Favorite Poems

[Bouvre]

Poetry isn't wildly popular, but rarely does somebody leave the American education system not liking any poems at all.

What are some of your favorites? What do you like about them? Any poems you like that you don't know why you like them?

 

One of my favorites is Robert Penn Warren's "True Love", which seems to tell a story more through perspective and implication

of events, than it does through the events itself. Warren steadily moves through known and unknown variables of a beautiful woman

and the story of her family. It also does an amazing job of moving in and out of the memory itself, juggling the word choice and voice

of the speaker as a child, and their more knowing, ominous but abstract observations.

 

 

 

In silence the heart raves.  It utters words

Meaningless, that never had

A meaning.  I was ten, skinny, red-headed,

 

Freckled.  In a big black Buick,

Driven by a big grown boy, with a necktie, she sat

In front of the drugstore, sipping something

 

Through a straw. There is nothing like

Beauty. It stops your heart.  It

Thickens your blood.  It stops your breath.  It

 

Makes you feel dirty.  You need a hot bath. 

I leaned against a telephone pole, and watched.

I thought I would die if she saw me.

 

How could I exist in the same world with that brightness?

Two years later she smiled at me.  She

Named my name. I thought I would wake up dead.

 

Her grown brothers walked with the bent-knee

Swagger of horsemen.  They were slick-faced.

Told jokes in the barbershop. Did no work.

 

Their father was what is called a drunkard.

Whatever he was he stayed on the third floor

Of the big white farmhouse under the maples for twenty-five years.

 

He never came down.  They brought everything up to him.

I did not know what a mortgage was.

His wife was a good, Christian woman, and prayed.

 

When the daughter got married, the old man came down wearing

An old tail coat, the pleated shirt yellowing.

The sons propped him.  I saw the wedding.  There were

 

Engraved invitations, it was so fashionable.  I thought

I would cry.  I lay in bed that night

And wondered if she would cry when something was done to her.

 

The mortgage was foreclosed. That last word was whispered.

She never came back.  The family

Sort of drifted off.  Nobody wears shiny boots like that now.

 

But I know she is beautiful forever, and lives

In a beautiful house, far away.

She called my name once.  I didn’t even know she knew it.

 

[Bouvre]

A movie of Robert

Bresson’s showed a yacht,

at evening on the Seine,

all its lights on, watched

 

by two young, seemingly

poor people, on a bridge adjacent,

the classic boy and girl

of the story, any one

 

one cares to tell. So

years pass, of course, but

I identified with the young,

embittered Frenchman,

 

knew his almost complacent

anguish and the distance

he felt from his girl.

Yet another film

 

of Bresson’s has the

aging Lancelot with his

awkward armor standing

in a woods, of small trees,

 

dazed, bleeding, both he

and his horse are,

trying to get back to

the castle, itself of

 

no great size. It

moved me, that

life was after all

like that. You are

 

in love. You stand

in the woods, with

a horse, bleeding.

The story is true.

 

Robert Creeley is a poet that receives mixed reactions for his work. Those who hear him read notice the jagged style of his reading voice and how he perceives and uses the end of a line. Unlike many who continue the sentence, but allow for these minute changes in the end of a line, Creeley allows the end of a line to often be an interruption, which allows for his work to have an incredibly unique rhythm to it. I think of him as a master of tension in sound, and especially toward the end in this piece, Bresson's Movies, we really sense the emphasis of the 'you' and its place in the poem and in being.

 

Most of the poem feels like summarizing, and very general observations of a relationship between the viewer of Bresson's films and the films themselves, but there are particularly impressive movements to and away from particular parts of the poem. "So, / years pass, of course" comes right after a depiction of a scene. Nothing exists in time previous to it. Years pass, of course, but it feels like such a violent shift from the scene. Then we get the narrator. Then we move back into another Bresson film. Then back to the viewer. While it has a certain symmetry, it remains elusive. For some reason, I'm so incredibly drawn to how this poem moves, and can't quite nail it down. I'm also drawn to the music and the sentiment of those last lines. "It / moved me, that / life was after all / like that. You are / in love. You stand / in the woods, with / a horse, bleeding. / The story is true." The jagged rhythm is concluded by the final line, which is the only line in that entire final moment that has a fully contained rhythm to it. It's fascinating.

[nameraka]

borges

 

"the suicide"

 

 

Not a star will remain in the night.

 

The night itself will not remain.

 

I will die and with me the sum

 

Of the intolerable universe.

 

I’ll erase the pyramids, the coins,

 

The continents and all the faces.

 

I’ll erase the accumulated past.

 

I’ll make dust of history, dust of dust.

 

Now I gaze at the last sunset.

 

I am listening to the last bird.

 

I bequeath nothingness to no-one.

[Bouvre]

borges

 

"the suicide"

 

 

Nice! I haven't dived into Borges' poetry at all, so this was awesome to see in the thread.  <3

I love the line about "the last bird," which seems out of reach of the speaker's pessimism. For dealing with a universe that's so intolerable, full of things to erase (both incredibly large and incredibly small), a bird and sunset holds the speaker's attention just before turning back over to its bitter conclusion, and it gives pause to these things without making them larger than they are. The dramatics exist almost everywhere except where the speaker's attention lies.

