It's Poetry Month, My Dudes

[Bouvre]

Here's a video of John Berryman reading Dream Song 29,

which was specifically chosen because, like Dream Song 29,

I seldom have any idea what anybody is talking about in Free-For-All.

 

 

[Mini_ghost420]

speaking of poetry I have to read "The Hunting of the Snark" so I can figure out how to kill a Bandersnatch

[Bouvre]

Fuck yes

[Bouvre]

For the record: yes, Berryman was hammered in this recording.

[Mini_ghost420]

For the record: yes, Berryman was hammered in this recording.

I would be too 

[bnmjy]

I watched this a few months ago.

 

 

[nameraka]

 

fine. let's do this. 

[Bouvre]

I watched this a few months ago.

 

 

Haven't watched the video yet, but I'm curious to see what they say, if anything, about how the misinterpretation came to be so popularized.

Being fed the misinterpretation in high school made me hate Frost,

and coming back to him via "Directive" made me realize I missed out on a truly remarkable poetry experience.

[Bouvre]

 

 

fine. let's do this. 

 

Ahh!

What an awesome choice in a poet to share (reading from that collection specifically)!

<3

[The_Swim_Grandpa]

Here's a video of John Berryman reading Dream Song 29,

which was specifically chosen because, like Dream Song 29,

I seldom have any idea what anybody is talking about in Free-For-All.

 

 

 

I'll have to be sure to read some Franz Wright

[GaiusIuliusCaesar]

"who so daring in your aid to move

or lift his hand against the force of Jove?

Once in your cause I felt his matchless might,

hurr'led down from the ethereal heights,

tossed all day in rapid circles round,

nor till the sun descended and touched the ground.

breathless I fell in giddy motions lost,

the sinthians raised me upon the lemnian coast." Vulcan in the Iliad speaking to Juno in contestation with Jupiter. 

[Bouvre]

I'll have to be sure to read some Franz Wright

 

YES!

[Bouvre]

"who so daring in your aid to move

or lift his hand against the force of Jove?

Once in your cause I felt his matchless might,

hurr'led down from the ethereal heights,

tossed all day in rapid circles round,

nor till the sun descended and touched the ground.

breathless I fell in giddy motions lost,

the sinthians raised me upon the lemnian coast." Vulcan in the Iliad speaking to Juno in contestation with Jupiter.

 

Ooo, translations!

I love talking about variations/versions of translated poetry. Do you know who did this one?

[Kagome-san101]

it isn't profound, and it isn't ironic, but this is my favorite poem.

I am a very big Bukowski fan, but this is my favorite-which is very much NOT Bukowski.

 

 

So Just Kiss Me

 

Jewel Kilcher

 

So just kiss me and let my hair

messy itself in your fingers

 

tell me nothing needs to be done-

no clocks need winding

 

There is no bell without a voice

needing to borrow my own

 

instead, let me steady myself

in the arms

 

of a man who won't ask me to be

what he needs, but lets me exist

 

as I am

 

a blonde flame

a hurricane

 

wrapped up

in a tiny body

 

that will come to his arms

like the safest harbor

 

for mending

 

 

It's very pretty, and it's simple.  <3

[Bouvre]

I remember having a collection of her poems when I was young and really liked them. I also think it was the first collection of poems I ever got, because it was available as one of those bookfair fundraisers in elementary school. In general, I like the simple stuff as much as I like the stuff that plays against sincerity and the like. This one made me feel a bit nostalgic.

[GaiusIuliusCaesar]

Ooo, translations!

I love talking about variations/versions of translated poetry. Do you know who did this one?

 

Alexander Pope, his translation is my favorite.

[Bouvre]

Alexander Pope, his translation is my favorite.

 

Rad! I prefer poet/writer translations over those who are strictly academic/immensely knowledgeable about the language (not to suggest that Pope isn't knowledgeable about the language, but he's also a poet),

and Pope is a badass, so I'll have to make a note for myself to read his.

[scoobdog]

So, this isn't a share your own poetry thread?

[Codename: Jackass]

I am a poetry pleb but I always liked Yeats.

[Bouvre]

So, this isn't a share your own poetry thread?

I certainly ain't stopping you!

 

[Bouvre]

I am a poetry pleb but I always liked Yeats.

 

Yeats is awesome. I've always loved Under Ben Bulben, and of course Sailing to Byzantine and The Second Coming.

The Fairy and Folk Tales of Ireland were an interesting read, but his poetry has always been my number one love.

 

[nameraka]

my other favorite poet.

