5554. incognito - May 14, 1999 - 12:20 PM PT
vonKreedon excellent!!
5555. vonKreedon - May 14, 1999 - 12:23 PM PT
Thank you Cog, enjoyed yours, as you can hopefully tell.
5556. incognito - May 14, 1999 - 12:27 PM PT
yeah but your "come back" is incredibly sharp!
5557. vonKreedon - May 14, 1999 - 12:54 PM PT
As long as I'm sharing poetry here is a cold war piece.
Nuclear Ant Hill
Machiavelli would love our fix,
Spine twisted methodology of politics.
Playing the ant hill trick,
Building monuments to government
Entomb us in the dark.
Wait, it will soon be your turn.
Be patient, we will get to you all.
No problem, please take a number now,
And pay in advance.
Silent consequences are the best;
Blind masses on the cliffs edge.
We chose the gnomes who led us there;
Silent screams, we fall unaware
Into the fire we built against the bear.
Wait, it will soon be your turn.
Be patient, we will get to you all.
No problem, please take a number now,
And pay in advance.
Our breath is taken from us and returned,
For its use in other's hurts.
How fortunate we are
Allowed to choose to be burnt!
Wait! Soon it will be your turn!
Be silent! We will get to you all.
No problems! We have your number now,
And you paid in advance.
5558. incognito - May 14, 1999 - 2:11 PM PT
"So, is Kathleen Hepburn lookin' good these days?"
I think is is Catherine (sp?) but in any event, had I met her in her 20s and fell in love with her in the way that I love, she WOULD still look good to me today.
Um, she isn't dead now is she???????
5559. vonKreedon - May 14, 1999 - 2:26 PM PT
Cog, no and no, Kate just turned 92.
5560. Blaise - May 15, 1999 - 7:51 PM PT
MASS GRAVE ON THE HILL
O thin small grave above the windy waters,
your prayers, your icons—
the syllables of grass—
Too late, a light snow is falling.
I am a long way from the village of my home.
My house is a cane,
it leans against the sky
and the sky has been empty for years.
2.
What difference does it make if my face
is mud-downward?
Give us a proper burial, then, and be off
with you. You wouldn't recognize
my heart, anyhow, my hand curled over my chest.
We're not waiting for anything
up here on the hill looking down at all those charred
bodies that once ploughed the labor
of these fields. (Even the black bird pecks the head
of a squirrel.)
Now pat the soil with the back of your shovel,
and be off with you.
3.
Have you no ears! No eyes?
The horse is riderless, and there is only
the stray black dog,
digging the bones of our ancestors.
Let it go then. Close your eyes.
See what you want to see.
A man can only swallow so much grief
before the wind
aches from its barges.
(for Michael Kinsley)
5561. wexxford1 - May 16, 1999 - 2:59 AM PT
After the German bombing in the 40s, the U.S. sent poet W.H. Auden ( in a uniform) over to Germany with the U.S. bomb investigation group to ask the Great Question of the Plain people of Germany ..."Did you like the bombing ?" What poet should be sent into Yugoslavia after this 90s round of bombing ?
5562. Blaise - May 16, 1999 - 7:18 AM PT
Yannis Ritsos. Unfortunately, he's dead. After that--I would say, Czeslaw Milosz. He's still here. There's a brief interview with Milosz in Salon (sorry Slate) on the Kosovo war situation. He says that it is morally right to intervene, however, he's not sure if bombing is the best solution.
5563. Blaise - May 16, 1999 - 7:25 AM PT
The only American poet I can think of -- who has the depth and wisdom of a Milosz and a Neruda is Robert Hass. I'm sure he agrees with Milosz, including the reservations of using bombing as a way to stop Milosevic for obvious reasons: NATO is committing their own series of "war crimes" against civilians and refugees. To say it's an accident doesn't excuse NATO from taking responsibility.
5564. RyckNelson - May 16, 1999 - 7:50 AM PT
Don't fade away, build crystalline, drop by drop.
5565. uzmakk - May 16, 1999 - 8:44 AM PT
Incognito: Message #5541
I have a poem in the workshop in which The Void makes a major appearance. It is the same one that I mentioned to Azure NW that contains the White Buffalo. All I have to do is find a suitable muffler and tailpipe and she will be finished. I wrote it in response to an essay in Harper's several months ago in which Thomas Merton was a major component. I know someone has mentioned Merton on the religion thread.
5566. hashke - May 16, 1999 - 8:48 AM PT
Ryck:
In answer to your question over in language, I would say no to all three questions. I, like marjoribanks, don't look in here very often. I have written some poetry but have been away from it for many years. Long ago 'The Harvard Advocate' flattered me by publishing one of my poems.
5567. uzmakk - May 16, 1999 - 8:53 AM PT
I can't help but think that this RIP Poetry business is just a clever application of pressure by Sir Irv to squeeze some good poetry out of you people. It seems to have worked.
5568. JamesWright - May 16, 1999 - 9:39 AM PT
I nominate Jorie Graham to go to Yugoslavia. The quality of her poetry demands it.
Blaise, this is my favorite part:
I am a long way from the village of my home.
My house is a cane,
it leans against the sky
and the sky has been empty for years.
It's looking like that whole country will be empty for years, if nothing changes soon.
5569. uzmakk - May 16, 1999 - 10:29 AM PT
JamesWright:
If I were you I would buy that rhyming dictionary.
5570. Blaise - May 16, 1999 - 1:16 PM PT
Hi James! Thanks for the compliment. Man, some heavy dust in here. (cough cough cough). This place needs a good cleaning!!
Here's a little prose piece: A New Kinsley Skit!!
FRUIT BAGELS
"This isn't because people are persuaded to switch, but because someone who has already eaten a blueberry bagel is more likely to eat a strawberry bagel than the average person is to eat a fruit bagel of any sort."
--Michael Kinsley, Slate
It was a cold, wet morning outside Mr. Kinsley's window, primarily because he had left his sprinkler on overnight, which directly hit his bedroom window. Why Mr. Kinsley turned his sprinkler on during the middle of a rainstorm was puzzling enough, but to deliberately set it at his bedroom window was beyond puzzlement—it was downright baffling.
(One could say that that was the way Michael Kinsley operated: brilliant as a scholar—but as for the practical matters of the world—even filling up his tires with air—was something of an enigma.)
