On April 14 2011 22:57 Bourneq wrote: It would be spitefull, to put jelly fish in a trifle.
Also
I don't like jellyfish, they’re not a fish, they're just a blob. They don’t have eyes, fins or scales like a cod. They float about blind, stinging people in the seas, And no one eats jellyfish with chips and mushy peas. Get rid of 'em!
Gotta respect the orange head.
What's with Britons and finishing when it's nicest?
Referring to the earlier discussion about The Divine Comedy. For me it is the most intricate and insane love story ever written. And by that I don't mean a story about lovers, but a story that is written for someone you love, usually because you cannot be with them. In it Dante vents about everything he hates/loves about history, humanity, religion and Italians, but this is all just the mud and grime of the world he wallows through with Beatrice awaiting him at the top of the universe.
In all the classes I teach I like to have them analyze poetry, even though I teach History. One I like to use when teaching Ancient History is "Ozymandias" by Percy Shelley.
I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed: And on the pedestal these words appear: 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away."
To me, a dying ember in the fireplace Is another adventure. The sparkling ash The road on which a hero's journey begins.
As thin smoke rises, scarring the bricks within The chimney and spiraling like a beautiful Gray ribbon into the starry night I see a
Winding and eternal road, the end of which Holds happiness. And the single dying ember, The lone spark of light in this darkness speaks
To me, with a low and tired voice. It repeats The same single utterence that has sustained it: "Happiness is an eternal pursuit."
Process
I tried to load a video on a website Of a barbershop quartet singing a Jazzy and uplifting song And the picture froze, and the sound cut Like a divisive dagger and threw itself from my Ears and I was left with a spinning wheel Of circles on a frozen picture and the Mingled irritation, expectation, and Excruciating irrational anger that nothing The web has brought me bears fruit anymore-- Nothing but the resounding crash of yesterday When a video-- what a concept, a video A piece of moving paint, a breathing, feeling Speaking cut of life encapsulated in a fraction Of life-- would load. I gaze at The spinning circle of little circles Beseechingly, longingly-- with every fiber In my tense and strained body I want To hear a few more notes, a few more Drops of heaven in my ears that keeps me From tearing out my insides. I want to hear The swift and sacred harmonies that connect Together four souls, I want to be reminded That beauty comes from within the vocal Chords of every preaching child of god I want to let the overwhelming sound drown Me in a cathartic sea of mellow melody I am asleep, and I want to be woken for the day By the sounds of the golden gates of heaven creaking a Jazzy and uplifting song.
Souvent, pour s'amuser, les hommes d'équipage Prennent des albatros, vastes oiseaux des mers, Qui suivent, indolents compagnons de voyage, Le navire glissant sur les gouffres amers.
A peine les ont-ils déposés sur les planches, Que ces rois de l'azur, maladroits et honteux, Laissent piteusement leurs grandes ailes blanches Comme des avirons traîner à côté d'eux.
Ce voyageur ailé, comme il est gauche et veule ! Lui, naguère si beau, qu'il est comique et laid ! L'un agace son bec avec un brûle-gueule, L'autre mime en boitant, l'infirme qui volait !
Le Poète est semblable au prince des nuées Qui hante la tempête et se rit de l'archer ; Exilé sur le sol au milieu des huées, Ses ailes de géant l'empêchent de marcher.
(this reading is quite bad tbh)
got to agree with my german friend,i like every type of literrature in english except poetry,every language has this sensibility,and poetry is usually what brings the most out of it. i usually just cant get it when it comes to english poetry,and this is coming from a guy whos read pretty much half of french classics in english instead of french :o
She looked over his shoulder For vines and olive trees, Marble well-governed cities And ships upon untamed seas, But there on the shining metal His hands had put instead An artificial wilderness And a sky like lead.
A plain without a feature, bare and brown, No blade of grass, no sign of neighborhood, Nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down, Yet, congregated on its blankness, stood An unintelligible multitude, A million eyes, a million boots in line, Without expression, waiting for a sign.
Out of the air a voice without a face Proved by statistics that some cause was just In tones as dry and level as the place: No one was cheered and nothing was discussed; Column by column in a cloud of dust They marched away enduring a belief Whose logic brought them, somewhere else, to grief.
