't,
it draws near.
I'm too picky, it seems.
Impatient.
Remote.
Cupid the cross-eyes lunatic
can't tell an ox
from a goat.

Abbie is this poem about Abraham and his land about the Jews and their land?

No, it's about Sodam, Gommorah, and my dictionary.

[silverchris9]

That poem was well-done. The repetition really improved it by giving it a quality of thought with certainty. Head in the clouds, feet on the ground. It's hard to picture in my head, though.

I think IEI poetry is meant to be heartfelt and dramatic while LSE poetry is meant to be pleasant-sounding and thought-provoking.

. Good description, and thank you. Yes, I do tend to write in a way that's hard to "see". Sensory imagery has never been my strong suit.

I don't know about heartfelt, but certainly dramatic, and certainly passionate. Pleasant-sounding and thought-provoking is also good for LSE poetry. The last poem you posted fit those criteria. I personally liked the fist one a bit better, but I liked this one as well.

[Satan]

I like the Omar Khayyam one from this book on C Programming.


Guy knows how to rhyme.

You stupid fuck;

You fucking suck.

I hate you;

Die in poo.

Now leave here;

I don't care.

[silverchris9]

T.S. Eliot

On the subject of original poems, I haven't written for a while but used to avidly. My style was in vein of Eliot's and Wallace Steven's. I've been given comparisons with the Mystical Poets and Robert Frost, not to say I was in league but in style. I am happy to say that I have had one I half-hassed recently published all thanks to having the right connections.

Congrats.

You should post some.

Also, bonus points, b/c everybody should write in the same vein as Stevens and Eliot.

[Satan]

i've been trying to learn how to write poetry but i still suck too much to post anything

[redbaron]

i've been trying to learn how to write poetry but i still suck too much to post anything

awww, post it anyway!

[Airman]

Thanks Silverchris9 ... Sometimes some poem just comes out but it´s usually rhymed, has a double-meaning or at least some words or things in it cannot be understood easily, and it´s short. I agree that the first stanza was how it could have continued if it would be a really good poem, but I don´t have patience so I just go on writing in a kind of hurry whatever is coming out, putting these ideas into some word order. I´m probably never going to write poems as well you do, since I´m an ST type.

[DirectorAbbie]

Being an ST type does not mean you write poor poetry! It meens your poetry has a different feel than NF poetry.

[redbaron]

Being an ST type does not mean you write poor poetry! It meens your poetry has a different feel than NF poetry.

I was just gonna say the same thing.

[Airman]

Being an ST type does not mean you write poor poetry! It meens your poetry has a different feel than NF poetry.

perhaps more concrete, less embellished, more compact, T-oriented.

[silverchris9]

perhaps more concrete, less embellished, more compact, T-oriented.

Maybe. But type has very little to do with writing ability beyond inclination. Poetry can be made of anything, so long as it is poetry that is made.

Also, I do the same thing: have a really strong self-expression at the top of the poem, and I just can't match that level of inspiration/vision/energy/whatever for the whole thing. That happens to the best of poets, even the very greatest ones like Shakespeare (although his best parts tend to be at the end of his sonnets, rather than at the beginning).

[DirectorAbbie]

Also, I do the same thing: have a really strong self-expression at the top of the poem, and I just can't match that level of inspiration/vision/energy/whatever for the whole thing. That happens to the best of poets, even the very greatest ones like Shakespeare (although his best parts tend to be at the end of his sonnets, rather than at the beginning).

Really? I've never had that problem with poems, but I have with stories.

[silverchris9]

Shakespeare's Sonnet 20, otherwise known as the "I'm not gay!" sonnet:

A woman's face with Nature's own hand painted
Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion;
A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false women's fashion;
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;
A man in hue, all 'hues' in his controlling,
Much steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth.
And for a woman wert thou first created;
Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,
And by addition me of thee defeated,
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
But since she prick'd thee out for women's pleasure,
Mine be thy love and thy love's use their treasure.

The beginning of Wallace Stevens' Notes toward a Supreme Fiction

And for what, except for you, do I feel love?
Do I press the extremest book of the wisest man
Close to me, hidden in me day and night?
In the uncertain light of single, certain truth
Equal in living changingness to the light
In which I meet you, in which we sit at rest
For a moment in the central of our being
The vivid transparence that you bring is peace.


Begin, ephebe, by perceiving the idea
Of this invention, this invented world
The inconceivable idea of the sun

You must become an ignorant man again
And see the sun with an ignorant eye
And see it clearly in the idea of it.

Never suppose an inventing mind as source
Of that idea, nor for that mind compose
A voluminous master, folded in his fire.

(it goes on for like a lot more, but I don't remember that well enough to post it.)

[redbaron]

just now getting around to posting some Rilke.


Early Spring

Harshness vanished. A sudden softness
has replaced the meadows' wintry grey.
Little rivulets of water changed
their singing accents. Tendernesses,

hesitantly, reach toward the earth
from space, and country lanes are showing
these unexpected subtle risings
that find expression in the empty trees.


Love Song

How can I keep my soul in me, so that
it doesn't touch your soul? How can I raise
it high enough, past you, to other things?
I would like to shelter it, among remote
lost objects, in some dark and silent place
that doesn't resonate when your depths resound.
Yet everything that touches us, me and you,
takes us together like a violin's bow,
which draws *one* voice out of two separate strings.
Upon what instrument are we two spanned?
And what musician holds us in his hand?
Oh sweetest song.

[Blaze]

sonnet 29

when in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes
i all alone beweep my outcast state
and trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
and look upon myself and curse my fate
wishing me like to one more rich in hope
featured like him, like him with friends possessed
desiring this man's art and that's man's scope
with what i most enjoy contented least
yet in these thoughts myself almost despising
haply i think on thee and then my fate
like to a lark at break of day arising
from sullen earth sings hymns at heaven's gate
for thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
that then i scorn to change my state with kings

i memorized it. this and the next, sonnet 115:

Those lines that I before have writ do lie,
Even those that said I could not love you dearer:
Yet then my judgment knew no reason why
My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer.
But reckoning Time, whose million'd accidents
Creep in 'twixt vows, and change decrees of kings,
Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp'st intents,
Divert strong minds to the course of altering things;
Alas! why, fearing of Time's tyranny,
Might I not then say, 'Now I love you best,'
When I was certain o'er incertainty,
Crowning the present, doubting of the rest?
Love is a babe, then might I not say so,
To give full growth to that which still doth grow?

i memorized sonnet 29 when young. when infpman said not to spend money on his birthday, i memorized sonnet 115 as a birthday gift.

[Blaze]

the rime of the ancient mariner is so long, but i loved these lines:

alone, alone, all all alone
alone on a wide, wide sea

[redbaron]

when infpman said not to spend money on his birthday, i memorized sonnet 115 as a birthday gift.

wow blaze. romantic!

[silverchris9]

115 is very pretty. It's astonishing how good shakespeare is.

rb, that second Rilke poem is wow. Very clever. And unexpected, to me.

[Blaze]

wow blaze. romantic!

haha yeah i guess this is the best i could think of for no money!

115 is very pretty. It's astonishing how good shakespeare is.

he's awesome. although i had to search through maybe 50 sonnets before i could find one that fit for the occasion....i think shakespeare was an infp!

shakespeare in the park is going in my city...the next play is macbeth, a version in which all the characters will be played by women. should be interesting...i'm planning to go, with a front lawn seat for sure!