 

[Bouvre]

Another day, another poem!

 

This one is a marvelous gem from Charles Simic's collection of short prose-poems, The World Doesn't End:

 

We were so poor I had to take the place of the bait in the mousetrap. All alone in the cellar, I could hear them pacing upstairs, tossing and turning in their beds. “These are dark and evil days,” the mouse told me as he nibbled my ear. Years passed. My mother wore a cat-fur collar which she stroked until its sparks lit up the cellar.

[Bouvre]

my other favorite poet.

 

 

Oh my god! 

[bnmjy]

Here's my favorite anyway. It's more practical than flowery, which is probably why I really like it.

 

[GaiusIuliusCaesar]

"I could be well moved if I were as you.

If I could pray to move, prayers would move me.

But I am constant as the northern star,

Of whose true-fixed and resting quality

There is no fellow in the firmament.

The skies are painted with unnumbered sparks.

They are all fire and every one doth shine,

But there’s but one in all doth hold his place.

So in the world. 'Tis furnished well with men,

And men are flesh and blood, and apprehensive,

Yet in the number I do know but one

That unassailable holds on his rank,

Unshaked of motion. And that I am he

Let me a little show it even in this:

That I was constant Cimber should be banished,

And constant do remain to keep him so." Shakespeare, Julius Caesar denying the request to resend publius cimber's banishment.

 

I tried to recite that one from memory too but I kept getting distracted by an episode of star trek I'm watching.

[Bouvre]

 

 

I tried to recite that one from memory too but I kept getting distracted by an episode of star trek I'm watching.

 

This seems like a poem waiting in itself.

[Bouvre]

Today's poem, a humorous one by Tony Hoagland that really wonderfully utilizes the line break for various tensions:

 

Fred Had Watched a Lot of Kung Fu Episodes

 

so when the policeman asked

to see his driver's license, he said,

Does the wind need permission

 

from the hedgehog to blow?

which resulted in a search of the car,

which miraculously yielded nothing

 

since Fred had swallowed all the mescaline already

and was just beginning to fall in love

with the bushy caterpillar eyebrows

of the officer in question.

 

In those days we could identify

the fingerprints on a guitar string

by the third note of the song

broadcast from the window of a passing car,

 

but we couldn't tell the difference

between a personal disaster

and "having an experience,"

 

so Fred thought being locked up for the night

was kind of fun,

with the graffiti on the drunk-tank wall

chattering in Mandarin

and the sentient cockroaches coming out to visit

in triplicate.

 

Back then it wasn't a question of pleasure or pain,

It wasn't a question of getting to the top

then trying not to fall at any cost.

 

It was a question of staying tuned in,

one episode at a time,

said Fred to himself

as he walked home the next morning

under the spreading lotus trees on Walnut Street,

feeling Oriental.

[GaiusIuliusCaesar]

This seems like a poem waiting in itself.

 

It was something about thoughtcrime, planet of telepaths that outlawed violent thoughts, and accidentally created a black market trading in them.

 

I used to write poems a long time ago, if you could call them poems. They were more strings of semi related subjects that I made to rhyme.

[Bouvre]

It was something about thoughtcrime, planet of telepaths that outlawed violent thoughts, and accidentally created a black market trading in them.

 

I used to write poems a long time ago, if you could call them poems. They were more strings of semi related subjects that I made to rhyme.

 

Semi-related subjects can make for good poems too!

 

(Also, I want all of that stuff above, mixed with an attempt to remember Shakespeare off the top of your head, in a poem. <3 )

[Bouvre]

On the topic of the associative style, here's Robert Bly's, "The Fat Old Couple Whirling Around"

 

The drum says that the night we die will be a long night.

It says the children have time to play. Tell the grownups

They can pull the curtains around the bed tonight.

 

The old man wants to know how the war ended.

The young girl wants her breasts to cause the sun to rise.

The thinker wants to keep misunderstanding alive.

 

It’s all right if the earthly monk is buried near the altar.

It’s all right if the singer fails to turn up for her concert.

It’s good if the fat old couple keeps whirling around.

 

Let the parents sing over the cradle every night.

Let the pelicans go on living in their stickly nests.

Let the duck go on loving the mud around her feet.

 

It’s all right if the ant always remembers his way home.

It’s all right if Bach keeps reaching for the same note.

It’s all right if we knock the ladder away from the house.

 

Even if you are a puritan it would be all right

If you join the lovers in their ruined house tonight.

It’s good if you become a soul and then disappear.