She looked over his shoulder For ritual pieties, White flower-garlanded heifers, Libation and sacrifice, But there on the shining metal Where the altar should have been, She saw by his flickering forge-light Quite another scene.
Barbed wire enclosed an arbitrary spot Where bored officials lounged (one cracked a joke) And sentries sweated for the day was hot: A crowd of ordinary decent folk Watched from without and neither moved nor spoke As three pale figures were led forth and bound To three posts driven upright in the ground.
The mass and majesty of this world, all That carries weight and always weighs the same Lay in the hands of others; they were small And could not hope for help and no help came: What their foes like to do was done, their shame Was all the worst could wish; they lost their pride And died as men before their bodies died.
She looked over his shoulder For athletes at their games, Men and women in a dance Moving their sweet limbs Quick, quick, to music, But there on the shining shield His hands had set no dancing-floor But a weed-choked field.
A ragged urchin, aimless and alone, Loitered about that vacancy; a bird Flew up to safety from his well-aimed stone: That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third, Were axioms to him, who'd never heard Of any world where promises were kept, Or one could weep because another wept.
The thin-lipped armorer, Hephaestos, hobbled away, Thetis of the shining breasts Cried out in dismay At what the god had wrought To please her son, the strong Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles Who would not live long.
I fell in love with this poem as I took some credits in English at the university, being a sc2 player, I am mastering in mathematcis
We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless As wind in dry grass Or rats' feet over broken glass In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour, Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost Violent souls, but only As the hollow men The stuffed men.
II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams In death's dream kingdom These do not appear: There, the eyes are Sunlight on a broken column There, is a tree swinging And voices are In the wind's singing More distant and more solemn Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer In death's dream kingdom Let me also wear Such deliberate disguises Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves In a field Behaving as the wind behaves No nearer --
Not that final meeting In the twilight kingdom
III
This is the dead land This is cactus land Here the stone images Are raised, here they receive The supplication of a dead man's hand Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this In death's other kingdom Waking alone At the hour when we are Trembling with tenderness Lips that would kiss Form prayers to broken stone.
IV
The eyes are not here There are no eyes here In this valley of dying stars In this hollow valley This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places We grope together And avoid speech Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless The eyes reappear As the perpetual star Multifoliate rose Of death's twilight kingdom The hope only Of empty men.
V
Here we go round the prickly pear Prickly pear prickly pear Here we go round the prickly pear At five o'clock in the morning.
Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception And the creation Between the emotion And the response Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire And the spasm Between the potency And the existence Between the essence And the descent Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is Life is For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.
Perhaps one of the most quoted stanzas in poetry (especially of Eliot's work, though) is the final stanza. So powerful and expressive.
I absolutely LOVE this poem. Simply my favorite poem. I first read it under severe depression some years ago and probably read it like ten times in a row. I even tried to committ it to memory, i think im gonna try again.
I also have to chime in with the french/germans. English poetry has a great advantage in this thread. Even though our poems might be translated, you always lose something during translation. And finding a good translation on the net is nigh impossible.
To contribute, I cant remember seeing Aedh wishes for the Cloths of Heaven by W. B. Yeats. (from The Wind Among the Reeds, 1899)
HAD I the heavens’ embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
Well, i know this is an english forum but i will post anway, my favorite poems are writen in Spanish, by Federico Garcia Lorca. If someone has any doubt about what he means in some parts, i will be glad to help out :D They say that Lorca's poems were pure poetry, that they transcendet the words but who knows...
Verde que te quiero verde. Verde viento. Verdes ramas. El barco sobre la mar y el caballo en la montaña. Con la sombra en la cintura ella sueña en su baranda, verde carne, pelo verde, con ojos de fría plata. Verde que te quiero verde. Bajo la luna gitana, las cosas le están mirando y ella no puede mirarlas.
*
Verde que te quiero verde. Grandes estrellas de escarcha, vienen con el pez de sombra que abre el camino del alba. La higuera frota su viento con la lija de sus ramas, y el monte, gato garduño, eriza sus pitas agrias. ¿Pero quién vendrá? ¿Y por dónde...? Ella sigue en su baranda, verde carne, pelo verde, soñando en la mar amarga.