That morning, Michael Kinsley got up and checked his Microsoft clock. It was 8 a.m. and the first thought that entered his mind was "Bagel," and then "Today's Papers." These two thoughts formed a certain "association of ideas," what David Hume called, "constant conjunction." After experiencing this arrangement of events for many years, Mr. Kinsley believed that the two events, "Bagel and Papers," were necessarily connected – when in fact – they were merely "customary habits of the mind." And so it was his daily morning ritual to pop an onion bagel in the toaster, layer it with low-fat cream cheese, and slurp it down with coffee while reading the papers.
But on this cold, wet morning, when Mr. Kinsley reached in to get his bag of onion bagels from the refrigerator, an extraordinary thing happened…
{To be continued...}
5571. stamper - May 16, 1999 - 7:59 PM PT
wexxfordL
hey man, you can't be serious with that stuff about sending a poet over there to ask the Serbs how they like the bombing. Hell, don't bother cause i can answer that one. They don't like the bombing no way and if they ain't got the good sense to say so then maybe jexster is right about them being so stupid.
5572. Blaise - May 17, 1999 - 9:34 AM PT
FRUIT BAGELS (continued)
"Blueberry bagels!" Kinsley looked at the package in disbelief.
“This can't be!” He muttered out loud. And again, he checked the package carefully. In fact, he examined every single blueberry bagel from the inside out, confused and bewildered.
“I must have picked up the wrong kind of bagels,” he concluded. “Well,” said Kinsley cheerfully, “that's all right. I've got plenty of onion bagels in the freezer.” But as Michael Kinsley opened the freezer door, a ton of blueberry bagels, which had been jammed tightly in the freezer, fell on the kitchen floor.
“What!? What in the…! Blueberry bagels – what's going on, here? Where did all these blueberry bagels come from? I didn't buy these – someone's playing a trick on me. That's it,” said Kinsley in utter disgust, “someone's playing some sort of prank. But how? How could anyone enter into my house?”
At that moment, the phone rang. “Mike? Pick up the phone, damn it…”
“Hel-lo, hello…” stammered Kinsley.
“Mike? Where are you?”
“Who is this?”
“It's Will! Will Saletan, your Senior Writer for Slate – remember?
“What's wrong?”
“Call the office—Why aren't there, yet?”
“Blueberry bagels.”
“What's that? I'm sorry, Mike, I didn't hear you. What did you say?”
“BLUE-BERRY-BAGELS!” shouted Kinsley and then he abruptly hung up.
“Hello? Mike? beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep. He hung up on me. Jesus.”
5573. incognito - May 17, 1999 - 2:58 PM PT
I see the RIP has itself been RIPed! Yeah!!
5574. JamesWright - May 17, 1999 - 4:00 PM PT
uzmakk:
Would that you had gotten to me earlier. I ordered the damn symbolism thing, and now I see what you mean. Oh well. It was cheap!
5575. uzmakk - May 17, 1999 - 4:26 PM PT
JamesWright:
Sorry for the bum steer. I am still paring my order and will now x that one off even if it is only five dollars. I work at a glacial pace. Get that rhyming dictionary though.
5576. Blaise - May 17, 1999 - 5:38 PM PT
Update at ForPoetry.Com
"Bia Ha Noi beers, anyone?! It's on Madame Albright's tab." What do the Vietnamese think of the Bombing of the Chinese Embassy: Read Joe Duemer's latest diary 5/17 and find out:
NEW POEMS:
"The Night Russia Vanished" by Jacqueline Marcus:
"Lot's Prayer" and "Puerto Vallarta"
by Athena Kildegaard
"Wintered" by Kelly Gorritz
"Mnemosyne" by Yugoslavian poet, Ivan V. Lalic
"Americans Playing Slow-Pitch Softball at an Airbase
near Kunsan, South Korea" by Halvard Johnson
Come join us at ForPoetry.Com!
ForPoetry.com
www.FORPOETRY.com
A daily literary webzine devoted to poetry,
featuring established and new poets.
5577. Blaise - May 18, 1999 - 7:41 AM PT
If anyone's interested in reading that brief interview with Czeslaw Milosz re: Milosz's views on the Kosovo war, simply go to
ForPoetry
and click the name Czeslaw Milosz.
5578. uzmakk - May 18, 1999 - 5:49 PM PT
Read Milosz. Just thought I'd let you know, Blaise.
5579. jlundell - May 18, 1999 - 5:54 PM PT
OK, somebody help me out. I've read and reread "Autobiographical" (Ed Skoog) and I'm entirely at sea. What's going on here?
5580. NuPlanetOne - May 18, 1999 - 7:00 PM PT
\
/
\
Re/ RIP?
/
\
What'sup wit dat?…..anyway
/
/
/
jlundell/ Here's my take on ‘Autobiographical.' He's looking back on a life that has beat him senseless, much like the seal pup from his youth. Though a bit obtuse, I think it is really a very nice poem. Especially since it has a well defined and accentuated ending. Which I like a poem to have. That way you can feed off it and overlook most of the ‘only the poet knows what he really means' stuff. Any help? Ciao.
/
/
Poem at eleven.\
//
Rip Van Winkle. Poetry is good.
5581. JamesWright - May 19, 1999 - 6:09 AM PT
jlundell:
I agree with you that this is a needlessly confusing poem. It is one of the more likely poems that Pinsky has published in Slate. I like the casual pentameter, and I think it is evocative, what with the garden and the whispering girl in the tree, and I love the idear of drowning when it's interesting. But how does the war fit in? And why doesn't the seal pup return in the poem? Did the seal pup like its own journey to the bottom? Then how can the speaker? And if the speaker of the poem is drowned, how can he tell his own story? I think it points up once again that while lines and images in poetry can't live unless they allow for various individual interpretations, when the whole narrative is in doubt, the poem itself loses meaning. About halfway through, I liked this poem as much as any (contemporary) poem in Slate, and then it all dissolved.
Anyone else? Maybe someone has puzzled out the actual storyline? Come on, explain it all and make me look like a dunce.
5582. stamper - May 19, 1999 - 8:54 AM PT
wrote a little poem that's been bumping my head all night and thought i'd share it with you so you could criticise it. Yoy are good at that.
STAMPER
who is he?
intrusive
ilusive
mainly obtuse!
his writing's a scandal.
he talks like a bumbkin.
but maybe
he's a pumpkin
you know,
a jack o'lantern, just sitting there
grining.
is he a goose
or is he a gander
I wonder. (slant rhyme)
My god, what an ego,
no doubt it's an alter.
he lives by the ocean
and i've got a notion
he loves to have fun, to lie in the sun,
but the love of his life, if it is not his wife,
to pretend he's, who would it be, now brain don't falter,
socrates, twain?
stamper,
perhaps a child we might just pamper.
we should just dismiss him,
or wait,
just have Irv show him the gate.
we could do that, we should do that,
but the mystery is
we just might miss him.
the end
Well have at me, i know it ain't good 'cause poetry now-a-days ain't supposed to rhyme, but i'm old fashioned.
