Poetry Thread

I haven't been able to find a poetry thread and enjoyed having one last year. This article may be of interest:

Amy King, Threat Level Poetry, Boston review

and as to poems, I enjoyed a friend directing me to find this one:

The Guest House by Rumi, trans Coleman Barks.

Mary Ann Caws and Paul Auster have both edited anthologies of French poetry that are dual language. I have worn the Auster to shreds, so the Caws was welcome. (She also did a two volume anthology of world literature with an unusual emphasis on asia.)

A recent acquisition of mine is the collected poetry of Zbignieu Herbert which has the 'Mr. Cogito' poems which were out of print and cost me a bundle before this collection came out. Herbert , Milosz, Szymborska and Zagajewski make Polish poetry high on my list.

Szymborska and Milosz both are Nobelists.

btw, thanks for thinking of this thread.

Thanks for this thread. A poem I love very much would be Bukowski's 'The Laughing Heart'
There is this really great version of Tom Waits reading this poem:
Tom Waits reading Bukowski's 'The Laughing Heart'

Nice one Tom

Yes I enjoyed that, the poem and the reading. I've not read any Bukowski.

I've read a little Milosz, but not the other Polish writers, not enough hours in the day it can feel like.

Rumi's poem is terrific!

I've read a book by Bukowski, which was fun. But is there much to it? I felt the collection was simple and complete and haven't felt the urge to read more of his work. (Haven't tried that link yet)

Try the link Dan, it's also terrific.

TLS - new poems by Sappho

Has me reading her and about her.

#3/#7 - I finally check the link. Waits is awesome. The poem doesn't change my opinion of Bukowski though. :) Fun, but...well, who knows, I'm no poetry expert.

#8 - cool.

There's a little creek in Inyo, singing by beyond the town,
Through the pink wild-almond tangle and the birches slim and brown,
Where all night we'll watch the star-beams in the shallow, open rills,
And the hot, bright moons of August skulking low along the hills;
And the Word will wake in Inyo──never printed in a page──
With the wind that wakes the morning on a thousand miles of sage.

- Mary Hunter Austin, 1909

In her words: "The name Inyo, given by the Shoshone Indians, meant 'the dwelling place of a great spirit'"

>10 dchaikin:: I like that!

Yes me too, and thank you for your explanation.

Today is Edward Thomas' birthday I see from Librarything's anniversary section, so, it is hard to choose a poem, but this one I like and may follow that last a little in theme and fits this time of year I think:

The Manor Farm

Then I read a line or two further in the list of anniversaries and see it is also Basil Bunting's birthday, north easterner. I've not really read him much, bad of me, but remember I like this one:

I am agog for foam

>1 tonikat: Interesting article, Tony, thanks for pointing it out. I thought the article a bit overwritten and wondered if it doesn't in itself demonstrate the reason poetry struggles to get attention. I think her style of writing gets in the way of the argument, but then, that's just my reading of it.

The reason I didn't post much, if any, in the poetry thread last year is that every time I stopped by it seemed like a gathering of the a dead white male poetry appreciation society. I suppose I didn't want to be the one ornery poster trying to give it some balance :-) That said, this thread has a promising start so I'll try to get over here once in a while.

I've been reading Alice Walker's new collection, and Margaret Atwood's first collection from 1966, recently reprinted by Anansi Press.

>14 avaland: We are, of course, who contributes. Every year this thread tends to remain a bit experimental. And it is always malleable by the next post. : )

#14 Lois, I'd have to reread the article to say much about it, I have a dim memory that I thought it talked a lot of sense, perhaps what I'd hope was common sense (that problematic notion) but did so with some long words.

I don't agree poetry struggles to get attention, it's there if we choose to hear, always was always will be... Maybe the balance of people listening has changed.

I agree with Dan this thread is what we make it, and I often have not posted here... But also from my perspective can hear that things can seem biased to dead white men, yet no one has monopoly of poetry... And it makes me think of those studies of he gender balance of poetry reviewed and reviewers, so I will try to keep this on mind.

Partly in that spirit, but also as I just plain enjoyed it, I recommend this:

Adrienne Rich, The Prospect

That was fantastic - both the story in the introduction and the poem. It reminds me to read more by A. Rich.

I've been enjoying Timothy Donnelly's first collection Twenty-seven Props for a Production of Eine Lebenszeit and came across these guest pieces he did last year and thought this may be a good place to share them. I've only read the first so far myself.

