/Lit/'s Favorite Poems

[Anonymous No.21333832]

In this thread, we post poems which are among our favorites. Any poem is acceptable, but it should be one which you carry within your heart.

Here's my choice for today:
The Song of Wandering Aengus
W.B. Yeats, c. 1897

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun

[࿇ C Œ M G E N V S ࿇ !KNDY/Ar.iI No.21333855]

>>21333832


UAU, ALL THAT FITS WITHIN YOUR HEART?

[Anonymous No.21333877]

>>21333855
Yes, praise God. I've had this poem memorized for six years. I recite it to myself regularly, sometimes while out walking at night - especially under the light of the moon or stars. There are many I love, but this is one of my absolute favorites. Irish myths were also very precious to me as a young man, and I always loved the metaphor of the Salmon of Wisdom. What is one of yours?

[Anonymous No.21334328]

>>21333832
as an ESL im a beginner at reading poetry , the one that has thus far captivated me is Alexander Pope's Eloisa to Abelard

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;

[Anonymous No.21334415]

>>21334328
Beautiful choice, anon! An absolutely wonderful poem. You've already a better ear for English than most natives.

[Anonymous No.21335295]

>>21333832
I have never read this but it is very beautiful. My favorite is The Raven by Poe. Not rare, but still my favorite since I was a kid.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more.”

[Anonymous No.21335338]

OP here. Shamelessly self-bumping with an excerpt from Tennyson's Tiresias (1885) because I want to see all your favorite poems /lit/. This poem is a personal favorite, of course, and certain lines and imagery from it are always with me. I highly recommend reading the entire poem here: https://www.telelib.com/authors/T/TennysonAlfred/verse/tiresias/tiresias.html

"One naked peak—the sister of the Sun
Would climb from out the dark, and linger there
To silver all the valleys with her shafts—
There once, but long ago, five-fold thy term
Of years, I lay; the winds were dead for heat;
The noonday crag made the hand burn; and sick
For shadow—not one bush was near—I rose
Following a torrent till its myriad falls
Found silence in the hollows underneath.
There in a secret olive-glade I saw
Pallas Athene climbing from the bath
In anger; yet one glittering foot disturb’d
The lucid well; one snowy knee was prest
Against the margin flowers; a dreadful light
Came from her golden hair, her golden helm
And all her golden armor on the grass,
And from her virgin breast, and virgin eyes
Remaining fixt on mine, till mine grew dark
For ever, and I heard a voice that said
“Henceforth be blind, for thou hast seen too much,
And speak the truth that no man may believe.”
Son, in the hidden world of sight that lives
Behind this darkness, I behold her still
Beyond all work of those who carve the stone
Beyond all dreams of Godlike womanhood,
Ineffable beauty, out of whom, at a glance
And as it were, perforce, upon me flash’d
The power of prophesying—but to me
No power—so chain’d and coupled with the curse
Of blindness and their unbelief who heard
And heard not, when I spake of famine, plague
Shrine-shattering earthquake, fire, flood, thunderbolt,
And angers of the Gods for evil done
And expiation lack’d—no power on Fate
Theirs, or mine own! for when the crowd would roar
For blood, for war, whose issue was their doom,
To cast wise words among the multitude
Was flinging fruit to lions; nor, in hours
Of civil outbreak, when I knew the twain
Would each waste each, and bring on both the yoke
Of stronger states, was mine the voice to curb
The madness of our cities and their kings.
Who ever turn’d upon his heel to hear
My warning that the tyranny of one
Was prelude to the tyranny of all?
My counsel that the tyranny of all
Led backward to the tyranny of one?
This power hath work’d no good to aught that lives
And these blind hands were useless in their wars."

[Anonymous No.21335344]

>>21335295
A wonderful poem. It was one of my childhood favorites as well. It weathers the years gracefully.

[Anonymous No.21335350]

>>21333832
Get all the gold and silver that you can,
Satisfy ambition, animate
The trivial days and ram them with the sun,
And yet upon these maxims meditate:
All women dote upon an idle man
Although their children need a rich estate;
No man has ever lived that had enough
Of children’s gratitude or woman’s love.

No longer in Lethean foliage caught
Begin the preparation for your death
And from the fortieth winter by that thought
Test every work of intellect or faith,
And everything that your own hands have wrought
And call those works extravagance of breath
That are not suited for such men as come
proud, open-eyed and laughing to the tomb

[Anonymous No.21335383]

>>21335350
Wow, so excellent! This is a Yeats poem I hadn't read. Thank you, friend.

[Anonymous No.21335390]

>>21333832
Four Quartets
Please read T.S. Eliot’s four quartets

[Anonymous No.21335395]

>>21335390
I sometimes wonder if that is what Krishna meant—
Among other things—or one way of putting the same thing:
That the future is a faded song, a Royal Rose or a lavender spray
Of wistful regret for those who are not yet here to regret,
Pressed between yellow leaves of a book that has never been opened.
And the way up is the way down, the way forward is the way back.
You cannot face it steadily, but this thing is sure,
That time is no healer: the patient is no longer here.
When the train starts, and the passengers are settled
To fruit, periodicals and business letters
(And those who saw them off have left the platform)
Their faces relax from grief into relief,
To the sleepy rhythm of a hundred hours.
Fare forward, travellers! not escaping from the past
Into different lives, or into any future;
You are not the same people who left that station
Or who will arrive at any terminus,
While the narrowing rails slide together behind you;
And on the deck of the drumming liner
Watching the furrow that widens behind you,
You shall not think 'the past is finished'
Or 'the future is before us'.
At nightfall, in the rigging and the aerial,
Is a voice descanting (though not to the ear,
The murmuring shell of time, and not in any language)
'Fare forward, you who think that you are voyaging;
You are not those who saw the harbour
Receding, or those who will disembark.
Here between the hither and the farther shore
While time is withdrawn, consider the future
And the past with an equal mind.
At the moment which is not of action or inaction
You can receive this: "on whatever sphere of being
The mind of a man may be intent
At the time of death"—that is the one action
(And the time of death is every moment)
Which shall fructify in the lives of others:
And do not think of the fruit of action.
Fare forward.
O voyagers, O seamen,
You who came to port, and you whose bodies
Will suffer the trial and judgement of the sea,
Or whatever event, this is your real destination.'
So Krishna, as when he admonished Arjuna
On the field of battle.
Not fare well,
But fare forward, voyagers.
Please read t.s Eliot’s four quartets

[Anonymous No.21335397]

'Daddy' by Sylvia Plath
You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time——
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.

In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend

Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene

An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.

I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You——

Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.

You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who

Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I’m finally through.
The black telephone’s off at the root,
The voices just can’t worm through.

If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two——
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.

There’s a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.

[Anonymous No.21335408]

>>21335395
I'll admit, I have gone over The Waste Land multiple times, but for some reason had never gotten around to Four Quartets. The excerpt is very good. I certainly will read it.

[Anonymous No.21335417]

>>21335408
In all honesty, Eliot is the only reason I read anything, simply to appreciate him better and alter my perception of his work; I’m sure everyone has some similar idol but it’s never gotten old to me, to be able to navigate and transmute the language as he does is generational and endlessly inspiring to me, approach with a fresh heart!!!!

[Anonymous No.21335432]

>>21335397
It might be a bit tongue in cheek for my tastes, and it's the first I've read of Sylvia Plath, but I have to say - it is skillfully written and her feelings come through powerfully. It makes me sad... I want to say I hate it - because I don't like her scarred and twisted heart, broken by life, broken by love; but I kind of love it. Thanks anon. I'll probably be mulling this one over for longer than I want to, and grief stricken as I do.

[Anonymous No.21335438]

>>21335417
Yes! You're awesome! This is exactly how I feel about the works I love! I'll give Four Quartets serious attention in your honor.

[Anonymous No.21335441]

>>21335438
You are very kind, I can only hope it is as temporarily transfiguring for you as I have found it to be. Here’s one for Christmas, A Song For Simeon

Lord, the Roman hyacinths are blooming in bowls and
The winter sun creeps by the snow hills;
The stubborn season has made stand.
My life is light, waiting for the death wind,
Like a feather on the back of my hand.
Dust in sunlight and memory in corners
Wait for the wind that chills towards the dead land.
Grant us thy peace.
I have walked many years in this city,
Kept faith and fast, provided for the poor,
Have taken and given honour and ease.
There went never any rejected from my door.

Who shall remember my house,
where shall live my children’s children

When the time of sorrow is come ?
They will take to the goat’s path, and the fox’s home,
Fleeing from the foreign faces and the foreign swords.

Before the time of cords and scourges and lamentation
Grant us thy peace.
Before the stations of the mountain of desolation,
Before the certain hour of maternal sorrow,
Now at this birth season of decease,
Let the Infant, the still unspeaking and unspoken Word,
Grant Israel’s consolation
To one who has eighty years and no to-morrow.

According to thy word,
They shall praise Thee and suffer in every generation
With glory and derision,
Light upon light, mounting the saints’ stair.
Not for me the martyrdom, the ecstasy of thought and prayer,
Not for me the ultimate vision.
Grant me thy peace.

(And a sword shall pierce thy heart,
Thine also).

I am tired with my own life and the lives of those after me,
I am dying in my own death and the deaths of those after me.
Let thy servant depart,
Having seen thy salvation.

[Anonymous No.21335475]

>>21335397
No wonder she killed herself

[Anonymous No.21335503]

The GOAT

[Anonymous No.21335514]

>>21335441
Another of Eliot's I'd never seen. As expected, it's so well constructed. It's very beautiful, and light, yet dark. Strangely, I would almost say this poem is one which is dark with a shadow of light, rather than the reverse. What do you think he means by, "And a sword shall pierce thy heart, Thine also?" One thing about Eliot which amuses me, in his verse he lives beyond his years. Here he is a man of 80, though at the time he was but 40. In Prufrock, he's consumed with death and aging, but he wrote it at 30. I find it almost too identifiable, but I lack his ability or cultivation. Another welcome poem, anon. The only thing about this poem which stirs me to sorrow, Eliot keeps begging the Lord for His peace, and in so asking, means death, but according to the precious Word, "For He Himself is our peace (Eph.2:14)," and I wish I could convey the literality of that statement to Eliot myself.

[Anonymous No.21335532]

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round;
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:
And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean;
And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ’twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

[Anonymous No.21335533]

>>21335503
So good! It's been years since I had read it. I think Poe gets a bit overlooked because he's well loved by most high school teachers, and most people encounter him first in their youth, but he really does have a real way with language, and a whimsical soul - whether the madness of joy or terrror.

[Anonymous No.21335569]

>>21335514
The “And a sword shall pierce thy heart” is a line taken directly from Simeon, of whom little is known about other than that he was “a man touched by the wholly spirit” stumbling upon Jesus’s circumcision ceremony, who recognized him for who he was to be even as a child; this particular quote to me is an expression of Simeon’s fore-sufferance, his incommunicable understanding of the pain Christ and by extension his mother and all the children of Israel will have to suffer through Christ’s necessary sacrifice. The poem, to my mind, is a quiet, accepting lament by Simeon, wavering upon the precipice of perhaps the most monumental occurrence of history while understanding he will not yet be there to witness it; as with many Eliotic characters, the knowledge is a burden (for example, Tiresias who was blinded by Athens, or Prufrock, who’s head is brought in upon a platter (in allusion to St. John the Baptist, a man also sympathetic for his wise, but painful acceptance of his secondariness to that of Christ)). Though it is relatively short, it’s concision I find works well for it and would of course not do quite so well as an extended poem, having little to build upon in the character of Simeon. In some respects, Simeon is an anti-Gerontion, having no quarrel with his place in history, only holding concern for those who will come after him (people such as Gerontion, who, though having full knowledge of the Gospel and history as a whole, still refuse to acknowledge their own place in relationship to it, rather preferring a self-serving, scientific view than one of self-surrender). But again, what must have Simeon felt upon recognizing Christ and his consequences, in a single moment, enabled by the grace of God to comprehend both the glory and the terror, the humility and hubris of centuries of men following the life and death of this yet young child, and he an old man, having lived unassumingly, daring perhaps too little, living in full accordance with the mandates of his God. To have his life and the lives of all those to precede him intersect so poignantly at that moment — what have any of us to even begin to compare?

[Anonymous No.21335574]

>>21335532
This one was so fun to read. I will have to think more on it; I'm not sure what it may mean. I could have sworn I'd read Coleridge, but now I'm so sure. At times he reminds me a little of Tennyson - probably just a case of being of a similar time and place, or maybe Coleridge was an influence?

[Anonymous No.21335586]

>>21335569
So insightful! You've given me even greater joy in the poem, and I mean that! "As with many Eliotic characters, the knowledge is a burden," and in that he's right, "as wisdom increases, so does sorrow." Anti-Gerontion is a good way to put it. Fantastic stuff.

[Anonymous No.21335606]

>>21335514
As for Eliot’s peace, it seems he would in fact ultimately find it, and certainly miraculously, considering the man he once was and could have turned out to be. From all I’ve read in Eliot’s biographies, especially a certain “T.S. Eliot’s early years” I think it was, the disposition and frame of mind that allowed him to write Prufrock and then of course The Wasteland were fundamentally unsustainable; the fact of his “homelessness” is of course well known, but who can say they really know who they are? For Eliot the only real recourse (to simplify one’s life immeasurably) was to return to what he thought were his roots in the Church of England and his puritanical distant past, of course adapted to a relatively modern sensibility. Being so “acutely aware of the sense of the void” in human interaction as I vaguely remember him putting it is now hardly unique to any of us, being as steeped as we are in conscious reenactment, ease of proliferation, self-examination and alienation anywhere one chances to go; I guess I only intend to portray him more sympathetically. The young Eliot was possessed by the impossibility of a modern martyrdom, the first tendrils of existentialism, and endless apprehensions and examinations of himself and his thoughts, seeing visions and brief glimpses of what he deemed “the Silence”. Such visionary impulses in his earlier years are, of course, downplayed (though still very much present) I assume to avoid any overly repugnant self-indulgence. Anyway I guess the point is he made it out okay and died a smoker’s death

[Anonymous No.21335617]

Awesome poem by Emily Bronte. I liked it the first time i read it.

[Anonymous No.21335632]

>>21335586
Thank you very much! I’m sure you understand what it’s like to happily ruminate a while on something you love for a while and finally be able to share it, though admittedly graceless in dealing with something is felt to be rather ineffable. Poetry can really only be apprehended with further poetics; if one is to do the work (admittedly any work, all the work in the western camp) any justice, one must simply set about doing the work, contributing to it. Thank you again for listening!!

[Anonymous No.21335664]

>>21335606
Good, I hope I'll see him in Heaven, and thank you for sharing your knowledge with me. I certainly get the sense of existentialism looming like an apparition in his work, and endless neuroses without a doubt. I hadn't ever thought of him as desiring some form of martyrdom in literal terms - despite the John the Baptist passage, but that is interesting to think about. I could easily, EASILY see that frame of mind as unsustainable. It would be waves that were all troughs, no crests! Even so, what poems he might have written! Ha! Well, thanks again. I might linger a bit longer, but I'm probably out for the night.

[Anonymous No.21335668]

>>21335632
It was a pleasure.

[Anonymous No.21335708]

>>21335617
It's certainly pleasant. Even though it's a melancholy poem, I found it soothing, even soft. You might like Christina Rossetti's, "Remember Me." I do, hehe. Yours was a graceful song.

[Anonymous No.21335722]

>>21333832
That’s good.

[Anonymous No.21335832]

My hatred weights seventy tons
of twisted metal and corpses
carbonated; my hatred
is a flaming airplane
(like the Sacred
Heart of Jesus),
an airplane in pieces
(the heart of Our
Lady of Sorrows).

This is my body; take thee,
motherfuckers, and eat thee,
because hatred
is my host,
by him I commune
with a world of skeptics
suicidals and cynic murders.

Hatred is my religion.

I am Thereza of Avila
in the frenetic ecstasy
of mass slaughter, of Francis
of Assisi of slaughterhouses

In a gesture of holy
fury (holy for it is
pure), I dive in the abyss
with my germanic wings;
I am Absinth Star,
a kamikazi archangel,
and drag with me the buzz
of a hundred and fifty people
desperate. And a garden
of heads
severed
shall sprite over my tomb.

9525, Emmanuel Santiago

[Anonymous No.21335859]

>>21335295
I like it.

[Anonymous No.21336085]

>>21335832
You wrote this? It's good.

[Anonymous No.21336824]

>>21336085
It's a brazillian poet, I just translated it

[Anonymous No.21336830]

>>21336824
Ajd mistranslated sprout with sprite lol

[Anonymous No.21336844]

[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]
BY E. E. CUMMINGS
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

[Anonymous No.21336926]

Madroad Driving by Jack Kerouac

The Mad Road, lonely, leading around the bend into the openings of space towards the horizon Wasatch snows promised us in the vision of the West...

Spine heights at the world's end, coast of blue Pacific starry night - no bone half-banana moons sloping in the tangled night sky, the torments of great formations in mist, the huddled invisible insect in the car racing onwards... Illuminate.

The raw cut, the drag, the butte, the star, the draw, the sunflower in the grass...

Orange-butted west lands of Arcadia, forlorn sands of the isolate earth, dewy exposures to infinity in black space, home of the rattlesnake and the gopher - the level of the world, low and flat...

The charging restless mute unvoiced road keening in a seizure of tarpaulin power into the route, fabulous plots of landowners in green unexpecteds, ditches by the side of the road... as I look from here to Elko along the level of this pin parallel to telephone poles I can see a bug playing in the hot sun...

Hitch yourself a ride beyond the fastest freight train:
Beat the Smoke...
Find the Thigh...
Spend the Shiny...
Throw the Shroud...
Kiss the morning star in the morning glass...

Mad Road Driving Men Ahead.

Pencil traceries of our faintest wish in the travel of the horizon merged, nosey cloud obelisks in a dribble of speechless distance, the black sheep clouds cling a parallel above the streams of C B Q - serried Little Missouri rocks haunt the badlands, harsh dry brown fields roll in the moonlight - dotting immensity.

The crazed voyageur of the lone automobile presses forth his eager insignificance in noseplates and licenses into the vast promise of life - the choice of tragic wives.

[Anonymous No.21337083]

>>21335432
There's audio of her reading it on YouTube. It's s nice comfy listen and made me like the poem more. She has a nice.voice and weird accent and reads it a bit differently (better) than I did in my head.

[Anonymous No.21337136]

"They wove bright fables in the days of old,
When reason borrowed fancy's painted wings;
When truth's clear river flowed o'er sands of gold,
And told in song its high and mystic things!
And such the sweet and solemn tale of her
The pilgrim heart, to whom a dream was given,
That led her through the world,- Love's worshipper,-
To seek on earth for him whose home was heaven!

"In the full city,- by the haunted fount,-
Through the dim grotto's tracery of spars,-
'Mid the pine temples, on the moonlit mount,
Where silence sits to listen to the stars;
In the deep glade where dwells the brooding dove,
The painted valley, and the scented air,
She heard far echoes of the voice of Love,
And found his footsteps' traces everywhere.

"But nevermore they met! since doubts and fears,
Those phantom shapes that haunt and blight the earth,
Had come 'twixt her, a child of sin and tears,
And that bright spirit of immortal birth;
Until her pining soul and weeping eyes
Had learned to seek him only in the skies;
Till wings unto the weary heart were given,
And she became Love's angel bride in heaven!"