5583. vonKreedon - May 19, 1999 - 8:55 AM PT
Stamper - Mind if I call you Leland?
5584. stamper - May 19, 1999 - 8:59 AM PT
von
You know my brother?
You're sharp, von.
5585. vonKreedon - May 19, 1999 - 9:05 AM PT
I had you pegged for the elder, but then the poetry and the education posts made me think that you might be Leland.
5586. stamper - May 19, 1999 - 9:10 AM PT
I'm that bad, eh? You had me pegged for the old man! I like to think i'm somewhere in the middle, just like i am 'bout most thiings in life, you know, not too cold, not too hot, just a bit tepid.
5587. vonKreedon - May 19, 1999 - 9:11 AM PT
Yeah, I thought you were going for the old man, I can't remember if that was Henry or Hank.
5588. stamper - May 19, 1999 - 9:18 AM PT
Henry.
5589. incognito - May 19, 1999 - 12:16 PM PT
once my heart was vibrant
my outlook fair and gay
but then my love courted
the affections of another guy
i told her how i hurt
how much her actions cut
she told me just to handle it
and she didn't care all that much
so now my days are grey
my nights are filled with tears
i thought she'd understand
how much i wanted her near
5590. incognito - May 19, 1999 - 1:26 PM PT
The last line should read "want" not "wanted"
5591. uzmakk - May 20, 1999 - 6:57 AM PT
I ponder as I wander all over the Universe
How Jesus the Savior fits in to the cuniverse.
5592. uzmakk - May 20, 1999 - 6:59 AM PT
The Elephant! The Elephant!
The Grandest, Finest Element.
5593. cmboyce - May 20, 1999 - 8:01 AM PT
Message #5581
James Wright, I agree that this poem is too opaque, if that's what you are saying. But I think there's some translucency, or at least that it's suggestive enough to permit one to imagine it. Which is maybe better if he isn't going to be forthright.
As I see it, the speaker in the first stanza establishes himself as inclined to wandering in "faery lands forlorn" ie, having a predilection for a romantic state of mind, his fantasy rife with emblems of European culture, as seen from a romantically conceived New World ("the Argentine"; a pointedly archaic and geopolitically vague variant on "Argentina").
Then, he envisions himself in an even older world, one in which he only stirs from langorous rest to observe a death—for the seal-pup is quite certainly dead, beyond enjoying his journey: beyond enjoyment, beyond journeying—and performing the obsequies. I think the death may be that of the ancient, pre-civilizational relationship between humanity and the animal world from which we rose.
He returns to sleep and grows, pupating in there, into physical (and sexual) awareness, an innocent. Then the war—plausibly the 20th century, or perhaps just (!) the trauma of discovering the conflicts of adult life, lived in the world.
He flees. I love "to escape conjecture". I see it playing on the likelier "escape conscription". But no, he is escaping from contemplating, even taking a stab at, the meaning of the war, of conflict (of evil?).
Anyway, once across the sea (back on his bicycle, in the Argentine, where the poem began), he attempts, "wearing down a new world of old roads" (ie, I think, introducing his now un-innocent knowledge to the new world)
[more]
5594. cmboyce - May 20, 1999 - 8:03 AM PT
[cont'd.]
, to "build a body of forgiveness" (ie, I think, his own forgiveness of the old world & by extension the new world's ditto). He arrives at a place of succor ("the house of a friend"). There he finds... death, the ultimate succor. A variant on the death and burial of the seal pup (who does return here, albeit inferentially). The sea is full of the detritus of war, and the dark forebodings of a denatured nature. The last line, I believe, expresses a fervency of enthusiasm for having died (perhaps suicidally).
I conclude from all this that the speaker of the poem (speaking from beyond the grave, an age-old trope) is meant as some sort of symbol for, or personification of, civilization, or humanity, or our dreadful century, or some sort of collectivity.
If this seems overinterpreted, and I concede it does, that tells you what's wrong with hermetic verse such as this. But all genres have their shortcomings, I guess, and while I think this poem could have used a little more light, I still think it's pretty good. Has anyone read others by Ed Skoog?
5595. Blaise - May 20, 1999 - 8:28 AM PT
Interestingly enough, Ed Skoog's poem is quite good, which doesn't surprise me since he's a new voice for a change. (I say that because it's rare to see a poet appear in Slate who isn't established with the typical MFA credentials & several books to his name -- status).
James -- you should know that you can't exactly approach a poem with such expectations. The associative leaps Skoog takes provide an undercurrent of "theme," and "order" but not in the narrative sense of meaning.
I like cmboyce's reading of the poem. I would add -- that the battered seal pup is a "symbol" of our times.
***
Care to know what the Vietnamese think of U.S. NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia? What do you suppose is the Vietnamese students' favorite American Novel? You'll _never_ guess.
Read Joseph Duemer's (Poetry Editor of The Wallace Stevens Journal) Journals from Viet Nam in ForPoetry.Com
ForPoetry
5596. JamesWright - May 20, 1999 - 9:44 AM PT
Blaise & cmboyce:
I approach all poems with the expectation that I can understand the thrust of them, if not completely, then in some predominant way. I thank cmboyce for the explication I was too lazy to do, but which is pretty much what I was thinking as I read the poem (three times). "If this seems overinterpreted, and I concede it does, that tells you what's wrong with hermetic verse such as this." I don't think it's overinterpreted at all, and while I am the first to say that sometimes all that is memorable and extremely impactful is a line or two from even a great poem, or one stanza out of many, those parts usually stand out from a clearer context. Nothing from this poem stands strong enough by itself for me to remember it. It was the overall tone that I liked, and that isn't quite enough for me. I think the structure is bad, in that it doesn't move from one clear point to any other clear point, and there is no good reason for that. Maybe if he set it to music . . . .
No but really, I was so excited by the poetry, if not the poem, that I tried to find more Ed Skoog online, and there wasn't any. Hopefully we'll see his work pop up again, because as Blaise says, there isn't that much to write home about in Pinsky's customary stable of established poets.
