Poetry Corner

[Jazz]

Anyone here write any poetry? Anyone want to post some? I'll go first! (I don't pretend to be any good)

Its times like these that I miss her the most

In the deep quiet of the night when the world is deserted

It is the misty darkness, evoking images of Bogart Lampposts

And Muted Miles Trumpets that reminds me that she is far away,

Not only in distance, but in our thoughts and feelings.

When the hour is both late and early and the graveyard shift

Workers are starting their day

When the streets are sleeping, resting from their all important

Weekly duties as portals to other lands

These are the lonely times known only to the nightowls,

The patrons of all night Dennys and late night cafes.

Yet I know she thinks of me as well in the late hours.

I know she also has trouble sleeping and I know

That we think of eachother, sometimes, in the same

Still moments that overtake us and wrench our hearts.

I know she loves me and always will. and may that love

Transform me into something much better than I am now.

[patricia]

Beautiful, Jazz.

My favourite poem was written by Francis W. Bourdillon [1852-1951]

Here it is:

The night has a thousand eyes,

And the day but one.

Yet the light of the bright world dies

With the dying sun.

The mind has a thousand eyes,

And the heart but one

Yet the light of a whole life dies

When love is done.

[And you thought this was a Bobby Vinton composition.]

[Jazz]

That was an awesome poem Patricia! I'll have to check out Bourdillon. Do you write any poetry?

On the subject of love, here is a poem I wrote for an independent musicians forum:

Posted by Jazz on another forum

Its a strange thing when you're in love. It's like a pickle. It's sour at times but oh so good. In fact, I think love deserves a poem.

Love

by Jazz

Widgey pit, Widgey pit

Where art thou shoes?

Snippy pit, Snippy pit

Your shoes did thou lose!

Smacka bamba wamba too

Your feet are all cold!

Chocka chocka choo choo

The cheese is full of mold!

Wind it, and grind it

Now its like grain

Make a funny face

Now do it again!!!

yay for love. Yay I say.

[Alexander]

I don't write poetry myself, but as I am an English teacher-in-training, I have several favorites that I can share. Here's one:

THE SUN RISING

By John Donne

Busy old fool, unruly sun,

Why dost thou thus

Through windows and through curtains call on us?

Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run?

Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide

Late schoolboys and sour prentices,

Go tell court huntsmen that the King will ride,

Call country ants to harvest offices;

Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,

Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

Thy Beams, so reverend and strong

Why shouldst thou think?

I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,

But that I would not lose her sight so long;

If her eyes have not blinded thine,

Look, and tomorrow late, tell me,

Whether both th' Indias of spice and mine

Be where thou leftst them, or lie here with me.

Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,

And thou shalt hear, All here in one bed lay.

She is all states, and all princes I,

Nothing else is.

Princes do but play us; compared to this,

All honor's mimic, all wealth alchemy.

Thou, sun, art half as happy as we,

In that the world's contracted thus;

Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be

To warm the world, that's done in warming us.

Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;

This bed thy center is, these walls thy sphere.

Another favorite:

This Is Just To Say

William Carlos Williams

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold

[Alexander]

Another favorite:

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

T.S. Eliot

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse

A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,

Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.

Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo

Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,

Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

LET us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherised upon a table;

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,

The muttering retreats

Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:

Streets that follow like a tedious argument

Of insidious intent

To lead you to an overwhelming question …

Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”

Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes

Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,

Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,

Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,

Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,

And seeing that it was a soft October night,

Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time

For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,

Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;

There will be time, there will be time

To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;

There will be time to murder and create,

And time for all the works and days of hands

That lift and drop a question on your plate;

Time for you and time for me,

And time yet for a hundred indecisions,

And for a hundred visions and revisions,

Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time

To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”

Time to turn back and descend the stair,

With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—

[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]

My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,

My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—

[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”]

Do I dare

Disturb the universe?

In a minute there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:—

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

I know the voices dying with a dying fall

Beneath the music from a farther room.

So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—

The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,

And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,

When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,

Then how should I begin

To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?

And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—

Arms that are braceleted and white and bare

[but in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]

It is perfume from a dress

That makes me so digress?

Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.

And should I then presume?

And how should I begin?

. . . . .

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets

And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes

Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…

I should have been a pair of ragged claws

Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

. . . . .

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!

Smoothed by long fingers,

Asleep … tired … or it malingers,

Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.

Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,

Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?