*
Compadre, quiero cambiar mi caballo por su casa, mi montura por su espejo, mi cuchillo por su manta. Compadre, vengo sangrando, desde los montes de Cabra. Si yo pudiera, mocito, ese trato se cerraba. Pero yo ya no soy yo, ni mi casa es ya mi casa. Compadre, quiero morir decentemente en mi cama. De acero, si puede ser, con las sábanas de holanda. ¿No ves la herida que tengo desde el pecho a la garganta? Trescientas rosas morenas lleva tu pechera blanca. Tu sangre rezuma y huele alrededor de tu faja. Pero yo ya no soy yo, ni mi casa es ya mi casa. Dejadme subir al menos hasta las altas barandas, dejadme subir, dejadme, hasta las verdes barandas. Barandales de la luna por donde retumba el agua.
*
Ya suben los dos compadres hacia las altas barandas. Dejando un rastro de sangre. Dejando un rastro de lágrimas. Temblaban en los tejados farolillos de hojalata. Mil panderos de cristal, herían la madrugada.
*
Verde que te quiero verde, verde viento, verdes ramas. Los dos compadres subieron. El largo viento, dejaba en la boca un raro gusto de hiel, de menta y de albahaca. ¡Compadre! ¿Dónde está, dime? ¿Dónde está mi niña amarga? ¡Cuántas veces te esperó! ¡Cuántas veces te esperara, cara fresca, negro pelo, en esta verde baranda!
*
Sobre el rostro del aljibe se mecía la gitana. Verde carne, pelo verde, con ojos de fría plata. Un carámbano de luna la sostiene sobre el agua. La noche su puso íntima como una pequeña plaza. Guardias civiles borrachos, en la puerta golpeaban. Verde que te quiero verde. Verde viento. Verdes ramas. El barco sobre la mar. Y el caballo en la montaña.
On January 27 2012 09:44 homeless_guy wrote: w.s. merwin ted kooser
google them, read them, and you will be glad you did
I like Merwin for his sort of blend between the Modern and the Post-Modern era of literature-- he structures his poems in a pretty common modernist style, but the content just sort of reminds me of Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Kooser's a different story. Normally, I don't like short poems (I hate the poems of William Carlos Williams and Ezra Pound), but I found myself really enjoying the succinct, yet powerful, structure Kooser brings. I also really love how he plays with distances and light in his stuff.
On January 27 2012 09:44 homeless_guy wrote: w.s. merwin ted kooser
google them, read them, and you will be glad you did
I like Merwin for his sort of blend between the Modern and the Post-Modern era of literature-- he structures his poems in a pretty common modernist style, but the content just sort of reminds me of Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Kooser's a different story. Normally, I don't like short poems (I hate the poems of William Carlos Williams and Ezra Pound), but I found myself really enjoying the succinct, yet powerful, structure Kooser brings. I also really love how he plays with distances and light in his stuff.
Definitely worth taking a look :D
I'll have to check out Kooser, too; I love that style. Also, cool to see Stevens and Auden in here.
My favorite poem at the moment is "Sadness" by Donald Justice: + Show Spoiler +
1 Dear ghosts, dear presences, O my dear parents, Why were you so sad on porches, whispering? What great melancholies were loosed among our swings! As before a storm one hears the leaves whispering And marks each small change in the atmosphere, So was it then to overhear and to fear.
2 But all things then were oracle and secret. Remember the night when, lost, returning, we turned back Confused, and our headlights singled out the fox? Our thoughts went with it then, turning and turning back With the same terror, into the deep thicket Beside the highway, at home in the dark thicket.
3 I say the wood within is the dark wood, Or wound no torn shirt can entirely bandage, But the sad hand returns to it in secret Repeatedly, encouraging the bandage To speak of that other world we might have borne, The lost world buried before it could be born.
4 Burchfield describes the pinched white souls of violets Frothing the mouth of a derelict old mine Just as an evil August night comes down, All umber, but for one smudge of dusky carmine. It is the sky of a peculiar sadness— The other side perhaps of some rare gladness.
5 What is it to be happy, after all? Think Of the first small joys. Think of how our parents Would whistle as they packed for the long summers, Or, busy about the usual tasks of parents, Smile down at us suddenly for some secret reason, Or simply smile, not needing any reason.
6 But even in the summers we remember The forest had its eyes, the sea its voices, And there were roads no map would ever master, Lost roads and moonless nights and ancient voices— And night crept down with an awful slowness toward the water; And there were lanterns once, doubled in the water.