 

There's something about a lot of South American poetry that I love. When I say that, I sort of mean the poems themselves, and the translations (most because I don't speak any of the languages in South America, and because there's a lot to argue about regarding the politics of aesthetics in translation). But whatever gets salvaged in translation, South American poetry often strikes me with a unique sense of the emotions at play, like Carlos Drummond de Andrade's "Don't Kill Yourself," translated by Elizabeth Bishop. I can't put my finger on why it strikes me as both relieving and distressing.

 

 

Carlos, keep calm, love

is what you're seeing now;

today a kiss, tomorrow no kiss,

day after day tomorrow's Sunday

and nobody knows what will happen

Monday.

 

It's useless to resist

or to commit suicide.

Don't kill yourself. Don't kill yourself!

Keep all of yourself for the nuptials

coming nobody knows when,

that is, if they ever come.

 

Love, Carlos, tellurian,

spent the night with you,

and now your insides are raising

an ineffable racket,

prayers,

victrolas,

saints crossing themselves,

ads for better soap,

a racket of which nobody

knows the why or wherefore.

 

In the meantime, you go on your way

vertical, melancholy.

You're the palm tree, you're the cry

nobody heard in the theatre

and all the lights went out.

Love in the dark, no, love

in the daylight, is always sad,

sad, Carlos, my boy,

but tell it to nobody,

nobody knows nor shall know.

[Naraku4656]

The back, the yoke, the yardage. Lapped seams,

The nearly invisible stitches along the collar

Turned in a sweatshop by Koreans or Malaysians

 

Gossiping over tea and noodles on their break

Or talking money or politics while one fitted

This armpiece with its overseam to the band

 

Of cuff I button at my wrist. The presser, the cutter,

The wringer, the mangle. The needle, the union,

The treadle, the bobbin. The code. The infamous blaze

 

At the Triangle Factory in nineteen-eleven.

One hundred and forty-six died in the flames

On the ninth floor, no hydrants, no fire escapes—

 

The witness in a building across the street

Who watched how a young man helped a girl to step

Up to the windowsill, then held her out

 

Away from the masonry wall and let her drop.

And then another. As if he were helping them up

To enter a streetcar, and not eternity.

 

A third before he dropped her put her arms 

Around his neck and kissed him. Then he held

Her into space, and dropped her. Almost at once

 

He stepped to the sill himself, his jacket flared

And fluttered up from his shirt as he came down,

Air filling up the legs of his gray trousers—

 

Like Hart Crane’s Bedlamite, “shrill shirt ballooning.”

Wonderful how the pattern matches perfectly

Across the placket and over the twin bar-tacked

 

Corners of both pockets, like a strict rhyme

Or a major chord.  Prints, plaids, checks,

Houndstooth, Tattersall, Madras. The clan tartans

 

Invented by mill-owners inspired by the hoax of Ossian,

To control their savage Scottish workers, tamed

By a fabricated heraldry: MacGregor,

 

Bailey, MacMartin. The kilt, devised for workers

To wear among the dusty clattering looms.

Weavers, carders, spinners. The loader,

 

The docker, the navvy. The planter, the picker, the sorter

Sweating at her machine in a litter of cotton

As slaves in calico headrags sweated in fields:

 

George Herbert, your descendant is a Black

Lady in South Carolina, her name is Irma

And she inspected my shirt. Its color and fit

 

And feel and its clean smell have satisfied

Both her and me. We have culled its cost and quality

Down to the buttons of simulated bone,

 

The buttonholes, the sizing, the facing, the characters

Printed in black on neckband and tail. The shape,

The label, the labor, the color, the shade. The shirt.

[Bouvre]

The back, the yoke, the yardage. Lapped seams,

The nearly invisible stitches along the collar

Turned in a sweatshop by Koreans or Malaysians

 

Gossiping over tea and noodles on their break

Or talking money or politics while one fitted

This armpiece with its overseam to the band

 

Of cuff I button at my wrist. The presser, the cutter,

The wringer, the mangle. The needle, the union,

The treadle, the bobbin. The code. The infamous blaze

 

At the Triangle Factory in nineteen-eleven.

One hundred and forty-six died in the flames

On the ninth floor, no hydrants, no fire escapes—

 

The witness in a building across the street

Who watched how a young man helped a girl to step

Up to the windowsill, then held her out

 

Away from the masonry wall and let her drop.

And then another. As if he were helping them up

To enter a streetcar, and not eternity.

 

A third before he dropped her put her arms 

Around his neck and kissed him. Then he held

Her into space, and dropped her. Almost at once

 

He stepped to the sill himself, his jacket flared

And fluttered up from his shirt as he came down,

Air filling up the legs of his gray trousers—

 

Like Hart Crane’s Bedlamite, “shrill shirt ballooning.”