But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,

Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,

I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,

And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,

And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,

After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,

Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,

Would it have been worth while,

To have bitten off the matter with a smile,

To have squeezed the universe into a ball

To roll it toward some overwhelming question,

To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,

Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—

If one, settling a pillow by her head,

Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.

That is not it, at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,

Would it have been worth while,

After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,

After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—

And this, and so much more?—

It is impossible to say just what I mean!

But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:

Would it have been worth while

If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,

And turning toward the window, should say:

“That is not it at all,

That is not what I meant, at all.”

. . . . .

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;

Am an attendant lord, one that will do

To swell a progress, start a scene or two,

Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,

Deferential, glad to be of use,

Politic, cautious, and meticulous;

Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;

At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—

Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old … I grow old …

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?

I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves

Combing the white hair of the waves blown back

When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea

By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown

Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

[Alexander]

Another great T.S. Eliot poem. I read this one to my daughter all the time:

Song of the Jellicles

Jellicle Cats come out tonight,

Jellicle Cats come one come all:

The Jellicle Moon is shining bright--

Jellicles come to the Jellicle Ball.

Jellicle Cats are black and white,

Jellicle Cats are rather small;

Jellicle Cats are merry and bright,

And pleasant to hear when they caterwaul.

Jellicle Cats have cheerful faces,

Jellicle Cats have bright black eyes;

They like to practise their airs and graces

And wait for the Jellicle Moon to rise.

Jellicle Cats develop slowly,

Jellicle Cats are not too big;

Jellicle Cats are roly-poly,

They know how to dance a gavotte and a jig.

Until the Jellicle Moon appears

They make their toilette and take their repose:

Jellicles wash behind their ears,

Jellicles dry between their toes.

Jellicle Cats are white and black,

Jellicle Cats are of moderate size;

Jellicles jump like a jumping-jack,

Jellicle Cats have moonlit eyes.

They're quiet enough in the morning hours,

They're quiet enough in the afternoon,

Reserving their terpsichorean powers

To dance by the light of the Jellicle Moon.

Jellicle Cats are black and white,

Jellicle Cats (as I said) are small;

If it happens to be a stormy night

They will practise a caper or two in the hall.

If it happens the sun is shining bright

You would say they had nothing to do at all:

They are resting and saving themselves to be right

For the Jellicle Moon and the Jellicle Ball.

[Alexander]

This is one I found myself returning to a lot following 9/11/2001:

September 1, 1939

W. H. Auden

I sit in one of the dives

On Fifty-second Street

Uncertain and afraid

As the clever hopes expire

Of a low dishonest decade:

Waves of anger and fear

Circulate over the bright

And darkened lands of the earth,

Obsessing our private lives;

The unmentionable odour of death

Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can

Unearth the whole offence

From Luther until now

That has driven a culture mad,

Find what occurred at Linz,

What huge imago made

A psychopathic god:

I and the public know

What all schoolchildren learn,

Those to whom evil is done

Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew

All that a speech can say

About Democracy,

And what dictators do,

The elderly rubbish they talk

To an apathetic grave;

Analysed all in his book,

The enlightenment driven away,

The habit-forming pain,

Mismanagement and grief:

We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air

Where blind skyscrapers use

Their full height to proclaim

The strength of Collective Man,

Each language pours its vain

Competitive excuse:

But who can live for long

In an euphoric dream;

Out of the mirror they stare,

Imperialism's face

And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar

Cling to their average day:

The lights must never go out,

The music must always play,

All the conventions conspire

To make this fort assume

The furniture of home;

Lest we should see where we are,

Lost in a haunted wood,

Children afraid of the night

Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash

Important Persons shout

Is not so crude as our wish:

What mad Nijinsky wrote

About Diaghilev

Is true of the normal heart;

For the error bred in the bone

Of each woman and each man

Craves what it cannot have,

Not universal love

But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark

Into the ethical life

The dense commuters come,

Repeating their morning vow;

"I will be true to the wife,

I'll concentrate more on my work,"

And helpless governors wake

To resume their compulsory game:

Who can release them now,

Who can reach the deaf,

Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice

To undo the folded lie,

The romantic lie in the brain

Of the sensual man-in-the-street

And the lie of Authority

Whose buildings grope the sky:

There is no such thing as the State

And no one exists alone;

Hunger allows no choice

To the citizen or the police;

We must love one another or die.

Defenceless under the night

Our world in stupor lies;

Yet, dotted everywhere,

Ironic points of light

Flash out wherever the Just

Exchange their messages:

May I, composed like them

Of Eros and of dust,

Beleaguered by the same

Negation and despair,

Show an affirming flame.