[GaiusIuliusCaesar]

"Thro’ the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber,

Past the wan-moon’d abysses of night,

I have liv’d o’er my lives without number,

I have sounded all things with my sight;

And I struggle and shriek ere the daybreak, being driven to madness with fright.

 

I have whirl’d with the earth at the dawning,

When the sky was a vaporous flame;

I have seen the dark universe yawning,

Where the black planets roll without aim;

Where they roll in their horror unheeded, without knowledge or lustre or name.

 

I had drifted o’er seas without ending,

Under sinister grey-clouded skies

That the many-fork’d lightning is rending,

That resound with hysterical cries;

With the moans of invisible daemons that out of the green waters rise.

 

I have plung’d like a deer thro’ the arches

Of the hoary primordial grove,

Where the oaks feel the presence that marches

And stalks on where no spirit dares rove;

And I flee from a thing that surrounds me, and leers thro’ dead branches above.

 

I have stumbled by cave-ridden mountains

That rise barren and bleak from the plain,

I have drunk of the fog-fetid fountains

That ooze down to the marsh and the main;

And in hot cursed tarns I have seen things I care not to gaze on again.

 

I have scann’d the vast ivy-clad palace,

I have trod its untenanted hall,

Where the moon writhing up from the valleys

Shews the tapestried things on the wall;

Strange figures discordantly woven, which I cannot endure to recall.

 

I have peer’d from the casement in wonder

At the moldering meadows around,

At the many-roof’d village laid under

The curse of a grave-girdled ground;

And from rows of white urn-carven marble I listen intently for sound.

 

I have haunted the tombs of the ages,

I have flown on the pinions of fear

Where the smoke-belching Erebus rages,

Where the jokulls loom snow-clad and drear:

And in realms where the sun of the desert consumes what it never can cheer.

 

I was old when the Pharaohs first mounted

The jewel-deck’d throne by the Nile;

I was old in those epochs uncounted

When I, and I only, was vile;

And Man, yet untainted and happy, dwelt in bliss on the far Arctic isle.

 

Oh, great was the sin of my spirit,

And great is the reach of its doom;

Not the pity of Heaven can cheer it,

Nor can respite be found in the tomb:

Down the infinite aeons come beating the wings of unmerciful gloom.

 

Thro’ the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber,

Past the wan-moon’d abysses of night,

I have liv’d o’er my lives without number,

I have sounded all things with my sight;

And I struggle and shriek ere the daybreak, being driven to madness with fright." Nemesis, by Hp Lovecraft

 

[Bouvre]

Make A Law So That The Spine Remembers Wings

  Larry Levis

 

So that the truant boy may go steady with the State,

So that in his spine a memory of wings

Will make his shoulders tense & bend

Like a thing already flown

When the bracelets of another school of love

Are fastened to his wrists,

Make a law that doesn’t have to wait

Long until someone comes along to break it.

 

So that in jail he will have the time to read

How the king was beheaded & the hawk that rode

The king’s wrist died of a common cold,

And learn that chivalry persists,

And what first felt like an insult to the flesh

Was the blank ‘o’ of love.

Put the fun back into punishment.

Make a law that loves the one who breaks it.

 

So that no empty court will make a  judge recall

Ice fishing on some overcast bay,

Shivering in the cold beside his father, it ought

To be an interesting law,

The kind of thing that no one can obey,

A law that whispers “Break me.”

Let the crows roost & caw.

A good judge is an example to us all.

 

So that the patrolman can still whistle

“The Yellow Rose of Texas” through his teeth

And even show some faint gesture of respect

While he cuffs the suspect,

Not ungently, & says things like ok,

That’s it, relax,

It’ll go better for you if you don’t resist,

Lean back just a little, against me.

[GaiusIuliusCaesar]

"Surpassing all kings, powerful and tall

beyond all others, violent, splendid,

a wild bull of a man, unvanquished leader,

hero in the front lines, beloved by his soldiers —

fortress they called him, protector of the people,

raging flood that destroys all defenses —

two-thirds divine and one-third human,

son of King Lugalbanda, who became

a god, and of the goddess Ninsun,

he opened the mountain passes, dug wells

on the slopes, crossed the vast ocean, sailed

to the rising sun, journeyed to the edge

of the world, in search of eternal life,

and once he found Utnapishtim — the man

who survived the Great Flood and was made immortal —

he brought back the ancient, forgotten rites,

restoring the temples that the Flood had destroyed,

renewing the statutes and sacraments

for the welfare of the people and the sacred land.