- "Cupid and Psyche" by T. K. Harvey

[Anonymous No.21337426]

>>21335832
I'm not a fan of this one - not at all.

[Anonymous No.21337432]

>>21336844
OP here, I'm back. I love this one. It is actually my younger sister's favorite poem of all time. My favorite E.E. Cummings poem is Buffalo Bill's, but this one is so good too.

[Anonymous No.21337435]

>>21337083
Ooo, I'll give a listen. Thanks.

[Anonymous No.21337463]

>>21333832
A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
By John Donne

As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say
The breath goes now, and some say, No:

So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears,
Men reckon what it did, and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined,
That our selves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the other do.

And though it in the center sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.

[Anonymous No.21337469]

Good thread.

Taoist
Kenneth Slessor

THOSE friends of Lao-Tzu, those wise old men
Dozing all day in lemon-silken robes,
With tomes of beaten jade spread knee to knee,
And pipe-stem, shining cold with silver, poised
In steaming play, and still a finger free
To dog the path of some forgotten pen;
Almost their bee-sweet ancient words incline
My mind to those old pagan ways, beloved
By mandarins and mages, now but dust
In drowsy pyramids. What creed is this,
Save that which those philosophers discussed
In gold pavilions, over musky wine?
'Repenting always of forgotten wrongs
Will never bring thy heart to rest, for thought
Repairs no whit of evil; rather cast
Thy meditations in that utter void
To which all human deeds resolve at last . . . .'
So runs the burden of their thousand songs.
Here, in this dark Star-Chamber of the soul,
You stand arraigned, O slayer of my heart . . .
But I am tired of hoarding up the grist
Of anger, and remember Lao-Tzu.
Revenge is empty to the Taoist,
And tears of penitence a futile toll!

[Anonymous No.21337479]

>>21337136
This is really beautiful. I'll enjoy reading it many times, no doubt.

[Anonymous No.21337518]

[Anonymous No.21337624]

Seven Fathoms Deep

>One voice and seven strings
>One Sun in seven rings,
>One breath through seven notes,
>One keep in seven moats.

>One light through seven colours,
>One king on seven horses,
>One father and seven mothers,
>One path and seven courses.

>One gold in seven metals,
>One water in seven vessels,
>One love and seven helpers,
>One peace and seven shelters.

>One lock with seven keys,
>One life in seven trees,
>One fire through seven lights,
>One day and seven nights.

>One truth through seven heavens,
>One alone and seven sevens,
>One beauty in seven veils,
>One treasure and seven jails.

>One and seven equal eight,
>To help the fire circulate!

Matthew Sutherland

[Anonymous No.21337730]

>>21336926
I'm not sure what I think of this one entirely. I like it, especially from, "Hitch yourself a ride," as it pressed towards its end. I really liked, "no bone half-banana moons sloping," but I may have to chew on it more to discover how its taste rests on me.

[Anonymous No.21337771]

>>21337463
A beautiful poem. This may be my new favorite of Donne's verse. I especially loved the lines, "Dull sublunary lovers' love (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit," all the way through, "Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss." In a way this poem, which speaks of a high and personal love beyond comprehension - and especially outside comprehension, echoes the Poe and Cummings poems other anons shared. I'm amazed at the individual depth and uniqueness of voice each poet can bring to this conversation.

[Anonymous No.21337787]

TO THE ETERNAL SELF

Thou Self Divine, whose heavenly throne
Outshines the sun in visioned splendor,
O hear me reverently intone
Thy Name with accent low and tender;
And let that Name, thus breathed, set free
The Power that wafts my soul to thee.

Let gleaming solar forces weave
My royal robe of light supernal; Triumphant, may I then receive
The promised crown of life eternal,
And thus within thy realm regain
My right with thee fore'er to reign.

While yet my soul must meekly wear
Its mortal vesture, dark and lowly, Unwearied may I strive with care
To do on earth thy Will most holy,
That here below thy boundless love Undimmed may shine from heaven above.

O give me now the power sublime
To read fair Wisdom's wondrous pages :
Unhindered then by space and time
My soul would haste, through fleeting ages,
With thee among the Gods to dine
On Wisdom's hallowed bread and wine.

James M Pryse

[Anonymous No.21337806]

>>21337469
I've never heard of Slessor, but this is a really good poem. To my mind, it shows (without meaning to perhaps) a way in which Christian repentance is often misunderstood, or where it's influence on Western society in general has produced an empty strain; but it captures beautifully his own impression of a Daoist sage, and the free feeling of the sensuospiritual. I don't dislike the ending, but for me something tonal perhaps goes awry after, "To which all human deeds resolve at last..." I almost feel the poem could have ended there, yet I still like the ending even when I read it as a stand alone passage, so I'm really not sure. I suppose I have to conclude it is excellent as is.

[Anonymous No.21337817]

An excerpt from Tennyson's Lockesly Hall.

For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;

Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight dropping down with costly bales;

Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain'd a ghastly dew
From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue;

Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm,
With the standards of the peoples plunging thro' the thunder-storm;

Till the war-drum throbb'd no longer, and the battle-flags were furl'd
In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.

There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe,
And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law.

[Anonymous No.21337821]

>>21333832
The Eve of Revolution by Algernon Charles Swinburne
The trumpets of the four winds of the world
From the ends of the earth blow battle; the night heaves,
With breasts palpitating and wings refurled,
With passion of couched limbs, as one who grieves
Sleeping, and in her sleep she sees uncurled
Dreams serpent-shapen, such as sickness weaves,
Down the wild wind of vision caught and whirled,
Dead leaves of sleep, thicker than autumn leaves,
Shadows of storm-shaped things,
Flights of dim tribes of kings,
The reaping men that reap men for their sheaves,
And, without grain to yield,
Their scythe-swept harvest-field
Thronged thick with men pursuing and fugitives,
Dead foliage of the tree of sleep,
Leaves blood-coloured and golden, blown from deep to deep.
...

[Anonymous No.21337888]

>>21337518
If this is what you carry in your heart, anon, out of the whole wide world of beautiful and meaningful poetry, then I don't know what to say.

[Anonymous No.21337915]

>>21337624
This is so interesting, but I definitely do not understand it. You would have to explain it to me, friend. I really liked it though, and can easily see how this could could carried along, quietly ringing out in backdrop of one's mind.

[Anonymous No.21337924]

>>21337624
This is so interesting, but I definitely do not understand it. You would have to explain it to me, friend. I really liked it though, and can easily see how this could be carried along, quietly ringing out in backdrop of one's mind.

[Anonymous No.21337943]

>>21337787
I'm curious what this poem means to you.

[Anonymous No.21337964]

>>21337817
I love Tennyson, but I've never read Lockesly Hall. It's very good, but it nearly sends a shudder down my spine - it's so darkly prophetic. His vision is yet unfurling. Amazing, really. I'll certainly read it in full.

[Anonymous No.21338009]

>>21337821
I just added some of Algernon Charles Swinburne's works to my Kindle yesterday. He's a poet I want to understand, and have firmly mentally placed within the framework of his day. This is a beautifully written piece. I'll have to read it in full. There's so much Biblical imagery just in this small part; I'm very curious to see where it goes. His language reminds me of D.H. Lawrence, actually. In particular, it calls to the mind two of his poems, "The Wild Common," and, "Twighlight." It's probably a small correlation, I'd have to compare them closely to venture a guess as to what it is, but perhaps Swinburne had a touch of influence on Lawrence. Yes, even the end of Cherry Robbers comes to mind, reading the end of this poem. Thanks, anon.

[Anonymous No.21338012]

>>21333832
This Dead Letter by Malcolm Lowry

When I am in the purgatory of the unread,
Of the backward, of those with wandering attention,
What survives must go back to Pier Head
To mingle with the bereaved, with those who weep
As freighters bear their hearts out with the tide.
It will not be a spirit worthy of mention,
Not one to recommend the down-and-out sailor:
Nor will it be a ghost to help my father
Struggling in the gale with his poor newspaper
. Or flying behind his bowler hat to work,
As once before to race his new school cap.
I shall not be looking for anyone to help;
The salt grey prop looks after itself.
I shall not stir a metaphor in a poet's head
Grown greyer than my book on his top shelf:
I spoke too much of wounds that never mend,
Of ships sailing in rain that never come back.
Still I shall watch them sail, but turn my back
To Saigon, the equator or Port Said.
I lived with sadness: I shall be stern
As this dead letter, I shall never send.

[Anonymous No.21338255]

>>21337943
>INITIATION, OR SPIRITUAL REBIRTH, results from the quickening in man of that Divine Spark which evolves, through upward direction of the Solar Force, * into the deathless Solar Body. † The degrees of Initiation are but the degrees of the evolution of the God in man; Illumination being that degree in which the Divine Self masters and enkindles its manifestation, the personality, which is henceforward subservient to its evolution. At the moment of Illumination man becomes, in truth, a "Son of God," having claimed and made his own his divine and natural birthright. Initiation and Illumination are the destiny of the race. " For all creation, gazing eagerly as if with outstretched neck, is waiting and longing to see the manifestation of the Sons of God. For those whom He has known beforehand He has also predestined to bear the likeness of His Son, that He might be the Eldest in a vast family of brothers."--ROMANS viii., 19, 29; "NEW TESTAMENT IN MODERN SPEECH." R. F. WEYMOUTH, D.LIT.
https://www.sacred-texts.com/eso/cdg/cdg04.htm

[Anonymous No.21338373]

>>21338012
This poem seems to be about a profound homesickness, but more than that. It seems about a sort of deep regret, but of what I am not sure. It strikes me as the poet's intention - to outline the debts of sadness and regret, but omit the lender's names. Am I mistaken? Do you carry this profound sadness and nostalgia with you, anon?

>>21338255
I see - at least in part. It is what I thought, more or less; although I am not knowledgeable enough in esoteric systems to make specific claims about the meanings of symbols. It was a well-written piece, even if I don't align with its sentiments. I'm glad you found time to reply.

[Anonymous No.21338623]

Nice thread, anon. I really like The Fall of Rome by W. H. Auden. I especially like the last verse. It's one of the first poems I learned by heart.


The piers are pummelled by the waves
In a lonely field the rain
Lashes an abandoned train
Outlaws fill the mountain caves

Fantastic grow the evening gowns
Agents of the Fisc pursue
Absconding tax-defaulters through
The sewers of provincial towns

Private rites of magic send
The temple prostitutes to sleep
All the literati keep
An imaginary friend

Cerebrotonic Cato may
Extol the Ancient disciplines
But the muscle-bound marines
Mutiny for food and pay

Caesar's double bed is warm
As an unimportant clerk
Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK
On a pink official form

Unendowed with wealth or pity
Little birds with scarlet legs
Sitting on their speckled eggs
Eye each flu-infected city

Altogether elsewhere, vast
Herds of reindeer move across
Miles and miles of golden moss
Silently and very fast

[Anonymous No.21338657]

>>21337806
I'll grant you that. If it ended on 'O, slayer of my heart', it would be an all-timer.


There is the muffled step in the snow; the stranger;
The crippled wren; the nun; the dancer; the Jesus-wing
Over the walkers in the village; and there are
Many beautiful arms around us and the things we know.

See how those stars tramp over the heavens on their sticks
Of ancient light: with what simplicity that blue
Takes eternity into the quiet cave of God, where Ceasar
And Socrates, like primitive paintings on a wall,
Look, with idiot eyes, on the world where we two are.

[Anonymous No.21339393]

>>21338623
It's an astoundingly strong poem, but I think I've only understood portions of it. For instance, are the "little birds with scarlet legs" merely birds, or are they people; and if merely birds, are they representative of a certain type of bird which has a symbolic meaning, or if people, what people, and then, what do the eggs represent? Likewise, does the bit about reindeer at the end, represent only the vast amounts of ignored territory - land which Rome in its prime would have tamed, or perhaps land beyond its ability to tame - signaling it reached its apex long ago, or is their swift, quiet march symbolic of a coming metaphorical winter? Are the literati's imaginary friends Muses, or is this another reference to the prostitutes whose friendship is imaginary due to the nature of the relationship? Or does it reference the oracular function of temple prostitutes, thus the imaginary friend is the god speaking through the oracle (this would then imply the god is fictional)? It is an excellent poem, without a doubt, but it leaves me with more questions than answers yet. I'm very curious - what is it that spoke to you so as to make it meaningful enough to memorize (aside from its obviously masterful command of language)? Side note: it reminds me of Yeats' tone, especially in some of his later poems - Byzantium, in particular. Auden's voice is his own, however. That is certain.

[Anonymous No.21339472]

>>21338657
I didn't quite understand the first stanza of this piece on its own, so I looked up the poem. I hadn't heard of Kenneth Patchen, despite owning two poetry collections compiled by Rexroth, his contemporary. I'll be perfectly honest with you, as I owe it to you all - as soon as I saw Patchen's eyes, I was immediately reminded of the eyes of those who spend long years deep in sorcery. They always have intelligent, cold eyes. Sometimes the backdrop of those frigid eyes is sorrow; oftentimes - most often - it looks like unfathomably deep misanthropy nearly to a point of weeping. In his case, the hatred seems second player to the sorrow.

After reading the poem, I can't deny how well constructed it is - excellent pacing and originality, but I can't possibly accept his sentiments towards Christ or God. They are in direct opposition to my own. Still, I enjoyed portions, more-or-less most of it, and especially the second stanza which you chose to share. Sure, it implies nature as God and precognition over cognition, but it was excellently done, and is a beautiful way of making himself heard. In fact, I can say that for the entire poem - whether he creeps me out or no - he has a vivid and soft way of sharing his perspective.

[Anonymous No.21340308]

Bump

[Anonymous No.21340482]

>>21333832
أنَا الذي نَظَـرَ الأعْمَـى إلى أدَبـي
وَأسْمَعَتْ كَلِماتـي مَنْ بـهِ صَمَـمُ
I am the one whose blind saw my literature
And my words were heard by who has deafness

أنَامُ مِلْءَ جُفُونـي عَـنْ شَوَارِدِهَـا
وَيَسْهَـرُ الخَلْـقُ جَرّاهَـا وَيخْتَصِـمُ
I sleep contently with filled eyelids in spite of my extraordinary language
While creatures stay awake and debate because of it

وَجاهِلٍ مَـدّهُ فِي جَهْلِـهِ ضَحِكـي
حَتَّـى أتَتْـه يَـدٌ فَـرّاسَـةٌ وَفَـمُ
And the ignorant man whom I prolonged his ignorance with my laughter
Until the predator hand and mouth came for him

إذا رَأيْـتَ نُيُـوبَ اللّيْـثِ بـارِزَةً
فَـلا تَظُـنّـنّ أنّ اللّيْـثَ يَبْتَسِـمُ
If you see the teeth of the lion prominent
Do not assume that the lion is smiling

وَمُهْجَةٍ مُهْجَتـي من هَمّ صَاحِبـها
أدرَكْتُـهَا بجَـوَادٍ ظَـهْـرُه حَـرَمُ
And I have slain the heart's blood of men who seaked my heart's blood
I realized this with a steed whose back was forbidden

رِجلاهُ فِي الرّكضِ رِجلٌ وَاليدانِ يَـدٌ
وَفِعْلُـهُ مَا تُريـدُ الكَـفُّ وَالقَـدَمُ
Her hind-legs when running were a single leg and the fore-legs a single leg
And does what the palm and the foot intend

وَمُرْهَفٍ سرْتُ بينَ الجَحْفَلَيـنِ بـهِ
حتَّى ضرَبْتُ وَمَوْجُ المَـوْتِ يَلْتَطِـمُ
And the [slender sword] I strolled through armies with
Until I struck and the waves of death collided

ألخَيْـلُ وَاللّيْـلُ وَالبَيْـداءُ تَعرِفُنـي
وَالسّيفُ وَالرّمحُ والقرْطاسُ وَالقَلَـمُ
For the horse and the night and the desert know me
And the sword and the spear and the stationary and the pen

صَحِبْتُ فِي الفَلَواتِ الوَحشَ منفَـرِداً
حتى تَعَجّبَ منـي القُـورُ وَالأكَـمُ
I made friends in the wasteland with the beast, alone
Until the hills and the mountains marveled at me

From Al Mutanabi, one of the greatest. Perhaps even the greatest.

[Anonymous No.21341173]

Bump

[Anonymous No.21341179]

[Anonymous No.21341203]

>>21340482
An interesting piece. It has elements I like. For instance, the lines regarding the lion's teeth, and my favorite two lines, "For the horse and the night and the desert know me And the sword and the spear and the stationary and the pen." I would have to hear it in Arabic, to have a real sense of it. It's expressive style bring certain writers who wrote their works in Spanish to mind, Cesar Vallejo's, "Black Stone on a White Stone," and Borges' gaucho and knife-fighter stories. My only qualm is the narcissistic tone present throughout. It sours it for me, but it's otherwise like-able.

[Anonymous No.21341601]

>>21341179
its over

[Anonymous No.21342117]

>>21333832
Dragutin Tadijanović, Balada o zaklanim ovcama
Pastirica blijedog lika, niz obronak, u svitanje,
Goni dvanaest ovaca, mekih runa,
U grad sneni na prodaju sitom mesaru.
Na čelu im ovan vitorog.

Eno ih, gle! bez bojazni uđoše,
Bezazleno, u povorci, jedna za drugom,
U dvorište gradske klaonice:
Tu stadoše u ugao, u hrpi, stisnute.

Mesarski ih pomoćnici, šutljivo,
Odvukoše kao kurjaci:
Nijedna se više natrag ne vrati.
Danas je svetkovina: stoka se kolje za gozbu.

Okrutne ruke snažno svaku obore:
Bez opiranja, pritisnuta koljenom,
Dočeka ona smrt od noža, u krvi.
Dvanaest ovaca visi o stupu gvozdenom.

Ugasle oči; runo krvlju polito; noge slomljene.
Javlja se sunce za obronkom... Na povratku
Pastirici se čini da čuje, u daljini, muklo blejanje.
Pašnjak blista rosnatom travom, u suncu.
my attempt at a translation:
Dragutin Tadijanović: A ballad about slaughtered sheep

A shepherd pale in form, down a slope, at dawn
Is herding sheep a dozen, soft to the touch,
Towards the sleepy town, towards the butcher.
Leading them, a ram, great in horn.

Here they are, look! without fear they enter,
Harmlessely, in a line, one after another,
the town slaughterhouse yard:
They settle the corner, all of them squeezed.

The butchers helpers, quietly,
take them away, like beasts:
Not one comes back.
Today is a holy day, for a feast the stock is slaughtered.

Cruel hands violently topple them:
Without resistance, under a knee,
She awaits her death by knife, by blood.
Twelve sheep are hanging from a stake.

Eyes empty, blood-soaked fleece, broken legs,
The Sun is shining upon the slope... Coming back,
A bleat enters the shepherds ear, far away, a muffled bleat.
The dew is shining in the grass, on the Sun.

Just so you know, the shepherd is female.Sorry if it sounds horrible I tried my best.

[Anonymous No.21342148]

>>21340482
Not the first time I see someone from the Arab world proclaim something rather unimpressive to be like the best thing ever. Like the Quran. Maybe it's a masterpiece in Arabic but clearly the supposedly beautiful language doesn't translate at all. In which case you should try to recognize this.