5597. JamesWright - May 20, 1999 - 9:56 AM PT
Here's a little number by Stephen Dobyns:
FUNCTIONAL FORGETTING
Here is the world, here the world's forgetting:
the left and right hand tugging at one another.
As he runs his tongue up the inside of her thigh,
the world retreats. But that was yesterday.
At first just the touch of her hand would send
the world spinning into darkness. Then it took
a kiss, then the exposing of a breast. How
these confessions age us. Is this why the old
become forgetful? Death's envoy must be Wonder.
Once again a touch becomes electric. As we stagger
toward our ultimate minute, the world grows rich
with opportunity. Ah, Death, unloose your thighs.
5598. uzmakk - May 20, 1999 - 10:00 AM PT
That one resonates with me.
5599. JamesWright - May 20, 1999 - 10:15 AM PT
LAMENT & PRAISE SONG
At this hour of unlettered
clocks, ghosts of Milton & Pope
gaze at one of my first loves
as she writes An Ethiop tells you
to the students of the University
of Cambridge. We were teenagers
when I fell for her
portrait of composure
crosshatched like tribal marks
on an oval frontispiece: Phillis
Wheatley, Negro Servant
to Mr. John Wheatley,
of Boston. At this hour
of wounded second hands,
I say what I think
she'd say to you: Please
follow Imagination like a lover
into the eardrum & inner
sanctum, into the secret rooms
behind seven chambers of naked
doubt. Here, now, this
anecdotal green & fretwork
hide trees she strolled past,
but I know of no shortcuts
to bypass the run-down
boardinghouse where she
scrubbed & polished floors.
We don't have to walk
out of our bodies to go
there, because clocks & bells
sway in towers of glass
& mortar to transport us
in the hull of a ship
of stormy midnights
in the belly of Moby Dick
where she crouched inside
seven years of African
memory. At this hour
among canonical roses
with seditious thorns,
I wonder if the tongues
of that tribunal of good men
quizzing her turned to dust
in pure Latin & Greek.
We are blessed if we can see her
on the streets of Cambridge,
in her heroic couplets,
rescued by our imagination:
a faint perfume of England
nestles in Puritan cloth
when she shakes the hand
of George Washington,
& clocks of pewter strike
till new leaves redden the quad.
5600. JamesWright - May 20, 1999 - 10:17 AM PT
That was by Yusef Komunyakaa.
5601. JamesWright - May 20, 1999 - 10:25 AM PT
One more recent thing:
TABLETOP WORLD
by Philip Memmer
Blasting a note to the crisp flags of Main,
the toy train hisses through fields of felt,
then over a painted stream by way
of an intricate matchstick bridge.
It passes the mill, the painted toy men
posed in their toil near the mine's closed mouth.
and curves through hills, the pinecone forest,
crowded with horses and soldiers.
And now as the engine dips into the tunnel
the flourescent sun goes dark with a click,
the song begins at Ye Olde saloon,
and the rows of streetlamps snap on.
If by day you shoveled coal, you shovel now by night.
If you washed clothes, you wash clothes.
If you had no legs and sat alone
in your chair by the glassless window
you sit there now, and wait for the sun
to flicker back, for the looped tune to stop
as the engine zips through the station on Main
and the boy in the boxcar waves--
his motorized arm like a metronome,
his hair blown wildly by an unseen wind,
his mouth a silently shouting O
as he tries to skip town yet again.
5602. marshame - May 20, 1999 - 12:06 PM PT
stumper
Fine pome, just fine. Set to music, it would be wonderful. Something not too jazzy or too soulful, something just kind of tepid.
5603. marshame - May 20, 1999 - 12:11 PM PT
Blaise
I liked your Kafkaesque story of Michael Kinsley and the blueberry bagels. Haven't we all had days like that? But what's with the question marks where quotation marks should be?
5604. theDiva - May 20, 1999 - 12:12 PM PT
This poem is a hoot.
STAMPER
who is he?
intrusive
ilusive
mainly obtuse!
his writing's a scandal.
he talks like a bumbkin.
but maybe
he's a pumpkin
you know,
a jack o'lantern, just sitting there
grining.
is he a goose
or is he a gander
I wonder. (slant rhyme)
My god, what an ego,
no doubt it's an alter.
he lives by the ocean
and i've got a notion
he loves to have fun, to lie in the sun,
but the love of his life, if it is not his wife,
to pretend he's, who would it be, now brain don't falter,
socrates, twain?
stamper,
perhaps a child we might just pamper.
we should just dismiss him,
or wait,
just have Irv show him the gate.
we could do that, we should do that,
but the mystery is
we just might miss him.
the end
5605. marshame - May 20, 1999 - 12:19 PM PT
Diva
I have already proclaimed my love for stamper. Are you trying to move in on me?
5606. theDiva - May 20, 1999 - 12:22 PM PT
No ma'am. Niner is my heart's delight.
5607. marshame - May 20, 1999 - 12:24 PM PT
Dibs
Diva diva diva
I think you betta leave-a.
Don't want no competition,
You're movin' in, says my intuition.
I just cain't bear to fight,
'Cept bout religion - I could do that all night!
But you've already got you a sweet man,
Not to mention fray boyfriends out the ying yan.
So give me a chance
And lemme try this once to enhance
A little friendship with stamper,
at least til his true id presents the final damper.
5608. marshame - May 20, 1999 - 12:25 PM PT
It may suck as a pome, but gol durn it, it rhymes!
5609. theDiva - May 20, 1999 - 12:25 PM PT
(cackling)
I can't even *begin* to match that one, so I will bow out gracefully. You are too funny!
5610. JamesWright - May 20, 1999 - 3:11 PM PT
Wow, a parade!
5611. Blaise - May 20, 1999 - 3:41 PM PT
Thanks Marshame. If there are question marks instead of quotation marks -- that's probably because the font isn't set right? Who knows? I had to go into view and font to change Fray font back to TNR.
James: First, thanks for the good poems! On Skoog: I didn't quite catch an instant meaning from the poem either -- but that's what I like about it. I prefer poems that don't deliver meanings as much as a certain tone, a dark mood. "Autobiographical" reminds me of Montale. For example:
ON THE ROAD TO VIENNA by Eugenio Montale
The baroque convent,
all biscuit and foam,
shaded a glimpse of slow waters
and tables already set, scattered here and there
with leaves and ginger.
A swimmer emerged, dripping
under a cloud of gnats.
inquired about our journey, spoke
at length about his own, beyond the frontier.
He pointed to the bridge before us,
you cross over (he said) with a penny toll.