Wonderful how the pattern matches perfectly

Across the placket and over the twin bar-tacked

 

Corners of both pockets, like a strict rhyme

Or a major chord.  Prints, plaids, checks,

Houndstooth, Tattersall, Madras. The clan tartans

 

Invented by mill-owners inspired by the hoax of Ossian,

To control their savage Scottish workers, tamed

By a fabricated heraldry: MacGregor,

 

Bailey, MacMartin. The kilt, devised for workers

To wear among the dusty clattering looms.

Weavers, carders, spinners. The loader,

 

The docker, the navvy. The planter, the picker, the sorter

Sweating at her machine in a litter of cotton

As slaves in calico headrags sweated in fields:

 

George Herbert, your descendant is a Black

Lady in South Carolina, her name is Irma

And she inspected my shirt. Its color and fit

 

And feel and its clean smell have satisfied

Both her and me. We have culled its cost and quality

Down to the buttons of simulated bone,

 

The buttonholes, the sizing, the facing, the characters

Printed in black on neckband and tail. The shape,

The label, the labor, the color, the shade. The shirt.

 

I was introduced to Robert Pinsky by my professor as "my student, who's in the fiction program -- not poetry"

 

to which Pinsky replied, "In other cultures, it is assumed that even the fiction writers are well-versed in poetry --

Japanese, Spanish, Ibo -- because it is your language. It's not like that in America. I blame Hemingway."

 

So long story short, Pinsky is a walking encyclopedia and his poetry really reflects his unrelenting knowledge.

He also blames Hemingway for American literature's problems, which -- even if it isn't true -- I admire.

 

 

That being said, this was the first Pinsky poem I'd ever heard, and I've been in love with his work since.

[Naraku4656]

I was introduced to Robert Pinsky by my professor as "my student, who's in the fiction program -- not poetry"

 

to which Pinsky replied, "In other cultures, it is assumed that even the fiction writers are well-versed in poetry --

Japanese, Spanish, Ibo -- because it is your language. It's not like that in America. I blame Hemingway."

 

So long story short, Pinsky is a walking encyclopedia and his poetry really reflects his unrelenting knowledge.

He also blames Hemingway for American literature's problems, which -- even if it isn't true -- I admire.

 

 

That being said, this was the first Pinsky poem I'd ever heard, and I've been in love with his work since.

i never even heard of the guy until the inside joke

[Bouvre]

I've never been able to pin down Michael Robbins' poetry, and used to hate it. Now, after reading enough of it, and reading enough associative poetry to understand there's occasionally a strategy in disjunctive/disassociative movements, I'm at least enjoying it a lot more.

 

I still can't explain basically any of it, but it makes me laugh frequently.

 

Gunter Glieben Glauten Globen

 

Says here to burn the rich and take their shit.

I’m paraphrasing. I’m barely grazing

the surplus. Do the rich have inner lives,

like little lambs and Antigone?

They never give me their money.

 

Bill Gates, the great humanitarian,

stands upon a peak in Darien.

I said Bill, I believe this is killing me.

A sculptor sees the statue in the slab,

the shiv in the toothbrush. The stab.

 

I plump for Red October. Sink or swim

or wade or creep or fly or soak

it all in kerosene. Miguel Hernández,

tell me, if you know, why there’s a darkness

 

on the edge of credit. My student loans?

Forget it. Burn it up. Let’s go for broke.

Watch the shares go up in smoke. Nostalgia’s

just another word that starts with No.

[SwimModSponges]

A randy marsupial named Reeves

Spent some time with the whores 'tween their knees

When they'd asked him for money

He'd say "Listen honey

A koala eats bushes and leaves."

[MasqueradeOverture]

A man walks into a bar

 

Not just any bar either. It was their place, a dimly-lit haven from the noise, that constant wheeze of taxi tires on wet pavement; a place once enlivened by the sight of the man leading his lady by the arm to the edge of the mahogany bar. The couple always sat beneath the television, their eyes rarely shifting from each other's mouths, as if their words cast shadows. On this night, however, the man chooses a stool at the opposite end and slumps dejectedly. This surprises the bartender, a burly asthmatic, who stops swiping a glass. With a knowing grin the bartender ambles toward the man.

 

"What'll it be?" the bartender asks despite being fairly certain the answer. The man always drinks 14-year-old scotch NEAT with a sidecar of warm water, alternating sips between the two glasses; whereas his former flame would knock back whatever vodka struck her fancy that evening, be it flavored or rock gut.

 

"What'll it be?" the man responds incredulously, his eyes glassing over. He glances over the bartender's shoulder to the TV, a cathode-ray relic that beams the snowy image of a football game, as if it mattered. Summoning the words, the man lays both palms flat upon the bar. "I'll tell you what it'll be," the man says. "I want my life back. I want to be under that TV with the person I love. I want the eight years I invested erased from memory. I want to know why she left. I want answers."

 

Below the bar, the bartender taps the phone tucked in his pocket. He knows everything and nothing.

 

"What you're looking for ain't here," the bartender replies.