Poet's Corner

[garyd]

With a pounding o' the drums
came a roaring o' the guns
And the brave died to a man
and the cowards turned an' ran

and the ground it was all gory
with those who died for futile glory

Ah where lies the glory in a death
died by many in one breath
for a yard of barren gound
and for reward not e'en a fun'ral mound?

 

[midcan5]

'The Routine Things Around the House'


"When Mother died
I thought: now I’ll have a death poem.
That was unforgivable

yet I’ve since forgiven myself
as sons are able to do
who’ve been loved by their mothers.

I stared into the coffin
knowing how long she’d live,
how many lifetimes there are

in the sweet revisions of memory.
It’s hard to know exactly
how we ease ourselves back from sadness,

but I remembered when I was twelve,
1951, before the world
unbuttoned its blouse.

I had asked my mother (I was trembling)
if I could see her breasts
and she took me into her room

without embarrassment or coyness
and I stared at them,
afraid to ask for more.

Now, years later, someone tells me
Cancers who’ve never had mother love
are doomed and I, a Cancer,

feel blessed again. What luck
to have had a mother
who showed me her breasts

when girls my age were developing
their separated countries,
what luck

she didn’t doom me
with too much or too little.
Had I asked to touch,

perhaps to suck them,
what would she have done?
Mother, dead woman

who I think permits me
to love women easily,
this poem

is dedicated to where
we stopped, to the incompleteness
that was sufficient

and to how you buttoned up,
began doing the routine things
around the house."

Stephen Dunn

 

[American Horse]

Poetry is a window into the soul, and the late 1950’s saw a lot of emotions being expressed in poetry. At the time I had thought it was coming from the guys who had come home from the Korean War, the veterans. But that was probably the second stage of the phenomenon; the first being the “Beat Generation’s" influence.

In our town, which is the seat of Indiana University, many coffee houses, sprang up back then, where nothing but coffee was served, or hot chocolate for those un-initiated to the black brew. Customers would get up, go to a small public ‘stage’ at the end of the room, and read their own poetry for the benefit of the coffee drinkers and other aspiring poets.

These coffee houses were generally just that, residential houses converted for their new use. The “poets” were of all ages, at least all ages between the mid-teens and perhaps the late twenties. I was sixteen. I was part of that “culture” and at the time I felt the same need to express myself with poetry, so it was fun to go hear what others were writing, and compare.

After, from the fifties and early 60's a lot of strange poetry was written and got popular acclaim. It was written by the likes of Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and others of the Beat Generation – they were the precursors of the “Hippy Generation” which included the likes of Bob Dylan etc.

There wasn’t much of these guys’ poetry I personally liked, but I checked it out from time to time.

In 1961 a poem, appeared in Eros Magazine, which when I read it, I thought it had reached a new, higher level of erotic expression – as distinguished from the usual smut, and curse words strung together – so much so that I wrote it down, but then lost track of where I’d put it. I recently found the copy which I’d made tucked into an older favorite book of poetry, taped with the written face against the inside of the back cover. Here it is:

A poem from 1962 “Eros” magazine

(Poet’s name and title unknown)

The loneliest moments come
When recreation done,
You disengage gently
And reinclose softly
Yourself, into its pattern
Of singleness. As you turn
From me into sleep, I long
To know whether I belong
So much to you, while you dream,
As your touch has made it seem.

 

[midcan5]

American Horse, The poet is actually an architect from what I found. In the book it reads:

to Anita

'the loneliness moments come
when, re-creating done
you separate gently
and re-enclose slowly
yourself, into its pattern
of singleness. As you turn
from me into sleep, I long
to know whether I belong
so much to you as you dream
as your touch has made it seem.'

Craig Ellwood

California Modern: The Architecture of Craig Ellwood by Neil Jackson

[ame=http://www.amazon.com/reader/B001BYUI7E?_encoding=UTF8&query=As%20your%20touch%20has%20made%20it%20seem.#reader]Amazon.com: California Modern: The Architecture of Craig Ellwood: Neil Jackson: Books[/ame]

 

[midcan5]

'The Olive Wood Fire'

"When Fergus woke crying at night,
I would carry him from his crib
to the rocking chair and sit holding him
before the fire of thousand-year-old olive wood,
which it took a quarter-hour of matches
and kindling to get the burning right. Sometimes
- for reasons I never knew and he has forgotten -
even after his bottle the big tears
would keep on rolling down his big cheeks
- the left cheek always more brilliant than the right -
and we would sit, some nights for hours,
rocking in the almost lightless light
eking itself out of the ancient wood,
and hold each other against the darkness,
his close behind and far away in the future,
mine I imagined all around.
One such time, fallen half-asleep myself,
I thought I heard a scream
- a flier crying out in horror
as he dropped fire on he didn't know what or whom,
or else a child thus set aflame -
and sat up alert. The olive wood fire
had burned low. In my arms lay Fergus,
fast asleep, left cheek glowing, God."

