# Modern Poetry



## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

I know that quite a hand-full of you aren't into literature, so this may get ignored, but I came across a recent poem that I read last year but had forgotten about, and just remembered how much I like it. Perhaps you can comment on it or share your own, or hope poetry never gets mentioned here again.

*For a Bridge Suicide by Richard Meier*

From four, six, eight feet, maybe even ten,
water's a giving, all-embracing thing.

Above that, it begins to harden, starts
to slap, to frighten till by fifty or sixty

limbs get broken. Still, even at that height,
you feel if you just got your entry right

you could elicit softness, could slip in
and it would melt to kindness there and then…

And yet, there is a point, even so,
when water's transformation is complete,

a point at which the whole of the earth's surface
is uniformly unforgiving. As

she neared the top of the bridge's central stanchion
this was a point she recognised. And let go


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## Igneous01 (Jan 27, 2011)

^ this would make a great song, who's up for it?


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

I like poetry, but I'd have to remind the writer that Mythbusters recently determined water is always softer than land no matter from how high you drop. Of course, there is poetic license.

I've been looking for a long time for a poem, possibly called "On First Hearing a Beethoven Symphony." It's probably by someone in the romantic era, Emily Dickinson or similar. If anyone knows of this poem and can point me to a copy, I'd be much obliged.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

One of my favorite poems about the arts:

Stephen Crane - _There Was a Man With Tongue of Wood_

There was a man with tongue of wood
Who essayed to sing,
And in truth it was lamentable.
But there was one who heard
The clip-clapper of this tongue of wood
And knew what the man
Wished to sing,
And with that the singer was content.


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## KaerbEmEvig (Dec 15, 2009)

*Petal of a cherry blossom tree.*

Vast stretches of loneliness,
heart bleeds.
Immensity of tears shed,
torrent of sorrow stifles the soul.

Leading a hollow life,
human shard.
Mute outcry in the valley,
anticipating footsteps of the echo.

Five centimeters per second,
precipitates on the wind.
To seize the desire to live,
quite an effort.


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## Fsharpmajor (Dec 14, 2008)

Weston said:


> I've been looking for a long time for a poem, possibly called "On First Hearing a Beethoven Symphony." It's probably by someone in the romantic era, Emily Dickinson or similar. If anyone knows of this poem and can point me to a copy, I'd be much obliged.


I think it might be this one. I don't know all that much about poetry, but it would appear to be a sonnet:

On Hearing a Symphony of Beethoven

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Sweet sounds, oh, beautiful music, do not cease!
Reject me not into the world again.
With you alone is excellence and peace,
Mankind made plausible, his purpose plain.
Enchanted in your air benign and shrewd,
With limbs a-sprawl and empty faces pale,
The spiteful and the stingy and the rude
Sleep like the scullions in the fairy-tale.
This moment is the best the world can give:
The tranquil blossom on the tortured stem.
Reject me not, sweet sounds; oh, let me live,
Till Doom espy my towers and scatter them,
A city spell-bound under the aging sun.
Music my rampart, and my only one.


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## Fsharpmajor (Dec 14, 2008)

My favourite poem is Fern Hill by Dylan Thomas. It's been set to music by John Corigliano.

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace.

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.


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## Dster (Oct 3, 2011)

I present to you the greatest poet from Scotland, William McGonagall with his immortal work lamenting the collapse of the railway bridge over the River Tay in 1880, entitled "The Tay Bridge Disaster"

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.

‘Twas about seven o’clock at night,
And the wind it blew with all its might,
And the rain came pouring down,
And the dark clouds seem’d to frown,
And the Demon of the air seem’d to say-
“I’ll blow down the Bridge of Tay.”

When the train left Edinburgh
The passengers’ hearts were light and felt no sorrow,
But Boreas blew a terrific gale,
Which made their hearts for to quail,
And many of the passengers with fear did say-
“I hope God will send us safe across the Bridge of Tay.”

But when the train came near to Wormit Bay,
Boreas he did loud and angry bray,
And shook the central girders of the Bridge of Tay
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.

So the train sped on with all its might,
And Bonnie Dundee soon hove in sight,
And the passengers’ hearts felt light,
Thinking they would enjoy themselves on the New Year,
With their friends at home they lov’d most dear,
And wish them all a happy New Year.

So the train mov’d slowly along the Bridge of Tay,
Until it was about midway,
Then the central girders with a crash gave way,
And down went the train and passengers into the Tay!
The Storm Fiend did loudly bray,
Because ninety lives had been taken away,
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.

As soon as the catastrophe came to be known
The alarm from mouth to mouth was blown,
And the cry rang out all o’er the town,
Good Heavens! the Tay Bridge is blown down,
And a passenger train from Edinburgh,
Which fill’d all the peoples hearts with sorrow,
And made them for to turn pale,
Because none of the passengers were sav’d to tell the tale
How the disaster happen’d on the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.

