The Poetry Thread.

[izzarina]

That, FJohn, is superb.

Slan,
D.

It really is. Wow......

[FJohnSharp]

That, FJohn, is superb.

Slan,
D.

It really is. Wow......

What I love about it is it's so accessible for anyone, even for people who say they don't like or understand poetry. It's readable and touches a chord in us all.

[Denny]

ya, liked it!

[fearfaoin]

A toast, a toast! To old djm,
Who thinks that these poems will sicken him.
I think that he finds things too saccharine,
In this poor, pro-poetical thread.

I'm sure he'd rather some biting prose.
Instead he gets verses lamenting life's woes.
Worse yet, rhyming couplet about some red rose
In this poor, pro-poetical thread.

With every new post, deej's rage will be fed.
With iamb and trochee we'll batter his head.
One day, out of ammo, we'll put it to bed,
This poor, pro-poetical thread.

[john_t]

The last few days...

She said I should put my hair in a cake. I think something was lost in translation as a small bird blew a hole in the window too. ‘I think she had the flu.’ Said the Veterinary. Who flew out of the room to take an emergency call. Some people were walking in circles with a purpose in the next room. The slow dancers danced and terrific cries were heard from the surrounding area. ‘Give me eyes and ears, feelings to feel.’ Said the sphere, inside a sphere that could speak. A donut shaped life will not see it, when it happens. For its eyes are on the outside. Only the dudes looking inside will see the mirror that shows them the real outside. Like wood with potential to be carved the people read into obsession and ill health.

[Innocent Bystander]

It's National Library Week next week. Dewey your community a favor go to the 800s and check-out poetry books, and don't return them.

A nurse is giving a young medical intern a tour of the hospital.
The intern approaches one bedridden patient and asks, “Why are you here?” The
patient replies, “Wee sleket cowerin’ timrous beastie/O, what a panic is in thy breastie.”
The intern moves on to the next bed and asks the same question, “Why are you
here?” The patient answers, “O, my luv is like a red, red, rose that’s newly sprung in June.”
The intern moves on to a third bed and asks again, “Why are you here” to which
the third patient replies, “The best laid plans of mice and men, may often gang awry.”
At this the intern turns to the nurse and asks, “What ward is this anyway.” And
the nurse answers, “It’s the Burns Unit.”

"Gang aft agley" Fer guidness sake! Yon obviously wisnae the SERIOUS Burns unit.

[I.D.10-t]

I fine some of the poems of Billy Collins to be entertaining.

Tension

He wrote a self referential poem that had me choking back laughs.

[Pammy]

The shortest poem ever ?

Bang!
Hang!

Major C W Bartlett

[cowtime]

I like this.

Now let no charitable hope by Elinor Wylie

Now let no charitable hope
Confuse my mind with images
Of eagle and of antelope:
I am by nature none of these.

I was, being human, born alone;
I am, being woman, hard beset;
I live by squeezing from a stone
What little nourishment I get.

In masks outrageous and austere
The years go by in single file;
But none has merited my fear,
And none has quite escaped my smile.

[izzarina]

I Do, I Will, I Have

How wise I am to have instructed the butler
to instruct the first footman to instruct the second
footman to instruct the doorman to order my carriage;
I am about to volunteer a definition of marriage.
Just as I know that there are two Hagens, Walter and Copen,
I know that marriage is a legal and religious alliance entered
into by a man who can't sleep with the window shut and a
woman who can't sleep with the window open.
Moreover, just as I am unsure of the difference between
flora and fauna and flotsam and jetsam,
I am quite sure that marriage is the alliance of two people
one of whom never remembers birthdays and the other
never forgetsam,
And he refuses to believe there is a leak in the water pipe or
the gas pipe and she is convinced she is about to asphyxiate
or drown,
And she says Quick get up and get my hairbrushes off the
windowsill, it's raining in, and he replies Oh they're all right,
it's only raining straight down.
That is why marriage is so much more interesting than divorce,
Because it's the only known example of the happy meeting of
the immovable object and the irresistible force.
So I hope husbands and wives will continue to debate and
combat over everything debatable and combatable,
Because I believe a little incompatibility is the spice of life,
particularly if he has income and she is pattable.

Ogden Nash

[FJohnSharp]

heh. pattable.

[dubhlinn]

heh. pattable.

I had a good laugh at that myself....

Must investigate Ogden a bit further.

Slan,
D.

[dubhlinn]

Nothing new or unheard of but one of my all time favourites.

It is a man kind of poem...ask any girl.



Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question ...
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the windowpanes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the windowpanes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair--
(They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!")
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin--
(They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!")
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all--
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all--
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all--
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?

. . . . .

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? . . .

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

. . . . .

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep . . . tired . . . or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in
upon a platter,
I am no prophet--and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it towards some overwhelming question,
To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"--
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: "That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all."

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor--
And this, and so much more?--
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
"That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all."

. . . . .

No!I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old . . . I grow old . . .
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind?Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

T. S. Eliot

Lovely..innit.

Slan,
D.

[cowtime]

Lovely..innit.

It is, ....in a wistful way...

[Congratulations]

I am notoriously (around these parts) unfond of Eliot. I will link, with your kind indulgence, a thing I wrote:

Why I Prefer Kavanagh to Eliot.