With a wave of his hand, he sank down,
became the river itself...
And in his place,
to announce our coming, out of a shed
bounced a dachsund, gaily barking--
sole brotherly voice in the sticky heat.
***
5612. stamper - May 20, 1999 - 4:29 PM PT
marshame and diva
Would love to chat but cannot do it on this thread. Just came over here to see if my shame was gone only to find out you reposted it. Please, oh please, i do beg you not to do that again the next time it is gone. Marshame, your poem wasn't bad and most likely would me not valued as highly 'cause of the rhyme. But it pleased me, but i,m easy, real easy, and sometime a little bit squeezy.
5613. incognito - May 20, 1999 - 5:08 PM PT
stamper what did you expect you practically begged for compliments about your poem in other threads
it was a cute poem nonetheless
5614. stamper - May 20, 1999 - 5:14 PM PT
incognito
You are mostly right, i was fishing around for remarks but if they were not comliments i would have accepted that. I have learned that if you can't handle the answer don't ask the question. It was just that i could not stand being ignored, that's it. Grow up Stamper and don't be such a baby.
5615. incognito - May 20, 1999 - 5:29 PM PT
stamper don't take ribbing so seriously!
But I did notice you were fishin'! :-)
5616. RyckNelson - May 20, 1999 - 8:39 PM PT
And What Do You Get
***
Excise the er from exercise. Or from
example, take the ex out: now it's bigger;
to be lonely, take the amp out
and replace it with an i, Take am or me
away from name
and suddenly there's not
much left, the name's one of the many names
for naught. Eleven tons of hidden work
are always lurking inside words. In English or
analysis (the cons turned pro, among the -fessions)
take in out
of mind and you've
go someone who delivers you a bill.
Take double you from anybody's will--
a skew, a skid--and all
is terrifying--
take the the from
therapist, split accent with an id--
By Heather McHugh
from Urbanus
Page 149 "The Best American Poetry 1995" Published by Touchstone
5617. uzmakk - May 21, 1999 - 8:06 AM PT
Absolutely!!!!!!!!!
_________
Hannibal, mount your mounts!
The mighty elephants of poetry!
Believe in Christ.
Follow the ten commandments.
Draw a perpendicular.
Get a job and drink lots of coffee.
5618. incognito - May 21, 1999 - 8:07 AM PT
"draw a perpendicular?"
5619. uzmakk - May 21, 1999 - 9:36 AM PT
draw a perpendicular, draw a circle, put a word on a page, send a message out into the ether.
5620. uzmakk - May 21, 1999 - 9:50 AM PT
Or, how about this one, imagine the earth as a sphere, draw a perpedicular, make it an arrow...does it point to god?
Or simply bringing to mind the basics of mathematics, or geometry or any other elemental understanding that we may have. Imagine a dot, call it an atom, imagine a universe.
Commandments all. Do it. Believe, Follow, Draw, Get.
5621. incognito - May 21, 1999 - 9:50 AM PT
uzmakk and THAT is why I will never be a good poet!
5622. marshame - May 21, 1999 - 10:19 AM PT
stamper
He's easy, and a bit squeezy.
It makes my knees weezy,
And my gut a bit queezy.
I know he could please me
Cuz he's just such a teasey.
But just to appease me
I hope he won't sneeze on me.
It's not the germs but the breeze on me
That make me feel all greasy.
So stamper-boy, oh pleasey
Make my life easy
And go ahead and leave me
Before you crush my heart
Completely.
Whew.
5623. marshame - May 21, 1999 - 10:20 AM PT
It don't quite rhyme all the way through, so I guess that makes it even better!
5624. incognito - May 21, 1999 - 10:26 AM PT
humminna humminna
5625. RyckNelson - May 22, 1999 - 7:01 PM PT
Standing at the Sea-------------------------------5/21/99
Seated together one humbling afternoon.
Search.
Softened solitude, moss in bloom.
With a forest of trees our only witness.
Reminisce Dayaks time gone.
Soil inseparable.
Keeping sojourn, rhythmists.
Glistening dew mirage.
Water darkened, spoiled apple brown.
shared surface.
Sitting upon toppled tree.
Dusty, cooked clay rutted road.
Later, standing at the sea one humbling evening.
Viewing red, orange, gold panaramic blue sunset.
Through a stand of trees.
Foam topped waves.
5626. This message either failed to post, has been archived, or (less likely) was deleted by the Fraymaster.
5627. RyckNelson - May 22, 1999 - 7:29 PM PT
From Journal of The Asian American Renissance
"Roots East / Roots West" 1997 No.2; page 54
"On the Rocks" by Lori Tsang, typed without permission.
***************
yeah, i see you
checking me out,
white boy,
i want to say,
but don't. he's gulping
a double
scotch on the rocks
at the other end
ot the bar, dressed
in gray pinstripes and white
button-down oxford. he smirks
nervously in my direction, takes off
his jacket and holds it
across his lap. i want
to say, yeah, i've
filled out quite
nicely for a skinny little
chinese kid, but i just run
my fingers round
the rim of my empty
glass and smile. gullible
as a walleyed pike, he flips
his gills at the bartender and a fresh
cognac arrives by my side. i see him rise
up off his stool, reeling
from the scotch and my
smile. now
he's coming
towards me, still holding his
jacket in front
of him, draped
over one arm, his gait
stiff
as the grin
slicing th crimson
flush of his
face. when he gets
here, i wonder if
i'll ask him
does he remember
back in fourth grade,
how my brother whupped
his ass and sent him
running
home to his mama
agter he pushed
me into the mcmurphy's
drainage ditch and called
me a gook.
5628. RyckNelson - May 22, 1999 - 7:51 PM PT
Tear and Smile
*********
My most fervent hope is that my life shall continue as tear and smile: a tear that preserves the the purity of my heart and reveals to me the mysteries of life, a smile which brings me closer to the quintessence of my being and symbolizes my glorification of the gods; a tear with which I share the misforutnes of all wounded hearts, a smile with which I express my joy in existence.
There is within me a friend who consoles me every time troubles overwhelm me and misfortunes afflict me. He who does not feel friendship towards himself is a public enemy, and he who finds no confidant within himself will die of despair. For life issues forth from man's inner self and not from what surrounds him.
I have come to say one single word, and I shall say it. But if death were to prevent me from doing so, then it will be said tomorrow. For tomorrow will leave no secret in the book of Eternity.
by Kahlil Gibran
5629. RyckNelson - May 22, 1999 - 8:34 PM PT
Motivation to write prose instead of verse has no meaning to me yet. A predilection toward heartfelt anecdotetal poetry exists within my motives at this time. The dynamics of this evolving orientation arrouses an excitement I've not explored formally.
