A question for poets and poetry lovers

[dubhlinn]

Ok, I admit it. I'm in one of my wild and windswept moods tonight.

It shows

I take a very dim view of those who disrespect Prufrock but for you an honourable exception will be made.....

just this once mind ye..

Slan,
D.

[dfernandez77]

The problem with Tao Te Ch'ing and such is that they don't necessarily say what you wrote. If you have a hundred different interpreters you will get a hundred different interpretations.

djm

Indeed. Yet of the 20 or so translations that I've read over the years, Peter Merel's seems to follow a fairly middle, unbiased road, and still remain approachable by Westerners. Some translations are anhydrous gobbldy-gook to the uninitiated.

So I use Merel's translation most often when discussing The Dao with Westerners.

besides, the Dao that can be spoken of is not the eternal Dao...

True that. It takes years to transition; reading different translations, understanding, accepting, internalizing.

Ok, back on topic.

[gonzo914]

Done with the work of breathing; done
With all the world; the mad race run
Though to the end; the golden goal
Attained and found to be a hole!

• • -- Squatol Johnes

[Innocent Bystander]

A SONG ABOUT MYSELF
by John Keats

I.

There was a naughty boy,
A naughty boy was he,
He would not stop at home,
He could not quiet be-
He took
In his knapsack
A book
Full of vowels
And a shirt
With some towels,
A slight cap
For night cap,
A hair brush,
Comb ditto,
New stockings
For old ones
Would split O!
This knapsack
Tight at's back
He rivetted close
And followed his nose
To the north,
To the north,
And follow'd his nose
To the north.

II.

There was a naughty boy
And a naughty boy was he,
For nothing would he do
But scribble poetry-
He took
An ink stand
In his hand
And a pen
Big as ten
In the other,
And away
In a pother
He ran
To the mountains
And fountains
And ghostes
And postes
And witches
And ditches
And wrote
In his coat
When the weather
Was cool,
Fear of gout,
And without
When the weather
Was warm-
Och the charm
When we choose
To follow one's nose
To the north,
To the north,
To follow one's nose
To the north!

III.

There was a naughty boy
And a naughty boy was he,
He kept little fishes
In washing tubs three
In spite
Of the might
Of the maid
Nor afraid
Of his Granny-good-
He often would
Hurly burly
Get up early
And go
By hook or crook
To the brook
And bring home
Miller's thumb,
Tittlebat
Not over fat,
Minnows small
As the stall
Of a glove,
Not above
The size
Of a nice
Little baby's
Little fingers-
O he made
'Twas his trade
Of fish a pretty kettle
A kettle-
A kettle
Of fish a pretty kettle
A kettle!

IV.

There was a naughty boy,
And a naughty boy was he,
He ran away to Scotland
The people for to see-
There he found
That the ground
Was as hard,
That a yard
Was as long,
That a song
Was as merry,
That a cherry
Was as red,
That lead
Was as weighty,
That fourscore
Was as eighty,
That a door
Was as wooden
As in England-
So he stood in his shoes
And he wonder'd,
He wonder'd,
He stood in his
Shoes and he wonder'd.

THE END
.

[Innocent Bystander]

On the Ocean Floor

by Hugh MacDiarmid

Now more and more on my concern with the lifted waves of genius gaining
I am aware of the lightless depths that beneath them lie;
As one who hears their tiny shells incessantly raining
On the ocean floor as the foraminifera die.

[talasiga]

When I was 14 or so I was obsessed with
the Lotos Eaters by Tennyson

[FJohnSharp]

Here's one by a friend of mine that it meant for younger kids but maybe yours would like it.

http://freed.ms11.net//deadfish.html

[cowtime]

I immediately thought of - The Highwayman-
http://www.potw.org/archive/potw85.html

nothing too deep- love, sacrifice, bravery, "bad boy" hero, yeah, the girls will love it, don't know about the guys....

great thread - glad you started this Carrie.



and nowit's too late, I have to go to bed and get up and go to work yet again... grrrrr...I'm into week five with only sunday off and it's getting old,old,old... I NEED MORE POETRY!!!!!!

[izzarina]

I NEED MORE POETRY!!!!!!

Everyone needs more poetry, even if they think they don't I sat down with a Yeats book the other day, and the kids thought I was nutso (I am, but don't give them the satisfaction of knowing that). "How can you read that?" they asked. How in the world did I, who could read poetry all day long, acquire such children, is what I want to know? It must be their father's fault.

[talasiga]

..... "How can you read that?" they asked. How in the world did I, who could read poetry all day long, acquire such children, is what I want to know? It must be their father's fault.

Had they asked me that particular one, I would have answered,
"I do put my heart in it ."

