Candy is dandy
But liquor is quicker
O. Nash
Candy is dandy
But liquor is quicker
O. Nash
All this thread proves is that people don't read poetry unless they're required to. I mean every poem cited is taught in high-school or college. Read something that isn't almost 100 years old for once.
not true. look at Hadd(away)'s reply
darkness imprisoning me
all that I see absolute horror
I cannot live, I cannot die
trapped in myself
body my holding cell
If there is a scheme,
perhaps this too is in the scheme,
as when a subway car turns on a switch,
the wheels screeching against the rails,
and the lights go out—
but are on again in a moment.
Charles Reznikoff (1894-1976)
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost
^case in point. How do you fight stupidity?????
I saw the best minds of my generation etcetera
The Bridge by Hart Crane. The finest American poem of the twentieth century, smacks T.S. Eliot in the face.
On the Increasing Diminution of Our Lives
“It is estimated that Americans now spend, on average,
fourteen years of their lives watching TV.”
* * * * * * * * * *
Fourteen divided by seventy-four — a life span.
Multiply the quotient by one hundred.
Nineteen percent.
About one-fifth of your life (if you’re average, of course).
Sever one complete leg from your body.
Take it from the hip down. That’s close to a fifth.
Now run fast.
Take your house and board up a room,
without first removing anything from it.
How cramped does it feel?
Are there five in your family. Shoot one. Any one.
How long will you grieve?
Drop your salary from forty to thirty-two thousand.
Burn eight thousand one-dollar bills, one at a time.
Cover yourself with their ashes.
What is twenty percent of our vision? When gone,
are we legally blind?
Lose ten points from your IQ. Slam your head
against a brick wall, repeatedly.
Can you still read this?
And if this is all too daunting, go down easy:
watch others live their lives,
disregard your own, the real one,
the one slipping away.
There once was a man from Nantucket...
IGNORANCE OF THE LAW IS NO EXCUSE
by John Ashbery
We were warned about spiders, and the occasional famine.
We drove downtown to see our neighbors. None of them were home.
We nestled in yards the municipality had created,
reminisced about other, different places—
but were they? Hadn't we known it all before?
In vineyards where the bee's hymn drowns the monotony,
we slept for peace, joining in the great run.
He came up to me.
It was all as it had been,
except for the weight of the present,
that scuttled the pact we had made with heaven.
In truth there was no cause for rejoicing,
nor need to turn around, either.
We were lost just by standing,
listening to the hum of wires overhead.
We mourned that meritocracy which, wildly vibrant,
had kept food on the table and milk in the glass.
In skid-row, slapdash style
we walked back to the original rock crystal he had become,
all concern, all fears for us.
We went down gently
to the bottom-most step. There you can grieve and breathe,
rinse your possessions in the chilly spring.
Only beware the bears and wolves that frequent it
and the shadow that comes when you expect dawn.
You went to one hell of a college "I'm making fun of the thread." My three date from within the last couple of decades.
I haven't noticed any woman poets. Here's one, plus she gets running into it:
Sex Without Love
How do they do it, the ones who make love
without love? Beautiful as dancers,
gliding over each other like ice-skaters
over the ice, fingers hooked
inside each other's bodies, faces
red as steak, wine, wet as the
children at birth whose mothers are going to
give them away. How do they come to the
come to the come to the God come to the
still waters, and not love
the one who came there with them, light
rising slowly as steam off their joined
skin? Theer are the true religious,
the purists, the pros, the ones who will not
accept a false Messiah, love the
priest instead of the God. They do not
mistake the lover for their own pleasure,
they are like great runners: they know they are alone
with the road surface, the cold, the wind,
the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio-
vascular health -- just factors, like the partner
in the bed, and not the truth, which is the
single body alone in the universe
against its own best time.
Sharon Olds
and another woman:
The Way Things Work
is by admitting
or opening away.
This is the simplest form
of current: Blue
moving through blue;
blue through purple;
the objects of desire
opening upon themselves
without us;
the objects of faith.
The way things work
is by solution,
resistance lessened or
increased and taken
advantage of.
The way things work
is that we finally believe
they are there,
common and able
to illustrate themselves.
Wheel, kinetic flow,
rising and falling water,
ingots, levers and keys,
I believe in you,
cylinder lock, pully,
lifting tackle and
crane lift your small head --
I believe in you --
your head is the horizon to
my hand. I believe
forever in the hooks.
The way things work
is that eventually
something catches.
Jorie Graham
and finally for you masters:
Forty Something
She says to him, musing, "If you ever leave me,
and marry a younger woman and have another baby,
I'll put a knife in your heart." They are in bed,
so she climbs onto his chest, and looks directly
down into his eyes. "You understand? Your heart."
Robert Haas
Whoops!
In "Sex Without Love"
"theer are the true religious" should be
"these are the true religious"
Sorry.
Bennett Edelman's disciple wrote:
(DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT,)*
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
(RAGE, RAGE, AGAINST THE DYING OF THE LIGHT.)*
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
- Dylan Thomas
*Please quote great literary works correctly, dummy.
And fot the rest of you numb nuts: stop doing this ass's homework for him.
aw, we're just giving him source material.
you'll notice that nobody's explaining anything, saying why we like things, etc. that part, he's got to do for himself.
my guess was that the work was due the first day school started again ... likely tuesday ... so our student probably doesn't need us any more. he (or she) hasn't posted again, right?
and another typo from me:
"Robert Haas" is of course "Robert Hass."
How am I supposed to explain why somebody likes a certain poem with out them telling me? Part of the project was for me to get the reason why they liked the poem.
Pemberton wrote:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost
Dammit, We went a page and a half without someone posting this. While I'm ridiculously surprised no one posted it sooner, I'm ridiculously disappointed anyone posted it at all. Ugh.
the bee
I suppose like any other boy
I had one best friend in the neighborhood.
his name was Eugene and he was bigger
than I was and one year older.
Eugene used to whip me pretty good.
we fought all the time.
I kept trying him but without much
success.
once we leaped off a garage roof together
to prove our guts.
I twisted my ankle and he came up clean
as freshly-wrapped butter.
I guess the only good thing he ever did for me
was when the bee stung me while I was barefoot
and while I sat down and pulled the stinger out
he said,
"I'll get the son of a bitch!"
and he did
with a tennis racket
plus a rubber hammer.
it was all right
they say they die
anyway.
my foot swelled up double-size
and I stayed in bed
praying for death
and Eugene went on to become an
Admiral or a Commander
or something large int he United States Navy
and he passed through on or two wars
without injury.
I imagine him an old man now
in a rocking chair
with his false teeth
and glass of buttermilk...
while drunk
I fingerf%$k this 19 year old groupie
in bed with me.
but the worst part is
(like jumping off the garage roof)
Eugene wins again
because he's not even thinking
about me.
---Charles Bukowski
Yo - How is your project going? Do you need more poetry and comments?