It must have been an awful sight,
To witness in the dusky moonlight,
While the Storm Fiend did laugh, and angry did bray,
Along the Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay,
Oh! ill-fated Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay,
I must now conclude my lay
By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay,
That your central girders would not have given way,
At least many sensible men do say,
Had they been supported on each side with buttresses,
At least many sensible men confesses,
For the stronger we our houses do build,
The less chance we have of being killed.


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

I suppose the term 'modern' for you classical music listeners is quite broooooooad...


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

I think that I shall never see
A poem as lovely as a tree
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j/k guys


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## Ravellian (Aug 17, 2009)

_From the Bathroom Stalls_ by Anonymous

Here I sit so brokenhearted
Tried to **** but only farted.

Some men come to sit and think
Some men come to **** and stink
I come here to scratch my ****s
and read what's written on the walls.


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## Fsharpmajor (Dec 14, 2008)

Polednice said:


> I suppose the term 'modern' for you classical music listeners is quite broooooooad...


I reckon that anything later than Spenser's The Faerie Queene is fair game.


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## Rasa (Apr 23, 2009)

Ravellian said:


> Some men come to sit and think
> Some men come to **** and stink
> I come here to scratch my ****s
> and read what's written on the walls.


It's oddly reminiscent of Wilde



> Yet each man kills the thing he loves
> By each let this be heard.
> Some do it with a bitter look,
> Some with a flattering word.
> ...


Here's another one from anon



> Roses are gray
> Violets are gray
> I can't do poetry
> I'm a dog


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## Klavierspieler (Jul 16, 2011)

"Jabberwocky" 

'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! Callooh! 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.


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## Guest (Nov 8, 2011)

From a soldier stationed in Iraq:

"Here, Bullet" 

If a body is what you want, 
then here is bone and gristle and flesh. 
Here is the clavicle-snapped wish, 
the aorta's opened valves, the leap 
thought makes at the synaptic gap. 
Here is the adrenaline rush you crave, 
that inexorable flight, that insane puncture 
into heat and blood. And I dare you to finish 
what you've started. Because here, Bullet, 
here is where I complete the word you bring 
hissing through the air, here is where I moan 
the barrel's cold esophagus, triggering 
my tongue's explosives for the rifling I have 
inside of me, each twist of the round 
spun deeper, because here, Bullet, 
here is where the world ends, every time. 
Curfew 
The wrong is not in the religion; 
The wrong is in us. 
-- Saier T.


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## Meaghan (Jul 31, 2010)

Okay, I've picked four 20th-21st century poets (Edna St. Vincent Millay, E. E. Cummings, Billy Collins, and Mary Oliver) and I'm picking a few poems by each of them and giving them each a post. So I'm about to inundate this thread with a bunch of my favorite poetry. Dunno who will read it, but I like sharing.


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## Meaghan (Jul 31, 2010)

*E. E. Cummings* (1894-1962)

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
-the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis
_______________________________

"next to of course god america i
love you land of the pilgrims' and so forth oh
say can you see by the dawn's early my
country 'tis of centuries come and go
and are no more what of it we should worry
in every language even deafanddumb
thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry
by jingo by gee by gosh by gum
why talk of beauty what could be more beaut-
iful than these heroic happy dead
who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter
they did not stop to think they died instead
then shall the voice of liberty be mute?"

He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water
_____________________________________

in spite of everything
which breathes and moves,since Doom
(with white longest hands
neatening each crease)
will smooth entirely our minds
-before leaving my room
i turn,and(stooping
through the morning)kiss
this pillow,dear
where our heads lived and were. 
___________________________

when god lets my body be

From each brave eye shall sprout a tree
fruit dangles therefrom

the purpled world will dance upon
Between my lips which did sing

a rose shall beget the spring
that maidens whom passions wastes

will lay between their little breasts
My strong fingers beneath the snow

Into strenous birds shall go
my love walking in the grass

their wings will touch with her face
and all the while shall my heart be

With the bulge and nuzzle of the sea


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## Meaghan (Jul 31, 2010)

*Billy Collins* (b. 1941)

_Another Reason Why I Don't Keep a Gun in the House_

The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark
that he barks every time they leave the house.
They must switch him on on their way out.

The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
I close all the windows in the house
and put on a Beethoven symphony full blast
but I can still hear him muffled under the music,
barking, barking, barking,

and now I can see him sitting in the orchestra,
his head raised confidently as if Beethoven
had included a part for barking dog.