[Jazzdog]

Images by Tyrone GreenePerformed by Eddie Murphy (date unknown)

Dark and lonely on a summer's night

Kill my landlord

Kill my landlord

Watchdog barking

Do he bite?

Kill my landlord

Kill my landlord

Slip in his window

Break his neck

Then his house

I start to wreck

Got no reason

What the heck

Kill my Landlord

Kill my landlord

C-I-L-L

my l a n d l o r d

Edited December 8, 2003 by Jazzdog

[Chuck Nessa]

Roses are red

Violets are blue

Phrases that rhyme

Make me want to spew

[Jazzmoose]

Here I sit, broken hearted...

[connoisseur series500]

Great Thread, Jazz!

I haven't written any poetry for years, but here are a couple about my Bangkok years, which I wrote years ago, and I may have already posted them in another thread.

1/30/96

Nonday siesta in Hua Hin.

The long climb up the hillside temple,

Sitting on the embankment,

Fanned by banana leaves.

I stare into forever.

The pull of week's imperatives

Melt into hill vegetation below

And the beach beyond.

Windwashed Buddha: calm the ocean.

Here in the pocket of the universe

At this tick of time, in the arms of this hill

May all things cease and ambition

Be abeyant.

Soft moment: lay your cloak on all which strive;

Amber us now to where we are;

Melt our sun-seeking wings.

Searching for Sunday

The wind shakes the tree in an ancient way.

Day without agenda; and man the animal

Of purpose bedding it on Sunday.

Lizards streaking in timed spurts across the ceiling.

Seeking the sun through frosted panes

For reasons beyond the glare.

Slack sails on a breezy Sunday.

Such quiet drove Fritz to drink.

One meets the light as haltingly as hesitantly

As one enters a Chinaman's shop.

Motorcycles roar at the green light,

And I lie lost in the seven layers of my bed.

Searching for Sunday in the whore's brown flesh.

I know the exile's sorrow.

(These aren't strictly autobiographical, btw, somewhat, but not entirely)

Will dig up some real poets to quote.

[Larry Kart]

Here's one by English poet/jazz pianist Roy Fisher:

THE THING ABOUT JOE SULLIVAN

The pianist Joe Sullivan

jamming sound against idea

hard as it can go

florid and dangerous

slams at the beat, or hovers,

drumming, along its spikes,

in his time almost the only

one of them to ignore

the chance of easing down,

walking it leisurely,

he'll strut, with gambling shapes,

underpinning by James P.,

amble, and then stride over

gulfs of his own leaving, perilously

toppling octaves down to where

the chords grow fat again

and ride hard-edged, most lucidly

voiced, and in good inversions even when

the piano seems at risk of being

hammered the next second into scrap.

For all that, he won't swing

like all the others;

disregards mere continuity,

the snakecharming business,

the 'masturbator's rhythm'

under the long variations:

Sullivan can gut a sequence

in one chorus--

--approach, development, climax, discard--

and sound magnanimous.

The mannerism of intensity

often with him seems true,

too much to be said, the mood

pressing in right at the start, then

running among stock forms

that could play themselves

and moving there with such

quickness of intellect

that shapes flaw and fuse,

altering without much sign,

concentration

so wrapped up in thoroughness

it can sound bluff, bustling

just big-handed stuff--

belied by what drives him in

to make rigid, display,

shout and abscond, rather

than just let it come, let it go--

And that thing is his mood:

a feeling violent and ordinary

that runs in among standard forms so

wrapped up in clarity

that fingers following his

through figures that sound obvious

find corners everywhere,

marks of invention, wakefulness;

the rapid and perverse

tracks that ordinary feelings

make when they get driven

hard enough against time.

[connoisseur series500]

Here are a few from a poet I really like. Will quote more if people like his stuff:

Filling her compact & delicious body

with chicken paprika, she glanced at me

twice.

Fainting with interest, I hungered back

and only the fact of her husband & four other people

kept me from springing on her

or falling at her little feet and crying

'You are the hottest one for years of night

Henry's dazed eyes

have enjoyed Brilliance,' I advanced upon

(despairing) my spumoni. --Sir Bones: is stuffed,

de world, wif feeding girls.

--Black hair, complexion Latin, jewelled eyes

downcast...The slob beside her feasts...What wonders is

she stting on, over there?

The restaurant buzzes. She might as well be on Mars.