Who is like Gilgamesh? What other king

has inspired such awe? Who else can say,

“I alone rule, supreme among mankind”?

The goddess Aruru, mother of creation,

had designed his body, had made him the strongest

of men — huge, handsome, radiant, perfect.

 

The city is his possession, he struts

through it, arrogant, his head raised high,

trampling its citizens like a wild bull.

He is king, he does whatever he wants,

takes the son from his father and crushes him,

takes the girl from her mother and uses her,

the warrior’s daughter, the young man’s bride,

he uses her, no one dares to oppose him.

But the people of Uruk cried out to heaven,

and their lamentation was heard, the gods

are not unfeeling, their hearts were touched,

they went to Anu, father of them all,

protector of the realm of sacred Uruk,

and spoke to him on the people’s behalf:

“Heavenly Father, Gilgamesh —

noble as he is, splendid as he is —

has exceeded all bounds. The people suffer

from his tyranny, the people cry out

that he takes the son from his father and crushes him,

takes the girl from her mother and uses her,

the warrior’s daughter, the young man’s bride,

he uses her, no one dares to oppose him.

Is this how you want your king to rule?

Should a shepherd savage his own flock? Father,

do something, quickly, before the people

overwhelm heaven with their heartrending cries.”

 

Anu heard them, he nodded his head,

then to the goddess, mother of creation,

he called out: “Aruru, you are the one

who created humans. Now go and create

a double for Gilgamesh, his second self,

a man who equals his strength and courage,

a man who equals his stormy heart.

Create a new hero, let them balance each other

perfectly, so that Uruk has peace.”

 

When Aruru heard this, she closed her eyes,

and what Anu had commanded she formed in her mind.

She moistened her hands, she pinched off some clay,

she threw it into the wilderness,

kneaded it, shaped it to her idea,

and fashioned a man, a warrior, a hero:

Enkidu the brave, as powerful and fierce

as the war god Ninurta. Hair covered his body,

hair grew thick on his head and hung

down to his waist, like a woman’s hair.

He roamed all over the wilderness,

naked, far from the cities of men,

ate grass with gazelles, and when he was thirsty

he drank clear water from the waterholes,

kneeling beside the antelope and deer." Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet 1, translated by Stephen Mitchel (the oldest story in human history, and the thing the Hebrew bible shamelessly plagiarizes)

[Bouvre]

I'm back with haiku by Issa:

 

 

The man pulling radishes

pointed my way

        with a radish.

 

 

 

        A dry riverbed

glimpsed

        by lightning.

 

 

 

    New Year’s Day—

everything is in blossom!

    I feel about average.

[Bouvre]

The Day Lady Died

Frank O'Hara

 

It is 12:20 in New York a Friday

three days after Bastille day, yes

it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine

because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton 

at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner

and I don’t know the people who will feed me

 

I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun 

and have a hamburger and a malted and buy

an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets 

in Ghana are doing these days

                                                        I go on to the bank

and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard) 

doesn’t even look up my balance for once in her life 

and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine 

for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do 

think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or 

Brendan Behan’s new play or Le Balcon or Les Nègres

of Genet, but I don’t, I stick with Verlaine

after practically going to sleep with quandariness

 

and for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE

Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega and 

then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue 

and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre and 

casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton

of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on it

 

and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of

leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT

while she whispered a song along the keyboard

to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing

[new_disease]

For those that like spoken word, this is one of my favorites

 

[Bouvre]

Max Ritvo struggled against terminal cancer for several years, and in that several years cultivated a deeply personal style that made him, in the only untimely way possible, a rising star in the poetry world at a young age. His poem, Poem To My Litter, was originally published in The New Yorker. He died less than 2 months after its publication and before his first collection, Four Reincarnations, could be published.

 

You can also hear him read it here: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/06/27/poem-to-my-litter-by-max-ritvo

 

 

My genes are in mice, and not in the banal way

that Man’s old genes are in the Beasts.

 

My doctors split my tumors up and scattered them

into the bones of twelve mice. We give

 

the mice poisons I might, in the future, want

for myself. We watch each mouse like a crystal ball.

 

I wish it was perfect, but sometimes the death we see

doesn’t happen when we try it again in my body.

 

My tumors are old, older than mice can be.

They first grew in my flank, a decade ago.

 

Then they went to my lungs, and down my femurs,

and into the hives in my throat that hatch white cells.

 

The mice only have a tumor each, in the leg.

Their tumors have never grown up. Uprooted

 

and moved. Learned to sleep in any bed

the vast body turns down. Before the tumors can spread,

 

they bust open the legs of the mice. Who bleed to death.