When the record finally ends he is still barking,
sitting there in the oboe section barking,
his eyes fixed on the conductor who is
entreating him with his baton

while the other musicians listen in respectful
silence to the famous barking dog solo,
that endless coda that first established
Beethoven as an innovative genius. 
__________________________________

_The Wires of The Night_

I thought about his death for so many hours,
tangled there in the wires of the night,
that it came to have a body and dimensions,
more than a voice shaking over the telephone
or the black obituary boldface of name and dates.

His death now had an entrance and an exit,
doors and stairs,
windows and shutters which are the motionless wings
of windows. His death had a head and clothes,
the white shirt and baggy trousers of death.

His death had pages, a dark leather cover, an index,
and the print was too minuscule for anyone to read.
His death had hinges and bolts that were oiled
and locked,
had a loud motor, four tires, an antenna that listened
to the wind, and a mirror in which you could see the past.

His death had sockets and keys, it had walls and beams.
It had a handle which you could not hold and a floor
you could not lie down on in the middle of the night.

In the freakish pink and gray of dawn I took
his death to bed with me and his death was my bed
and in every corner of the room it hid from the light,

and then it was the light of day and the next day
and all the days to follow, and it moved into the future
like the sharp tip of a pen moving across an empty page. 
___________________________________

_Osso Bucco_

I love the sound of the bone against the plate
and the fortress-like look of it
lying before me in a moat of risotto,
the meat soft as the leg of an angel
who has lived a purely airborne existence.
And best of all, the secret marrow,
the invaded privacy of the animal
prized out with a knife and swallowed done
with cold, exhilarating wine.

I am swaying now in the hour after dinner,
a citizen tilted back on his chair,
a creature with a full stomach -
something you don't hear much about in poetry,
that sanctuary of hunger and deprivation.
You know: the driving rain, the boots by the door,
small birds searching for berries in winter.

But tonight, the lion of contentment
has placed a warm, heavy paw on my chest,
and I can only close my eyes and listen
to the drums of woe throbbing in the distance
and the sound of my wife's laughter
on the telephone in the next room,
the woman who cooked the savory osso bucco,
who pointed to show the butcher the ones she wanted.
She who talks to her faraway friend
while I linger here at the table
with a hot, companionable cup of tea,
feeling like one of the friendly natives,
a reliable guide, maybe even the chief's favorite son.

Somewhere, a man is crawling up a rock hillside
on bleeding knees and palms, an Irish penitent
carrying the stone of the world in his stomach;
and elsewhere people of all nations stare
at one another across a long, empty table.

But here, the candles give off their warm glow,
the same light that Shakespeare and Izaak Walton wrote by,
the light that lit and shadowed the faces of history.
Only now it plays on the blue plates,
the crumpled napkins, the crossed knife and fork.

In a while, one of us will go up to bed
and the other one will follow.
Then we will slip below the surface of the night
into miles of water, drifting down and down
to the dark, soundless bottom
until the weight of dreams pulls us lower still,
below the shale and layered rock,
beneath the strata of hunger and pleasure,
into the broken bones of the earth itself,
into the marrow of the only place we know.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

I suppose the term 'modern' for you classical music listeners is quite broooooooad... 

By "Modern Poetry" what are you speaking of? "Modernist" poetry? Contemporary Poetry? Poetry written by living poets? I am myself an incurable bibliophile (although my wife would probably say bibliomaniac) with a rather large personal library that focuses extensively upon poetry. Among the more recent poets I enjoy Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill, Yves Bonnefoy, Richard Wilbur, Richard Howard, Charles Wright, Charles Simic, Adam Zagajewski, Wislawa Szymborska, Eugenio de Andrade, Homero Aridjis, Ales Debeljak, W.S. Merwin, Czeslaw Milosz, Jaroslav Seifert, Seamus Heaney, Octavio Paz, Rafael Alberti, J.L. Borges (who wrote poetry extensively) and a good number of others.


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## Meaghan (Jul 31, 2010)

*Edna St. Vincent Millay* (1892-1950)

_Inland_

People that build their houses inland,
People that buy a plot of ground
Shaped like a house, and build a house there,
Far from the sea-board, far from the sound

Of water sucking the hollow ledges,
Tons of water striking the shore --
What do they long for, as I long for
One salt smell of the sea once more?

People the waves have not awakened,
Spanking the boats at the harbor's head,
What do they long for, as I long for, --
Starting up in my inland bed,

Beating the narrow walls, and finding
Neither a window nor a door,
Screaming to God for death by drowning --
One salt taste of the sea once more?
_______________________________

_Wild Swans_

I looked in my heart while the wild swans went over.
And what did I see I had not seen before?
Only a question less or a question more;
Nothing to match the flight of wild birds flying.
Tiresome heart, forever living and dying,
House without air, I leave you and lock your door.
Wild swans, come over the town, come over
The town again, trailing your legs and crying!
__________________________________

_First Fig_

My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends--
It gives a lovely light!
_____________________________

_Second Fig_

Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand:
Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!
____________________________________________

_Recuerdo_

We were very tired, we were very merry --
We had gone back and forth all night upon the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable --
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on the hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.