[Anonymous No.21342921]

>>21342148
I am not from the arab world, but simply a student of the language. But I do agree with your sentiment overall, so much is lost when translating. Most of the stuff cannot even be translated. Like for example in the verse about the teeth of the lion prominent, the word he uses for the lion is ليث which comes from the word of لثة which means the gums of the mouth, and obviously you can see how that relates to assuming smiling and to the verse before it speaking about how the poet's laugher kept a person in ignorance and then the verse speaking about his predatory mouth (words,language), and then relating all of that to a powerful steed and his own skill in war which make waves of death collide. Also the language itself is so inherently beautiful and complex oftentimes it feels like a miracle if a line or a verse even comes close to how beautiful it is in arabic. One particular verse that I often think about because of how its translation is almost as good as the original is from Farouq Gouida
ولو أن إبليس يومًا رآك
لقبّل عينيك.. ثم اهتدى
And if the devil was to ever see you
He'd kiss your eyes and repent

I assume you speak a language other than english, so you know how a translation can never be as good, but it feels literally impossible to capture the complexity of beauty of arabic. In regards to Quran I am not religious but reading it in arabic it was obviously the greatest thing I have ever read, although it was little bit too complex for me personally. Finishing it the first time it felt like I could find no joy in any other literature because nothing could compare. I had a similar, but obviously less intense, feeling reading Borges for the first time in that everything I read after it felt unimpressive.

[Anonymous No.21342925]

>>21341203
Try these to hear it in arabic
https://youtu.be/LBwrDuUQdNg
https://youtu.be/O04oUcNXmdI

What I translated was only an excerpt, and the rest of the poem actually speaks a lot about love, philosophizing about life, and intense praise for his friend Saif Al-Dawla (literally means Sword of the Nation). Also funny you picked those two verses as your favorite as they are the two most well known ones, with the sword and pen being his most well known and the verse of the lion's prominent teeth almost a proverb.

But yes he was extremely extremely boastful and it also adds to the legend of his life. In fact his name "Al-Mutanabbi" means the person who claims prophethood, as he claimed he was a prophet or had elements of prophethood by claiming he was related to prophet Saleh and by famously successfully climbing on a legendarily insane and aggressive horse as a young man who was said that no person would be able to climb unless they literally were a prophet with miracles. His boastfulness and huge ego and pride also literally led to his death. While traveling with his son and servant he was intercepted by a man he viciously insulted in one of his poems, as well as that man's uncle, and when his servant recited the famous sword and pen verse Al-Mutanabbi ignored the opportunity to flee and fought until they killed him.

I have never read Cesar Vallejo, but I will check out Black Stone on a White Stone, thank you.

[Anonymous No.21343147]

>>21342117
I really enjoyed this one. I may be misinterpreting it, and pardon me for that, but it comes across as a view of Christians. I'm not sure if that's why you mentioned the shepherd was female - to do away with that notion (or perhaps that we may see Mary, the mother of Christ, as the shepherd - the face which leads the "sheep" to their slaughter), but even the line, "The Sun [read: Son] is shining upon the slope...Coming back," seems to point to the sheep [read: Church] waiting for the return of Christ even as they are slaughtered. I am Christian, and am therefore inclined, always, to orient things towards an interpretation in that regard, so if it is inaccurate that is my misunderstanding. If, contrariwise, it is so, then I find this a marvel of a poem. From a Christian-haters view, this would be a scathing rebuke against the Church - a downright mockery, and from a Christian's view, this is our grateful and holy allotment on this Earth. To be led, "harmlessly, in a line," sometimes to a life of comfort on the grass - shorn for wool only, sometimes to the slaughter, and all for the glory of the Lord. Praise to His name!

I think you've rendered a beautiful translation. I've never been exposed to anything Croatian in my life, as I can recall. I am happy to have been today, and that it was this poem. I hope you carry it with you in the love of the Lord, but even if you do not, I will bless you all the same, and I'll pray that one day soon you shall.

[Anonymous No.21343195]

>>21333832
That's lovely. Thank you, anon. I should really read more Yeats.

[Anonymous No.21343335]

"Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair."

So sung a little Clod of Clay
Trodden with the cattle's feet,
But a Pebble of the brook
Warbled out these metres meet:

"Love seeketh only self to please,
To bind another to its delight,
Joys in another's loss of ease,
And builds a Hell in Heaven's despite

[Anonymous No.21343564]

>>21343195
Anytime, buddy. There's more where that came from.
>>21342921
I'm OP, not the guy you were replying to there, but that was interesting to hear.
>>21342925
It definitely sounds great when read aloud in Arabic! Thank you for such a thoughtful reply. He certainly seems like a very fascinating historical figure. I can see why you like him. I'm a curious now myself.
>Also funny you picked those two verses as your favorite as they are the two most well known ones
Hah! Awesome.

[Anonymous No.21343661]

>>21343335
Well written, but an incongruent match. I enjoy the juxtaposition of these two definitions of Love. Perfect really. I delight in the metaphors the author has chosen, but that change in definition creates a difference so macroscopic it's vastness cannot be underestimated. The first stanza speaks of selfless love - 1st Corinthians 13 love, Jesus on the Cross love. Real Love. The kind which transcends all boundaries and overcomes all obstacles. Love with power to affect great change in the world even beyond the grave. It is the sort of love which has changed nations and peoples, and led legendary knights out in search of great selfless deeds and acts of Christian charity (though they missed the mark in seeking their own glory). The second stanza isn't about Love at all, really, but mere craving and self-satisfaction, utilitarianism, and an eternal tug-o-war between egos. Under the second definition - which is the modern vogue, we've seen marriages and even the idea of marriages fall into shambles and worse, homosexuality proliferate - as the wounded and gender-jaded seek out pleasure and genuine love wherever they believe they can find it. How did this confusion happen? The answer is fairly simple, I think. Overtime, and often scathingly through Art, we have reduced the idea of love to the act of sex as a manifestation of love between Man and Woman. This reduction in focus fed inextricably into a reduction in our focus within relationships as well, as we more and more aggrandized the act rather than the feeling back of it. The onward course of our intraction into the senses, is to conclude we are mere animals perpetually searching for new grass on which to graze, and in a psyche aligned which such metaphor, we become the consumer and all others food for the fodder. This is a simple and linear outline, to be sure, and no phenomenon on such scale could possibly be linear, but even so. No, no, the Clod of Clay and the Pebble may use the same word, but it's mere homophony - the concepts are too disparate and their powers even more so.

That said. I enjoyed it. I like conversable works, and I sometimes get as much enjoyment out of disagreement as agreement.

[Anonymous No.21343708]

>>21333832
One by the famous P. Bateman.

The poor nigger on the wall.
Look at him.
Look at the poor nigger.
Look at the poor nigger on the wall.
Fuck him.
Fuck the nigger on the wall.
Black man is debil.

[Anonymous No.21343722]

>>21333832
I love reading Fiction, History, and Philosophy but can't into Poetry. How do I escape midwitism?

[Anonymous No.21343817]

>>21343708
せまい。ちさい。お前。
>>21343722
Start small. Take short, simple poems from great authors and chew on them. Find ones which sound good - literally sound good - to you. If they sound good to you, you're more likely to have fun as you ruminate on them. Choose ones which pique your curiosity, or provoke feeling. If you do this often enough, and just gradually branch, branch, and branch out from where you've begun, before you know it you'll have escaped the babby stage and be a neophyte. If you can enjoy your other reading hobbies and keep up with them, I'm sure you'll be able to find material within the wide poetic world which can stretch and grow you in ways you'll appreciate.

I personally began with anthologies, and zeroing in on poets I liked through Poetry Foundation, mostly. They have a free app, and if you're wanting to appreciate modern poets as well, I recommend thumbing through poetry mags at a Barnes and Nobles, or somewhere that carries them until you find one which has curation you like. Additionally, it is worth reading the US Poet Laureate's work, as their selection to the post is always multifaceted - guaranteeing that their poetry will be generally above average, sometimes excellent, will be in some way emblematic of its time or of the poet's people, and in this way you'll also gain interesting artistic talking points if you'd want them. Here in the US, we have a national PL as well as one for each state - sometimes the state level exceeds the national in a given time and place. The UK selects them for life, as I understand it, so they are typically selected with more gravity, and from what I've seen, are always strong.

With new things, time and experimentation are the answer.

I'll embarrass myself by revealing this - a story I've only told to family, but the first time I read Keats' introduction to Endymion, I was so emotionally underdeveloped I started surmising he was talking about the degradation of works of art physically over time, rather than the incredibly obvious reality he was speaking on how beautiful things which charm our souls become a part of us emotionally and stay with us throughout our lives - able to even outlive the life of the object itself. To make matters worse, I said this to a full table of my elders and professional betters, who were also poetry nuts. They were all very gracious, no one mocked or chided me, but the look in their eyes and the patient smiles which followed, told me clearly, I'd misunderstood. The point is, I moved past that stage of struggle, and, thank God, struggle with poetry of higher complexity or symbol now, and Lord-willing, will keep on growing and keep on finding new works with which to struggle forever - as I'm sure you can too, if you really wish it. Maybe this all sounded pretentious, but I just really, really like poetry and want to get as many people as possible sharing and enjoying it.

[Anonymous No.21343883]

Sound and Sense by Alexander Pope.

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance.
'Tis not enough no harshness gives offense,
The sound must seem an echo to the sense:
Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;
But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,
The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar;
When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,
The line too labors, and the words move slow;
Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain,
Flies o'er the unbending corn, and skims along the main.
Hear how Timotheus' varied lays surprise,
And bid alternate passions fall and rise!

00ART

[Anonymous No.21343930]

>>21343883
BAM! BLOW! WAM! *insert beatdown noises* A masterpiece. Anyone with less polish would have come across like a total doofus, speaking so authoritatively on verse, but he does it literally as he's backing it up! Fun! Pope is an emerging favorite of mine.

[Anonymous No.21345226]

Bump

[Anonymous No.21345282]

THE isles of Greece! the isles of Greece
Where burning Sappho loved and sung,
Where grew the arts of war and peace,
Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung!
Eternal summer gilds them yet,
But all, except their sun, is set.

The Scian and the Teian muse,
The hero’s harp, the lover’s lute,
Have found the fame your shores refuse:
Their place of birth alone is mute
To sounds which echo further west
Than your sires’ ‘Islands of the Blest’.

The mountains look on Marathon—
And Marathon looks on the sea;
And musing there an hour alone,
I dream’d that Greece might still be free;
For standing on the Persians’ grave,
I could not deem myself a slave.

A king sate on the rocky brow
Which looks o’er sea-born Salamis;
And ships, by thousands, lay below,
And men in nations;—all were his!
He counted them at break of day—
And when the sun set, where were they?

And where are they? and where art thou,
My country? On thy voiceless shore
The heroic lay is tuneless now—
The heroic bosom beats no more!
And must thy lyre, so long divine,
Degenerate into hands like mine?

’Tis something in the dearth of fame,
Though link’d among a fetter’d race,
To feel at least a patriot’s shame,
Even as I sing, suffuse my face;
For what is left the poet here?
For Greeks a blush—for Greece a tear.

Must we but weep o’er days more blest?
Must we but blush?—Our fathers bled.
Earth! render back from out thy breast
A remnant of our Spartan dead!
Of the three hundred grant but three,
To make a new Thermopylae!

What, silent still? and silent all?
Ah! no;—the voices of the dead
Sound like a distant torrent’s fall,
And answer, ‘Let one living head,
But one, arise,—we come, we come!’
’Tis but the living who are dumb.

In vain—in vain: strike other chords;
Fill high the cup with Samian wine!
Leave battles to the Turkish hordes,
And shed the blood of Scio’s vine:
Hark! rising to the ignoble call—
How answers each bold Bacchanal!

You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet;
Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone?
Of two such lessons, why forget
The nobler and the manlier one?
You have the letters Cadmus gave—
Think ye he meant them for a slave?

[Anonymous No.21345286]

>>21345282

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
We will not think of themes like these!
It made Anacreon’s song divine:
He served—but served Polycrates—
A tyrant; but our masters then
Were still, at least, our countrymen.

The tyrant of the Chersonese
Was freedom’s best and bravest friend;
That tyrant was Miltiades!
O that the present hour would lend
Another despot of the kind!
Such chains as his were sure to bind.

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
On Suli’s rock, and Parga’s shore,
Exists the remnant of a line
Such as the Doric mothers bore;
And there, perhaps, some seed is sown,
The Heracleidan blood might own.

Trust not for freedom to the Franks—
They have a king who buys and sells;
In native swords and native ranks
The only hope of courage dwells:
But Turkish force and Latin fraud
Would break your shield, however broad.

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
Our virgins dance beneath the shade—
I see their glorious black eyes shine;
But gazing on each glowing maid,
My own the burning tear-drop laves,
To think such breasts must suckle slaves.

Place me on Sunium’s marbled steep,
Where nothing, save the waves and I,
May hear our mutual murmurs sweep;
There, swan-like, let me sing and die:
A land of slaves shall ne’er be mine—
Dash down yon cup of Samian wine!

Lord Byron

[Anonymous No.21345373]

>>21343147
Thank you for your encouraging words regarding the translation. I messed up a bit at times but overall I think it's decently faithful while preserving the original's fluidity to a decent extent.
When it comes to the Christian tones you have picked up, it's certainly possible knowing the author but just so you know this particular poem is a part of a collection called Srebrne svirale (Silver pipes). Comprising it are usually idyllic descriptions and some songs about his childhood. Make of that what you will.

[Anonymous No.21346122]

>>21345373
Oh, interesting. I will try and check out his collection, if I can. It sounds calm and relaxing.

[Anonymous No.21346231]

>>21346122
I'm afraid that you will struggle finding any of his work translated. From the 5 minute searching I did, I only found
https://www.sic-journal.org/Article/Index/117 concerning Tin Ujević
And that's pretty much it when it comes to translations. It's sad that so much work is inaccessible. If I ever feel like it I might translate more stuff from Croatian (probably
more modern poems since 16th century Croatian is sort of difficult to translate faithfully). But I do think it's nice that at least someone holds an interest in not so well known work.

[Anonymous No.21346858]

>>21345282
>>21345286
A really enjoyable poem! He was certainly full of deep Hellenistic love, but doesn't it all seem a bit dramatic given that England continued to dominate many nations of the globe throughout the Victorian era? Not only that, it comes across as lacking in perspective some to drop tears, "to think that such breasts much suckle slaves," as a citizen of a nation which pillaged and enslaved peoples all over the world in actuality - even more so when considered that no genuine slavery would engulf them though genuine slavery was the life and lot of peoples in Byron's time. As I said, I really enjoyed it, but the sentiments would bring me to mock him a bit were he sharing it with me personally.

For instance, "Must we but weep o'er days more blest? Must we but blush? - Our fathers bled." It sounds so powerful, so passionate - the great sentimentality of it almost makes it feel true, until you consider that in all times soldiers are somewhere fighting, dying on front lines for a country of saucy young writers who would rather romanticize the past than fight in the present. In other words, the beauty of the battles of the past is only ever constructed as part of a motivational narrative, or as the work of historians and artists. The reality of the great battle at the Somme, romantic now, was just a hideous bloodbath - as ultimately meaningless in the great tapestry of history as most will seem. There is a line from the American philosopher William Barret's Irrational Man which I've had memorized since my first reading, "sentimentality is at base, feeling which is untrue to its object," and this is correct. We cannot avoid it, but we should be conscious of it. The battles of the past weren't necessarily more glorious or more noble, but were made so by the sentimentalists of the ages, and this is becoming true of our recent past wars - whether as examples of valor, folly, or wickedness, historianship and the poetics of art will raise these things beyond their natural place - and it will be as true again of the battles of the future.

I may sound like I hated it, but actually I like it alot - kind of loved it. I just enjoy picking up a dialogue of sorts with the authors I read.

>>21346231
I really do. I appreciate it very much, and this page looks like it attempts some examination of him and his art as well.

[Anonymous No.21347515]

I haven't read very much poetry, but from what I have read, I really like the Grey Monk by William Blake:
"I die, I die," the mother said,
"My children die from lack of bread.
What more has the merciless tyrant said?"
The monk say down on the stony bed,

The blood red ran from the grey monk's side,
His hands and feet were wounded wide.
His body bent, his arms and knees,
Like to the roots of ancient trees.

His eye was dry, no tear could flow,
A hollow groan first spoke his woe.
He trembled and shuddered upon the bed,
At length with a feeble cry he said,

"When God commanded this hand to write
In the studious hours of deep midnight,
He told me the writing I wrote should prove
The bain of all that on earth I loved.

"My brother starved between two walls,
His children's cry my soul appalls.
I mocked at the wrack and grinding chain,
My bent body mocks their torturing pain.

"Thy father drew his sword in the North,
With his thousands strong, he marched forth.
Thy brother has armed himself in steel
To avenge the wrongs thy children feel

"But vain the sword, and vain the bow!
They never can work war's overthrow.
The hermit's prayer and the widow's tear
Alone can free the world from fear.

"For a tear is an intellectual thing,
And a sigh is the sword of an angel king,
And the bitter groan of the martyr's woe
Is an arrow from the Almighty's bow.

"The hand of vengeance found the bed
To which the purple tyrant fled.
The iron hand crushed the tyrant's head,
And became a tyrant in his stead"

I'd have to say though, that my favorite singular line of poetry is an Albanian one:
Pásh njat degë, ku rri pushue
It's line 625 of a poem called "Martesa e Halilit" from the book "Visaret e Kombit", collected by Át Bernadin Palaj and Át Donat Kurti. I say "collected", not "written", because it's a book of legends originally passed down orally, like the Iliad.
It roughly means, and this'll probably sound stupid, 'by that branch, where you sit resting".
For context, Halili, the hero of this poem, is in chains, about to be put to death by the king of Kotorr and his final request is to be given a lahutë (the instrument that the poem was traditionally sung to, by the way) so he can sing one last song before he dies, which he sings in Albanian, so none of the Slavic spectators can understand. He curses the sun and moon and fairies for not fulfilling their promise to protect him yada yada, but then a bird flies in and sits down on a maple's branch, and Halili turns his song towards the bird, asking it to send news of his plight to his brother. He asks the bird to do this in the name of the branch it's sitting on. That's the highest authority he can invoke to get the bird to do it. To me personally, the line invokes a very warm and cozy image of a little bird on a little branch and to that bird, in that moment, the most important thing, the most powerful thing there is the branch. Halili's song is very warm and sad and this line fits very nicely into it

[Anonymous No.21347580]

>>21347515
Of course, the warmth of the poem slowly starts to rise as the sadness slowly turns into anger, which reaches a crescendo when Muji, Halili's brother, comes out of the bushes to free Halili and he comes prepared with a small army to start a fierce war that ends in the entirety of the city, Kotorr, being burnt down.
You can find a translation of the whole poem at albanianliterature dot net slash oralverse slash verse underscore 09 underscore 05 dot html, although I don't think it's nearly as beautiful in English as in Albanian. I also dislike how Elsie puts religion into the text where there is none. He puts "Christian" where a more accurate translation would just put "slav" or "slavic"
Also, fuck 4chan for thinking my post is spam

[Anonymous No.21347593]

>>21333832
Never did read a poem that I "carried within my heart."
I liked The Raven though, but only for its aesthetic value. I'll be reading the poetry ITT

[Anonymous No.21347613]

>>21343564
Thank you for your kind words
I greatly enjoyed black stone on a white stone

[Anonymous No.21348259]

>>21347515
>>21347580
>"For a tear is an intellectual thing,
And a sigh is the sword of an angel king,
And the bitter groan of the martyr's woe
Is an arrow from the Almighty's bow."