Where did it all go wrong? there ought to be a law against Henry.

--Mr Bones, there is.

-----------------

God bless Henry. He lived like a rat,

with a thatch of hair on his head

in the beginning.

Henry was not a coward. Much.

He never deserted anything; instead

he stuck, when things like pity were thinning.

So may be Henry was a human being.

Let's investigate that.

...We did; okay.

He is a human and American man.

That's true. My lass is braking.

My brass is aching. Come & diminish me, & map my way.

God's Henry's enemy. We're in business...Why,

what business must be clear.

A cornering.

I couldn't feel more like it. --Mr. Bones,

as I look on the saffron sky,

you strikes me as ornery.

-----------------------

The high ones die, die. They die. You look up and who's there?

--Easy, easy, Mr. Bones. I is on your side.

I smell your grief.

--I sent my grief away. I cannot care

forever. With them all again & again I died

and cried, and I have to live.

--Now there you exaggerate, Sah. We hafta die.

That is our 'pointed task. Love & die.

--Yes; that makes sense.

But what makes sense between then? What if I

roiling & babbling & braining, brood on why and

just sat on the fence?

--I doubts you did or do. De choice is lost.

--It's fool's gold. But I go in for that.

The boy & the bear

looked at each other. Man all is tossed

& lost with groin-wounds by the grand bulls, cat.

William Faulkner's where?

(Frost being still around.)

---------------------------

I'm scared a lonely. Never see my son,

easy be not to see anyone,

combers out to sea

know they're goin somewhere but not me.

Got a little poison, got a little gun,

I'm scared a lonely.

I'm scared a only one thing, which is me,

from othering I don't take nothin, see,

for any hound dog's sake.

But this is where I livin, where I rake

my leaves and cop my promise, this' where we

cry oursel's awake.

Wishin was dyin but I gotta make

it all this way to that bed on these feet

where peoples said to meet.

Maybe but even if I see my son

forever never, get back on the take,

free, black & forty-one.

----------------------------------

Bats have no bankers and they do not drink

and cannot be arrested and pay no tax

and, in general, bats have it made.

Henry for joining the human race is bats,

known to be so, by few them who think,

out of the cave.

Instead of the cave! ah lovely-chilly, dark,

ur-moist his cousins hand in hundreds or swerve

with personal radar,

crisisless, kid. Instead of the cave? I serve,

inside, my blind term. Filthy four-foot lights

reflect on the whites of our eyes.

He then salutes for sixty years of it

just now a one of valor and insights,

a theatrical man,

O scholar & Legionnaire who as quickly might

have killed as cast you. Ole. Stormed with years

he tranquil commands and appears.

---------------------

Also I love him: me he's done no wrong

for going on forty years--forgiveness time--

I touch now his despair,

he felt as bad as Whitman on his tower

but he did not swim out with me or my brother

as he threatened--

a powerful swimmer, to take one of us along

as company in the defeat sublime,

freezing my helpless mother:

he only, very early in the morning,

rose with his gun and went outdoors by my window

and did what was needed.

I cannot read that wretched mind, so strong

& so undone. I've always tried. I--I'm

trying to forgive

whose frantic passage, when he could not live

an instant longer, in the summer dawn

left Henry to live on.

--------------------------------

The marker slants, flowerless, day's almost done,

I stand above my father's grave with rage,

often, often before

I've made this awful pilgrimage to one

who cannot visit me, who tore his page

out: I come back for more,

I spit upon this dreadful banker's grave

who shot his heart out in a Florida dawn

O ho alas alas

When will indifference come, I moan & rave

I'd like to scrabble till I got right down

away down under the grass

and ax the casket open ha to see

just how he's taking it, which he sought so hard

we'll tear apart

the mouldering grave clothes ha & then Henry

will heft the ax once more, his final card,

and fell it on the start.

Edited December 8, 2003 by connoisseur series500

[jacman]

do dirty limericks count?

[rachel]

Comment (Dorothy Parker)

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,

A medley of extemporanea;

And love is a thing that can never go wrong,

And I am Marie of Romania.

Jazzdog: Landlord. Brilliant. I hadn't thought of that one in years. I'm still laughing.

Edited December 8, 2003 by rachel

[BERIGAN]

Comment (Dorothy Parker)

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,

A medley of extemporanea;

And love is a thing that can never go wrong,

And I am Marie of Romania.

Jazzdog: Landlord. Brilliant. I hadn't thought of that one in years. I'm still laughing.