7 Sadness has its own beauty, of course. Toward dusk, Let us say, the river darkens and looks bruised, And we stand looking out at it through rain. It is as if life itself were somehow bruised And tender at this hour; and a few tears commence. Not that they are but that they feel immense.
I love his imagery and description, and the way he uses form.
"The Snowman" is one of the greatest poems of our time.
Song by Brigit Pegeen Kelly
Listen: there was a goat's head hanging by ropes in a tree. All night it hung there and sang. And those who heard it Felt a hurt in their hearts and thought they were hearing The song of a night bird. They sat up in their beds, and then They lay back down again. In the night wind, the goat's head Swayed back and forth, and from far off it shone faintly The way the moonlight shone on the train track miles away Beside which the goat's headless body lay. Some boys Had hacked its head off. It was harder work than they had imagined. The goat cried like a man and struggled hard. But they Finished the job. They hung the bleeding head by the school And then ran off into the darkness that seems to hide everything. The head hung in the tree. The body lay by the tracks. The head called to the body. The body to the head. They missed each other. The missing grew large between them, Until it pulled the heart right out of the body, until The drawn heart flew toward the head, flew as a bird flies Back to its cage and the familiar perch from which it trills. Then the heart sang in the head, softly at first and then louder, Sang long and low until the morning light came up over The school and over the tree, and then the singing stopped.... The goat had belonged to a small girl. She named The goat Broken Thorn Sweet Blackberry, named it after The night's bush of stars, because the goat's silky hair Was dark as well water, because it had eyes like wild fruit. The girl lived near a high railroad track. At night She heard the trains passing, the sweet sound of the train's horn Pouring softly over her bed, and each morning she woke To give the bleating goat his pail of warm milk. She sang Him songs about girls with ropes and cooks in boats. She brushed him with a stiff brush. She dreamed daily That he grew bigger, and he did. She thought her dreaming Made it so. But one night the girl didn't hear the train's horn, And the next morning she woke to an empty yard. The goat Was gone. Everything looked strange. It was as if a storm Had passed through while she slept, wind and stones, rain Stripping the branches of fruit. She knew that someone Had stolen the goat and that he had come to harm. She called To him. All morning and into the afternoon, she called And called. She walked and walked. In her chest a bad feeling Like the feeling of the stones gouging the soft undersides Of her bare feet. Then somebody found the goat's body By the high tracks, the flies already filling their soft bottles At the goat's torn neck. Then somebody found the head Hanging in a tree by the school. They hurried to take These things away so that the girl would not see them. They hurried to raise money to buy the girl another goat. They hurried to find the boys who had done this, to hear Them say it was a joke, a joke, it was nothing but a joke.... But listen: here is the point. The boys thought to have Their fun and be done with it. It was harder work than they Had imagined, this silly sacrifice, but they finished the job, Whistling as they washed their large hands in the dark. What they didn't know was that the goat's head was already Singing behind them in the tree. What they didn't know Was that the goat's head would go on singing, just for them, Long after the ropes were down, and that they would learn to listen, Pail after pail, stroke after patient stroke. They would Wake in the night thinking they heard the wind in the trees Or a night bird, but their hearts beating harder. There Would be a whistle, a hum, a high murmur, and, at last, a song, The low song a lost boy sings remembering his mother's call. Not a cruel song, no, no, not cruel at all. This song Is sweet. It is sweet. The heart dies of this sweetness.
You Ask How Nick Flynn "Some Ether"
& I say, suicide, & you ask how & I say, an overdose, and then she shot herself, & your eyes fill with what? wonder? So I add, in the chest, so you won't think her face is gone, & it matters somehow that you know this...
& near the end I eat all her percodans, to know how far they can take me, because they are there. So she won't. Cut straws stashed in her glove compartment, & I split them open to taste the alkaloid residue. Bitter. Lingering. A bottle of red wine moves each night along as she writes, I feel too much, again & again. Our phone now
unlisted, our mail kept in a box at the post office & my mother tells me to always leave a light on so it seems someone's home. She finds a cop for her next boyfriend, his hair greasy, pushed back with his fingers. He lets me play with his service revolver while they kiss on the couch. As cars fill the windows, I aim, making the noise with my mouth, in case it's them,
& when his back is hunched over her I aim between his shoulders blades,