We were very tired, we were very merry --
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.

We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed, "Good morrow, mother!" to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, "God bless you!" for the apples and the pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

*Anne Carson:*

I will do anything to avoid boredom. It is the task of a lifetime. You can never know enough, never work enough, never use infinitives and participles oddly enough, never impede the movement harshly enough, never leave the mind quickly enough.

_*On Ovid*_

I see him there on a night like this but cool, the moon blowing through the black streets. He sups and walks back to his room. The radio is on the floor. Its luminous green dial blares softly. He sits down at the table; people in exile write so many letters. Now Ovid is weeping. Each night about this time he puts on sadness like a garment and goes on writing. In his spare time he is teaching himself the local language (Getic) in order to compose in it an epic poem no one will ever read.

_*On Parmenides*_

We pride ourselves on being civilized people. Yet what if the names for things were utterly different? Italy, for example. I have a friend named Andreas, an Italian. He has lived in Argentina as well as England, and also Costa Rica for some time. Everywhere he lives he invites people over for supper. It is a lot of work. Artichoke pasta, Peaches. His deep smile never fades. What if the proper name for Italy turns out to be Brzoy- will Andreas continue to travel the world like the wandering moon with her borrowed light? I fear we failed to understand what he was saying or his reasons. What if every time he said cities, he meant delusion, for example?

_*Sleep Stones*_

Camille Claudel lived the last thirty years of her life in an assylum, wondering why, writing letters to her brother the poet, who had signed the papers. Come visit me, she says. Remember, I am living here with madwomen, days are long. She did not smoke or stroll. She refused to sculpt. Although they gave her sleep stones- marble and granite and porphyry- she broke them, then collected the pieces and buried these outside the walls at night...

_*Canicula Di Anna*_

1.

What we have here
is the story of a painter.
It occurs in Perugia
(ancient Perusia)
where lived the painter Pietro Vannucci
(c. 1445-1523)
who was called Perugino,
a contemporary of Michelangelo
and teacher of Raphael...

some philosophers of the present day
meet in conclave
upon the ancient rock of Perugia.
They seem to have commissioned
for purposes of public relations,
a painter to record them
in pigments of the fifteenth century...

The painter, at any rate,
is not a happy man.
A woman, as usual, is the problem...

9.

It is perhaps not widely known
that a certain so-called Perugino
spent the years 1483-1486
covering with frescoes
that part of the Sistine Chapel
now immortalized by Michelangelo's Last Judgment,
which efforts were ruthlessly effaced
to make space for
his successor's more colossal genius...

13.

Group portrait: a special commission.
I paint the philosophers at table and
on the way to Being.
The bottle is difficult. I attempt
a color invented by Cimabue.
The phenomenologists engage in dialectic
about wine as vinegar.
To render the throat holes
(blackish red) I have acquired
sap of the tree draco dracaena (an expense
but the phenomenolgists requested it)
or dragon's blood, which, medieval legend
recounts, originally
soaked into the earth 
during epic wars
of elephants and dragons...

14.

The phenomenologist from Paris hates mosquitoes
and carries a small electric devise
that lures the female mosquito to her death
by simulating the amorous cry of the male. Then
to block the whining sound, he has pink earplugs.
As he sits in conversation
with the phenomenologist from Sussex
a mosquito is observed to enter.
The Englishman leaps to his feet,
calling, "Let us use the mosquito machine!"
and smashes the insect to the wall
with the devise. It is the first sign
of wide ontological differences
that will open in the Anglo-French dialectic
here.

from Anne Carson- _Plainwater_

I find myself entranced by Carson's writing. She is Canadian... 60 years old... a professor of classics and comparative literature with a distinguished background in classical languages, comparative literature, anthropology, history, and commercial art. She writes poetry, prose, essay, criticism, and translation (her recent translations of Sappho, Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles are well regarded). Beyond this the writer is quite reluctant to reveal information of her personal life.

Carson's books of "poetry" are a fascinating merger of all of her experiences as a scholar and professional writer. Her works remind me in many ways of the writings of J.L. Borges, Italo Calvino, Augusto Monterroso, the shorter writings of Kafka, Donald Barthleme, and the "prose poems" of W.S. Merwin. Like these writers she blurs the boundaries between fact and fiction... and between various literary genre or forms. Her poems are laden with marvelous fictive accounts of historic personages complete with scholarly details and notations. At times one is not certain if the work one is reading is prose, poetry, essay, history, critical analysis, meditation... or something completely different. There is also a marvelous crisp, crystalline prose that is also not far removed from that of Borges, Calvino, or Merwin.