Wow... This is why Bloom believed only Blake had escaped Shakespeare and truly found himself poetically. Amazing stuff. It makes my chest swell with deep satisfaction above and beyond sense. Excellent poem!

Your main choice, far from sounding stupid sounds very interesting. Your choice of Blake poem makes me certain it will be as fascinating as it sounds. I'm sadly very ignorant of the works of many countries and Albania is one. I'm excited to read it, but I'll keep in mind the translation is perhaps skewed and lacking in English (I bet I will enjoy myself regardless!).

>>21347613
They were deserved, and I'm glad you enjoyed Vallejo. I found that poem thanks to people here, long ago, and it is probably the most passionately emotional poem which has found its way into the poems which wander through my mind now and again - especially the line about the stick and club (which is even better in the original Spanish, I think), hahaha!

>>21347593
Then you've come to the right place, friend! Welcome!!

[Anonymous No.21348305]

Well /lit/ I must hit the sack, but to help keep the thread interesting till morning I will drop a short, but beautiful poem. I was thinking to myself, "What female poet could I share in this thread," but due to my own criterion (of carrying the work in your heart) I realized, that though there are woman poets I respect greatly, and whose works float around with me a bit (Marianne Moore's "Black Maps," is genuinely impressive for instance, or Tracy K. Smith for "Sci-Fi" as one of the best and most patient summaries of the confusion of our times), there is only one woman poet whose work never fails to hit me as deeply as a mans and stirs my heart to feeling and my mind to wonder at her skilled, gentle choice of words and pure heart. That woman is Christina Rossetti, whose father and elder sister were Dante scholars, and whose two elder brothers were writers and poets as well, in particular, her closest and well-known brother Dante Gabriel, of the Pre-Raphaelite movement.

Here is her duly famous poem, "Remember":

Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann'd:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.


I hope that we men, who by our nature resonate more easily with the works of other men, can also look with tender appreciation on the delicate beauty of a feminine poetic hand.

[Anonymous No.21348314]

>>21348305
*Black Earth* sorry. Black Maps is a poem I like by former Poet Laureate of the US, Mark Strand. I just mixed them up.

[Anonymous No.21348585]

>>21348314
That's okay, not like anyone here can tell the difference

[Anonymous No.21348603]

>>21333832
So beautiful but this line always pissed me off

>hollow lands and hilly lands,

It just sounds bad

[Anonymous No.21348653]

>>21337463
>Thy firmness makes my circle just,
>And makes me end where I begun.

Such an explosion of meaning in these lines

1. Conceit of the compass (the literal which grounds the other levels)
2. Firmness making the circle (metonymy for “soul” “just,” (righteous)).
3. Underlying sexual meaning of “ending” (in orgasm and in the erotic dissolution the poem treats of in the early stanzas) into a womb, which is also where we all begin.
4. Less sexual meaning of ending (coming to one’s purpose) where one began.. this is a rather Freudian meaning too, in a sense. Basically when we come to a good relationship with a woman we come to another mother, but a mother whom we now meet not as a child, but as a father. The fractal or at least repeating nature of life is also symbolized by the circle.
5. The compass is two physical, tangible objects working together to inscribe an abstract perfect being (a circle) onto a symbolic space. In the same way (echoing the poem’s general preoccupation with spiritualized erotic love), lovers both participate in and inscribe/re-create the love which animates them and created them.

And I’m sure I could go on. Fucking incredible poem.

[Anonymous No.21348661]

>>21339393
I take the Reindeer as signifying how nature continues to operate “perfectly” even when human institutions grow terribly corrupt. But that has been on my mind lately.

[Anonymous No.21348674]

>>21341179
I tried to get it to grok regular meter and rhyme and it just wouldn’t do it

[Anonymous No.21348696]

>>21343883
Ironically I find that this lacks soul. Hopkins writes somewhere that a poem may be technically proficient but nevertheless somehow inert. I believe he calls the opposite stuff “Orphic” (?)

[Anonymous No.21348727]

>>21348305
Some of the simplest poems are most beautiful.

But I disagree with the sentiment. Surely the lover should not forget his beloved. I know that the speaker only wants her beloved to be happy, but I think that her love for him should have his love for her in it. As symbolized in [__].

[Anonymous No.21348772]

>>21334415
He got it from the movie
>>21335569
A fitting subject for a poem. Tradition holds that Simeon quarreled with an angel during the composition of the Septuagint… refusing to put down “Parthenos,” as he found it incredible… I wrote a poem about that, but it’s infinitely worse… (but being comic, lighter, it’s out of the running, thank God)

[Anonymous No.21348777]

Glory be to God for dappled things –
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.

[Anonymous No.21350013]

>>21348603
I could see distaste for that. It's supposed to evoke the image of fairy mounds and magic to further Irish-ize this obvious muse to Yeats purpose.

[Anonymous No.21350066]

>>21333877
Please recommend some of your other favorite Yeats poems

[Anonymous No.21350079]

>>21333832
"My November Guest" by Robert Frost (a month late!)

My sorrow, when she’s here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.

Her pleasure will not let me stay.
She talks and I am fain to list:
She’s glad the birds are gone away,
She’s glad her simple worsted grey
Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolate, deserted trees,
The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
And vexes me for reason why.

Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
And they are better for her praise.

[Anonymous No.21350084]

>>21348653
Yes, absolutely. I hadn't considered a sexual layer to the metaphor - despite the erotic nature of the poem, but your analysis is appears fully sound in that regard. Very keen, and it makes my appreciation for the piece grow further.
>>21348661
An interesting perspective - very possible.
>>21348727
I consider her one whose graceful mastery masquerades as simplicity. I don't think it's that she wishes him to forget, but only that she frees him to move on fully - even if it means that her memory fades as new life comes in. I think her choice of, "some vestige of the feeling that I had," is so apt. As the years pass, whether we wish or no, memories of lost love ones fade - even, really, of those loved ones still living, and which memories are lost, which are kept, is largely up to forces within ourselves of which we have less control than we should like. Her love is a true one. Selfless enough to liberate him fully, but hoping that she would be to him what Keats says all beautiful things are to us in his introduction to Endymion.
>>21348777
>trips sevens confirm
Praise God indeed. What a wonderful, grateful poem; now I know of Gerard Manley Hopkins as well. You must have a lovely soul to carry such pleasant gratitude around within you.

[Anonymous No.21350283]

>>21350066
Oh, boy! I've been trying not to flood the thread with Yeats because I'm too inclined to do so, but now you've asked I'll post another. Sometimes I use its lines as a conviction to myself, sometimes as honest or playful rebuke to others, but this, to me, is the companion to the first - along with another two, viewed as one, and one of which is well known. Wandering Aengus represents Yeats initial poetic inspiration - mystical in depiction, the heady divine fire, like great Cuchulain, which drove him into the wilderness of the hazel wood, and his solemn self-vow to catch the Muse to become the great Irish Homer - a new and magic bard, divinely blessed to clear the blindness from men's eyes and wake their hearts in power with new song, but this poem represents his eventual dissolution and coming to terms with the reality of men.

The Fisherman (1919)

Although I can see him still,
The freckled man who goes
To a grey place on a hill
In grey Connemara clothes
At dawn to cast his flies,
It's long since I began
To call up to the eyes
This wise and simple man.
All day I'd looked in the face
What I had hoped 'twould be
To write for my own race
And the reality;
The living men that I hate,
The dead man that I loved,
The craven man in his seat,
The insolent unreproved,
And no knave brought to book
Who has won a drunken cheer,
The witty man and his joke
Aimed at the commonest ear,
The clever man who cries
The catch-cries of the clown,
The beating down of the wise
And great Art beaten down.

Maybe a twelvemonth since
Suddenly I began,
In scorn of this audience,
Imagining a man,
And his sun-freckled face,
And grey Connemara cloth,
Climbing up to a place
Where stone is dark under froth,
And the down-turn of his wrist
When the flies drop in the stream;
A man who does not exist,
A man who is but a dream;
And cried, 'Before I am old
I shall have written him one
Poem maybe as cold
And passionate as the dawn.'


I believe his views can further be circumscribed, through his late life paired poems, written at ages 63 and 68, at the height of his powers - Sailing to Byzantium (1928) and Byzantium (1933). The first is often shared without the second for some unfathomable reason. I consider these to outline Yeats views of the meaning and role of the poet, or at least his own function.

I'll share some which I group together, and some which I love alone.

>these three, together; the fourth is arguably on the same theme
The Magi, c. 1914
The Second Coming, c.1916
Two Songs from a Play, c. 1927
Her Anxiety, date unknown to me

>if you're unfamiliar with Hesiod's Theogony, I recommend going to Theoi and reading the genealogies of Leda.
Leda and the Swan, c. 1923

The Lake Isle of Innisfree, c. 1890 (the first Yeats poem I ever read - powerful for me)
To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing, c.1914 (interesting backstory to this one)
No Second Troy, c. 1908
Adam's Curse (a true favorite of mine), c. 1903

There are many more, truly, but this is a start.

[Anonymous No.21350325]

>>21350079
I love it. I've found it strangely easy to forget just how impressive a writer Frost was. He really deserved the Poet Laureate's seat. Wonderful poem.

[Anonymous No.21350492]

https://www.bartleby.com/360/7/168.html
Alonzo the Brave and the Fair Imogine
Matthew Gregory Lewis

A WARRIOR so bold, and a virgin so bright,
Conversed as they sat on the green;
They gazed on each other with tender delight:
Alonzo the Brave was the name of the knight,—
The maiden’s, the Fair Imogine.

“And O,” said the youth, “since to-morrow I go
To fight in a far distant land,
Your tears for my absence soon ceasing to flow,
Some other will court you, and you will bestow
On a wealthier suitor your hand!”

“O, hush these suspicions,” Fair Imogine said,
“Offensive to love and to me;
For, if you be living, or if you be dead,
I swear by the Virgin that none in your stead
Shall husband of Imogine be.

“If e’er I, by lust or by wealth led aside,
Forget my Alonzo the Brave,
God grant that, to punish my falsehood and pride,
Your ghost at the marriage may sit by my side,
May tax me with perjury, claim me as bride,
And bear me away to the grave!”

[Anonymous No.21350604]

>>21335350
>All women dote upon an idle man

Based and blackpilled.

[Anonymous No.21350629]

>>21333832
No Joy in Life by DH Lawrence
Those Winter Sundays by Roberty Hayden
Wild Geese by Mary Oliver
I Too Sing America by Lnagston Hughes

[Anonymous No.21350901]

>>21333832

*copy and pastes entire Divine Comedy*

Here’s one I adore by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, titled “Solitude”:

Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone;
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air;
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.

Rejoice, and men will seek you;
Grieve, and they turn and go;
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not need your woe.
Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all,—
There are none to decline your nectared wine,
But alone you must drink life’s gall.

Feast, and your halls are crowded;
Fast, and the world goes by.
Succeed and give, and it helps you live,
But no man can help you die.
There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a large and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.

[Anonymous No.21352100]

Thomas Hood's The Bridge of Sighs is one of my favorites as well. Here is the first few stanzas:

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One more Unfortunate,
Weary of breath,
Rashly importunate,
Gone to her death!

Take her up tenderly,
Lift her with care;
Fashion'd so slenderly
Young, and so fair!

Look at her garments
Clinging like cerements;
Whilst the wave constantly
Drips from her clothing;
Take her up instantly,
Loving, not loathing.

Touch her not scornfully;
Think of her mournfully,
Gently and humanly;
Not of the stains of her,
All that remains of her
Now is pure womanly.

Make no deep scrutiny
Into her mutiny
Rash and undutiful:
Past all dishonour,
Death has left on her
Only the beautiful.

[Anonymous No.21352138]

>>21350492
Ah! *raises glass (nevermind it's coffee)* "To the wholesome souls of faithful and noble women, may their number people the Earth and their hearts never change!" *takes drink* "And may our manly souls burn bright and heavy as neutron stars that we should honor their fealty and their love!" *second drink* A poem of true romance, friend. I would not wish her pretty head the dreary solitude of widowhood (or is it widowdom - which sounds cooler, lol), however. Better she'd find someone again.

>>21350604
At first read it sounded somewhat true to me as well, but the more I've thought on it, I'm less convinced. The Amish women, for instance, who must be practical, or conservative women in general who tend to do the same thing as a lot of conservative men, and over-romanticize stereotypically masculine activities - which would seem to favor an active life, and I suppose I can recall men who were especially well-loved by women on both sides; inactivity and activity. I've come to the conclusion, that the most valuable way to gain from those lines of Yeats', whether as a man or woman, is to think on the sort of man he was imagining as one who is popular, yet useless, and the sort he imagined one ought to be. As a man, for the purpose of being him, and as a woman, so as not to make the mistake of going for the wrong sort. This we can do irrespective of degrees of agreement on whether women generally favor idle men. On the other hand, if it were true, I wonder why?

>>21350901
I'm planning on starting the Divine Comedy for the first time soon; once I finish what I'm currently reading - although I have been debating whether to read Virgil first. I'm impatient.

Solitude is a fantastic poem! It makes me a bit sad. Truly, Christians fall short of the calling of God though we try - in proliferating the faith, and in living out Romans 12, "rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep," yet those commands do run in opposition to human nature, rendering the necessity of command. It is interesting, sad, and wonderfully put. A magnificent poem!

[Anonymous No.21352189]

>>21333832
eidolons walt whitman

[Anonymous No.21352438]

>>21350629
>No Joy in Life by DH Lawrence
Why can I only find this on Reddit? Seems awfully suspicious. It does sound like Lawrence in tone, style, and flamboyant arrogance however, so it may be genuine. I'm fond of Lawrence, despite his cocaphonal affirmations and denunciations. What I like about him, I suppose, is whether he's right or wrong, he does it maximally and with style. He is vivacious and musical. I can see why you might carry this one around in your heart, there is truth in it, though he's off the mark.

>Those Winter Sundays by Roberty Hayden
I think this is excellent. It reads more like prose than poetry - which I dislike, but it reads like prose I like. Specifically, it reminds me of Joyce in, "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man." The entire work has a poetic quality to the prose, and in fact I'd call Joyce's prose very Lawrence-like, but there's a moment where he's describing the sound of the young men at Clongowes playing cricket which your poem called to mind, despite of disparity in emotional tone, "And from here and from there came the sounds of the cricket bats through the soft grey air. They said: pick, pack, pock, puck: little drops of water in a fountain slowly falling in the brimming bowl." - My favorite sentence in the whole book, probably.

So rhythmic, and what striking hard stops back to back! Stops which whip and crackle, crinkle, and crack! Lol, ok, I'll stop, but Roberty Hayden has this nice quality too.

A splendid poem. One it would do a lot of men and young men to think on - both not to be irascible as the lonely, austere provider and thereby undermine our own kindnesses with generating a punishing atmosphere, and to be thoughtful and appreciative as children, willing to make room for the shortness of temper weariness can bring. Wonderous stuff!

>Wild Geese by Mary Oliver
I'll be brutally honest about this one. I don't like it. It represents many of the things I dislike about a lot of modern poetry:

- sensuality as religion
- bodily urges as rectitude
- prosaic without craft
- meaningless line breaks
- value subversion
- all of it under this "I'm going to make you feel warm and fluffy, so you'll feel, rather than think," kind of vibe

It seems to appear most in women's poetry - far as I can tell, and there's a lot of poems like it. I can say two nice things - it lacks the explicit sexuality a lot of similar poems have, which I find distasteful, not because sex is talked about explicitly, but because it is done almost as though to do so were virtuous in itself, and, two, it provides a genuinely, if weakly, optimistic perspective. However, if this optimism is powerful for you it's to her credit.

>I Too Sing America by Langston Hughes
Simple, but powerful. A good poem. It makes me a bit sad. What empty miseries we humans inflict on one another! Thank God, for we have continued to grow beyond this one!

[Anonymous No.21352485]

>>21352100
Hmmm, interesting. I'd be willing to read the entirety of it.

[Anonymous No.21352494]

>>21333832
Whitman’s entire oeuvre. It is a whole that can’t be broken up

[Anonymous No.21352531]

>>21352189
Excellent, and a bit spooky, but Plato would be well pleased.

[Anonymous No.21352550]

>>21352494
Oh, I disagree. I dislike portions of Leaves of Grass immensely, but I enjoyed Eidólons which an anon above just had me read. I see that Whitman is indivisible for you, however, and that is meaningful.

[Anonymous No.21353364]

>>21352485
You should. Not very long.

[Anonymous No.21353373]

>>21333832
https://www.onassis.org/initiatives/cavafy-archive/the-canon/candles

[Anonymous No.21354406]

>>21353373
Solid.

[Anonymous No.21354529]

>>21350283
>Wandering Aengus represents Yeats initial poetic inspiration - mystical in depiction, the heady divine fire, like great Cuchulain, which drove him into the wilderness of the hazel wood, and his solemn self-vow to catch the Muse to become the great Irish Homer - a new and magic bard, divinely blessed to clear the blindness from men's eyes and wake their hearts in power with new song, but this poem represents his eventual dissolution and coming to terms with the reality of men.
What a fantastic characterization of a large part of Yeats. I never even thought about it like this, but now "Sailing to Byzantium" makes so much more sense (along with "Byzantium," which I just read for the first time and the separation of which, with you, I cannot fathom). "The Fisherman" was also a nice touch here.

"The Lake Isle of Innisfree" is also the first Yeats poem I ever read, and one of my favorites. I agree with your description that it is simply powerful. I've also read "The Second Coming," of course, but none of these others. I will give them all a read. Thanks so much, Anon! Great thread and great recs.

[Anonymous No.21354551]

Whose beloved are you, I asked,
You who are so unbearably beautiful?
My own, he replied
For I am one and alone love, lover, and beloved-
Mirror, beauty, eye.

Fakhruddin al-Iraqi

[Anonymous No.21354621]

blessed bloomer thread, i love OP's energy

[Anonymous No.21355037]

>>21354551
Narcissism of a high order perhaps, but interesting and poetically beautiful. I would read more. It uses such well organized visual control of the mental space.

[Anonymous No.21355412]

>>21354551
>>21342925
>>21342921
>>21340482
Thank you for these.

This is from the great Mahmoud Darwish about his beloved Palestine. I wish I could read the original in Arabic.

