Name your poet(s)

[SteveShaw]

The Song of the Wandering Aengus is rather good, I admit. I believe it's one of Yeats' early efforts, before he went and got all convoluted. In similar vein (not least because it was also sung by a great Irish singer) is this, by Patrick Kavanagh.

On Raglan Road on an autumn day I met her first and knew

That her dark hair would weave a snare that I might one day rue;

I saw the danger, yet I walked along the enchanted way,

And I said, let grief be a fallen leaf at the dawning of the day.

On Grafton Street in November we tripped lightly along the ledge

Of the deep ravine where can be seen the worth of passion's pledge,

The Queen of Hearts still making tarts and I not making hay

O I loved too much and by such by such is happiness thrown away.

I gave her gifts of the mind I gave her the secret sign that's known

To the artists who have known the true gods of sound and stone

And word and tint. I did not stint for I gave her poems to say.

With her own name there and her own dark hair like clouds over fields of May

On a quiet street where old ghosts meet I see her walking now

Away from me so hurriedly my reason must allow

That I had wooed not as I should a creature made of clay -

When the angel woos the clay he'd lose his wings at the dawn of day.

This is coming with me on my desert island:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBndHNJo ... re=related
The best bit is the reference to the true gods.

[cowtime]

There are a few, but there's only one who I'd think of as MY poet-

When I got her book Kettle Bottom, I opened the package and opened the book and began to read. Later I realized I'd been standing in my kitchen for a long time, so I sat down and read until I'd finished the whole thing. Here's the first-

Explosion at Winco No. 9


Delsey Salyer knowed Tom Junior by his toes,

which his steel-toed boots had kept the fire off of.

Betty Rose seen a piece of Willy’s ear, the little

notched part where a hound had bit him

when he was a young’un, playing at eating its food.


It is true that it is the men that goes in, but it is us

that carries the mine inside. It is us that listens

to what all they are scared of and takes

the weight of it from them, like handing off

a sack of meal. Us that learns by heart

birthmarks, scars, bends of fingers,

how the teeth set crooked or straight.

Us that picks up the pieces.

I didn’t have

nothing to patch with but my old blue dress,

and Ted didn’t want flowered goods

on his shirt. I told him, It’s just under your arm,

Ted, it ain’t going to show.

They brung out bodies,

you couldn’t tell. I seen a piece of my old blue dress

on one of them bodies, blacked with smoke,

but I could tell it was my patch, up under the arm.

When the man writing in the big black book

come around asking about identifying marks,

I said, blue dress. I told him, Maude Stanley, 23.[4]

[Denny]

When I got her book Kettle Bottom, I opened the package and opened the book and began to read. Later I realized I'd been standing in my kitchen for a long time, so I sat down and read until I'd finished the whole thing.

yep, makes sense

excellent!

[Infernaltootler]

Can't believe no one has mentioned Pam Ayres

Will I have to be sexy at Sixty.

Will I have to be sexy at sixty?
Will I have to keep trying so hard?
Well I'm just going to slump,
With my dowager's hump
And watch myself turn into lard.

I'm not going to keep exercising,
I'm not going to take HRT,
If a toy boy enquires
I'll say, "Hah! Hard luck squire!
Where were you in 73...?"

I'm not going to shave my moustaches,
I'm just going to let them all sprout,
My chins'll be double
All covered in stubble,
I'm going to become an Old Trout!

My beauty all gone and forgotten,
Vanished with never a quibble,
I'll sit here and just
Kind of gnaw at a crust
And squint at the telly, and dribble.

As my marbles get steadily fewer,
Must I battle to keep my allure?
Have I still got to pout
Now my teeth have come out
And my husband has found pastures newer?

Farewell to the fad and the fashion,
Farewell to the young and the free!
My passion's expired,
At bedtime... I'm TIRED!
Sexy and sixty? Not me!

[Hotblack]

Sorry to disappoint you but Steve Shaw wrote

You can have read tons of poetry and still think that Radio 4 does a pretentious and sombre job much of the time. Shakespeare readers can be even worse. Poets reading their own stuff can be particularly dire. I'm sure Hotblack will agree with me that Pam Ayres is an honourable exception. She also writes damn good poems without an ounce of pretention or convolution

about a fortnight back.