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## Meaghan (Jul 31, 2010)

*Mary Oliver* (b. 1935)

_Turtle_

Now I see it--
it nudges with its bulldog head
the slippery stems of the lilies, making them tremble;
and now it noses along in the wake of the little brown teal

who is leading her soft children
from one side of the pond to the other; she keeps
close to the edge
and they follow closely, the good children--

the tender children,
the sweet children, dangling their pretty feet
into the darkness.
And now will come--I can count on it--the murky splash,

the certain victory
of that pink and gassy mouth, and the frantic
circling of the hen while the rest of the chicks
flare away over the water and into the reeds, and my heart

will be most mournful
on their account. But, listen,
what's important?
Nothing's important

except that the great and cruel mystery of the world,
of which this is a part,
not to be denied. Once,
I happened to see, on a city street, in summer,

a dusty, fouled turtle plodded along--
a snapper--
broken out I suppose from some backyard cage--
and I knew what I had to do--

I looked it right in the eyes, and I caught it--
I put it, like a small mountain range,
into a knapsack, and I took it out
of the city, and I let it

down into the dark pond, into
the cool water,
and the light of the lilies,
to live. 
__________________________________

_Dogfish_

Some kind of relaxed and beautiful thing
kept flickering in with the tide
and looking around.
Black as a fisherman's boot,
with a white belly.

If you asked for a picture I would have to draw a smile
under the perfectly round eyes and above the chin,
which was rough
as a thousand sharpened nails.

And you know
what a smile means,
don't you?

*

I wanted the past to go away, I wanted
to leave it, like another country; I wanted
my life to close, and open
like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song
where it falls
down over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery;
I wanted
to hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know,

whoever I was, I was

alive
for a little while.

*

It was evening, and no longer summer.
Three small fish, I don't know what they were,
huddled in the highest ripples
as it came swimming in again, effortless, the whole body
one gesture, one black sleeve
that could fit easily around
the bodies of three small fish.

*

Also I wanted
to be able to love. And we all know
how that one goes,
don't we?

Slowly

*

the dogfish tore open the soft basins of water.

*

You don't want to hear the story
of my life, and anyway
I don't want to tell it, I want to listen

to the enormous waterfalls of the sun.

And anyway it's the same old story - - -
a few people just trying,
one way or another,
to survive.

Mostly, I want to be kind.
And nobody, of course, is kind,
or mean,
for a simple reason.

And nobody gets out of it, having to
swim through the fires to stay in
this world.

*

And look! look! look! I think those little fish
better wake up and dash themselves away
from the hopeless future that is
bulging toward them.

*

And probably,
if they don't waste time
looking for an easier world,

they can do it. 
_____________________________

_Skunk Cabbage_

And now as the iron rinds over
the ponds start dissolving,
you come, dreaming of ferns and flowers
and new leaves unfolding,
upon the brash
turnip-hearted skunk cabbage
slinging its bunches leaves up
through the chilling mud.
You kneel beside it. The smell
is lurid and flows out in the most
unabashed way, attracting
into itself a continual spattering
of protein. Appalling its rough
green caves, and the thought
of the thick root nested below, stubborn
and powerful as instinct!
But these are the woods you love,
where the secret name
of every death is life again - a miracle
wrought surely not of mere turning
but of dense and scalding reenactment. Not
tenderness, not longing, but daring and brawn
pull down the frozen waterfall, the past.
Ferns, leaves, flowers, the last subtle
refinements, elegant and easeful, wait
to rise and flourish.
What blazes the trail is not necessarily pretty.
______________________________

_When Death Comes_

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Fsharpmajor said:


> I think it might be this one. I don't know all that much about poetry, but it would appear to be a sonnet:
> 
> On Hearing a Symphony of Beethoven
> 
> Edna St. Vincent Millay


That's the one! I used to have this in a poem anthology, but never could find it one the web. Thanks!

:tiphat:


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## NightHawk (Nov 3, 2011)

"The Man with the Blue Guitar"
W.Stevens

I

The man bent over his guitar,
A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.

They said, "You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are."

The man replied, "Things as they are 
Are changed upon the blue guitar."

And they said then, "But play, you must,
A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,

A tune upon the blue guitar
Of things exactly as they are."

II

I cannot bring a world quite round,
Although I patch it as I can.

I sing a hero's head, large eye
And bearded bronze, but not a man,

Although I patch him as I can
And reach through him almost to man.

If to serenade almost to man
Is to miss, by that, things as they are,

Say it is the serenade 
Of a man that plays a blue guitar.

III

Ah, but to play man number one,
To drive the dagger in his heart,

To lay his brain upon the board 
And pick the acrid colors out,

To nail his thought across the door,
Its wings spread wide to rain and snow,

To strike his living hi and ho,
To tick it, tock it, turn it true,

To bang from it a savage blue,
Jangling the metal of the strings�

IV

So that's life, then: things as they are?
It picks its way on the blue guitar.