Write down:
I am Arab
And my ID number is 50,000
My kids are eight
And the ninth will arrive after the summer
So will you be mad?
Write down:
I am Arab
And I work with my labour buddies in a stone quarry
My kids are eight
I secure them bread loafs, clothing, and notebooks
From rocks
And I don’t beg for charity at your door
And I don’t lower myself at the footsteps of your court
So will you be mad?
Write down:
I am Arab
I am a name without an epithet
Patient in a country where everything
Lives with a flush of anger
My roots
Were deeply entrenched before the birth of time
And prior to the birth of eras
Before cypresses and olive trees
And before grass grew
My dad hails from a family of plowers, not well-known barons
My grandpa was a farmer without tally...nor pedigree
Taught me eminence of the soul before reading books
And my home is a cabin made out of sticks and bamboos
So are you displeased with my status?
I am a name without an epithet!
Write down:
I am Arab
And my hair colour... coal-like
And my eye colour... brown
Distinguishing marks: on my head a headband on top of a keffiyeh
And my palm is solid as rock
scratches whoever touches it
And my address: I am from an isolated village... forgotten
Its streets are without names
And all its men... in the field or in the stone quarry
So will you be mad?
Write down:
I am Arab
Robbed of my ancestors vineyard and the land I used to cultivate
Together with all my kids
Nothing was left for us or our offsprings
Except these rocks...
So will your government take them away as was said?
In that case
Write down
On the heading of the first page:
“I don’t hate people, and I don’t rob anyone
But... if I starve to death
I eat the flesh of my rapist
So beware...beware..of my hunger and of my anger"

[Anonymous No.21355613]

>>21354551
I have loved in life and I have been loved.
I have drunk the bowl of poison from the hands of love as nectar,
and have been raised above life’s joy and sorrow.
My heart, aflame in love, set afire every heart that came in touch with it.
My heart has been rent and joined again;
My heart has been broken and again made whole;
My heart has been wounded and healed again;
A thousand deaths my heart has died, and thanks be to love, it lives yet.
I went through hell and saw there love’s raging fire,
and I entered heaven illumined with the light of love.
I wept in love and made all weep with me;
I mourned in love and pierced the hearts of men;
And when my fiery glance fell on the rocks, the rocks burst forth as volcanoes.
The whole world sank in the flood caused by my one tear;
With my deep sigh the earth trembled, and when I cried aloud the name of my beloved,
I shook the throne of God in heaven.
I bowed my head low in humility, and on my knees I begged of love,
‘Disclose to me, I pray thee, O love, thy secret.’
She took me gently by my arms and lifted me above the earth, and spoke softly in my ear,
‘My dear one, thou thyself art love, art lover,
and thyself art the beloved whom thou hast adored.’”

― Hazrat Inayat Khan, The Dance of the Soul

[Anonymous No.21355695]

this book really has it all

[Anonymous No.21355728]

>>21355412
I am >>21340482 and thank you so much for this! I absolutely love Mahmoud Darwish one of the greatest writers and poets in modern history, and this poem is absolutely lovely! Obviously mcuh better in arabic, but the translation is good. Love live palestine.

>>21354621
Yes he is wonderful and engages with the poetry very well

[Anonymous No.21355771]

>>21352138
If you want to start the Comedy, I highly recommend the Barnes and Noble hardback version, which comes with illustrations from the wood engravings of Gustave Dore.

Reading Virgil first is not necessary to understand the Comedy, but Virgil’s Aenid is a masterpiece in its own right, though it’s incomplete. What’s important to know is that:

1. Virgil was a beloved poet in Italy shortly before Dante, and Dante adored his work and idolized Virgil
2. Virgil was more secular while Dante was Catholic, so that’s why, I’m the story, Virgil can’t go to Heaven, but he can guide Dante through both Hell and Purgatory.
3. The Comedy was controversial at the time of its release because Dante put some of his contemporaries in Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory. Politicians, kings, poets, warriors, philosophers—it would be like someone writing a book today where they decide where Trump and Hillary Clinton go. But now that it’s several centuries old, most of these personal biases of his contemporaries don’t have any negative impact on the poem.

[Anonymous No.21355884]

>>21355771
Dore's illustrations are incredible. They're my go-to wallpapers for new devices

[Anonymous No.21356223]

>>21355412
>>21355613
>>21355037 very beautiful poems
Its not narcissism, its a sufi speaking to god...

[Anonymous No.21356249]

>>21356223
Related - shahidbazi - this explains the genders of the speaker and the spoken to. There are layers to the poem

[Anonymous No.21356395]

LO! ‘tis a gala night
Within the lonesome latter years!
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre, to see
A play of hopes and fears,
While the orchestra breathes fitfully
The music of the spheres.

Mimes, in the form of God on high,
Mutter and mumble low,
And hither and thither fly—
Mere puppets they, who come and go
At bidding of vast formless things
That shift the scenery to and fro,
Flapping from out their Condor wings
Invisible Wo!

That motley drama—oh, be sure
It shall not be forgot!
With its Phantom chased for evermore,
By a crowd that seize it not,
Through a circle that ever returneth in
To the self-same spot,
And much of Madness, and more of Sin,
And Horror the soul of the plot.

But see, amid the mimic rout
A crawling shape intrude!
A blood-red thing that writhes from out
The scenic solitude!
It writhes!—it writhes!—with mortal pangs
The mimes become its food,
And the angels sob at vermin fangs
In human gore imbued.

Out—out are the lights—out all!
And, over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm,
And the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, “Man,”
And its hero the Conqueror Worm.
Poe, the Conqueror Worm

[Anonymous No.21356403]

>>21333832
Hafiz and Saadi

[Anonymous No.21356404]

>>21356223
Ah, I thought he was speaking to himself. It makes a lot more sense as a conversation with God.

[Anonymous No.21356540]

>>21355412
Hello, OP again. I have mixed feelings about this one. It's political from the start, not merely by subject matter, but by artistic choice - which I can appreciate intellectually, from a distance, but politics isn't something I generally want in my poetic readings, personally. The other thing that keeps me from really loving it is, if I had to name which emotions I thought were being conveyed here I would say: anger, defiance, a kind of self-pity which takes on a sort of martyr-mentality, yet isn't actually reflective of the psyche of a martyr, and these are things I wouldn't want to carry around in my own heart, but I want to set that aside to look at what I do appreciate about it because it is precious to you, and because it is a genuinely strong poem.

The visual and emotional story here is overwhelmingly powerful. The more times I read it, I'm up to three now, the more I feel its strengths are superseding my objections. There's an almost fractaline quality to the circularity with which he encapsulates his everyday life. For instance, this early pattern:

- Arab identity in abstract
- personalized identity through children
- taunt
- return to Arab as abstract
- vivid daily-life reality of his labors
- return to personal reality of the children
- "From rocks" as the return to the reality of his daily labors
- taunt
- return to abstraction

There's a concept in Biblical and poetic analysis called chiasms. I actually wonder if this entire poem could be considered chiastic in a literal sense. I could break it down more seriously, and easily could go on because the poem is well made to the point to make this possible, but you get the idea. This incredible looping descriptiveness allows me, as the reader, to sink, sink deep down into the whirling churn of Palestinian identity as he reflects it. Something which from this poem, I would conclude to be an injection of inescapable political identity as an abrupt and persistent invasion into the personalness of their lives. The constant tension between self-as-political and self-as-self comes across as an almost unbearable friction whose tension threatens to tear apart the patient endurance of the poet and radicalize him (as hinted at at the end). Really, it's moving. In fact, I think I am fond of it at this point, perhaps its simply too emotionally weighty in its painfulness for me to enjoy in the same way as many of my other favorites.

I will say this, this poem has certainly left marks upon me, and will likely remain with me, though in what way, I couldn't yet tell you. An impressive and powerful poem, and I can't overstate the wonderful use of repetitive symbolism - the constant recurring rock theme as symbolic demonstration of his intrinsic and persistent tie to the land.

[Anonymous No.21356550]

>>21355771
Thank you. I appreciate your advice.

[Anonymous No.21356694]

Traveling through the dark- William E. Stafford

Traveling through the dark I found a deer
dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.
It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:
that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.

By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car
and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing;
she had stiffened already, almost cold.
I dragged her off; she was large in the belly.

My fingers touching her side brought me the reason—
her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting,
alive, still, never to be born.
Beside that mountain road I hesitated.

The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights;
under the hood purred the steady engine.
I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red;
around our group I could hear the wilderness listen.

I thought hard for us all—my only swerving—,
then pushed her over the edge into the river.

[Anonymous No.21356814]

>>21355613
I had a complete reply written for this, and my pc decided to restart itself before I could post it... Round two!

Arabic poetry, based largely off of what you've all posted in this thread, as my exposure otherwise is very limited, seems to much more emotionally expressive, literally, than Western poetry. Western poetry intellectualizes emotion - evidenced even metrically, while the raw expression of Middle Eastern poetry is not something I really expected. (I said this all so much better the first time, lol) I find myself wondering if this is the reason for the apparent similarity between the way Spanish writing and Arabic writing translate into English? This is just a pure speculative impression on a layman, mind you.

[Anonymous No.21356945]

>>21355695
I love the poem, and the sentiments, all too common among men in any age - of desiring to leave the world for horror at the state of humanity (Tennyson's, The Palace of Art is a good example, and a personal favorite). This is a subject of grave seriousness to a Christian, really. We are in the world, yet not of the world, but are we here for ourselves? I have occasionally entertained the idea that if our individual salvation were the object of importance to God, each Christian would be raptured at the moment of salvation, or else some clearer means of progress unto our necessary state would be given, perhaps. We could conceptually argue this couldn't be done, else the necessity of faith would be undermined, but I believe this an irrelevant obstacle for God - He is smart enough to find a way. I think the real reason any Christian is here is our holy and sacred calling to burn like a flame for the glory of God and the salvation of other men - to exist in this Earth, whether in power or weakness, acceptance or reviling, comfort or abuse, and even to the point of death for those two things and those two things alone! In that light, I consider those moments when, in childlike frustration at discipline, we desire to be released from our service to God, to return to the comforts of Heaven before our task is done, to be an adolescent intraction into our being as men on earth, when we ought to retain our perspective as heavenly beings among slumbering heavenly beings, sent to wake them to glory for the pleasure of the Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Most High God!

C.S. Lewis has a lovely essay, arguably on the subject, yet in his own words and framing, of course, callled, "The Weight of Glory." I found it at a time when I was a new Christian, at university, and just beginning to feel this burden for the salvation of everyman I saw.

In any case, a lovely poem. I well enjoyed it. Thank you, and the Lord bless and keep you, friend!

[Anonymous No.21356981]

>>21354621
>>21355728
Wow. I'm touched. I consider myself very blessed you've all shared so much wonderful poetry with me. Truly.

[Anonymous No.21356988]

>>21356249
Fascinating! You're opening up worlds to me!

[Anonymous No.21357024]

>>21356988
yes, today we learned poets were gay, so shocking.
Alhamdulilah i too become very inspired to write poetry after looking at cute boys or I would never write anything, i am so sufi like that ;)

[Anonymous No.21357062]

>>21354529
You have no idea how much this pleases me.

[Anonymous No.21357075]

>>21357024
Oh, is that what it means? Hahahaha, I hadn't Googled it yet. I was just excited at the prospect of research!

[Anonymous No.21357112]

>>21356395
I love Poe. One of my favorite poets, and the only poet who's complete (poetical) works I've read

[Anonymous No.21357595]

>>21333832
as an ESL im a beginner at reading poetry , the one that has thus far captivated me is Alexander Pope's Eloisa to Abelard

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;

[Anonymous No.21357642]

>>21356981
it is i, bloomer appreciator, returned this time bearing poetry, thought I would come back and post em since this is the only good thread on the board rn. (as for the other poems posted, i have saved this thread to read them later, so your efforts have not been in vain, anons)

i could easily have posted some yeats had not so much yeats already been posted; but i rather have a couple of slightly more recondite picks: a sonnet by edna st. vincent millay, and a kind of ballad, called bewitched, by walter de la mare:

And you as well must die, beloved dust,
And all your beauty stand you in no stead;
This flawless, vital hand, this perfect head,
This body of flame and steel, before the gust
Of Death, or under his autumnal frost,
Shall be as any leaf, be no less dead
Than the first leaf that fell,—this wonder fled,
Altered, estranged, disintegrated, lost.
Nor shall my love avail you in your hour.
In spite of all my love, you will arise
Upon that day and wander down the air
Obscurely as the unattended flower,
It mattering not how beautiful you were,
Or how beloved above all else that dies.


I have heard a lady this night,
Lissom and jimp and slim,
Calling me - calling me over the heather,
'Neath the beech boughs dusk and dim.

I have followed a lady this night,
Followed her far and lone,
Fox and adder and weasel know
The ways that we have gone.

I sit at my supper 'mid honest faces,
And crumble my crust and say
Nought in the long-drawn drawl of the voices
Talking the hours away.

I'll go to my chamber under the gable,
And the moon will lift her light
In at my lattice from over the moorland
Hollow and still and bright.

And I know she will shine on a lady of witchcraft,
Gladness and grief to see,
Who has taken my heart with her nimble fingers,
Calls in my dreams to me:

Who has led me a dance by dell and dingle
My human soul to win,
Made me a changeling to my own, own mother,
A stranger to my kin.

[Anonymous No.21357965]

Tiger! Tiger! Burning bright!
In the forests of the night
And what immortal hand or eye
Could fret thy fearful symmetry?

[Anonymous No.21358625]

>>21343817
That's a pretty endearing story, how old were you anon? And would you care to recommend an anthology for the beginner?
I'm drawn to poetry primarily because I want to see what the absolute limits of language are in its capabilities. I want word objects that contain layers upon layers of meaning to be unlocked, that develop alongside you and can never truly be known in their entirety without knowing yourself completely. So far I have only ever found that with certain philosophers so I wonder what a good place would be for me to begin with poetry. Apologies if this doesn't completely make sense.
>>21357595
Mods really need to do something about this copy bot.

[Anonymous No.21359069]

This thread is further proof that nearly everyone on lit has exceptionally poor taste in poetry. Tennyson? Swinburne? T.S Eliot's four quartets? Jesus Christ.

[Anonymous No.21359100]

>>21359069
>Ctrl-f "Shakespeare"
>1 result
>its talking about Harold fucking bloom
I'm leaving this board.

[Anonymous No.21359202]

>>21359069
>>21359100
Shakespeare is great, but he's so universally recognized it's hard to call him a favorite. Usually people pick someone less legendary as it feels more personal. At least, that's my case.

[Anonymous No.21359265]

>>21359100
minor poet poster here, i have read shakespeare's sonnets cover to cover and his narrative poems, but
- the narrative poems are too long to post
- literally what is the point of saying 'hurr durr have you heard of shakespeare's sonnets guyss??'
gtfo of here.

[Anonymous No.21359273]

Be Drunk
Charles Baudelaire

You have to be always drunk. That's all there is to it—it's the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk.

But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.

And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing, everything that is speaking. . .ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: "It is time to be drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish."

[Anonymous No.21359291]

>>21359069
Why not post what you love for us to see? I would love to see what you love just as much as the wonderful things everyone else has shared. And I would love to see it all the more if you think it dwarfs Tennyson or Eliot.
>>21359100
I love Shakespeare at certain moments, but he has never moved me with the consistency others have - Yeats, especially in my case, but even Kobayashi Issa, for instance. Not only that, but the moments where he moves me most are times I'm not sure anyone else feels anything at all.

Here's an example:

Barnado in Scene I of Hamlet:

Last night of all,
When yond same star that’s westward from the pole,
Had made his course t’illume that part of heaven
Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself,
The bell then beating one—

Not much to it, but I've always loved this small part, and have fun reciting it to myself.

Secondly, how can someone touting Shakespeare hate Harold Bloom who was arguably the largest and most ardent public champion of Shakespeare in all the 20th century?


*To everyone I haven't replied to. I will; I must run an errand first*

[Anonymous No.21359370]

>>21359202
>Usually people pick someone less legendary as it feels more personal
what
>>21359265
Because they're infinitely better poems; I cannot imagine trying to pass off Tennyson or Blake as relevant or personal poets. One can trace a direct line from Milton to the romantics to the Victorians,and its a line that is becoming increasingly forgotten--no one wants to read Tennysons drivel, and Swinburnes comical alliteration anymore.
>>21359291
>Secondly, how can someone touting Shakespeare hate Harold Bloom who was arguably the largest and most ardent public champion of Shakespeare in all the 20th century?
Bloom continues to be the favorite of highschoolers and English undergrads, and has had almost no real impact on Shakespeare studies: he is a complete joke. No one needed a public champion less than Shakespeare--and there are better Shakespeare scholars out there (Eliot, Zukofsky, Hazlitt etc) than a man who famously claimed he could read a thousand pages an hour. No offense, but when someone mentions Bloom I immediately label them a midwit and move on.

Here are three Ronald Johnson "beams" from ARK, which I think you guys would enjoy.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52411/ark-99-arches-xxxiii
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52345/beam-30-the-garden
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/157959/beams-21-22-23-the-song-of-orpheus


Most of the poems I could post are too long; however, Sonnet 129 is my personal favorite:
>Th' expense of spirit in a waste of shame
>Is lust in action; and till action, lust
>Is perjured, murd'rous, bloody, full of blame,
>Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,
>Enjoyed no sooner but despisèd straight,
>Past reason hunted; and, no sooner had
>Past reason hated as a swallowed bait
>On purpose laid to make the taker mad;
>Mad in pursuit and in possession so,
>Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
>A bliss in proof and proved, a very woe;
>Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.
>All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
>To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

And one that isn't particularly good, but the Swinburne guy might like, In saturn by Clark Ashton Smith
>Upon the seas of Saturn I have sailed
>To isles of high primeval amarant,
>Where the flame-tongued, sonorous flowers enchant
>The hanging surf to silence; all engrailed

>With ruby-colored pearls, the golden shore
>Allured me; but as one whom spells restrain,
>For blind horizons of the somber main
>And harbors never known, my singing prore

>I set forthrightly. Formed of fire and brass,
>And arched with moons, immenser heavens deep
>Were opened—till above the darkling foam,

>With dome on cloudless adamantine dome,
>Black peaks no peering seraph deems to pass
>Rose up from realms ineffable as sleep!

[Anonymous No.21359599]

>>21359370
sonnet 129 is really good.

>its a line that is becoming increasingly forgotten--no one wants to read Tennysons drivel, and Swinburnes comical alliteration anymore
There is something ludicrous about swinburne in full flow, possibly about tennyson also, but what can i say? i like that stuff, too. There is something great about that stuff, even if it is clearly of a time (and attitude) we can never go back to.
I guess I would understand you better if I knew what you were looking for in poetry and not finding in... any poet from milton to eliot, as it seems? just who do you rate highly, other than shakespeare?

and I am not the swinburne poster, but i do like that CAS poem (if there's a poet even more disgustingly baroque than swinburne, it must be CAS). I was actually going to post a CAS sonnet too, and I shall take this opportunity to do so:

Not while the woods are redolent with spring,
Or scentless immortelles of autumn blow,
Shall I evade your loveliness, or know
Surcease of love and love's remembering.

But haply wandering, worlds and cycles hence,
Through unforeseen fantastic avatars,
I shall forget you in the future stars,
And take of time an alien recompense.

Till in some strange and latter planet, wrought
From molten shards and meteor-dust of this,
My hand shall pluck an unsuspected bloom

That lifts again the scarlet of your kiss;
And I shall muse and loiter, knowing not
The love that perished like a lost perfume.


and to OP, in response to his lyrical conceit from elizabethan verse drama >>21359291, i offer one from thomas beddoes, a romantic-era poet some call 'the last elizabethan':

I followed once a fleet and mighty serpent
Into a cavern in a mountain’s side;
And, wading many lakes, descending gulphs,
At last I reached the ruins of a city,
Built not like ours but of another world,
As if the aged earth had loved in youth
The mightiest city of a perished planet,
And kept the image of it in her heart,
So dream-like, shadowy, and spectral was it.
Nought seemed alive there, and the bony dead
Were of another world the skeletons.
The mammoth, ribbed like to an arched cathedral,
Lay there, and ruins of great creatures else
More like a shipwrecked fleet, too vast they seemed
For all the life that is to animate:
And vegetable rocks, tall sculptured palms,
Pines grown, not hewn, in stone; and giant ferns,
Whose earthquake-shaken leaves bore graves for nests.