AH, Dorothy Parker!

Suicide

Razors pain you; Rivers are damp; Acids stain you; And drugs cause cramp. Guns aren't lawful; Nooses give; Gas smells awful; You might as well live.

[BERIGAN]

Roses are red

Violets are blue

Phrases that rhyme

Make me want to spew

you don't like vocalists, do you?

[king ubu]

not to hijack this thread, I like poetry a lot, but I wonder, has the "no poetry after Auschwitz" debate hit the US, too?

Some of my favorite poets of more recent years include:

Ingeborg Bachmann

Ilse Aichinger

Günther Eich

Raoul Schrott

couple of older favorites:

Georg Trakl

Else Lasker-Schüler

Gottfried Benn

August Stramm

Kurt Tucholsky

Kurt Schwitters

Ball, Arp, Huelsenbeck, Tzara etc (big fan of the dada movement)

I guess it would not make too much sense to post german poems here, otherwise, please tell me and I'll try to find the time to type out some.

ubu

[Jazz]

not to hijack this thread, I like poetry a lot, but I wonder, has the "no poetry after Auschwitz" debate hit the US, too?

I've never heard of it, but then, I'm not exactly well versed in either poetry or literary criticism. What is it all about?

Thanks for the contributions guys! I'm gonna try and check out the authors of alot of those poems.

Here is the second and last poem I've ever written. Feel free to tell me that I suck!

The Land of Never Never Sleep

Bright are the flourescent lights that hang overhead.

But brighter do they shine from the linolium floor

As it reflects and spits back out their blasphemy with angry intensity.

So unholy it seems as the mop swings back and forth

In vain effort to clean the slippery surface.

So contrary and horrible the artificial daylight is

When all is covered in the blackest night outside

Forever trying to invade the defiant lights that refuse to die

Even when the sun disappears below the earth.

So loud the thoughts of others are as they pass by

So obtrusive is their presence as they shop for dishes

for toothbrushes, for motor oil, for toilet paper, for snacks

for cold medicine, for greeting cards, for car stereos

for clothes, for utensils, for windshield wipers, for fishing rods

Why are they here when they should be in bed

Sleeping and resting for the next blind turbulent day

The shadows move when eyes are looking elsewhere

And pretend to be still when they are again observed

They are frightening foes to be watched carefully

Lest they act without warning and drag someone down

Into the depths of unknown terrors and nameless places

They are the muddy concoction of every fear and doubt

They are the singers of the silent songs, the trumpets of misery

In this prison will we walk until a single day becomes a month

In this prison do our wardens shout and scream at us

In this place I have gone insane from never sleeping

In this place will my insanity always be waiting for me, for the rest of my life.

[Rooster_Ties]

I really like some of Sun Ra's poetry, though I haven't read any in years. I'll have to dig some out, and post a couple of my favorites here, in this thread.

[king ubu]

not to hijack this thread, I like poetry a lot, but I wonder, has the "no poetry after Auschwitz" debate hit the US, too?

not really; i mean, as idiotic as this country often is, i think that's rightfully seen as inane & i write that as one w/almost the entire maternal side of my family lost in the war (poland and latvia). if anything, i'm offended by the very suggestion, it smacks of gross self-importance and repression.

ubu, how does Thomas Bernhard read in the german?

signed,

a Robert Walser fan too

clem, thanks for this information. That was crap indeed! But a somehow understandable over-reaction, in my opinion.

I'm a HUUUGE fan of Robert Walser - not sure if I did ask you that, but going from your Bernhard question I guess you don't, but: do you read german? In my opinion (and in that of some of the few Walser fans among literary scientist or whatever you call them in english) it's the short stories, "Erzählungen", or - the best term, I think - "Prosa-Miniaturen" (you can translate that to miniatures of/in (?) prose). If you do understand german, I guess you might try! The only usable german Walser edition appears as Suhrkamp paperbacks. You sure find them all on Amazon Germany doing a search for Robert Walser and Suhrkamp.

Feel free to ask more, it's kind of difficult however for me to express these things in english...

I love the few books of Bernhard I read so far, but I am no expert whatsoever. Some of his books are extremely funny (you gotta love austrian literature, though, and be open to cynicism of the highest order), others are rather difficult. His basic thing is to repeat himself, create never-ending phrases and also sort of cycles in which the narration evolves, going back almost to start again, and then going a place just next to the one were the last cycle went... difficult to describe. I guess you don't loose on the structure reading him in translation, but you sure fail to experience the "sound".