Galway Kinnell

 

[American Horse]

American Horse, The poet is actually an architect from what I found. In the book it reads:

to Anita

'the loneliness moments come
when, re-creating done
you separate gently
and re-enclose slowly
yourself, into its pattern
of singleness. As you turn
from me into sleep, I long
to know whether I belong
so much to you as you dream
as your touch has made it seem.'

Craig Ellwood

California Modern: The Architecture of Craig Ellwood by Neil Jackson

Amazon.com: California Modern: The Architecture of Craig Ellwood: Neil Jackson: Books

Thanks, Midcan, you've "fleshed it out" for me. I'd be interested in learning how you found out so much about the poet. I've tried sporadically and never learned more than I already knew. I'll be looking into the poet's work. It might be interesting after all these years to learn more. At that time he offered something different from what had been done before. I'm surprised the poet is a man rather than a woman, but I must have known the name of the poem back when I first read it which would seem to reveal the fact that it was a male poet rather than a female.

 

[American Horse]

Gaius Valerius Catullus (1st century poet of Republican Rome; lived 84 B.C., to about 57 B.C. about 27 years)
Roman Erotica (rather than name his poems, he numbered them)

My sweetest Ipsithilla, dear,
My cutie, I implore
Ask me to come at noon, and sweetie,
Please don't lock the door.

Be right at home and waiting for me,
There's no time to lose,
I want you to be ready, pet,
For nine continuous screws.

 

[midcan5]

American Horse, I liked the stanza and thought it should be easy to find the poet. Turned out it was an architect and a talented one. I found it in Google books after pasting and putting quotation marks on the last line.

I mostly agree with you on the Beat poets although there are a few I like. I want to post some one day. I tend towards more modern prose poetry, much older work seems forced to me. But Beat grew out of a time we cannot go back to, and often when we view the past, we do it through eyes too used to the present.

This thread seems popular as I see the number of views grow. I try to post only a poem a day even though I have lots, and occasionally even one of my own attempts. Carver is another favorite.

******************

'For Tess'

"Out on the Strait the water is whitecapping,
as they say here. It’s rough, and I’m glad
I’m not out. Glad I fished all day
on Morse Creek, casting a red Daredevil back
and forth. I didn’t catch anything. No bites
even, not one. But it was okay. It was fine!
I carried your dad’s pocketknife and was followed
for a while by a dog its owner called Dixie.
At times I felt so happy I had to quit
fishing. Once I lay on the bank with my eyes closed,
listening to the sound the water made,
and to the wind in the tops of the trees. The same wind
that blows out on the Strait, but a different wind, too.
For a while I even let myself imagine I had died –
and that was all right, at least for a couple
of minutes, until it really sank in: Dead.
As I was lying there with my eyes closed,
just after I’d imagined what it might be like
if in fact I never got up again, I thought of you.
I opened my eyes then and got right up
and went back to being happy again.
I’m grateful to you, you see. I wanted to tell you."

Raymond Carver

 

[American Horse]

American Horse, I liked the stanza and thought it should be easy to find the poet. Turned out it was an architect and a talented one. I found it in Google books after pasting and putting quotation marks on the last line.

I mostly agree with you on the Beat poets although there are a few I like. I want to post some one day. I tend towards more modern prose poetry, much older work seems forced to me. But Beat grew out of a time we cannot go back to, and often when we view the past, we do it through eyes too used to the present.

This thread seems popular as I see the number of views grow. I try to post only a poem a day even though I have lots, and occasionally even one of my own attempts.
******************

While our dog was still around I would walk her each evening for about an hour, and at the same time I would wear my "walkman-radio" and listen to NPR. At the end each day at 7:00 I would catch Garrison Keelor's reading of his poem for the day.

One a day was enough; more would've been more than enough, as poetry is something - probably like most anything else - which we can get too much of. For the same reason, seeing what you were doing, I hold back, careful not to pile on; maybe just enough to create a foil for yours and others.

 

[editec]

I guess I am a child of my times.

I seldom read poetry except for work.

Bob Dylan's lyrics are probably my favorite poetry

So here's something I find compelling.

But naturally, since I hear it sung in my mind's ear, even I can't tell whether I like it as poetry or as poetic song.

Guess it doesn't much matter.

Nobody feels any pain
Tonight as I stand here in the rain.
Everybody knows that baby's got new clothes,
But lately I see her ribbons and her bows
Have fallen from her curls.

She takes
just like a woman.
She makes love
just like a woman.
And then she aches
just like a woman.
But she breaks just like a little girl.

Queen Mary, she's my friend.
Yes I believe I'll go see her again.
Nobody has to guess
that baby can't be blessed
'Till she finally sees that she's like all the rest
With her fog, her amphetamines, and her pearls.