A million people on one string?
And all their manner in the thing,

And all their manner, right and wrong,
And all their manner, weak and strong?

The feelings crazily, craftily call,
Like a buzzing of flies in autumn air,

And that's life, then: things as they are,
This buzzing of the blue guitar.

V

Do not speak to us of the greatness of poetry,
Of the torches wisping in the underground,

Of the structure of vaults upon a point of light.
There are no shadows in our sun,

Day is desire and night is sleep.
There are no shadows anywhere.

The earth, for us, is flat and bare.
There are no shadows. Poetry

Exceeding music must take the place
Of empty heaven and its hymns,

Ourselves in poetry must take their place,
Even in the chattering of your guitar.

VI

A tune beyond us as we are,
Yet nothing changed by the blue guitar;

Ourselves in the tune as if in space,
Yet nothing changed, except the place

Of things as they are and only the place
As you play them, on the blue guitar,

Placed, so, beyond the compass of change,
Perceived in a final atmosphere;

For a moment final, in the way 
The thinking of art seems final when

The thinking of god is smoky dew.
The tune is space. The blue guitar

Becomes the place of things as they are,
A composing of senses of the guitar.

VII

It is the sun that shares our works.
The moon shares nothing. It is a sea.

When shall I come to say of the sun,
It is a sea; it shares nothing;

The sun no longer shares our works 
And the earth is alive with creeping men,

Mechanical beetles never quite warm?
And shall I then stand in the sun, as now

I stand in the moon, and call it good,
The immaculate, the merciful good,

Detached from us, from things as they are?
Not to be part of the sun? To stand 

Remote and call it merciful?
The strings are cold on the blue guitar.

VIII

The vivid, florid, turgid sky,
The drenching thunder rolling by,

The morning deluged still by night,
The clouds tumultuously bright

And the feeling heavy in cold chords
Struggling toward impassioned choirs,

Crying among the clouds, enraged
By gold antagonists in air--

I know my lazy, leaden twang 
Is like the reason in a storm;

And yet it brings the storm to bear.
I twang it out and leave it there.

IX

And the color, the overcast blue
Of the air, in which the blue guitar

Is a form, described but difficult,
And I am merely a shadow hunched

Above the arrowy, still strings,
The maker of a thing yet to be made;

The color like a thought that grows
Out of a mood, the tragic robe

Of the actor, half his gesture, half
His speech, the dress of his meaning, silk

Sodden with his melancholy words,
The weather of his stage, himself.

X

Raise reddest columns. Toll a bell
And clap the hollows full of tin.

Throw papers in the streets, the wills
Of the dead, majestic in their seals.

And the beautiful trombones-behold
The approach of him whom none believes,

Whom all believe that all believe,
A pagan in a varnished care.

Roll a drum upon the blue guitar.
Lean from the steeple. Cry aloud,

"Here am I, my adversary, that
Confront you, hoo-ing the slick trombones,

Yet with a petty misery
At heart, a petty misery,

Ever the prelude to your end,
The touch that topples men and rock."

�

XV

Is this picture of Picasso's, this "hoard
Of destructions", a picture of ourselves,

Now, an image of our society?
Do I sit, deformed, a naked egg,

Catching at Good-bye, harvest moon,
Without seeing the harvest or the moon?

Things as they are have been destroyed.
Have I? Am I a man that is dead

At a table on which the food is cold?
Is my thought a memory, not alive?

Is the spot on the floor, there, wine or blood
And whichever it may be, is it mine?



XXIII

A few final solutions, like a duet
With the undertaker: a voice in the clouds,

Another on earth, the one a voice
Of ether, the other smelling of drink,

The voice of ether prevailing, the swell
Of the undertaker's song in the snow

Apostrophizing wreaths, the voice
In the clouds serene and final, next

The grunted breath scene and final,
The imagined and the real, thought

And the truth, Dichtung und Wahrheit, all
Confusion solved, as in a refrain

One keeps on playing year by year,
Concerning the nature of things as they are.



***

From this I shall evolve a man.
This is his essence: the old fantoche

Hanging his shawl upon the wind,
Like something on the stage, puffed out,

His strutting studied through centuries.
At last, in spite of his manner, his eye

A-cock at the cross-piece on a pole
Supporting heavy cables, slung

Through Oxidia, banal suburb,
One-half of all its installments paid.

Dew-dapper clapper-traps, blazing
From crusty stacks above machines.

Ecce, Oxidia is the seed
Dropped out of this amber-ember pod,

Oxidia is the soot of fire,
Oxidia is Olympia.