Should we open a new thread (in addition to this one dedicated to poetry and the "now reading" one)?

ubu

[maren]

Here are a few from a poet I really like. Will quote more if people like his stuff:

Filling her compact & delicious body

with chicken paprika, she glanced at me

twice...

-----------------

God bless Henry. He lived like a rat,

with a thatch of hair on his head

in the beginning.

Henry was not a coward. Much.

He never deserted anything; instead

he stuck, when things like pity were thinning...

I love John Berryman, Conn. Heard (saw) him read in the fall of 1970.

Love Auden, too, Alexander.

Funny thing -- my boyfriend at that time (freshman year of college, 1970) had just bought a big Auden volume on the way to the Berryman reading -- Berryman signed it "All my love, Wystan per John Berryman"!

Do you ever mis-attribute lines you remember? For years the phrase:

"come diminish me and map my way"

(an exhortation to a love interest) reverberated in my head as being Berryman -- but it's actually Auden.

[maren]

Clementine -- and Ubu --

I don't have enough time to look at more than one poetry thread! So will throw in my "St. Mark's" two cents right here (and hold the "German" thoughts for later)... thanks for the Ted Berrigan poem.

Here's all I could find online by Susie Timmons (winner of "the First Annual Ted Berrigan book prize" --winning meant she got her book published -- it's called "Locked from the Outside" -- but below is a more recent poem):

THE FREAKY WAYS

[by Susie Timmons]

Row, wicked sailor row,

go freezing by

your eyes are space

one day my heart passed

the knot into a smooth version

in just one day

you and your haunts

were on the subject of the freaky ways

days and violent nights

Scent of pain and faded rules

April birds fell through May skies

my heart passed

a versatile transmission

fog channel

when I first touched the ground they told

me leave

they were skipping through time

lots of red guys

moving through the grass

but there was more

Tension than that

I believe in a scare with a memory

its been delightful

panoramic vision

spanning the yard

delightful, you pass the store

with your immortal steps

keeping your own descent

here comes my train

here I go, I’ve got to go, like you, I’ll

jump down, I meet someone to believe

see you next June in a memory

picnic, silly

to have passionate

memory see you next week

I believe in a plan with an alley

It got so big it covered the valley

panoramic

Black and white antique

Tamarisk tree, why vegetation

Dust

What are you waiting for

I hear a chorus of sand

angles, you know

triangles

live inside of no day

so somehow its sad to watch the

standing away

smoke aggravation

could happen to anyone

exception, sweeping

I’m just like everyone

I want to feel the rush of power beneath

my wheels

but when I slow I see a ship with sails

competence pulls the stars from the sky

west to east

I counted the motions

always a surprise,

you’re the

insider inside her

send a letter to Memphis,

let reality read it

process prove it.

[connoisseur series500]

I love John Berryman, Conn. Heard (saw) him read in the fall of 1970.

Great job, Maren!

Didn't quite know if anyone else knew John Berryman's stuff. The poems I quoted are obviously from his Dream Songs. I figured I'd introduce him here without naming him, and that he's a pretty good poet to introduce to people who are not necesssarily familiar with contemporarary/modern American poetry.

My alltime favorite is Robert Lowell and I'll quote some of his stuff later.

He was a greater poet than Berryman or anyone else of the 20th century, in my opinion, but I realize that these comparative arguments aren't strong.

[maren]

My alltime favorite is Robert Lowell and I'll quote some of his stuff later.

He was a greater poet than Berryman or anyone else of the 20th century, in my opinion, but I realize that these comparative arguments aren't strong.

I just haven't read as much of Lowell (though I remember quoting

"calmed by Miltown, we lay on mother's bed"

on the BNBB) -- what I have read, I love. And clearly he spawned (well, not as literally as Ted Berrigan and Alice Notley "spawned" Anselm Berrigan!) some significant poetic offspring.

I tend to steer clear of rankings like "greater than" in poetry, music, painting -- just to leave lots of space for being receptive to the great inventions of those who aren't "as great as..."

For some reason, this is making me think of Berryman's poem about Elizabeth Bishop:

"since Emily Dickinson, only Miss Moore is adroiter"

which is very sweet -- doesn't strike me as an oppressive kind of ranking -- because "adroit" isn't the only thing a poet can be -- it's a precise, loving criticism (criticism = "appreciation, consideration, evaluation" not "putdown").