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5302. ElliottRW - 9/13/2004 3:03:06 AM i have never read cummings but i know people who write like him in email
In Slate today, there is an article indirectly about a poet named George Starbuck who, it would seem, wrote the kind of poetry that I most appreciate.
(NOT that I don't appreciate the rhyme-free emotionally evocative stuff like NuPlanetOne's House For Sale, above--it's terrific--I just don't think of it as "poetry." Ok, maybe intellectually I recognize it as poetry and, sure, it really is poetry, but not to my inner eight-year-old.)
As it so happens, I've never read this Starbuck fellow, other than the excerpts in the article above, so I'm open to a second opinion. Otherwise, I'm going to try to pick something up from the library this weekend. 5303. wonkers2 - 9/13/2004 7:46:16 AM Elliott, how about this one?
ON THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION'S RESCINDING LIMITS
ON ARSENIC IN DRINKING WATER
Though arsenic's in what we drink,
It's not as nasty as you think.
Yes, hidden in the stroganoff
It's used to knocking people off.
But in your water it's okay--
That's what the mining interests say.
Apparently in Bush's view
It mixes well with CO2.
Calvin Trillin
April 16, 2001 5304. wonkers2 - 9/13/2004 7:49:21 AM Or this one:
ON BUSH BREAKING HIS CAMPAIGN PLEDGE
TO LIMIT CARBON-DIOXIDE EMISSIONS
Yes, W once took the view
That CO2 is bad for you.
He says he's had a turnabout:
We make this stuff when breathing out,
So dangerous is what it's not.
From lobbyists you learn a lot.
Calvin Trillin
April 8, 2001 5305. RickNelson - 9/13/2004 9:33:58 AM Good article ElliottRW.
It's the first time I've read of him as well. He definitely motivates investigation. 5306. RickNelson - 9/13/2004 9:34:49 AM wonkers2, Those Tillin's are funny. 5307. RickNelson - 9/14/2004 12:07:40 AM
Three poems by Yusef Komunyakaa these will appear on this link only today, then an archive search will show them thereafter.
I was reading "Romance" by Stanley Moss on Slate. It left me with a humdrum feeling. I read three other works by Moss and found them alike. Of course it's not comprehensive of him, but these four poems are what I don't like in some poetry. Again to praise NuPlanetOne, his poems exude the style which Moss falls flat upon. Give me a bone why don't ya, Moss gives a bit of half rotten branch to gnaw.
Now Yusof Komunyakaa in the link above has something that plays along and kept me reading. I don't follow why older writers get off on the historical references, but maybe someday I will. I do get off on the black man compendiousness of his themes. Of course I have to take his word for it, but seems like a good bet to me.
Gotta love Y.K.
5308. RickNelson - 9/14/2004 12:32:33 PM The yet to end stream
pebbly washes flicker
and star glare in my eyes
set upon a glittered sun beam.
Frogs, crickets and flies
are background percussion
and strings. As senses are attune
of the drift of air to my ears and eyes.
The air moves past clean stands of pine,
whose aged bark are slate like variegations.
And each step through brushing grasses,
is perfumed by a wind blown pantomime.
I started this poem today. I'm worried about time that I'll have for writting. 5309. Ulgine Barrows - 9/15/2004 3:41:38 PM ODE TO FLATULENCE
Sometimes, there's a mis-step
The dragon in the background
Chews up your insides
Solemnly, you lift a cheek
Solar panels flare
Airborne 5310. Ulgine Barrows - 9/15/2004 3:43:19 PM Errr... you'll make the time, if you want. 5311. Ulgine Barrows - 9/15/2004 3:53:18 PM Anything's better than THAT.
where's tmesis,VNuPlanetOne, JustEars? 5312. RickNelson - 9/23/2004 3:00:06 PM Republican's got the little ditto head
the little ditto head, the little ditto head
Republican's got the little ditto head
yeah, yeah, yeah--
And Al Franken smacks the big one.
5313. NuPlanetOne - 9/23/2004 7:21:00 PM
Elliott I too somehow feel that unrhymed poetry is somewhat less poetic in a sense than rhymed verse. But I am getting over that. I mostly write some rhyme scheme into my stuff, but I also have written things I liked without rhyming. And it may be that the bulk of poetry is unrhymed. Anyone got stats? Anyway, thanks rick for comparing me to anyone, especially when I come out on top..lol.
