Poetry

[Ben Staad]

I'm not sure if anyone is a fan of poetry but I thought I would create a thread. The intent would be to share poetry you like, have written, written by others, enjoy it, and/or discuss it. It's wide open.

[Ben Staad]

Death Again by Jim Harrison

Let’s not get romantic or dismal about death.
Indeed it’s our most unique act along with birth.
We must think of it as cooking breakfast,
it’s that ordinary. Break two eggs into a bowl
or break a bowl into two eggs. Slip into a coffin
after the fluids have been drained, or better yet,
slide into the fire. Of course it’s a little hard
to accept your last kiss, your last drink,
your last meal about which the condemned
can be quite particular as if there could be
a cheeseburger sent by God. A few lovers
sweep by the inner eye, but it’s mostly a placid
lake at dawn, mist rising, a solitary loon
call, and staring into the still, opaque water.
We’ll know as children again all that we are
destined to know, that the water is cold
and deep, and the sun penetrates only so far.

[RonClinton]

Death Again by Jim Harrison

Let’s not get romantic or dismal about death.
Indeed it’s our most unique act along with birth.
We must think of it as cooking breakfast,
it’s that ordinary. Break two eggs into a bowl
or break a bowl into two eggs. Slip into a coffin
after the fluids have been drained, or better yet,
slide into the fire. Of course it’s a little hard
to accept your last kiss, your last drink,
your last meal about which the condemned
can be quite particular as if there could be
a cheeseburger sent by God. A few lovers
sweep by the inner eye, but it’s mostly a placid
lake at dawn, mist rising, a solitary loon
call, and staring into the still, opaque water.
We’ll know as children again all that we are
destined to know, that the water is cold
and deep, and the sun penetrates only so far.

I always dismiss poetry…until I read something like the above and realize there can be an appealing degree of power and substance in the form.

[Ben Staad]

Glad you took something away from this. When short form is done right it can be fantastic. 

I read something like the above and it gets my gears going and engages my brain.

I always dismiss poetry…until I read something like the above and realize there can be an appealing degree of power and substance in the form.

 

[Dave1442397]

I always liked this one:


The Second Coming by W.B. Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.




Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   

The darkness drops again; but now I know   

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
 

[Ben Staad]

I don't think I've ever read that one. I like it!

 

[RonClinton]

A couple from Joseph Payne Brennan, whose prose I love and whose macabre, pessimistic poetry I admire and, at times, revel in.

Sleepers are mangled by the scythe of dreams;
every spastic turning takes a knife.
Out of childhood's thicket creeps the ghost
We thought was banished with the hopscotch squares.
Out of the drunken tunnel of our loves
the old sad terrors slowly reel.
Fears have flaming faces;gains are lost.
Naked in our nightmare need, we know at last
the fissures never filled, the crevices we kept.
We glimpse again with eyes that lose their lids
the grey ineffable ghoul of all our days.

And this second one:

In cold October rain I go again
down grey neglected streets my father knew,
past blackened walls and rows of silent houses
where years have watched their sullen scars accrue.

The chilling autumn rain sweeps steadily
as if it fell forever out of Time.
I walk unseen till I become a wraith,
a witless marionette, in some dim pantomime.

No one stands at the vanished door I seek,
no one waits in the light to lead me home again.
The silent houses mock me with their ruin
as if they mocked ghosts as well as men.

[Ben Staad]

Thanks for sharing. I came back for another reading of the 2nd one. So good.

A couple from Joseph Payne Brennan, whose prose I love and whose macabre, pessimistic poetry I admire and, at times, revel in.

Sleepers are mangled by the scythe of dreams;
every spastic turning takes a knife.
Out of childhood's thicket creeps the ghost
We thought was banished with the hopscotch squares.
Out of the drunken tunnel of our loves
the old sad terrors slowly reel.
Fears have flaming faces;gains are lost.
Naked in our nightmare need, we know at last
the fissures never filled, the crevices we kept.
We glimpse again with eyes that lose their lids
the grey ineffable ghoul of all our days.

And this second one:

In cold October rain I go again
down grey neglected streets my father knew,
past blackened walls and rows of silent houses
where years have watched their sullen scars accrue.

The chilling autumn rain sweeps steadily
as if it fell forever out of Time.
I walk unseen till I become a wraith,
a witless marionette, in some dim pantomime.

No one stands at the vanished door I seek,
no one waits in the light to lead me home again.
The silent houses mock me with their ruin
as if they mocked ghosts as well as men.

 

[Sock Monkey]

Truth be told, traditionally I am not a big fan of poetry. I often find there to be a tendency to keep readers at arm's length and the difficulties that some poets put in the path of their readers understanding to not be worth the effort put into it. All that being said, I have had to do some poetry analysis over the last year or so and it really opened my eyes to the breadth of poetry and that not all of it is as pretentious as I thought it was. One of the more interesting poems that I had to analyze--and actually chose to do a paper on--was Charles Baudelaire's "A Carcass." Baudelaire was big fan of Poe and I think you can see that same macabre sensibilities reflected in the poem below.

"A Carcass" by Charles Baudelaire

Remember, my love, the object we saw
That beautiful morning in June:
By a bend in the path a carcass reclined
On a bed sown with pebbles and stones;

Her legs were spread out like a lecherous whore,
Sweating out poisonous fumes,
Who opened in slick invitational style
Her stinking and festering womb.

The sun on this rottenness focused its rays
To cook the cadaver till done,
And render to Nature a hundredfold gift
Of all she'd united in one.

And the sky cast an eye on this marvellous meat
As over the flowers in bloom.
The stench was so wretched that there on the grass
You nearly collapsed in a swoon.

The flies buzzed and droned on these bowels of filth
Where an army of maggots arose,
Which flowed with a liquid and thickening stream
On the animate rags of her clothes.

And it rose and it fell, and pulsed like a wave,
Rushing and bubbling with health.
One could say that this carcass, blown with vague breath,
Lived in increasing itself.

And this whole teeming world made a musical sound
Like babbling brooks and the breeze,
Or the grain that a man with a winnowing-fan
Turns with a rhythmical ease.

The shapes wore away as if only a dream
Like a sketch that is left on the page
Which the artist forgot and can only complete
On the canvas, with memory's aid.

From back in the rocks, a pitiful bitch
Eyed us with angry distaste,
Awaiting the moment to snatch from the bones
The morsel she'd dropped in her haste.

And you, in your turn, will be rotten as this:
Horrible, filthy, undone,
O sun of my nature and star of my eyes,
My passion, my angel in one!

Yes, such will you be, o regent of grace,
After the rites have been read,
Under the weeds, under blossoming grass
As you moulder with bones of the dead.

Ah then, o my beauty, explain to the worms
Who cherish your body so tine,
That I am the keeper for corpses of love
Of the form, and the essence divine!

[Ben Staad]

Sock Monkey I will need to give that one a second and probably third read to wrap my mind around it.

For me I have always enjoyed that frustrating aspect of poetry. Each reader can stylize the meaning to whatever they wish, to match their moment, to fit the readers narrative.