XXXI

How long and late the pheasant sleeps�
The employer and employee contend,

Combat, compose their droll affair.
The bubbling sun will bubble up,

Spring sparkle and the cock-bird shriek.
The employer and employee will hear

And continue their affair. The shriek
Will rack the thickets. There is no place,

Here, for the lark fixed in the mind,
In the museum of the sky. The cock

Will claw sleep. Morning is not sun,
It is this posture of the nerves,

As if a blunted player clutched
The nuances of the blue guitar.

It must be this rhapsody or none,
The rhapsody of things as they are.


XXXII

Throw away the lights, the definitions,
And say of what you see in the dark

That it is this or that it is that,
But do not use the rotted names.

How should you walk in that space and know 
Nothing of the madness of space,

Nothing of its jocular procreations?
Throw the lights away. Nothing must stand

Between you and the shapes you take
When the crust of shape has been destroyed.

You as you are? You are yourself.
The blue guitar surprises you.


XXXIII

That generation's dream, aviled
In the mud, in Monday's dirty light,

That's it, the only dream they knew,
Time in its final block, not time

To come, a wrangling of two dreams.
Here is the bread of time to come,

Here is its actual stone. The bread 
Will be our bread, the stone will be

Our bed and we shall sleep by night.
We shall forget by day, except

The moments when we choose to play
The imagined pine, the imagined jay.


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## Guest (Nov 12, 2011)

"Death Fugue" by Paul Celan


Black milk of daybreak we drink it at evening
we drink it at midday and morning we drink it at night
we drink and we drink
we shovel a grave in the air there you won't lie too cramped
A man lives in the house he plays with his vipers he writes
he writes when it grows dark to Deutschland your golden hair Marguerite
he writes it and steps out of doors and the stars are all sparkling
he whistles his hounds to come close
he whistles his Jews into rows has them shovel a grave in the ground
he orders us strike up and play for the dance

Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at morning and midday we drink you at evening
we drink and we drink
A man lives in the house he plays with his vipers he writes
he writes when it grows dark to Deutschland your golden hair Margeurite
your ashen hair Shulamith we shovel a grave in the air there you won't lie too cramped
He shouts jab this earth deeper you lot there you others sing up and play
he grabs for the rod in his belt he swings it his eyes are blue
jab your spades deeper you lot there you others play on for the dancing

Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at midday and morning we drink you at evening
we drink and we drink
a man lives in the house your goldenes Haar Margeurite
your aschenes Haar Shulamith he plays with his vipers
He shouts play death more sweetly Death is a master from Deutschland
he shouts scrape your strings darker you'll rise then in smoke to the sky
you'll have a grave then in the clouds there you won't lie too cramped

Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at midday Death is a master aus Deutschland
we drink you at evening and morning we drink and we drink
this Death is ein Meister aus Deutschland his eye it is blue
he shoots you with shot made of lead shoots you level and true
a man lives in the house your goldenes Haar Margarete
he looses his hounds on us grants us a grave in the air
he plays with his vipers and daydreams
der Tod is ein Meister aus Deutschland
dein goldenes Haar Margarete
dein aschenes Haar Shulamith


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

Ooooooooo lovely! I'll bookmark this page and come back to it over the next few days.

With regards to 'modern', I meant common-sense modern (i.e. recent).


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

Yes! Celan is great. The Death Fugue is one of the most harrowing poems since WWII. At a time when the critical thought voiced by Theodor Adorno was that "writing a poem after Auschwitz was barbaric" Celan went further writing poetry about Auschwitz... and magnificent poetry at that. One of the greatest living artists, the German Anselm Kiefer, has created any number of paintings alluding to Celan's poem.


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## Guest (Nov 12, 2011)

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Yes! Celan is great. The Death Fugue is one of the most harrowing poems since WWII. At a time when the critical thought voiced by Theodor Adorno was that "writing a poem after Auschwitz was barbaric" Celan went further writing poetry about Auschwitz... and magnificent poetry at that. One of the greatest living artists, the German Anselm Kiefer, has created any number of paintings alluding to Celan's poem.


 And Aribert Reimann has set several of Celan's poems to music for soprano and piano, including "Death Fugue." The song version is equally, if not more harrowing!


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## Jeremy Marchant (Mar 11, 2010)

_Mozart_

Mozart walking in the garden,
Tormented beside cool waters,
Remembered the empty-headed girl,
And the surly porters,

The singing-bird in the snuff-box,
And the clown's comic nose;
And scattered the thin blue petals
Of a steel rose.