5314. NuPlanetOne - 9/23/2004 7:21:28 PM /
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Watching and Wishing
Boy! This TV really makes it all
Looked so connected
Like we are all together
Like we were all collected
And put here on a stage
Oh, not to strut in rage
In some melodramatic soliloquy
Demanding to know what will I be
But placed and spaced
Into far reaching corners
That once in days gone by
No one would even try
To get to. Even if they would let you
They simply didn’t exist
Because they were so far away
Fifty miles was enough to enlist
Help and special planning
Yet now I sit and watch
People in conflict beyond the hill
Beyond the ocean, the mountains
With no messenger to kill
Strangers with a holy will
To destroy all that disagree
There’s no hiding or abiding
By rules. No one is denying
No one is even trying to evade
Or mollify their intentions
And it is disturbing, unnerving
It feels like I am swerving
To avoid a catastrophe
And it ruins my day
Upsets my week-ends
Interrupts my dinner and
I fear I will grow thinner
And anxious and I hope
Soon, they will declare a winner
When I tune in later
And see those people far away
I wish they could say
They are gone.
5315. Ulgine Barrows - 9/24/2004 7:09:28 AM 5313. NuPlanetOne....
And it may be that the bulk of poetry is unrhymed. Anyone got stats?
Whyever would you want stats, crazy person?
Numbers don't matter in poetry.....it's all about words.....
You're fine, we like reading. 5316. Macnas - 10/1/2004 8:29:46 AM Now, I'm not a big fan of Heaney, but as he's been mentioned in the Cafe and I can't recall seeing his work here before, I'll post my favourite of his.
Harvest Bow.
As you plaited the harvest bow
You implicated the mellowed silence in you
In wheat that does not rust
But brightens as it tightens twist by twist
Into a knowable corona,
A throwaway love-knot of straw.
Hands that aged round ashplants and cane sticks
And lapped the spurs on a lifetime of game cocks
Harked to their gift and worked with fine intent
Until your fingers moved somnambulant:
I tell and finger it like braille,
Gleaning the unsaid off the palpable,
And if I spy into its golden loops
I see us walk between the railway slopes
Into an evening of long grass and midges,
Blue smoke straight up, old beds and ploughs in hedges,
An auction notice on an outhouse wall--
You with a harvest bow in your lapel,
Me with the fishing rod, already homesick
For the big lift of these evenings, as your stick
Whacking the tips off weeds and bushes
Beats out of time, and beats, but flushes
Nothing: that original townland
Still tongue-tied in the straw tied by your hand.
The end of art is peace
Could be the motto of this frail device
That I have pinned up on our deal dresser--
Like a drawn snare
Slipped lately by the spirit of the corn
Yet burnished by its passage, and still warm.
5317. Ulgine Barrows - 10/1/2004 9:12:13 AM Well, don't I just love that phrase......
But brightens as it tightens twist by twist
It's super! 5318. alistairconnor - 10/1/2004 9:30:15 AM That whole first verse, a universal image of autumn, stands alone very well.
It sounds well in my mind, but it looks well on the page too : It goes beyond alliteration : the repeated w's : twist knowable throwaway straw : hypnotic plaiting pattern.
The rest is rest is more local, cultural, personal: harder work. 5319. Macnas - 10/1/2004 9:47:20 AM I suppose that's why I like it, and probably why I prefer Irish poetry more than any other.
In the above poem, he is very close in style and content to Paddy Kavanagh. 5320. Macnas - 10/1/2004 9:48:48 AM This last is my other favourite, for similar reasons.
Personal Helicon
As a child, they could not keep me from wells
And old pumps with buckets and windlasses.
I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells
Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss.
One, in a brickyard, with a rotted board top.
I savoured the rich crash when a bucket
Plummeted down at the end of a rope.
So deep you saw no reflection in it.
A shallow one under a dry stone ditch
Fructified like any aquarium.
When you dragged out long roots from the soft mulch
A white face hovered over the bottom.
Others had echoes, gave back your own call
With a clean new music in it. And one
Was scaresome, for there, out of ferns and tall
Foxgloves, a rat slapped across my reflection.
Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime,
To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring
Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme
To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.
5321. alistairconnor - 10/1/2004 10:12:51 AM There are universal reasons for liking Irish poetry above other English language traditions. The shape of the language, the music of it, and the manner of telling a tale (tired clichés!).
So much poetry in English is abrupt or stuffy.
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