In two months I've purchased no less than eight books containg verse and prose poetry. This intoxication for the words, looking for them to parade on the page for me to inhale this new found mind-stream.
I invite the entertainment of written prose, which I do not find dull, but an expression of emotive art.
Just Say Yo and do it is my motto.
5630. RyckNelson - May 22, 1999 - 8:54 PM PT
The first sentence where I exclaim "Motivation to write prose instead of verse has no meaning to me yet."
Should read
Motivation to write prose OR verse has no meaning to me yet.
5631. RyckNelson - May 23, 1999 - 6:17 AM PT
From: The Best American Poetry 1995; a Touchstone book
Page, 98
Prospects
***
We have set out from here for the sublime
Pastures of summer shade and mountain stream;
I have no doubt we shall arrive on time.
Is all the green of that enamelled prime
A snapshot recollection of a dream?
We have set out from here for the sublime
Without provisions, without one thin dime,
And yet, for all our clumsiness, I deem
It certain that we shall arrive on time.
No guidebook tells you if you'll have to climb
Or swim. However foolish we may seem,
We have set out from here for the sublime
And must get past the scene of an old crime
Before we falter and run out of steam,
Riddled by doubt that we'll arrive on time.
Yet even in winter a pale paradigm
Of birdsong utters its obsessive theme.
We have set out from here for the sublime;
I have no doubt we shall arrive on time.
***
Originally printed in the New Yorker
Written by Anthony Hecht
5632. RyckNelson - May 23, 1999 - 6:34 AM PT
Standing at the Sea is a rewrite of a poem I wrote in October 1998. I've rewritten it because I find more meaning with location as its theme.
Some of you know I've been up the Baram River, Sarawak, Borneo, Malaysia. Sarawak is the location for the poem Standing at the Sea. I have used ambiguity because I like that style. I add visual specificity to prompt pleasant emotions, the desire for which is to balance with the ambiguity. With this poem I wanted the reader to take what might have meaning out of the poem and have it for their own. I am looking for a style which shares emotions and experience and gives the words to others. Ambiguity is the device I'm exploring. I like the way it teases the mind, as long as it's balanced with pleasantry.
5633. RyckNelson - May 23, 1999 - 6:49 AM PT
I copied this from the Slate site. For me it's a published work which reflects my intentions of ambiguity and balance.
Autobiographical
***
By Ed Skoog
Ed Skoog lives in New Orleans. His poems have appeared recently in Third Coast, Gulf Coast, The Marlboro Review, Cut Bank, Teacup, and LitRag. Posted Tuesday, May 18, 1999, at 10:15 a.m. PT
***
I rode my bike across the Argentine.
Marble arms raised for joy in the garden,
a slush of sculpture salvaged from wrecked ships
around Don d'Carlo's sandstone pen
carved from a boulder fallen from that cliff.
When I was a nude Sicilian youth, and had been
lounging on the piazza for a good hour,
above the sea, I heard a cry from the beach
and ran. A seal pup lay curled around
a stone. Someone--my brothers?--had beat it
senseless, so I heaved the sack of fur
back to surf, the body cooling my body,
and swam some yards until it sank to green.
Back up the steps, I dried on the wall
fell to sleep forgot the beast and grew
athletic and kept my tongue back of my head
obeyed the trainer loved a girl she climbed
a tree beside the training yard to whisper
my secret names from the arbor. War grew
as we slept. I fled across the sea
to escape conjecture; I biked all over
to build a body of forgiveness, the wheels
wearing down a new world of old roads.
I rode across the Argentine, my spokes
speaking for me, to the house of a friend:
I swam in the sea there, among the mangled steel.
A lost flotilla, the hemisphere
tapped in my ear, the ticking of whales
the warnings of sand. And when I drowned
I sank slowly and meant every fathom.
5634. Blaise - May 23, 1999 - 9:19 AM PT
AT THE MICROSOFT CAFETERIA by Thomas Eisele
I watch her cross the Plaza
through the shadows
of a hot morning sun
the cicadas are already complaining about.
Her face looks tired
as her feet move monotonously,
one in front of the other.
She is carrying a paper cup
of either coffee or a cold drink
from the cafeteria.
I have seen her before
and though I don't know where she's going
I sense she would rather be someplace else
and I want to comfort her,
take her dark body in my arms
and revive her pouting lips with kisses,
tell her she could come into my heart
to break that same old routine
that buys the coffee
and pays for the space
which contains a bed
one can never sleep long enough in
to dream.
Then my reverie is interrupted
as I'm paged on the intercom
by the voice of all that needs to be done,
but to what end?
And as I stand to go wherever
I wonder if anyone will be watching me
from some other secret longing
this protocol makes impossible to share.
5635. RyckNelson - May 23, 1999 - 9:42 AM PT
Again from Journal of The Asian American Renaissance "Roots East / Roots West" 1997 No.2, page 61 by Kyoko Katayama;
How we love one another
***
I)
Tucked away high up in the gabled room
alone.
I play hide and seek with your memories.
I go through them like the forgotten clothes
hanging in the shadowy and cluttered attic
seldom visited by light and breath.
A never-worn wedding gown ...
Tenderly, my fingers touch the fragile layers of its lamina.
The sleeping dust is awakened by the stirring of the rustling silk.
The smoky mirror, softly lit by the threading beams of light,
beckoning me to yield to its spell.
I hold it close to my heart to see how I look with it.
I am inside your skin, seeing, feeling, breathing the air of another time, a time of burning homes, maimed bodies, empty peace after, and of shattered dreams leaving only the shards of piercing pain.
In the still eye of the whirling hurricane
in that instance you chose life
even if it kills you.
You abandoned your memories
and delivered me to the uncertain world.
My heart breaks in thousand pieces
and the ancient mirror nods in approval ...
In the midst of such forbidden play among the graveyard of your memories
You would drop in at my house unannounced.
I go down down the stairs to greet you of today:
you, at the door laden with the perennial gifts of mother land and sea:
wakame sea weed that stongly smells like Tateyama beach
pickled plum to pucker your mouth
instant miso soup, a modern invention of the old
dried sardines with their staring little eyeballs
flesh-gray pickled squid-guts in a glass jay
sweet bean cakes, oh my favorite ...