John Heath-Stubbs


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

From the latest edition of _Poetry Review_:

*How Astonishing -* by Anne Stevenson

That this is my wild left foot I'm freeing from a Lycra sock,
That these arthritic fingers once belonged to my bow hand,
Slaves to a cello named Caesar and to Johann Sebastian Bach
Whose solo suite Number 5 in C minor, the Sarabande,
Is quietly fingering my memory: resignation and truth.
That I can lean over, flick a switch and a light will go on
Surprises me, as does nodding to sleep, book in hand, flicking it off
To revive in the dark a young cello-playing Anne Stevenson
Along with strict Mr Troostewick (Troosey) in New Haven
And soft-spoken Mr Edel, feared and adored in Ann Arbor,
Both by now dead - living souls in beautiful instruments. Even
Herr Haydn, Signor Boccherini, M. Saint-Saens and Mr. Elgar,
Long dead, are alive in those concertos I never quite learned to play
Before I listened to my deafness. This is my left foot, poetry.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

I love E. E. Cummings (who did prefer his name with capitals). Especially his later works. What I want to explore are his plays. I've never actually read or seen any of them.


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## Il_Penseroso (Nov 20, 2010)

I like this poem too much :

*Mr. Flood's Party*

Old Eben Flood, climbing alone one night
Over the hill between the town below
And the forsaken upland hermitage
That held as much as he should ever know
On earth again of home, paused warily.
The road was his with not a native near;
And Eben, having leisure, said aloud,
For no man else in Tilbury Town to hear:
"Well, Mr. Flood, we have the harvest moon
Again, and we may not have many more;
The bird is on the wing, the poet says,
And you and I have said it here before:
Drink to the bird." He raised up to the light
The jug that he had gone so far to fill,
And answered huskily: "Well, Mr. Flood,
Since you propose it, I believe I will."

Alone, as if enduring to the end
A valiant armor of sacred hopes outworn,
He stood there in the middle of the road
Like Roland's ghost winding a silent horn.
Below him, in the town among the trees,
Where friends of other days had honored him,
A phantom salutation of the dead
Rang thinly till old Eben's eyes were dim.

Then, as a mother lays her sleeping child
Down tenderly, fearing it may awake,
He set the jug down slowly at his feet
With trembling care, knowing that most things break;
And only when assured that on firm earth
It stood, as the uncertain lives of men
Assuredly did not, he paced away,
And with his hand extended paused again:

"Well, Mr. Flood, we have not met like this
In a long time; and many a change has come
To both of us, I fear, since last it was
We had a drop together. Welcome home!"
Convivially returning with himself,
Again he raised the jug up to the light;
And with an acquiescent quaver said:
"Well, Mr. Flood, if you insist, I might.

"Only a very little, Mr. Flood-
For auld lang syne. No more, sir; that will do."
So, for the time, apparently it did,
And Eben evidently thought so too;
For soon amid the silver loneliness
Of night he lifted up his voice and sang,
Secure, with only two moons listening,
Until the whole harmonious landscape rang-

"For auld lang syne." The weary throat gave out,
The last word wavered; and the song being done,
He raised again the jug regretfully
And shook his head, and was again alone.
There was not much that was ahead of him,
And there was nothing in the town below-
Where strangers would have shut the many doors
That many friends had opened long ago.

_by Edwin Arlington Robinson _


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## Fsharpmajor (Dec 14, 2008)

That's a really good poem. In my mind I associate it with this one--probably because I read them both at around the same time, years ago:

_Skunk Hour

by Robert Lowell

(for Elizabeth Bishop)_

Nautilus Island's hermit
heiress still lives through winter in her Spartan cottage;
her sheep still graze above the sea.
Her son's a bishop. Her farmer
is first selectman in our village;
she's in her dotage.

Thirsting for
the hierarchic privacy
of Queen Victoria's century,
she buys up all
the eyesores facing her shore,
and lets them fall.

The season's ill--
we've lost our summer millionaire,
who seemed to leap from an L. L. Bean
catalogue. His nine-knot yawl
was auctioned off to lobstermen.
A red fox stain covers Blue Hill.

And now our fairy
decorator brightens his shop for fall;
his fishnet's filled with orange cork,
orange, his cobbler's bench and awl;
there is no money in his work,
he'd rather marry.

One dark night,
my Tudor Ford climbed the hill's skull;
I watched for love-cars. Lights turned down,
they lay together, hull to hull,
where the graveyard shelves on the town. . . .
My mind's not right.

A car radio bleats,
"Love, O careless Love. . . ." I hear
my ill-spirit sob in each blood cell,
as if my hand were at its throat. . . .
I myself am hell;
nobody's here--

only skunks, that search
in the moonlight for a bite to eat.
They march on their soles up Main Street:
white stripes, moonstruck eyes' red fire
under the chalk-dry and spar spire
of the Trinitarian Church.

I stand on top
of our back steps and breathe the rich air--
a mother skunk with her column of kittens swills the garbage pail.
She jabs her wedge-head in a cup
of sour cream, drops her ostrich tail,
and will not scare.


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