Harriet blog at Poetry Foundation

edit - I've read them all and with pleasure and will reread them I am sure.

Good stuff - although I've onlly read part of the fisrat one.

>6 dchaikin: Every now and then, Bukowski would hit a homer and the simplistic fun would be replaced by naked honesty. This one ranks as one of my favorite poems about loss:

For Jane

>2 almigwin: The Caws-edited Surrealist Love Poems is worth checking out if you can find it. But then, I support any anthology that brings Robert Desnos' lovely work to light.

I came across this today, I don't know Szymborska's work though I knew her surname I didn't know she was a woman, so thought this would be a good place to post as my last post about a man (read upwards about this).

NYRB poetry month celebration of Wislawa Szymborska

>21 LibraryPerilous: the line of Desnos that starts 'j'ai tellement reve de toi' exists in two of his poems and I think it is the 'dernier poeme' that Poulenc set to music. Both poems are beautiful. I have an illustrated book of his poems but they have only the English translations.

>22 tonikat: Thank you for the link to the celebration of Szymborska. I enjoyed the comments of Milosz very much. I think he really hit the nail on the head. Another I especially like begins 'after every war, someone has to clean up'. It my favorite ironic poem of hers.

I can't give the name of the poem because I am away from my library. Sorry.

>21 LibraryPerilous: there is a beautiful Poulenc setting of the Desnos 'Dernier Poeme' that starts 'j'ai tellement reve de toi'. His early death in the concentration camp was terribly tragic, since he so wanted to return to his wife Youki.

>22 tonikat: My favorite ironic poem of Szymborska's starts 'after every war someone has to clean up'

Sorry I can't post more of it; I am away from my library.

Thanks for the Milosz comments about her poetry

>23 almigwin: & >24 almigwin: thanks Miriam

I didn't want to post this right away, I was sad to see this news the death of Tadeusz Rozewicz . This thread has really made me interested to learn more of these Poles.

>20 LibraryPerilous: - thanks Diana. That's a moving poem.

>20 LibraryPerilous: & >26 dchaikin: - I should have said, yes I liked that, direct as you say, speaks honestly.

Keats...

A THING of beauty is a joy forever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing 5
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o’er-darkened ways               10
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils                     15
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
’Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms                  20
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
All lovely tales that we have heard or read:
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven’s brink.

>30 dchaikin: Lovely.

A bit of silly: Every time a Keats poem of any stripe crops up, I think of Desmond Skirrow's "Ode on a Grecian Urn Summarized":

Gods chase
Round vase.
What say?
What play?
Don't know.
Nice, though.

Love it!

Courtesy of LT's on this day widget thingy - today is Gerard Manley Hopkins' birthday: "Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet"

No one into Neruda? I like the Keats and the précis.

>33 tonikat: Hopkins is one of my favorites: "No worst, there is none."

I've not read Neruda, outside of a few selections from Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair: "Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines," etc. The article certainly makes it seem like the new poems are a great find.

>34 LibraryPerilous: I only know a bit of both Hopkins and Neruda so far, but love what I am familiar with. It does seem a great find from Neruda and I read somewhere one of the poems is very long, it may be hype but I hope not.

I see it is Rumi's birthday today, from way back in 1207. I'll try to find a poem to post after work, meanwhile please see post 1.

When I am alone,
and quite alone,
I play a game,
and it's all my own.

I hide myself
Behind myself,
And then I try
To find myself.

I hide in the closet,
Where no one can see;
Then I start looking
Around for me.

I hide myself
And look for myself;
There once was a shadow
I took for myself.

I hide in a corner;
I hide in the bed;
And when I come near me
I pull in my head!

Abraham B. Shiffrin
(1902 - 1998)

Found this in a 1982 issue of The Paris Review. It wasn't published in a book until 1996.

Monet Refuses the Operation

BY LISEL MUELLER

Doctor, you say there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.
I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don’t see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.
Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of three-dimensional space,
wisteria separate
from the bridge it covers.
What can I say to convince you
the Houses of Parliament dissolve
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?
I will not return to a universe
of objects that don’t know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent. The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and change our bones, skin, clothes
to gases. Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.

ETA - it's available all over the web, including here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/236810

.>38 dchaikin: Nice one Dan

>38 dchaikin: yes I like it too, not been about as much recently, just read it