She takes
just like a woman.
She makes love
just like a woman.
And then she aches
just like a woman.
But she breaks just like a little girl.

It raining at first, and I was dying there of thirst,
So I came in here.
And your long-time curse hurts, but what's worse
Is this pain in here.
I can't stay in here.
Ain't it clear...
That I just can't fit.
I believe it's time for us to quit.
But when we met again and are introduced as friends,
Please don't let on that you knew me when
I was hungry, and it was your world.

You take
just like a woman.
You make love
just like a woman.
And then you ache
just like a woman.
But you break just like a little girl.

Bob Dylan

 

[midcan5]

'Starlight'

"My father stands in the warm evening
on the porch of my first house.
I am four years old and growing tired.
I see his head among the stars,
the glow of his cigarette, redder
than the summer moon riding
low over the old neighborhood. We
are alone, and he asks me if I am happy.
``Are you happy?'' I cannot answer.
I do not really understand the word,
and the voice, my father's voice, is not
his voice, but somehow thick and choked,
a voice I have not heard before, but
heard often since. He bends and passes
a thumb beneath each of my eyes.
The cigarette is gone, but I can smell
the tiredness that hangs on his breath.
He has found nothing, and he smiles
and holds my head with both his hands.
Then he lifts me to his shoulder,
and now I too am there among the stars,
as tall as he. Are you happy? I say.
He nods in answer, Yes! oh yes! oh yes!
And in that new voice he says nothing,
holding my head tight against his head,
his eyes closed up against the starlight,
as though those tiny blinking eyes
of light might find a tall, gaunt child
holding his child against the promises
of autumn, until the boy slept
never to waken in that world again."

Philip Levine - hear the poet (remove space)

h ttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0ilw12CpFg

 

[American Horse]

(From) Ovid's description of the creation of mankind:

And even though all other animals
lean forward and look down toward the ground,
he gave to man a face that is uplifted,
and ordered him to stand erect and look
directly up into the vaulted heavens
and turn his countenance to meet the stars;
the earth, that was so lately rude and formless,
was changed by taking on the shapes of men.

Publius Ovidius Naso (43 BC - 18 AD)

Charles Martin's poetic translation of Ovid’s Metamorphose Book I

 

[midcan5]

My wife and I

#2

My wife and I are watching 'House'
when an ad near an ocean highway
brings back to me the camping trips
we took in Nova Scotia with our boys.
My wife looks over at me,
'that's because you live in the past.'
This thought bewilders me,
I excuse the impulse
saying that it is the images
burned somewhere in my head
the many photographs
that bring these things
back into view.
Can we even live in the past,
why does it make one defensive,
often as we travel I tell her
places of some mishap
a bicycle flat,
when our son hears these stories
he laughs he shares these imprints.
The next morning I rise early
and into my heads come thoughts
of four AM rides
on bicycle summer winter
but as I turn to leave
I say only, 'see you later.'

mc5

 

[garyd]

"Ode on a Grecian
Urn" Truth be beauty, beauty be truth
Who is kidding whom?

 

[American Horse]

The Dirty Word

The dirty word hops in the cage of the mind like the Pondicherry
vulture, stomping with its heavy left claw on the sweet
nest of the brain and tearing it with its vicious beak, ripping
and chopping the flesh. Terrified, the small boy bears the big
bird of the dirty word into the house, and grunting, puffing,
carries it up the stairs to his own room in the skull. Bits of
black feather cling to his clothes and his hair as he locks the
staring creature in the dark closet.
. . . All day the small boy returns to the closet to examine
and feed the bird, to caress and kick the bird, that now snaps
and flaps its wings savagely whenever the door is opened. How
the boy trembles and delights at the sight of the white excrement
of the bird! How the bird leaps and rushes against the
walls of the skull, trying to escape from the zoo of the vocabulary!
How wildly snaps the sweet meat of the brain in its rage.
. . . And the bird outlives the man, being freed at the man’s
death-funeral by a word from the rabbi.
. . . (But I one morning went upstairs and opened the door
and entered the closet and found in the cage of my mind the
great bird dead. Softly I wept it and softly removed it and
softly buried the body of the bird in the hollyhock garden of
the house I lived in twenty years before. And out of the worn
black feathers of the wing have I made these pens to write
these elegies, for I have outlived the bird, and I have murdered
it in my early manhood.)

Ken Shapiro

.

 

[midcan5]

'Grief Calls Us to the Things of This World'

The morning air is all awash with angels. . .Richard Wilbur


"The eyes open to a blue telephone
In the bathroom of this five-star hotel.

I wonder whom I should call? A plumber,
Proctologist, urologist, or priest?