[s1m0n]

There are a few, but there's only one who I'd think of as MY poet-

When I got her book Kettle Bottom, I opened the package and opened the book and began to read. Later I realized I'd been standing in my kitchen for a long time, so I sat down and read until I'd finished the whole thing. Here's the first-

Explosion at Winco No. 9


Delsey Salyer knowed Tom Junior by his toes,

which his steel-toed boots had kept the fire off of.

Betty Rose seen a piece of Willy’s ear, the little

notched part where a hound had bit him

when he was a young’un, playing at eating its food.


It is true that it is the men that goes in, but it is us

that carries the mine inside. It is us that listens

to what all they are scared of and takes

the weight of it from them, like handing off

a sack of meal. Us that learns by heart

birthmarks, scars, bends of fingers,

how the teeth set crooked or straight.

Us that picks up the pieces.

I didn’t have

nothing to patch with but my old blue dress,

and Ted didn’t want flowered goods

on his shirt. I told him, It’s just under your arm,

Ted, it ain’t going to show.

They brung out bodies,

you couldn’t tell. I seen a piece of my old blue dress

on one of them bodies, blacked with smoke,

but I could tell it was my patch, up under the arm.

When the man writing in the big black book

come around asking about identifying marks,

I said, blue dress. I told him, Maude Stanley, 23.[4]

That's a good poem; thank you.

[cowtime]

Glad you liked it Simon.
You can go here and listen to the author reading that poem and more from the book Kettle Bottom- I love the second one she reads

http://www.perugiapress.com/books/bookp ... type=audio

[JS]

Donald Justice: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive ... l?id=80787by Donald Justice

In Memory of the Unknown Poet, Robert Boardman Vaughn

by Donald Justice

But the essential advantage for a poet is not, to have a beautiful world with which to deal: it is to be able to see beneath both beauty and ugliness; to see the boredom, and the horror, and the glory.
T. S. ELIOT

It was his story. It would always be his story.
It followed him; it overtook him finally—
The boredom, and the horror, and the glory.

Probably at the end he was not yet sorry,
Even as the boots were brutalizing him in the alley.
It was his story. It would always be his story,

Blown on a blue horn, full of sound and fury,
But signifying, O signifying magnificently
The boredom, and the horror, and the glory.

I picture the snow as falling without hurry
To cover the cobbles and the toppled ashcans completely.
It was his story. It would always be his story.

Lately he had wandered between St. Mark’s Place and the Bowery,
Already half a spirit, mumbling and muttering sadly.
O the boredom, and the horror, and the glory.

All done now. But I remember the fiery
Hypnotic eye and the raised voice blazing with poetry.
It was his story and would always be his story—
The boredom, and the horror, and the glory.

[JS]

And Paula Meehan:

Dharmakaya
for Tom McGinty

When you step out into death
with a deep breath,
the last you'll ever take
in this shape,

remember the first step on the street –
the footfall and the shadow
of its fall – into silence. Breathe
slow-

ly out before the foot finds solid earth again,
before the city rain
has washed all trace
of your step away.

Remember a time in the woods, a path
you walked so gently
no twig snapped
no bird startled.

Between breath and no breath
your hands cupped your own death,
a gift, a bowl of grace
you brought home to us –

become a still pool
in the anarchic flow, the street's
unceasing carnival
of haunted and redeemed.

http://www.wfu.edu/wfupress/authors/paula_meehan.php

[SteveShaw]

I did like that piece of poem that's in my signature, which was part of Obama's inauguration. It expresses a kind of hope that we could still wish to see fulfilled. One day anyway.

[Dale]

Robert Bly, Issa, Donald Hall

[chas]

I try to stay out of anything to do with poetry. But I can't believe nobody's mentioned Dr. Seuss. I think "One fish two fish red fish blue fish" is possibly the best bit of poetry ever written. Just a few stanzas:

We took a look.
We saw a Nook.
On his head
he had a hook.
On his hook
he had a book.
On his book
was "How to Cook."

We saw him sit
and try to cook.
He took a look
at the book on the hook.

But a Nook can't read,
so a Nook can't cook.
SO...
what good to a Nook is hook cook book?

And the end:

Today is gone. Today was fun.
Tomorrow is another one.
Every day,
from here to there,
funny things are everywhere.

THOSE are words to live by.