[Will O'B]

In looking through my Dad's files there is "Driving In Oklahoma" by Carter Revard. He is a Native American poet. I don't know if it is really what you thematically want (hope I speelled that right). I searched but can't find the text on line. Maybe you know it?

Michael

[Innocent Bystander]

I can't find "Driving In Oklahoma" either. But
Wikipedia on Carter Revard
has an excerpt which seems to fit your remit, Carrie!

[Will O'B]

In looking through my Dad's files there is also "October Journey" by Margaret Walker. I found the text for this one on line. She was an African American poet. My Dad would recite this one sometimes when he was in a certain mood. I like the images in this one and just the way it sounds if you could have heard him recite it.

Michael

October Journey
By: Margaret Walker

Traveller take heed for journeys undertaken in the dark of

the year.
Go in the bright blaze of Autumn's equinox.
Carry protection against ravages of a sun-robber, a vandal,

a thief.
Cross no bright expanse of water in the full of the

moon.
Choose no dangerous summer nights;
no heavy tempting hours of spring;
October journeys are safest, brightest, and best.

I want to tell you what hills are like in October
when colors gush down mountainsides
and little streams are freighted with a caravan of leaves,
I want to tell you how they blush and turn in fiery shame

and joy,
how their love burns with flames consuming and terrible
until we wake one morning and woods are like a smoldering

plain--
a glowing caldron full of jewelled fire;
the emerald earth a dragon's eye
the poplars drenched with yellow light
and dogwoods blazing bloody red.
Travelling southward earth changes from gray rock to green

velvet.
Earth changes to red clay
with green grass growing brightly
with saffron skies of evening setting dully
with muddy rivers moving sluggishly.
In the early spring when the peach tree blooms
wearing a veil like a lavender haze
and the pear and plum in their bridal hair
gently snow their petals on earth's grassy bosom below
then the soughing breeze is soothing
and the world seems bathed in tenderness,
but in October
blossoms have long since fallen.
A few red apples hang on leafless boughs;
wind whips bushes briskly
And where a blue stream sings cautiously
a barren land feeds hungrily.

An evil moon bleeds drops of death.
The earth burns brown.
Grass shrivels and dries to a yellowish mass.
Earth wears a dun-colored dress
like an old woman wooing the sun to be her lover,
be her seetheart and her husband bound in one.
Farmers heap hay in stacks and bind corn in shocks
against the biting breath of frost.

The train wheels hum, "I am going home, I am going home,
I am moving toward the South."
Soon cypress swamps and muskrat marshes
and black fields touched with cotton will appear.
I dream again of my childhood land
of a neighbor's yard with a redbud tree
the smell of pine for turpentine
an Easter dress, a Christmas eve
and winding roads from the top of a hill.
A music sings within my flesh
I feel the pulse within my throat
my heart fills up with hungry fear
while hills and flatlands stark and staring
before my dark eyes sad and haunting
appear and disappear.

Then when I touch this land again
the promise of a sun-lit hour dies.
The greeness of an apple seems
to dry and rot before my eyes.
The sullen winter rains
are tears of grief I cannot shed.
The windless days are static lives.
The clock runs down
timeless and still.
The days and nights turn hours to years
and water in a gutter marks the circle of another world
hating, resentful, and afraid,
stagnant, and green, and full of slimy things.

[carrie]

These are terrific! I'm enjoying this thread, too, cowtime!

Big thanks to all who have contributed poems and ideas.

carrie

[dubhlinn]

From Belfast came Louis Macneice...well worth a look.


Prayer Before Birth

I am not yet born; O hear me.
Let not the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the stoat or the club-footed ghoul come near me.

I am not yet born, console me.
I fear that the human race may with tall walls wall me, with strong drugs dope me, with wise lies lure me, on black racks rack me, in blood-baths roll me.

I am not yet born; provide me
With water to dandle me, grass to grow for me, trees to talk to me, sky to sing to me, birds and a white light in the back of my mind to guide me.

I am not yet born; forgive me
For the sins that in me the world shall commit, my words when they speak me, my thoughts when they think me, my treason engendered by traitors beyond me, my life when they murder by means of my hands, my death when they live me.

I am not yet born; rehearse me
In the parts I must play and the cues I must take when old men lecture me, bureaucrats hector me, mountains frown at me, lovers laugh at me, the white waves call me to folly and the desert calls me to doom and the beggar refuses my gift and my children curse me.

I am not yet born; O hear me,
Let not the man who is beast or who thinks he is God come near me.

I am not yet born; O fill me
With strength against those who would freeze my humanity, would dragoon me into a lethal automaton, would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with one face, a thing, and against all those who would dissipate my entirety, would blow me like thistledown hither and thither or hither and thither like water held in the hands would spill me.

Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me.
Otherwise kill me.

Louis Macneice



Slan,
D.