[Anonymous No.21359718]

Now someone paste in Paradise Lost. All of it.

[Anonymous No.21359719]

>>21359370
Friend, as a fellow lover of poetry, you have my appreciation, but your condescension is precisely the sort of sentiment which shrivels love of the Arts in the world, and drives people away from great things, even as they are desperate for it. I expect more from you, both as a man and as a lover of Art.

Fine. Look down upon me as a midwit if it makes you feel smart, but I won't recant love of Bloom's heart, nor his ideas for fear of your judgement, even as I enjoy Steven Runciman, though he's been denounced by posterity as a literary man, rather than a historian.

Your excerpt from 129 is wonderful and masterful, without a doubt, but for me, I hear in Whitman the modern Shakespeare, and in Shakespeare, ancient Whitman (to a lesser extent, even a bit of Lawrence), and though both have their powers, and those magnanimous, they are simply another man's poetic voice which will resonate with those they may, and give no certificate of superiority to their fans - only the mark of preference.

>Clark Ashton Smith
Very Shakespearian in tone, and beautiful - honestly, but Tennyson's Ulysses does it better.

I'll get to Ronald Johnson in little while.

>I cannot imagine trying to pass off Tennyson or Blake as relevant or personal poets. One can trace a direct line from Milton to the romantics to the Victorians, and its a line that is becoming increasingly forgotten--no one wants to read Tennysons drivel, and Swinburnes comical alliteration anymore.
This is just a perfect lie, and you know it. Why make false claims as if they would provide any shield? You haven't fooled us, or duped yourself, and this thread stands in direct opposition to the claim. Just sad, as there's no need for all this one-upmanship. We can all share what we like without it. I hope time broadens your mind and seasons your opinions with a little humility.

[Anonymous No.21359745]

>>21359599
OP here, I like Beddoes. I already did, but I don't consider him able to stand on equal footing with Tennyson, neither in craft, nor or the magnitude of his ideas. Still, I enjoy this poem, and the Swinburne poem too.

[Anonymous No.21359749]

>>21359718
HAH! Yes! I love it. Milton is amazing.

[Anonymous No.21359881]

>>21356395
I hadn't remembered this poem of his at all. What an interesting one! I'll enjoy reading this one over again and again. What do you think this means Poe thought of himself and his work?

[Anonymous No.21360307]

>>21359719
>This is just a perfect lie
No it isn't, use google scholar and see how many people are talking about either of those poets. The victorians have largely been left in the dustbin of history, and if you want I can articulate why, and where the trends in poetry have progressed as criticism has evolved.

Ill be posting more since you like the others, Clark Ashton smith is kinda a lousy poet (he has some gems though) but I'm obsessed with reading his works because I'm an astrophysics major and cant get enough about space.

Song of a Comet, Clark ashton smith


Pale plummet of the stark immensities,
From perished heavens cast, I fall and flare
Through gulfs by stellar orbits girdled round;
And spaces bare
Of sparkless night between the galaxies—
By path of sun nor circling planet bound.
No star allots my lone and cyclic gyre;
I mark the systems vanish one by one;
Among the swarming worlds I lunge,
And sudden plunge
Close to the zones of solar fire;
Or ' mid the mighty wrack of stars undone,
Flash, and with momentary rays
Compel the dark to yield
Their aimless forms, whose once far-potent blaze
In ashes chill is now inurned.
Upon the shadowy heavens half-revealed,
I show their planets turned,
Whose strange ephemerae,
On adamantine tablets deeply written,
In cities long unlitten,
Have left their history
And lore beyond redemption or surmise.
Adown contiguous skies,
I pass the thickening brume
Of systems yet unshaped, that hang immense
Along mysterious shores of gloom;
Or see—unimplicated in their doom—
The final and disastrous gyre
Of blinded suns that meet,
And from their mingled heat
And battle-clouds intense,
Overspread the deep with fire.

Upon the Lion's track,
Or far beyond the abysms of the Lyre,
I thread, through mazes of the zodiac,
Mine orbit placed amid
The multiple and irised stars, or hid,
Unsolved and intricate,
In many a planet-swinging sun's estate.
At times I steal in solitary flight
Along the rim of the exterior night
That rounds the universe;
And then return,
Past outer footholds of sidereal light,
To see the systems gather and disperse;
And learn
What vast and multifarious marvels wait
In the dim void that has no ultimate;
What wraiths of suns extinguished long ago
On alien welkins burn;
What flaming blossoms grow
From the black battlefields of cosmic wars;
What stellar hells, or ampler spheres sublime,
Enisled in diverse time,
Are wrought from sharded moons and meteors;
And haply I discern
What paler fires, to mine own self akin,
Still haunt the night's eternal corridors,
Or in the toils of great Arcturus spin.
Then, restless still, I rise
Through vaults of mightier gloom, to watch the dark
Snatch at the flame of failing suns;
Or mark
That midden of the stagnant nadir skies
Where many a fated orbit runs.
An arrow sped from some forgotten bow,
Through change of firmaments and systems sent,
And finding bourn nor bars,
I fly, nor know
For what remoter mark my flight is meant.

[Anonymous No.21360351]

>>21333832
Robert Browning - "My Last Duchess"

FERRARA

That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now; Fra Pandolf’s hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will’t please you sit and look at her? I said
“Fra Pandolf” by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, ’twas not
Her husband’s presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess’ cheek; perhaps
Fra Pandolf chanced to say, “Her mantle laps
Over my lady’s wrist too much,” or “Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat.” Such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart—how shall I say?— too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, ’twas all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace—all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men—good! but thanked
Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody’s gift. Who’d stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech—which I have not—to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, “Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark”—and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse—
E’en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will’t please you rise? We’ll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master’s known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretense
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we’ll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!

[Anonymous No.21360505]

>>21357642
I don't often tend towards sonnets, but this one is so good! I really liked absolutely all of it except the end of this part, "as any leaf, be no less dead Than the first leaf that fell." I feel like, "this wonder fled," is the only part of the poem weakly conceived, made more prominent by how strong the prior lines are. Even so, it is held up by how well, "altered, estranged, disintegrated, lost" works, both for sound and meaning. I went and read more of her sonnets right away (I had forgotten about her until now, sadly). This one has very powerful language.

Love, though for this you riddle me with darts,
And drag me at your chariot till I die, —
Oh, heavy prince! Oh, panderer of hearts! —
Yet hear me tell how in their throats they lie
Who shout you mighty: thick about my hair,
Day in, day out, your ominous arrows purr,
Who still am free, unto no querulous care
A fool, and in no temple worshiper!
I, that have bared me to your quiver's fire,
Lifted my face into its puny rain,
Do wreathe you Impotent to Evoke Desire
As you are Powerless to Elicit Pain!
(Now will the god, for blasphemy so brave,
Punish me, surely, with the shaft I crave!)

Is it as risque as I think it is, or am I just another sex-addled brain tainted by our porn-soaked age? While I await the general verdict like a condemned man, I'll say, "Isn't 'your ominous arrows purr,
Who still am free, unto no querulous care
A fool, and in no temple worshiper!' so good!?" I love the description of arrows as purring, and within this metaphor, it's even better suited. The whole thing is scathing! I would consider myself fully roasted under the circumstances. But returning to your own, at its start, "And you as well must die, beloved dust," reads almost like divine pronouncement - it's very cool. I've actually begun one of my own poems in a similar tone. What of the steel and fire as symbols of the body? All I can imagine at this moment is as a way of emphasizing the apparent staying power of something like a person - likening it to a smith's handiwork; wrought, yet no more dust. "Wander DOWN the air," hah! Her lover better not read too much into that.

This second fellow had me the moment he rhymed, "Lissom and jimp and slim," with, " 'Neath the beech boughs dusk and dim." I couldn't tell you why, but I've always loved b's and d's together with low sinking sounds. Is it any surprise it calls to mind my first Yeats poem, "lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore. I hear it on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, I hear it in the deep hearts core," yet with Lawrence's liveliness, "from the rushes; Crowds of glittering king-cups surge to challenge the blossoming bushes; There the lazy streamlet pushes," as exemplifying his playfulness. Based off of this, if you haven't already, I would recommend reading Yeats' short story Rosa Alchemica, along with what might be my all-time favorite poem of his, Ego Dominus Tuus.

Wonderful choices, bloomer!

[Anonymous No.21360525]

>>21357642
I forgot to mention, the "flame and steel" imagery for the body brought to mind one of my favorite Blake (Yes, haha, I said Blake friend >>21359370, poems). One I've had memorized for a long time.

Cruelty has a Human Heart
And Jealousy a Human Face
Terror the Human Form Divine
And Secrecy, the Human Dress

The Human Dress, is forged Iron
The Human Form, a fiery Forge.
The Human Face, a Furnace seal'd
The Human Heart, its hungry Gorge.

[Anonymous No.21361108]

>>21358625
I'm embarrassed to say! I think I was twenty-five or so, and fairly new to poetry. Imagine!! Just thinking about it makes me feel like hiding.

It makes perfect sense, but I would have to think about it before I could suggest anyone in particular - though there are many who might fit the bill to some degree. I've shared this on /lit/ once before, but I began my journey with poetry from the anthology Major British Writers Vol. II, which I pulled, damp and slightly molded from a great big trash heap near a field I used to pass by, as it caught my eye and curiosity. Once I read the Yeats and Eliot sections, I was hooked. I've long since ordered Vol. I of the set, and they are a genuine pleasure. Every author covered in the anthology is covered by a different expert on that author and C.S. Lewis is actually the editor for the Edmund Spenser portion! I highly recommend them both. Beyond that, I'm a fan of the poetry magazines Poetry and Poetry East especially, and use Poetry.org's app to find new authors occasionally.

[Anonymous No.21361129]

>>21357965
A wonderful classic.
>>21359273
Anon, I love it! I think this is a new favorite. It's certainly true of my life, though I rarely drink, and don't get drunk, I'm always drunk on a concept, idea, piece of music, the Holy Spirit, something! Indeed! I'll be sharing this poem within twenty-four hours (you have no idea how often I share poetry out in the world), you can be certain.

[Anonymous No.21361161]

>>21356694
I missed this one by accident. I don't know if I'm the only one, but it reads almost like microfiction to me - which I enjoy a lot (when its good). This is good stuff. When I hit the line, "my only swerving," I was instantly reminded of an old band I had forgotten - El Ten Eleven. They have a song by the same name, and to my surprise, when I pulled it up, the band dedicates the song to this author and this poem! I'm not sure if you knew, but if you didn't you might give it a listen.

It reminded me of another modern poet's work, not necessarily in style, but in tone and subject matter a bit. Chard DeNiord, the Poet Laureate of the state of Vermont, one of my favorite modern poets.

Here's his poem, "In The Grass" (2015)

He lowered his head and darted through
the grass, flushing a hen from off her nest,
then zeroing in on the day-old chicks
instead of the mother whose decoy trick
had failed to lure him away. In the time
it took for me to notice this, he'd broken
the necks of two of the chicks and torn
the skin from off their backs and heads.
The taste of their blood had deafened him
to my commands, so I went to him
like an angry god and chased him away
with my staff and rod, inflicting a wound also
in his side for him to go on licking, to wash
their blood from off his tongue with his own blood,
and then I kneeled in the grass to regard his kill
while the mother keened inside the woods
not far away. Oh, what a mess they were
with their heads snapped back and wings
unhinged. I picked up the bodies
like bloody socks and prayed to the god
in charge of this field for my own weakness
to feel this much for slaughtered chicks.
For an understanding of his need to kill
the most vulnerable thing, whether hungry or not.

It also reads a bit like microfiction. We need to have a good microfiction thread soon, but that aside, even though I don't align precisely with DeNiord's sentiments here, I like the poem. I prefer his poem, "This Ecstacy," in case you want more.

I like finding modern poets, so thanks for this one.

[Anonymous No.21361162]

>>21352438
>Why can I only find this on Reddit? Seems awfully suspicious.
they used to have these things called 'books' back in the day, in the time before reddit

[Anonymous No.21361168]

>>21360351
Ah! We just had this one not long ago in the Poetry of the Day threads. That was my first time reading it. It's really well done - pure, distilled incel angst, lol.

[Anonymous No.21361175]

>>21361162
That's exactly why it's so suspicious. Appearing only on Reddit makes it seem like it originated there, whereas originating in a book, it would likely have found its way all over the internet through various means. Like I said, it seems genuine enough - based off of tone.

[Anonymous No.21361248]

>>21360307
An academic trend doesn't necessarily mean much. Thought falls in and out of fashion like anything else, especially in the liberal arts. To quote Ashbery in my favorite poem of his, "And sure as shillelaghs fall from trees onto frozen doorsteps, it came round again when all memory of it had been expunged from the common brain."

You're free to share why if you want to. I'm sure to find it interesting. I'm simply not likely to care about what's trendy to the point of change - only what impresses me, and since most modern writing repulses rather than impresses, I'm not likely to be swayed by the veiled preferences of cloistered academicians - however well articulated.

I have to say, though, I loooove the poem. From start to finish. There's so many good things about it. His word choice is exceptionally good in many places, and the imagery is very strong. I happen to mention Arcturus by name in the first major poem I ever wrote. I'm something of a star nut myself, unprofessionally. I have most of the major constellations memorized for my own pleasure, and wait joyfully, year after year, for the returns of my favorite constellations to the night sky. This is one of the things I'm drunk on >>21359273 as it so happens. Anyway, I loved the phrase, "planet-swinging sun's estsate," and, "stellar hells, or ampler spheres sublime, Enisled in diverse time." Great stuff.

[Anonymous No.21361399]

>>21360505
I'm glad you liked the Millay sonnet, she is a great sonneteer (or should that be sonnetess?) and I do think that one is something special. She is prone to lapse into triviality but when she avoids it she can commit great work. Yes, "altered, estranged, disintegrated, lost" is a great line. It's better known, but if you want another beautiful sonnet of her, there is of course 'Euclid alone has looked on beauty bare'.

>Is it as risque as I think it is
I actually hadn't caught the innuendo in the last line until now! I think you're right that it is present, except that I'm quite sure 'shaft' wouldn't have sounded quite as brazen then as it does now.
She was quite a risque poet for her time and her life was quite scandalous. There's a cynical, hedonistic strand to her love poetry, which sits oddly next to sentiment like 'and you as well must die, beloved dust'. (I read that her cynical, hedonistic poems were all written to men and her heartfelt ones to women, but I don't know how true that is.)

>This second fellow had me
Yes, Walter de la Mare is an incredibly musical poet, surely one of the most musical of modern times.
It isn't that surprising that it should call Yeats to mind, they were of a similar era, and F. R. Leavis treats them together in a chapter in New Bearings in English Poetry, admiring both before dismissing both as different kinds of fantasist.
I've read a decent bit of Yeats but not Rosa Alchemica, will try and dig it out, think I've a copy around here somewhere. I think I *have* read Ego Dominus Tuus but the memory is dim... will dig it out for another look too. Thankyou, my friend.

>>21360525
I have never really been able to into Blake - he was one of the poets I was made to study back when I hated poetry and I've never really recovered. His primitivism and simplicity tend to rub me up the wrong way, and I'm afraid that this poem didn't really do it for me for the same reason. But thankyou for sharing.

It's a shame this thread is going to die sooner or later (it has to hit the bump limit before long, no?). It's been (for the most part) a wonderful island of civility and genuine appreciation, I wish we could keep it alive forever, we'll just have to settle for as long as we can. (Though if someone wants to set up a discord or something to carry on the discussion, I'll certainly join!)

[Anonymous No.21361407]

>>21359370
>>21360307
I said I would get to Ronald Johnson, and I have. I like that he's modern. To hear more modern voices and try to find artists whose art isn't a declination - I'm always eager for it.

Considering the nature of ARK - based off the Poetry Foundation article on him, and its name, I'm not sure whether I can really judge him fairly without reading all of it. At least reading whichever of the emanations these were from, but I'll give comment. Interesting that while denouncing Blake, you'd include a poet who quoted him, hehheh. I think I'll have to like him, we sound like kindred spirits. He's a hiker, he's a lover of the sciences, he quotes Tolkien, he loves Handel (one of my favorite composers), he's an anglophile; there's a lot of reasons to for me to want to read more of this man, so I suppose your intuition is vindicated in that I'm fairly likely to enjoy this fellow. I wish I could have come back at you with a, "Nana-na boo-boo, you dunno what you're on about," but so far I'm liking your posted excerpts and your suggestions ((though you'd have an easier time killing me than divesting me of my love for Tennyson, Blake, or Eliot, and - in fact, may as well kill me on the spot, for the me which exists now would indeed be dead the moment I denounced any of them, and a new me would be born from his ashes (undoubtedly a unscrupulous scoundrel)).

Anyway, ARK 99, Arches XXXIII is enjoyable. A bit too minimalistic perhaps, but certainly interesting. I had never heard of ὀμφᾰλός (omphalós), for instance, and apotheosis is one of my favorite words which never gets used, but the poem itself seems more like word-game, than full-fledged poem. Yes, yes; I realize it's fully intentional by a well-sentient man, but even so. The phrase, "conflagration of souls," can't help, but call to mind Herk Harvey's awesomely slap-dash film, "Carnival of Souls." Wildly unrelated, but don't blame me, I didn't suggest the poem; just watch the film if you haven't seen it, and marvel that it was made on a whim in two days time. I really liked these two stanzas:

compass beyond confines
music of the spheres solved,
mosaic of Cosmos

snowflakes lit darkest sea,
bowsprit the deeps
bound white antipodes

"Bound white antipodes!" So clever, and preying on my love of b's and d's - we even got a p thrown in! It almost reads like what would be my own personal version of a Dickensian ghost visitation! I would be as paralyzed as Scrooge no doubt - quavering. Actually, even better, it calls to mind, to his immense credit, a modern Heliconian visitation, "Shepherds of the wilderness, wretched things of shame, mere bellies..."! As you can see, I enjoyed myself, and this wasn't even my favorite. I'll have to admit you've an unique taste and a suited mind to poetics, even just to choose what you have.

So that I don't keep going on and on, I'll tell you. I liked the others as well, and, "The Song of Orpheus," was my favorite. I could say even more on it.

[Anonymous No.21361427]

>>21359370
>>21360307
I said I would get to Ronald Johnson, and I have. I like that he's modern. To hear more modern voices and try to find artists whose art isn't a declination - I'm always eager for it.