Who is most among us and most deserves
The first call? I choose my father because

He's astounded by bathroom telephones.
I dial home. My mother answers. "Hey, Ma,

I say, "Can I talk to Poppa?" She gasps,
And then I remember that my father

Has been dead for nearly a year. "Shit, Mom,"
I say. "I forgot he’s dead. I’m sorry—

How did I forget?" "It’s okay," she says.
"I made him a cup of instant coffee

This morning and left it on the table—
Like I have for, what, twenty-seven years—

And I didn't realize my mistake
Until this afternoon." My mother laughs

At the angels who wait for us to pause
During the most ordinary of days

And sing our praise to forgetfulness
Before they slap our souls with their cold wings.

Those angels burden and unbalance us.
Those fucking angels ride us piggyback.

Those angels, forever falling, snare us
And haul us, prey and praying, into dust."

Sherman Alexie

 

[Sky Dancer]

Whites Only - A Decasyllabic

The privilege of having a moustache
with matching blue eyes, and a complexion
prone to skin cancer; a long nose and thin
lips, has returned once more to Zimbabwe.
Who else can play the part of boers, jailers
and policemen so beloved of movie
directors from the USA and Great
Britain in movies such as "Cry Freedom"
and "The Power of One"? Parts well paid, mind
you, considering all you have to do
to look yourself for a second, or say
a few words in cartoon Afrikaans like
"Kaffir" and "Roer jou gat" and "Swart gevaar".
Since the heady days of Black Consciousness
in the seventies; Independence highs,
Post-independence lows in the eighties,
I have noted – not being a farmer
or a businessman – noted with relief
the rapid falling away, like cutis
from an unregenerative limb, of
privileges: access to publication,
scholarships, promotion in the public
service, parcels from Mrs Jellyby . . .
just when I began to think: We're even;
No more apologies, stepping aside,
head down, muttering, no more "after you"
in bread and passport queues, no more -isms
and -ists . . . just when the last crystals of guilt
in my joints had dissolved, this job – they give
you dark glasses if your eyes are gentle –
for white males with cruel faces only

© 1995, John Eppel
From: Sonata for Matabeleland

 

[Sky Dancer]

Racism still sadly continues


Racism comes in many different shapes and forms
Sadly I have had my fair share since I’ve been born
Judged before I have been even given a chance
Delaying my future and for my career to advance

My parents tell me of stories they have had to endure
I wish racism was a sickness with a dose of medication to cure
Thankfully there are good hearted and educated people
Who can look beyond skin colour and treat us all as an equal

Why would another person’s skin colour be such an issue?
Get to know them; they might have things in common just like you
I am so fed up of hearing “They from so and so, they all the same”
Everyone has differences but skin colour is not to blame

I wonder sometimes is it because the racist themselves are afraid to mix
Who knows, I am only looking for a solution to get it fixed
It’s a major problem none of us like or need,
How sad to hear, a racist sees skin colour the only reason to want to make you bleed
You see films like ‘Mississippi Burning’
I think to myself that was then but when are racist going to start learning?

If humans never saw in colour, what would it be like then?
I am sure everyone would get along and call each other friend
I hope my kids and the next generation never get to witness racism first hand
Lets pray for them racism was a issue in the past that no longer stands

Life is hard as it is, without the need of racism
Like supporting our family and giving our kids a good education
Ways to stop racism should begin at home and school
Getting along will be our biggest advantage, our strongest tool
I did have people who I did call friends
But their own racist views meant our friendship had to end

It does not matter, if your white, black or brown
You should feel safe to walk and talk in any town
Racism has to be erased from every country and every street
Knowing racism is not an issue when theirs someone new we meet
Everyone has the right to go anywhere they choose
Because whilst racism is still alive, no one wins, everybody lose

To those facing racism, all I can say is be brave and stay strong
To those racist, deep down in your heart you must know it’s wrong?
God blessed us by putting us here, giving us all different shades of colour
Were not meant to have the same colour skin, but we all can respect one another

Martin Luther King Jr said in 1963 “I have a dream”
But up to now it has yet to be seen

21.04.08

Amit Chubbah

 

[midcan5]

'In Praise of Feeling Bad About Yourself'

"The buzzard never says it is to blame.
The panther wouldn't know what scruples mean.
When the piranha strikes, it feels no shame.
If snakes had hands, they'd claim their hands were clean.

A jackal doesn't understand remorse.
Lions and lice don't waver in their course.
Why should they, when they know they're right?

Though hearts of killer whales may weigh a ton,
in every other way they're light.

On this third planet of the sun
among the signs of bestiality
a clear conscience is Number One."

Wislawa Szymborska

 

[American Horse]

(a quote: on "enlightenment" – From “ZEN TO GO” )

This is It
and I am It
and You are It
and so is That
and He is It
and She is It
And It is It
And That is That

James Broughton