You, who refuse to "call ahead like the white people,"
and show up at my door trusting in our bond-age,
you are content to have me listen to the gossips on Hanako, Tomo, Yuriko ...
cont.
5636. RyckNelson - May 23, 1999 - 9:56 AM PT
cont.
and the latest turns in the saga of my aunts and uncles in Tokyo.
You would ask me to translate letters and scribe addresses on envelopes.
Then you would hurry home to take care of your incontinent old dog.
Another blessed day in time of peace and modest prosperity
for you.
For me
going our seperate ways,
I climb back up to the attic
to continue the unfinished conversation with you
on the other side of the cloudy mirror.
II)
"Why don't you just ask her about her memories and feelings?"
my white husband said.
"No, you don't understand,"
feeling the familiar sensation of despair.
"She will not speak. I can not make her talk on my terms."
Despair quickly turns to that 'old give-up feeling.'
Once I give up then there is calm, this I know.
Mother taught me that:
to give up is to surrender to fate like a good Buddhist
while simultaneously making sure I learn the art of perseverance.
Give up what you want from people.
Persevere to take care of the young, the needy the suffering.
Give up what you want from fathers, brothers, or husbands,
but persevere to honor them and take care of them.
Give up that your friends will ever understand you
but persevere to treat them well with proper gifts.
Give up you dreams and desires
but persevere to instill them in your children.
I give up asking for your memories and heart
but persevere to receive your food and gossip.
You give up that I will ever be your good Japanese daughter
but persevere with your breathtaking patience that I will come around.
You break my heart, mother.
For the thousandth time
you break my heart woth your fierce tenderness and
stubborn silence.
cont.
5637. RyckNelson - May 23, 1999 - 10:17 AM PT
cont.
Is that what I give you?
Are you also giving me your broken heart?
You don't talk to me; I don't talk to you
about our memories, our regrets, our shattered dreams.
We exchange our broken hearts under the table
in deafening quiet and blinding dark
like splintered rice bowls
still held together in our hands
always becoming filled with the sweetest yearning for each other.
This is how we love one antoher:
an aging Japanese mother and her half-blood daughter.
5638. RyckNelson - May 23, 1999 - 10:37 AM PT
Dealing with the subject matter in a poem. Putting it into perspective. Linking it to belief that it shares a commonality with an audiance. Observing thoughts from inside anothers point of view.
Avoiding the conflict of misinterpretation is the major task. Would I take the face value and apply it to my life? It's tempting to grasp the words and claim ability to decipher all there intentions and aspirations. What goal is achieved with copying so many poems if avoiding interpretation mistakes overshadows the task? The poems chosen aren't overly difficult to interpret is the first, then the emotions they invoked is the second. Emotive art. I think the authors are seeking this stirring of emotion. Then the interpretation of the life behind the words is less important. The emotions become foremost.
I find the Japanese artist binding me to the half blood remark.
5639. jexster - May 23, 1999 - 11:19 AM PT
ON BEING ASKED FOR A WAR POEM
I THINK it better that in times like these
A poet keep his mouth shut, for in truth
We have no gift to set a statesman right;
He has had enough of meddling who can please
A young girl in the indolence of her youth,
Or an old man upon a winter's night.
W.B. Yeats
5640. RyckNelson - May 23, 1999 - 2:43 PM PT
"I think" is the operative phrase.
Thinking in times of war allows justice and peace to prevail. Closing thought to leave thinking to the gun ends humanity. Shared thoughts, experiences, reciprocatons, commonalities, and respect for differences in times of war gives and takes. Fighting for what's right without it ends humanity.
Rick Nelson, 1999
5641. Blaise - May 23, 1999 - 2:56 PM PT
Hi Ryck -- enjoyed your posts. One last update before leaving...
Update: ForPoetry.com
In Joseph Duemer's (Poetry Editor of the Wallace Stevens Journal) lastest journal from Vietnam, Duemer observes a brothel that is being raided by police not far from his hotel window.
"But in the last three months in Hanoi, alone, forty prostitutes have been arrested--every one of them HIV positive. There is a huge public health issue here, and hardly any resources to address it..."
Read Duemer's Diary from Vietnam at www.ForPoetry.com
ForPoetry
5642. jexster - May 23, 1999 - 5:41 PM PT
Leda and the Swan
A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.
How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?
A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
Being so caught up
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?
1923
5643. RyckNelson - May 24, 1999 - 4:39 PM PT
William Carlos Williams 1883-2963
from Paterson, Book Three
"It is dangerous to leave written that which is badly written. A chance word, upon paper, may destroy the world. Watch carefully and erase, while the power is still yours, I say to myself, for all that is put down, once it escapes, may rot its way into a thousand minds, the corn become a black smut, and all libraries, of necessity, be burned to the ground as a consequence."
5644. RyckNelson - May 24, 1999 - 7:21 PM PT
By: Malay Roy Choudhury ----a Hungrealist---- b.1939
Stark Electric Jesus:
Oh I'll die I'll die I'll die
My skin is in blazing furore
I do not know what I'll do where I'll go oh I am sick
I'll kick all Arts in the back and go away Shubha
Shubha let me go and live in your cloaked melon
In the unfastened shadow of dark destroyed saffron curtain
The last anchor is leaving me after I got the other anchors lifted
I can't resist anymore, million glass-panes are breaking in my cortex
I know, Shubha, spread out your matrix, give me peace
Each vein is carrying a stream of tears up to the heart
Brain's contagious flints are decomposing out of eternal sickness
Mother why didn't you give me birth in the form of a skeleton
I'd have gone two billion light years and kissed God's ass
But nothing pleases me nothing sounds well
I feel nauseated with more than a single kiss
I've forgotten women during copulation and returned to Muse
Into the sun-colored bladder
I do not know what these happenings are but they are occuring within me
I'll destroy and shatter everything
Desmantle your rib-shackled festivals
Draw and elevate Shubha into my hunger
Shubha will have to be given
Oh Malay
Calcutta seems to be a procession of wet and slippery organs today
But I do not know what I'll do now with my own self
My power of recollection is withering away
Let me ascend alone toward death
I haven't had to learn copulation and dying
I haven't had to learn the responsibility of shedding last drops after urination
Haven't had to learn to go and lie beside Shubha in the darkness
Have not had to learn the usage of French lather while lying on Nandita's bosom
cont.
5645. RyckNelson - May 24, 1999 - 7:32 PM PT
cont.