Considering the nature of ARK - based off the Poetry Foundation article on him, and its name, I'm not sure whether I can really judge him fairly without reading all of it. At least reading whichever of the emanations these were from, but I'll give comment. Interesting that while denouncing Blake, you'd include a poet who quoted him, hehheh. I think I'll have to like him, we sound like kindred spirits. He's a hiker, he's a lover of the sciences, he quotes Tolkien, he loves Handel (one of my favorite composers), he's an anglophile; there's a lot of reasons to for me to want to read more of this man, so I suppose your intuition is vindicated in that I'm fairly likely to enjoy this fellow. I wish I could have come back at you with a, "Nana-na boo-boo, you dunno what you're on about," but so far I'm liking your posted excerpts and your suggestions ((though you'd have an easier time killing me than divesting me of my love for Tennyson, Blake, or Eliot, and - in fact, may as well kill me on the spot, for the me which exists now would indeed be dead the moment I denounced any of them, and a new me would be born from his ashes (undoubtedly a unscrupulous scoundrel)).

Anyway, ARK 99, Arches XXXIII is enjoyable. A bit too minimalistic perhaps, but certainly interesting. I had never heard of ὀμφᾰλός (omphalós), for instance, and apotheosis is one of my favorite words which never gets used, but the poem itself seems more like word-game, than full-fledged poem. Yes, yes; I realize it's fully intentional by a well-sentient man, but even so. The phrase, "conflagration of souls," can't help, but call to mind Herk Harvey's awesomely slap-dash film, "Carnival of Souls." Wildly unrelated, but don't blame me, I didn't suggest the poem; just watch the film if you haven't seen it, and marvel that it was made on a whim in two days time. I really liked these two stanzas:

compass beyond confines
music of the spheres solved,
mosaic of Cosmos

snowflakes lit darkest sea,
bowsprit the deeps
bound white antipodes

"Bound white antipodes!" So clever, and preying on my love of b's and d's - we even got a p thrown in! It almost reads like what would be my own personal version of a Dickensian ghost visitation! I would be as paralyzed as Scrooge no doubt - quavering. Actually, even better, it calls to mind, to his immense credit, a modern Heliconian visitation, "Shepherds of the wilderness, wretched things of shame, mere bellies..."! As you can see, I enjoyed myself, and this wasn't even my favorite. I'll have to admit you've an unique taste and a suited mind to poetics, even just to choose what you have.

So that I don't keep going on and on, I'll tell you. I liked the others as well, and, "The Song of Orpheus," was my favorite. I could say even more on it.

[Anonymous No.21361476]

>>21361399
>Euclid
It's not better known to my unwashed plebian ways, and any sonnet about Euclid ought to be! "Sonnetess" sounds infinitely more desirable and majestic, so lets go with that. I mean, just think about it. "Oh, him. He's a sonneteer." Frankly, it sounds like he works on street corners, and his fanbase consists of old, swooning librarianettes; meanwhile, "Oh, her. She's a sonnetess." I'm instantly intrigued, feel under-read, and am determined to introduce myself (nevermind that she will likely be an insufferable Samantha-whatsherface).

Innuendo-wise, I'm blushing to say, though only my dog is present, I saw it come in at the line, "I, that have bared me to your quiver's fire," which of course can easily mean written or spoken slander, but when coupled with, "Lifted my face to its puny rain," and, "Impotent!" HAH!! Good grief man, he'll never live it down. DOA this poor ungentlemanly fool. The last line is the best of the innuendos if it is one, for sure. The Roaring 20's, eh? Ya don't say? Whatcha call 'em? Flappers? She's interesting that's for sure.

>F.R. Leavis
I'm learning so many new names in this thread! So much wonderful new stuff to read! You can find Rosa on Gutenberg.org if needs be.

>It's been (for the most part) a wonderful island of civility and genuine appreciation
Thanks. It has gone beyond my own hopes, that's for sure. I have other threads in mind once this is done; hopefully they'll garner similar success.

[Anonymous No.21361478]

>>21352438
With poems I don't really evaluate them with some idea of who is the better or worse craftsman, with other arts you can do that, but with poems it's a question of resonance or whether they are able to articulate a feeling better than it is articulated elsewhere.

What I find with the poems I like is that they are articulating a rare feeling and they will be divisive on account of this. Mary Oliver is the least important to me out of these, and DH Lawrence the most. With DH Lawrence I actually used to have a rule of not sharing it unless it was a special or fortiutous occasion, and funny enough, it only lands when I do so. That poem is special.

Mary Oliver isn't as important but it is an incredibly divisive poem. By that I mean that I find it to have a fairly obvious meaning to it that people seem to miss widely. It definitely isn't warm and fluffy - that isn't to question your analytical skills, I think it's an issue of whether you have the experience it speaks of.

>You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
>the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting

It's consoling in its meaning, but the vibe isn't 'comfortable', the subject is the feeling of walking on your knees across the desert in repentance, and what the poem offers positively doesn't really measure up to that. It's hard to explain what that feeling actually is, but people, in my experience, seem to miss the poem widely. I saw it come up in a class, no one got it, the general reaction seems to be "that's nice of her to say", but that is definitely not what the poem is.
But, again, it's not an issue of craft for me, I don't have much of an opinion of Oliver in that regard, it's just a well articulated moment of a sort that I don't think everyone is familiar with. That's what I like in poetry I guess, unique feelings that the poet and I get but maybe others don't.

I can't entirely disagree with your criticism of DH Lawrence. The "unapologetically himself" and "wrong with style" thing is real and ultimately not too far from what he intends, although he does have facts to declare.

I'm glad you liked the others, though. Those Winter Sundays is important and one I do like to share with many people, it is generally received well. It is less poetic, and I would want to suggest its appropriate to the subject. Speaks of a cold and practical man.

Thank you for reading the poems, anyhow, and for giving thought to them. That particular work by Joyce happens to have been on my mind, I have a little pdf of it I've been waiting to read, I'll take that as a spur. Not to be dramatic or over-flattering but that actually is a striking line you posted. I generally don't have an inclination for sensory imagination, aphantasia type deal. Have to work for that sort of reward in literature. But that little Joyce bit - I smelled that shit. It was an interesting moment

[Anonymous No.21361494]

>>21361175
Well DH Lawrence wrote a lot of poems and he isn't at the level where we should expect all of them to be on poems.com
I did not discover DH Lawrence in a reddit post, it is in a book of his collected works, if you want a citation for this book I can give that to you, although I'm sure you can reason on your own that it is pretty unlikely to something other than a poem he really wrote

[Anonymous No.21361495]

>>21361399
>Euclid
It's not better known to my unwashed plebian ways, and any sonnet about Euclid ought to be! "Sonnetess" sounds infinitely more desirable and majestic, so lets go with that. I mean, just think about it. "Oh, him. He's a sonneteer." Frankly, it sounds like he works on street corners, and his fanbase consists of old, swooning librarianettes; meanwhile, "Oh, her. She's a sonnetess." I'm instantly intrigued, feel under-read, and am determined to introduce myself (nevermind that she will likely be an insufferable Samantha-whatsherface).

Innuendo-wise, I'm blushing to say, though only my dog is present, I saw it come in at the line, "I, that have bared me to your quiver's fire," which of course can easily mean written or spoken slander, but when coupled with, "Lifted my face to its puny rain," and, "Impotent!" HAH!! Good grief man, he'll never live it down. DOA this poor ungentlemanly fool. The last line is the best of the innuendos if it is one, for sure. The Roaring 20's, eh? Ya don't say? Whatcha call 'em? Flappers? She's interesting that's for sure.

>F.R. Leavis
I'm learning so many new names in this thread! So much wonderful new stuff to read! You can find Rosa on Gutenberg.org if needs be.

As for the Blake poem, too bad, but we all have our preference. I just love the interchangeability between the components of that one due to its chiastic nature. We can change, "Secrecy, the Human Dress," to, "Secrecy is Forged Iron," and so on, gaining shrewd tidbits of Blakeian wisdom along the way.

>It's been (for the most part) a wonderful island of civility and genuine appreciation
Thanks. It has gone beyond my own hopes, that's for sure. I have other threads in mind once this is done; hopefully they'll garner similar success.

[Anonymous No.21361500]

>>21361494
No, no, friend. I wasn't taking it that seriously. I myself have a collection of his works, not all of which are well known. I was more teasing than anything, as I'm wont to do.

[Anonymous No.21361503]

>>21356540
Beautifully put OP and I am glad I was able to hear your words.
Your reflection on political anger is very thoughtful and empathetic, and I am happy it had some sort of effect or impact on you as it did on countless others.

I actually would not be surprised if it was indeed chiastic. As you probably know in many arab regions christians lived alongside muslims and in Palestine in particular christians have a very strong presence in the fight for freedom from the israeli occupation. The Quran itself also has a lot of chiasms (no surprise considering it is an abrahamic religion) and one example is Surat Al Baqarah (Chapter of The Cow) and the famous Ayat Al Kursi (Verse of The Throne) as the verse contains 9 sentences all of which exhibit chiasmus, and as for the whole Surah Al Baqarah itself contains a fractal chiastic structure in its 286 verses, where each outer chiasm is composed of inner chiastic structures reflected in some sense in the analogue outer chiasm and in verses themselves like the verse of the throne.


>>21356814
Again OP, beautifully said. I am not sure if it is correct or accurate or not, and I have my own differing opinions, but your thoughts as a layman new to arabic poetry are very interesting.

>>21359069
They are very well known. Even I as a non-native english speaker interested in poetry read them, so it feels a little bit redundant to post them.

>>21359273
This one is very beautiful.

[Anonymous No.21361507]

>>21352438
With poems I don't really evaluate them with some idea of who is the better or worse craftsman, with other arts you can do that, but with poems it's a question of resonance or whether they are able to articulate a feeling better than it is articulated elsewhere.

What I find with the poems I like is that they are articulating a rare feeling and they will be divisive on account of this. Mary Oliver is the least important to me out of these, and DH Lawrence the most. With DH Lawrence I actually used to have a rule of not sharing it unless it was a special or fortiutous occasion, and funny enough, it only lands when I do so. That poem is special.

Mary Oliver isn't as important but it is an incredibly divisive poem. By that I mean that I find it to have a fairly obvious meaning to it that people seem to miss widely. It definitely isn't warm and fluffy - that isn't to question your analytical skills, I think it's an issue of whether you have the experience it speaks of.

>You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
>the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting

It's consoling in its meaning, but the vibe isn't 'comfortable', the subject is the feeling of walking on your knees across the desert in repentance, and what the poem offers positively doesn't really measure up to that. It's hard to explain what the moment being described is. I'll say that I saw it come up in a class and no one got it (besides the professor of course), the general reaction there and since seems to be "that's nice of her to say", which is definitely not what the poem really is.
But, again, it's not an issue of craft for me, I don't have much of an opinion of Oliver in that regard, it's just a well articulated moment of a sort that I don't think everyone is familiar with. That's what I like in poetry I guess, unique feelings that the poet and I get but maybe others don't.

I can't entirely disagree with your criticism of DH Lawrence. The "unapologetically himself" and "wrong with style" thing is real and ultimately not too far from what he intends, although he does have facts to declare.

I'm glad you liked the others, though. Those Winter Sundays is important and one I do like to share with many people, it is generally received well. It is less poetic, and I would want to suggest its appropriate to the subject. Speaks of a cold and practical man.

Thank you for reading the poems, anyhow, and for giving thought to them. That particular work by Joyce happens to have been on my mind, I have a little pdf of it I've been waiting to read, I'll take that as a spur. Not to be dramatic or over-flattering but that actually is a striking line you posted. I generally don't have an inclination for sensory imagination, aphantasia type deal. Have to work for that sort of reward in literature. But that little Joyce bit - I smelled that shit. Was an interesting moment

[Anonymous No.21361562]

>>21361478
It's not that her subject matter is warm and fluffy, nor her message, but her manner of speaking about it. It's like being wrapped up in a blanket by Nana on a cool winter morning after having some objectively trivial, but personally momentous disappointment. Though I understand perfectly, she's trying to imply nearly the opposite, that though it is objectively gargantuan, it is also trivial in the grand scheme of things. Life goes on; beauty exists despite of ugliness, "just beeee yourself," and so on. As for Lawrence's poem. It isn't that it didn't land, but that it can't possibly land. It can be appreciated for its craft, like any work of art, but cannot truly be accepted. I'm a fervent Christian, you see, and in this poem, as elsewhere in Lawrence's writings, there's and undercurrent of subversion through an advocacy towards a hedonic paganism - not as an organized pagan religion of any sort, but as a personal self-deifying pure paganism. Raw Lawrencian Paganism! Lol. It appears in the second published version of one of my favorite Lawrence poems, "The Wild Common," as well for example. That said, the more explicitly advocated sentiments of the poem I'm in full agreement with. I actually rebuke people in real life for the same thing - got chided by a boss at work over it. I looked at a young coworker of mine, an empty-headed, unambitious, lazy-but-likeable boy, as he walked by and she remarked to me, "What do think of so-and-so," and I answered, "Oh, he's fine and all, but like most of them, he has no fire in his loins." She didn't like that phrasing (which I found endearing and respectable).

I can't possibly be over-flattered. Just go on, and try! I'll lap it all up in a dash!

And yes, I did truly enjoy the other two. I'll even give Mary Oliver's less favored poem another go for your sake! Thank you for sharing your poems and bearing your heart in this thread, anon. I love you all for it - every one of you who took it seriously; it is a serious, yet jovial affair to me.

[Anonymous No.21361568]

>>21361507
It's not that her subject matter is warm and fluffy, nor her message, but her manner of speaking about it. It's like being wrapped up in a blanket by Nana on a cool winter morning after having some objectively trivial, but personally momentous disappointment. Though I understand perfectly, she's trying to imply nearly the opposite, that though it is objectively gargantuan, it is also trivial in the grand scheme of things. Life goes on; beauty exists despite of ugliness, "just beeee yourself," and so on. As for Lawrence's poem. It isn't that it didn't land, but that it can't possibly land. It can be appreciated for its craft, like any work of art, but cannot truly be accepted. I'm a fervent Christian, you see, and in this poem, as elsewhere in Lawrence's writings, there's an undercurrent of subversion through an advocacy towards a hedonic paganism - not as an organized pagan religion of any sort, but as a personal self-deifying pure paganism. Raw Lawrencian Paganism! Lol. It appears in the second published version of one of my favorite Lawrence poems, "The Wild Common," as well for example. That said, the more explicitly advocated sentiments of the poem I'm in full agreement with. I actually rebuke people in real life for the same thing - got chided by a boss at work over it. I looked at a young coworker of mine, an empty-headed, unambitious, lazy-but-likeable boy, as he walked by and she remarked to me, "What do think of so-and-so," and I answered, "Oh, he's fine and all, but like most of them, he has no fire in his loins." She didn't like that phrasing (which I found endearing and respectable).

I can't possibly be over-flattered. Just go on, and try! I'll lap it all up in a dash!

And yes, I did truly enjoy the other two. I'll even give Mary Oliver's less favored poem another go for your sake! Thank you for sharing your poems and bearing your heart in this thread, anon. I love you all for it - every one of you who took it seriously; it is a serious, yet jovial affair to me.

[Anonymous No.21361574]

>>21333832
>ctrl-f
>one mention of Whitman

"When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer"

When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

[Anonymous No.21361602]

>>21361503
Thank you, for your kind words. I am completely fascinated by what you had to say about the chiastic structures in the Quran! What a thrill it would be to examine them! I hadn't considered it might be chiastic on its own (though now it seems obvious).

[Anonymous No.21361614]

>>21336824
It's good, the rendering is compelling. Translate the rest and shill it here when you done. Good job. huehuehue

[Anonymous No.21361623]

>>21361399
>>21361399
>It's a shame this thread is going to die sooner or later
and you as well must die, beloved thread, kek

[Anonymous No.21361633]

>>21333832

Because that you are going
And never coming back
And I, however absolute,
May overlook your Track—

Because that Death is final,
However first it be,
This instant be suspended
Above Mortality—

Significance that each has lived
The other to detect
Discovery not God himself
Could now annihilate

Eternity, Presumption
The instant I perceive
That you, who were Existence
Yourself forgot to live—

The “Life that is” will then have been
A thing I never knew—
As Paradise fictitious
Until the Realm of you—

The “Life that is to be,” to me,
A Residence too plain
Unless in my Redeemer’s Face
I recognize your own—

Of Immortality who doubts
He may exchange with me
Curtailed by your obscuring Face
Of everything but He—

Of Heaven and Hell I also yield
The Right to reprehend
To whoso would commute this Face
For his less priceless Friend.

If “God is Love” as he admits
We think that me must be
Because he is a “jealous God”
He tells us certainly

If “All is possible with” him
As he besides concedes
He will refund us finally
Our confiscated Gods—

—Emily Dickinson

[Anonymous No.21361637]

>>21342925
>I have never read Cesar Vallejo
Peruvian Baudelaire (but better). Highest recommendation

[Anonymous No.21361641]

>>21333832

The Underground

There we were in the vaulted tunnel running,
You in your going-away coat speeding ahead
And me, me then like a fleet god gaining
Upon you before you turned to a reed

Or some new white flower japped with crimson
As the coat flapped wide and button after button
Sprang off and fell in a trail
Between the Underground and the Albert Hall.

Honeymooning, moonlighting, late from the Proms,
Our echoes die in that corridor and now
I come as Hansel came on the moonlit stones
Retracing the path back, lifting the buttons

To end up in a draughty lamplit station
After the trains have gone, the wet track
Bared and tensed as I am, all attention
For your step following and damned if I look back.

—Seamus Heaney

[Anonymous No.21361683]

>>21333832

Enobarbus: I will tell you.
The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne,
Burned on the water: the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were lovesick with them; the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggar'd all description: she did lie
In her pavilion, cloth-of-gold of tissue,
O'erpicturing that Venus where we see
The fancy outwork nature: on each side her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With divers-colour'd fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid did.

Agrippa: O, rare for Antony.

Enobarbus: Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides,
So many mermaids, tended her i' th' eyes,
And made their bends adornings. At the helm
A seeming mermaid steers: the silken tackle
Swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands
That yarely frame the office. From the barge
A strange invisible perfume hits the sense
Of the adjacent wharfs. The city cast
Her people out upon her; and Antony,
Enthroned i' th' marketplace, did sit alone,
Whistling to th' air; which, but for vacancy,
Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too,
And made a gap in nature.

—William Shakespeare, From Antony and Cleopatra

[Anonymous No.21362284]

Futility
BY WILFRED OWEN

Move him into the sun—
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields half-sown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.

Think how it wakes the seeds—
Woke once the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides
Full-nerved, still warm, too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
—O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth's sleep at all?

[Anonymous No.21362919]

>>21335397
This is a wonderful and painful poem. She really bit through every bit of herself to write that, I can tell. Things like that don't get written without serious courage, and serious suffering. Sad. Brave girl. Not brave enough in the end.

[Anonymous No.21363392]

>>21361495
On 'Love, though for this you riddle me with darts', I thought about it a bit more and it struck me that our readings of it may be different. Do you take it as directed to a person, a lover of hers? I take it as directed to the abstract personification of love (Cupid, more or less, hence all the arrow talk), whom she shit-talks from a mixture of her own love cynicism and a secret desire to be struck down by it. But if you read it as directed to a particular gentleman then yes, the innuendo comes much more to the fore.

I re-read Ego Dominus Tuus this morning, and liked it, but was puzzled that my Walter de la Mare ballad should have called it to mind, as it seemed rather philosophical than lyrical as the de la Mare piece. Now I reread your comment and see that you were not in fact saying so, only that it reminded you of another Yeats piece, and that you moreover commend Ego Dominus Tuus. Oh well, there are worse fates than having to 'waste' time unnecessarily re-reading Yeats.