Next time the doctors plan to cut off the legs

 

in the nick of time so the tumors will spread.

But I still have both my legs. To complicate things further,

 

mouse bodies fight off my tumors. We have to give

the mice AIDS so they’ll harbor my genes.

 

I want my mice to be just like me. I don’t have any children.

I named them all Max. First they were Max 1, Max 2,

 

but now they’re all just Max. No playing favorites.

They don’t know they’re named, of course.

 

They’re like children you’ve traumatized

and tortured so they won’t let you visit.

 

I hope, Maxes, some good in you is of me.

Even my suffering is good, in part. Sure, I swell

 

with rage, fear—the stuff that makes you see your tail

as a bar on the cage. But then the feelings pass.

 

And since I do absolutely nothing (my pride, like my fur,

all gone) nothing happens to me. And if a whole lot

 

of nothing happens to you, Maxes, that’s peace.

Which is what we want. Trust me.

[Bouvre]

It's the final day of National Poetry Month. It has been especially the cruellest month this year.

Thank y'all to putting up with this thread appearing at random intervals throughout the month.

 

 

No One Ever Fails in A Universe of Tables, by Noah Burton

 

no one ever fails in a universe of tables

where nothing ever falls off

without falling onto another table

so we hold everything and everything’s

held by us and we are held by all of it

so we never fail to keep a table top ready

to hold whatever else may come

then I’d gather we’d expect it

to be another table but here we are

propped up cleared and all standing

surprised together that it’s a table

 

[Bouvre]

A poem is often strongly benefited by the poet reading it.

Robert Pinsky's reading of Creole, accompanied by Laurence Hobgood in the album "Poemjazz", is magnifying to listen to.

The poem's text can be read below the spoiler:

 

I’m tired of the gods, I’m pious about the ancestors: afloat

In the wake widening behind me in time, the restive devisers.

 

My father had one job from high school till he got fired at thirty.

The year was 1947 and his boss, planning to run for mayor,

 

Wanted to hire an Italian veteran, he explained, putting it

In plain English. I was seven years old, my sister was two.

 

The barbarian tribes in the woods were so savage the Empire

Had to conquer them to protect and clear its perimeter.

 

So into the woods Rome sent out missions of civilizing

Governors and invaders to establish schools, courts, garrisons:

 

Soldiers, clerks, officials, citizens with their household slaves.

Years or decades or entire lives were spent out in the hinterlands—

 

Which might be good places to retire on a government pension,

Especially if in those work-years you had acquired a native wife.

 

Often I get these things wrong or at best mixed up but I do

Feel piety toward those persistent mixed families in Gaul,

 

Britain, Thrace. When I die may I take my place in the wedge

Widening and churning in the mortal ocean of years of souls.

 

As I get it, the Roman colonizing and mixing, the intricate Imperial

Processes of enslaving and freeing, involved not just the inevitable

 

Fucking in all senses of the word, but also marriages and births

As developers and barbers, scribes and thugs mingled and coupled

 

With the native people and peoples. Begetting and trading, they

Needed to swap, blend and improvise languages—couples

 

Especially needed to invent French, Spanish, German: and I confess—

Roman, barbarian—I find that Creole work more glorious than God.

 

The way it happened, the school sent around a notice: anybody

Interested in becoming an apprentice optician, raise your hand.

 

It was the Clutch Plague, anything about a job sounded good to

Milford Pinsky, who told me he thought it meant a kind of dentistry.

 

Anyway, he was bored sitting in study hall, so he raised his hand,

And he got the job as was his destiny—full-time, once he graduated.

 

Joe Schiavone was the veteran who took the job, not a bad guy,

Dr. Vineburg did get elected mayor, Joe worked for him for years.

 

At the bank an Episcopalian named John Smock, whose family owned

A piece of the bank, had played sports with Milford. He gave him a small

 

Loan with no collateral, so he opened his own shop, grinding lenses

And selling glasses: as his mother-in-law said, “almost a Professional.”

 

Optician comes from a Greek word that has to do with seeing.

Banker comes from an Italian word for a bench, where people sat,

 

I imagine, and made loans or change. Pinsky like “Tex” or “Brooklyn”

Is a name nobody would have if they were still in that same place:

 

Those names all signify someone who’s been away from home a while.

Schiavone means “a Slav.” Milford is a variant on the names of poets—

 

Milton, Herbert, Sidney—certain immigrants gave their offspring.

Creole comes from a word meaning to breed or to create, in a place.