Though I wanted the healthy spirit of Aleya's fresh Chinarose matrix
Yet I submitted to the refuge of my brain's cataclysm
I am failing to understand why I still want to live
I am thinking of my debauched Sabarna-Choudhury ancestors
I'll have to do something different and new
Let me sleep for the last time on a bed soft as the skin of Shubha's bosom
I remember now the sharp-edged radiance of the moment I was born
I want to see my own death before passing away
The world had nothing to do with Malay Roy Choudhury
Shubha let me sleep for a few moments in your violent ailvery uterus
Give me peace, Shubha, let me have peace
Let my sin-driven skeleton be washed anew in your seasonal bloodstream
Let me create myself in your womb with my own sperm
Would I have been like this if I had different parents?
Was Malay alias me possible from an absolutely different sperm?
Would I have been Malay in the womb of other women of my father?
Would I have made a proffesional gentleman of me like my dead brother without Shubha?
Oh, answer, let somebody answer these
Shubha, ah Shubha
Let me see the earth through your cellophane hymen
Come back on the green mattress again
As cathode rays are sucked up with the warmth of a magnet's brilliance
I rememeber the letter of the final decision of 1956
The surroundings of your clitoris were being embellished with coon at that time
Fine rib-smashing roots were descending into your bosom
cont.
5646. RyckNelson - May 24, 1999 - 8:06 PM PT
cont.
Stupid relationship inflated in the bypass of senseless neglect
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah
I do not know whether I am going to die
Squandering wars roaring within heart's exhaustive impatience
I'll disrupt and destroy
I'll split all into pieces for the sake of art
There isn't any other way out for Poetry except suicide
Shubha
Let me enter into the immemorial incontinence of your labia majora
Into the absurdity of woeless effort
In the golden chlorophyll of the drunken heart
Why wasn't I lost in my mother's urethra
Why wasn't I driven away in my father's urine after his self-coition
Why wasn't I mixed in the ovum-flux or in the phlegm
With her eyes shut supine beheath me
I felt terribly distressed when I saw comfort seixe Shubha
Women could be treacherous even after unfolding a helpless appearance
Today it seems there is nothing so treacherous as women & Art
Now my ferocious heart is running towards an impossible death
Vertigos of water are coming up to my neck from the pierced earth
I will die
Oh what are these happenings within me
I am failing to fetch out my hand and my palm
From the dried sperms on my trousers spreading wings
300000 children gliding toward the district of Shubha's bosom
Millions of needles are now running from my blood into Poetry
Now the smuggling of my obstinate leg is trying to plunge
Into the death-killer sex -wig entangled in the hypnotic kingdom of words
Fitting violent mirrors on each wall of the room I am observing
After letting loose a few naked Malay, his unestablished scramblings
Translation from the Bengali by the author Malay Roy Choudhury
5647. incognito - May 25, 1999 - 9:22 AM PT
A Simple Poem
by incognito
I miss her night and day,
I miss her every way,
More than words can say,
Hoping she'll be mine.
She said that we were through,
She found somebody new,
I hoped that she'd be true,
And give us some more time.
She means so much to me,
I cannot measure by degree,
I hoped that she would see,
My short and simple rhyme.
Forgiveness is so hard,
And because I am no bard,
My words may seem so marred,
But my heart has kept the line.
5648. Jenerator - May 25, 1999 - 11:56 AM PT
Beautiful poem Incognito.
5649. incognito - May 25, 1999 - 12:34 PM PT
Oh I didn't see that. It's nice to have my work appreciated! :-)
5650. RyckNelson - May 25, 1999 - 8:44 PM PT
incognito,
The heart of your poem is endearing. I sense the emotion. Did you find meter with your rhyme, I'm just curious of that, I know how hard it is to have time to edit, let alone a meter check.
Tone on Tone
Confessing Blessings
Rehearse every verse
Understandable thirst
Completely rehearsed
Reflexive not pensive
Collapse into offensive
Unilateraly pervasive
Speculating the oppresive
Contractual oblique
Zeitgeist unique
Prolepsis critique
Fracture the sleek
tone-less tone tongue toning down tonetics
5651. incognito - May 25, 1999 - 9:46 PM PT
Rick, yes I found meter but violated in a couple of places.
third stanza, second line: "can't measure by degree" would have kept the meter
fourth stanza, second line: "Because I am no bard" would have kept the meter but then without the "and" the "because" wouldn't have worked well after the first line
fourth stanza, last line: lost the meter again!
But I hope I at least communicated my *feelings*!
5652. msgreer - May 25, 1999 - 9:50 PM PT
incognito..
A lovely poem.
5653. RyckNelson - May 26, 1999 - 4:54 AM PT
">Bob's Glossary of Poetic Terms
incognito,
I'm not sure, I interpret your stress of "*feeling*" to mean my question and comment "I sense the emotion" were unecassary.
My explanation for the question is it regarded the syllable accenting and counting that I find tedious. I was curious if you made the effort. I apprecitate the rhyme of your poem and also found it emotionally beautiful as Msgreer and Jenerator have. I look to BOB in my link above to explain to me what I can't remember wrt verse, meter and the rest. I fear your ire was raised and that was not my intention at all.
I have spent a couple of years in Poetry now and I seek free expression, sharing of thought, any written poetry and essay. I personally seek emotive style. Writting now is a joy in my life and I am sharing all the creative flow I can muster at any given time. With my hectic schedule and family time I am often hasty.
I would have that all fraysters come to poetry share their joy of writting, and if I'm the lucky one who can have a few lines of discourse with an individual wrt their writing then I am the one blessed a thousand measures.
5654. RyckNelson - May 26, 1999 - 4:56 AM PT
Bob's Glossary of Poetic Terms
incognito,
I'm not sure, I interpret your stress of "*feeling*" to mean my question and comment "I sense the emotion" were unecassary.
My explanation for the question is it regarded the syllable accenting and counting that I find tedious. I was curious if you made the effort. I apprecitate the rhyme of your poem and also found it emotionally beautiful as Msgreer and Jenerator have. I look to BOB in my link above to explain to me what I can't remember wrt verse, meter and the rest. I fear your ire was raised and that was not my intention at all.
I have spent a couple of years in Poetry now and I seek free expression, sharing of thought, any written poetry and essay. I personally seek emotive style. Writting now is a joy in my life and I am sharing all the creative flow I can muster at any given time. With my hectic schedule and family time I am often hasty.
I would have that all fraysters come to poetry share their joy of writting, and if I'm the lucky one who can have a few lines of discourse with an individual wrt their writing then I am the one blessed a thousand measures.