By the way, you seemed to suggest that you're an anglophile earlier. May I ask where you're from?

[Anonymous No.21364430]

I recently read Oscar Wilde's The Burden of Itys and George Crabbe's The Village, both of which I highly enjoyed but seldom see of mentioned. Do you guys have any hidden gems of poetry that you would like to share?

[Anonymous No.21364529]

>>21333832
odi et amo quare id faciam fortasse requiris
nescio sed fieri sentio et excrucior

the latin could be wrong its been a long time since i learned it and i havent the will to do a quick goolge search
i love and i hate you. why is this happening, perhaps you ask? I don't know, but i feel it happening, and i am tortured

[Anonymous No.21364555]

Virocon, Virocon
Still the ancient name rings on
And brings, in the untrampled wheat
The tumult of a thousand feet

Where trumpets rang and men marched by
None passes but the dragon-fly
Athwart the grassy town, forlorn,
The lone dor-beetle blows his horn,

The poppy standards droop and fall
Above one rent and mournful wall:
In every sunset-flame it burns
Yet towers unscathed when day returns

And still the breaking seas of grain
Flow havenless across the plain:
The years wash on, their spindrift leaps
Where the old city, dreaming, sleeps

Grief lingers here, like mists that lie
Across the dawns of ripe July,
On capital and corridor
The pathos of the conqueror.

The pillars stand, with alien grace
In churches of a younger race;
The roadside column, black and rough,
Becomes a roadside cattle trough

The skulls of men who, right or wrong,
Still wore the splendour of the strong,
Are shepherds' lanterns now and shield
Their candles in the lambing field

But when, through evening's open door
Two lovers tread the broken floor
And the wild apple petals fall
Round passion's scarlet festival

When cuckoos call from the green gloom
Where dark, shelving forests loom;
When foxes bark beside the gate,
And the grey badger seeks his mate

There haunts within them secretly
One that lives while empires die
A shrineless god whose songs abide
Forever in the countryside

[Anonymous No.21365352]

Bumping this so I remember to post more poetry and reply to some anons tomorrow

[Anonymous No.21365422]

Based

>>21334328
Cringe and tryhard

>>21335295
Based

>>21335350
Based

>>21335390
Dangerously Based

>>21335397
Cringe but not tryhard

>>21335503
Based

>>21335532
Based

>>21335617
Based

>>21336844
Cringe and shit

>>21336926
Cringe but not total shit

>>21337136
Cringe

>>21337463
Cringe

>>21337469
Cringe

>>21337787
Cringe

>>21337817
Cringe

>>21337821
Cringe

>>21338012
Shit

>>21338623
Based

>>21340482
Shit and Cringe

>>21343335
Cringe

>>21343883
Cringe

[Anonymous No.21365449]

>>21333832

The Wolf at the Door by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

[Anonymous No.21365939]

>>21365422

[Anonymous No.21366748]

bump for the guy who is going to reply to the other guy

[Anonymous No.21367324]

>>21361633
I took a day off to finished the book I was reading and spent some time on guitar. I'm amazed to see the thread has survived.

I fond of Dickenson; she's such a gentle soul, and this is one I've never read. "A Residence too plain" - if she means Heaven, as I think she does, it always amazes me how little people manage to fathom it from our lives here and the Word. Certainly it is beyond comprehension, but even so, it doesn't take much to realize there isn't any possibility of anyone being bored, far from it. Who or what do you think, "Our confiscated Gods," are?

[Anonymous No.21367537]

>>21361641
This is one of the most excellent modern poems I've read. Do you happen to know when it was written? I love the line, "And me, me then like a fleet god gaining," it reminds me strongly of the Song of Songs in scripture - its passion and Solomon's strength, David the Psalter King's zeal, and the verse which says, "The Lord God is my strength, And He has made my feet like hinds’ feet, And makes me walk on my high places." It brings to mind tales of Cuchulain's hurley games with the mortal boys who couldn't best him not 50-to-1, Nimrod the mighty hunter lord, Susa-no-Ou's inebriated battle with Yamata-no-Orochi, the Kusanagi-no-ken flailing on behalf of the earthly woman (spirit), and of Cupid and Psyche, - all fleet men of God, or tales of fleet gods or god-men. Their impassioned moments are captured as vividly as any film could capture here. I found the Hansel and Gretel metaphor to be so creative as well - the innocence and fidelity of boyhood implied - charming, and poignant to end with the Lot's wife metaphor. I can't seem to help, but be charmed by an Irish poet. I'll enjoy returning to this one.

[Anonymous No.21367682]

>>21361683
>the poop was beaten gold
>and the piss was molten silver
>beads of sweat as shining diamonds
>and every break of wind a wafting rose
>in our summer of insanity, upon the sea-ship Sanitarium
Jk, I know what he means; I've just had one too many gummy worms.
I love the metaphor of the wind and water amorous and lovesick, and the line, "to the tune of flutes kept stroke," is so strong! I can the oars splashing along - see their whirlpools curling with love behind! Best of all the ending portion, "and Antony,
Enthroned i' th' marketplace, did sit alone,
Whistling to th' air; which, but for vacancy,
Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too,
And made a gap in nature." Absolutely perfect. I doubt anyone would have said it quite so perfectly.

Antony and Cleopatra is a Shakespearian play I've never read. I don't generally have a large appetite for romance, but this excerpt has convinced me to do so.

[Anonymous No.21367709]

>>21362284
Wonderful. An instant favorite. The answer is Christ.

[Anonymous No.21367745]

>>21363392
HAH! Yes; I was thinking she was speaking to a lover and simply dressing him in Cupid metaphors, it makes a lot more sense, and is far less stupendously graphic, if she is speaking to Cupid himself. I recommended Ego Dominus Tuus only because the end portion of Walter de la Mare's poem called Rosa Alchemica to mind, and, in some ways, those two works go together. Rosa Alchemica is, as far as I know, the only work besides EDT which mentions his friend Michael Robartes. I'm an American - a Texan, to be more precise.

[Anonymous No.21368057]

>>21364430
Hidden gems, you ask? There are too many to number! I've been considering dropping some of Kenneth Rexroth's ancient Chinese poetry translations here, to gently season our wee thread with a hint of Asian spice. There are many, and not all from the Orient on my mind. I will share a few I think no one here may have seen.

These excepts come from the collection, "Love and the Turning Year; One Hundred More Poems from the Chinese."

Majestic, from the most distant time,
The sun rises and sets.
Time passes and men cannot stop it.
The four seasons serve them,
But do not belong to them.
The years flow like water.
Everything passes away from before my eyes.

~ Emporer Wu of Han, Liu Ch'u (156-187 A.D.)

The fish weeps in the
dry riverbed. Too late he
Is sorry he flopped
Across the shallows. Now he
Wants to go back and
Warn all the other fishes.

~ Anonymous; (Six Dynasties)

"By T'ing Yang Waterfall"

A strange, beautiful girl
Bathes her white feet in the flowing water,
The white moon, in the midst of the clouds,
Is far away, beyond the reach of man.

~ Hsieh Ling Yuen; Duke of K'ang Lo (385-433 A.D.)

I wonder if this next one was perhaps an influence on Eliot's choice of words at the end of Prufrock.

"The Drowning of Conaing"

The shining waters rise and swell
And break across the shining strand,
And Conaing gazes at the land,
Swung high in his frail coracle.

Then she with the white hair of foam,
The blinding hair that Conaing grips,
Rises, to turn triumphant lips,
On all the gods that guard his home.

~ 8th century; translation by Frank O' Connor

This one is a bit simple, but in simplicity, a bit more accessible to beginners. It is more the poet I wish to highlight than the poem, though I love it as well. I'll type it in romaji, rather than kana.

Waga koi wa
chibiki no iwa o
nana bakari
kubi ni kakemu mo
kami no manimani

My longing is like
seven stones around my neck
stones it takes a thousand men to pull -
It shall be as the gods will.

~ Otomo Yakamochi (718-785); translation by Paula Doe

I also really wanted to post Ashbery's poem, "Some Trees," from the collection by the same name, published in 1956, I believe, but I think I'm out of space, haha.

[Anonymous No.21368161]

>>21364529
Interesting. Catullus? It sounds like him.

CV
Mentula conatur Pipleium scandere montem. Musae furcillis praecipiem eiciunt.

Prickface tries to scale the heights of poetry. With pitchforks the Muses poke him back down on his a**.

~ Catullus; translation Carl Sesar

[Anonymous No.21368202]

>>21333832
I was going to post a mean comment about how everyone in this thread is a fart-sniffing psued, but this is honestly the highest-effort thread I've seen on this board in a while. OP seems like a genuinely knowledgeable and helpful guy and is doing a great job keeping the thread alive. That said, there is tragically little Bishop in here:

"Filling Station"

Oh, but it is dirty!
—this little filling station,
oil-soaked, oil-permeated
to a disturbing, over-all
black translucency.
Be careful with that match!

Father wears a dirty,
oil-soaked monkey suit
that cuts him under the arms,
and several quick and saucy
and greasy sons assist him
(it’s a family filling station),
all quite thoroughly dirty.

Do they live in the station?
It has a cement porch
behind the pumps, and on it
a set of crushed and grease-
impregnated wickerwork;
on the wicker sofa
a dirty dog, quite comfy.

Some comic books provide
the only note of color—
of certain color. They lie
upon a big dim doily
draping a taboret
(part of the set), beside
a big hirsute begonia.

Why the extraneous plant?
Why the taboret?
Why, oh why, the doily?
(Embroidered in daisy stitch
with marguerites, I think,
and heavy with gray crochet.)

Somebody embroidered the doily.
Somebody waters the plant,
or oils it, maybe. Somebody
arranges the rows of cans
so that they softly say:
esso—so—so—so
to high-strung automobiles.
Somebody loves us all.

[Anonymous No.21368368]

>>21368057
I really like some of these. I should get this collection. I'm not really into Chinese poetry except for the songs of chu and li he, recommendations made to me by another anon.

>>21368161
I'm only familiar with Virgil, Ovid, and Horace. Is this the whole poem? This seems up my alley.

[Anonymous No.21368613]

>>21368057
That third one is lovely! The translation emphasizes the intended symmetry between lines 2 and 3, so if it hadn't been broken up between lines 1 and 4, the poem would have come off too tidy and constructed. Instead, the translator decides to leave line 1 a fragment, which gives the entire poem a direction of its own.

I struggled with poetry for a long time because of compulsive overinterpreting (and still do), and in trying to reset to first principles ended up taking the New Directions Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry on vacation, which completely floored me. That collection also contains a good amount of Rexroth translations (including the second one you posted), although these are Gary Snyder:

The path to Han-Shan's place is laughable,
A path, but no sign of cart or horse,
Converging gorges--hard to trace their twists
Jumbled cliffs--unbelievably rugged.
A thousand grasses bend with dew,
A hill of pines hums in the wind.
And now I've lost the shortcut home,
Body asking shadow, how do you keep up?
(Han-Shan)

Sitting alone, hid in bamboo
Plucking the lute and gravely whistling
People wouldn't know that deep woods
Can be this bright in the moon.
(Wang Wei)

To me, poems like these effortlessly superimpose subject matter and 'meaning' in a way that I haven't found in Western poetry so far - but that's more likely just a case of needing to read more. Need to find good German translations anyway, reading already translated poems in your second language can't be ideal.

[Anonymous No.21368788]

>>21368368
>the songs of chu and li he
I'm unfamiliar with them. I'll have to have a look at those myself. Yes, it is the whole poem, but he has longer ones as well - just be prepared - he's scandalous.

[Anonymous No.21368830]

>>21368613
Those are really nice. I know exactly what you mean. Far Eastern poetry has its own serene way of saying without saying, and a generally understated conveyance of feeling. There really isn't anyone I can think of in English poetry who quite has it down. I'll have to snag a copy of that anthology for myself. Thank you for sharing those with me, anon.

[Anonymous No.21369147]

>>21333832
This one is also from Mahmoud Darwish.

In her absence, I created her image: out of the earthly
The hidden heavenly commences. I am here weighing
The expanse with the Jahili Mu'allaqat...absence is
The guide, it is the guide. For every rhyme I built
A tent. And for everything in the wind
A rhyme. Absence teaches me its lessons. "If it weren't for
the mirage you wouldn't have endured..."and in the emptiness
I disassembled a letter from the old alphabets,
And I leaned on the absence, so who am I after
The visitation? A bird or a passerby between the symbols
And the vendors of memory? I am like an artifact,
And I am like a ghost who snuck from yabous,and I said to myself:
Let's go to the seven hills. So I placed
My masks on a stone, so I walked a walk as
The asleep led by my dream. And from moon to
Moon I leapt. There is enough of unconscious
To liberate the things from their history. And there
Is enough of history to liberate the unconsciousness
From its ascension "take me to our first
years" - says my first (girl)friend. "Leave
the window open to let the periodic bird enter
your dream"...then I awaken, no city in
The city. No 'here' except 'there'. And no
There except here. If not for the mirage
I wouldn't have walked to the seven hills...
If it were not for the mirage.


Just to be clear the seven hills he is referencing here are not the seven hills of rome, or the seven hills of Jerusalem or of Istanbul or of Amman, but I think it is probably the seven hills in Saudi Arabia, sometimes called The Seven Grand Mountains of Makkah.

[Anonymous No.21369166]

>>21355728
>>21355613
>>21355412
>>21354551
>>21342925
>>21342921
>>21340482
Arabic/Muslim brothers!

[Anonymous No.21369294]

>>21333832
Though we are parted,
If on Mount Inaba's peak
I should hear the sound

Of the pine trees growing there,
I'll come back again to you

Heian period poets were the masters of having a lot of meaning in just a few lines

[Anonymous No.21370212]

Bump

[Anonymous No.21370232]

Why do i hate long poems?

[Anonymous No.21370235]

I have walked the paths; the shadowed roads
that led to terror’s breast.
I have plumbed the depths of Hatred’s womb,
and scaled Destruction’s crest.
For every secret left unveiled, for every power learned,
I’d sell the remnants of my soul, regardless how it burned.
And still I sought a higher wisdom few could have attained.
‘Though I found it, it would leave me - broken, damned and drained.
For now I find this power gained is more unto a curse.
My spirit burns with every spell and each irreverent verse.
Despite this strength and knowledge earned, I have paid a heavy toll,
Never should’ve traded power for my own immortal soul.”

[Anonymous No.21370250]

>>21368788
Which translation of his should I get from libgen?

[Anonymous No.21371293]

>>21364555
An interesting poem, at first I was thinking to myself, "Shelley's Ozymandias does it better," but it took an interesting turn towards the end, and throughout had enjoyable scenery. I didn't know what Wroxeter was either, so I also enjoyed it on that account.

[Anonymous No.21371360]

>>21365449
This one was very pleasantly written, but when I searched for it the source appearing at the top of the list was marxists.org. As you can imagine, I winced, then scrolled down a ways and clicked Bartleby's option. This only to find the poem itself seems advocative in the implied vein. It isn't that there isn't any increasing imbalance between work and life - there is, but that the imbalance itself originates out of the debasement of money for the sake of an, ironically, communofascist elite class - ever seeking to abscond with our excess, consolidating the resultant power into an transnational structure over which our like shall have no say, but mere nods of ascent. Regardless, though Gilman's sentiments do not resonate with me wholly (I am sympathetic to a degree, but only just), I did like it as a poem. I loved this image - what clever description, "Fierce lamping eyes at nightfall,
A crouching shade by day." Am I wrong to have been colored by the idea she was Marxist? Was she less politically aligned in her motives for this poem?

[Anonymous No.21371532]

>>21371360
It's about people in industrial servitude, the wolf being the debt-owners and business-men (or even just the need for money) that would drive workers to exhaustion. If it's been co-opted by marxists, I have no idea if it was the intention of the author, but I love it.

Almost every line is a gem, and she is so good at transcribing the fear of the wolf, and the looming threat of it. The lines you mentioned in the beginning are just awesome, but my favorite bit is actually at the end:

>There's a hot breath at the keyhole
>And a tearing as of teeth!
>Well do I know the bloodshot eyes
>And the dripping jaws beneath!


I'm very glad that you looked it up, and I'm glad you like it. Thank you.

[Anonymous No.21371629]

Your death, near now, is of an easy sort.
So slow a fading out brings no real pain.
Breath growing short
Is just uncomfortable. You feel the drain
Of energy, but thought and sight remain:

Enhanced, in fact. When did you ever see
So much sweet beauty as when fine rain falls
On that small tree
And saturates your brick back garden walls,
So many Amber Rooms and mirror halls?

Ever more lavish as the dusk descends
This glistening illuminates the air.
It never ends.
Whenever the rain comes it will be there,
Beyond my time, but now I take my share.

My daughter’s choice, the maple tree is new.
Come autumn and its leaves will turn to flame.
What I must do
Is live to see that. That will end the game
For me, though life continues all the same:

Filling the double doors to bathe my eyes,
A final flood of colours will live on
As my mind dies,
Burned by my vision of a world that shone
So brightly at the last, and then was gone.

[Anonymous No.21372033]

>>21367324
It's a rarer one—I think it was part of a letter she wrote to a friend or lover. I think "Our confiscated Gods" are the people she loved who died. Dickinson seems simple, but the more I read her, the more I realise how complicated a thinker she was.
>>21367537
That's a great commentary. Thanks. Interesting you thought of Lot's wife—when I first read this poem I thought of Eurydice and Orpheus. Weird to realise how many "damned if I look back" myths there are. Seems like it was published in 1983, though I can't be sure when it was written.
>>21367682
Haha. I think it's one of his best plays, but it's also one of his most unusual and difficult. As a romance story it's unsatisfying: you only once, for a brief moment, see Antony and Cleopatra together. It's interesting to compare it with Romeo and Juliet, a much less mature play. First love versus last love. Stylistically, it might be his best. Sometimes I wish Shakespeare had lived longer so that we could see how his style would have continued to evolve, but maybe he was fully spent.

[Anonymous No.21373575]

>>21372033
That's who I thought she meant also, but I feel uncertain to a small degree. Ah! Eurydice and Orpheus! How could I have forgotten? That is interesting actually. I bet Joseph Campbell would have had something to say on the subject - not that I'm an adherent to his views - more a lover of his love of his views. One of Shakespeare's most unusual and difficult, you say? Unsatisfying as a romance? Stylistically his best? I'm even more intrigued. I've always appreciated Shakespeare's brilliance and enjoy him to a degree, but I've largely been an advocate out of mere objectivity, rather than an ardent lover. Perhaps it is better said, my becoming a fan has been a process which is still ongoing, and has been since reading my first play of his at 12 or 13. In honor of the snobbish, but interesting anti-Bloom anon who came through, I started rereading Harold Bloom's "Anxiety of Influence," 1997 edition with the added preface on Shakespeare and Marlowe, and OH BOY would Bloom have agreed with your wish. I have little doubt he would have had himself cryogenically frozen in order to one day travel back in time to see Shakespeare on the Elizabethan stage had he thought there any chance of it. The man worshiped him - nearly in earnest. It's people like Bloom and you who keep me returning to The Bard from time to time. I always enjoy myself, but would most often wander for other fields without coaxing. Passion is catching.