/lit/ - Literature

Good evening /lit/. Yesterday we lost the great voice of Lawrence Ferlinghetti at the age of 101. I'll be honest with you fellas, I didn't know he was still alive until I found he had passed, yet it's always a sad day when an artist moves on. I also found out through his passing that he owned a book shop in California which I hope I may be able to visit one day. But alas! I'm getting distracted, it is reading time after all and I must read you a poem before bed, so tonight I have decided to read to you a poem of Ferlinghetti's which he wrote about my own home town, so with further adieu:

New York - Albany

God I had forgotten how
the Hudson burns
in indian autumn
Saugerties
Coxsackie
fall away through
all those trees
The leaves die turning
falling fallen
falling into loam of dark
yellow into death
Disappearing
falling fallen falling
those 'pestilence-stricken multitudes'
blown all blasted
They are hurting them
with wood rakes
They are raking them
in great hills
They are burning them
the leaves curl burning
the curled smoke gives up
to eternity
Never
never the same leaf turn again
the same leaves burn
In a red field
a white stallion stands
and pees his oblivion
upon those leaves
washing my bus window
only now blacked out
by a covered bridge
we flash through
only once
No roundtrip ticket
never returning the youth years fallen
away back then
Under the Linden trees in Boston Common
Trees think through these woods of years
They flame forever
with those thoughts I did not see eternity
the other night
but now in burning
turning day
Every bush burns
Love licks
all down
All gone
In the red end
Small nuts fall
Mine too.


Good night friends, and sleep well.

"If you're too open minded; your brains will fall out." - Lawrence Ferlinghetti

>>17630652
If you would think of doing such a thing over something so trivial, then I have only to assume that either you are unhappy with her for reasons beyond this, or that you are not right for this relationship.

Good evening /lit/. It's been a long time since I read to you, but no need to worry, I am back and it's now time to read you a poem before bed.
Yesterday was Edna St. Vincent Millay's birthday, so let's make an homage to her tonight. She was one of the most influential and powerful poets of the twentieth century in America, and she is one of my personal favorites. Tonight I will read to you a series of her poems.

Time Does Not Bring Relief - Edna St. Vincent Millay
Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year’s bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.
There are a hundred places where I fear
To go,—so with his memory they brim.
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, “There is no memory of him here!”
And so stand stricken, so remembering him.”

Love is Not All

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.

Sonnet XLIII

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.


Good night friends, and sleep well.

I'm having trouble describing what I'm looking at.

Good evening /lit/. I am upset tonight. I am upset by the disregard that the majority of men show for the natural world and most disappointingly the disregard those in power have for protecting it. I will read you an excerpt from T.S. Eliot's 'Little Gidding' of the Four Quartets which reflects how I've been feeling as of late.

Ash on an old man's sleeve
Is all the ash the burnt roses leave.
Dust in the air
suspended
Marks the place where a story ended.
Dust inbreathed was a house--
The walls, the wainscot and the mouse,
The death of hope and despair,
This is the death of air.

There are flood and drouth
Over the eyes and in the mouth,
Dead water and dead sand
Contending for the upper hand.
The parched eviscerate the soil
Gapes at the vanity of toil,
Laughs without the mirth.
This is the death of earth.

Water and fire succeed
The town, the pasture and the weed.
Water and fire deride
The sacrifice that we denied.
Water and fire shall rot
The marred foundations we forgot,
Of sanctuary and choir.
This is the death of water and fire.


Good night friends, and sleep well, and remember that the Earth is a gift.

Good evening /lit/. A few days ago it was Carl Sandburg's birthday, so I'll be reading you one of his poem's tonight before bed.

Under the Harvest Moon - Carl Sandburg

Under the harvest moon,
When the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over the garden nights,
Death, the gray mocker,
Comes and whispers to you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers.

Under the summer roses
When the flagrant crimson
Lurks in the dusk
Of the wild red leaves,
Love, with littles hands,
Comes and touches you
With a thousand memories,
And asks you
Beautiful, unanswerable questions.


Good night friends, and sleep well.

Good evening /lit/. Here are some particularly gorgeous lyrics I'd like to read you before bed by the Scottish Pete Seeger himself, Dick Gaughan.

Workers' Song - Dick Gaughan

Come all of you workers who toil night and day
By hand and by brain to earn your pay
Who for centuries long past for no more than your bread
Have bled for you countries and counted your dead in the factories and mills, in the shipyards and mines
We've often been told to keep up with the times
For our skills are not needed, they've streamlined the job
And with sliderule and stopwatch our pride they have robbed
But when the sky darkens and the prospect is war
Who's given a gun and then pushed to the fore
And expected to die for the land of our birth
When we've never owned one handful of Earth?

We're the first ones to starve, we're the first ones to die
We're the first ones in line for that pie in the sky
And always the last when the cream is shared out
For the worker is working when the fat cat's about
All of these things the worker has done
From tilling the fields to carrying the gun
We've been yoked to the plough since time first began
And always expected to carry the can


Good night friends, and sleep well.

>>17110971
Merry Christmas fren.

>>17111089
>realize there is no answer for how to treat others
You can't go wrong just treating them well.

>What comes after philosophy?
Your decision on how you are going to live.

Shoo you! Tonight is Christmas Eve, a night when we should do no harm, but you are here sowing seeds of conflict. Shame on you.

Merry Christmas my friends! What could I read to you before bed on such a night, but the classic tale of a visit from St Nick.

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds;
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;
And mamma in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled down for a long winter's nap,
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.
The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow,
Gave a luster of midday to objects below,
When what to my wondering eyes did appear,
But a miniature sleigh and eight tiny rein-deer,
With a little old driver so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment he must be St. Nick.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name:
"Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now Prancer and Vixen!
On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donner and Blitzen!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!"
As leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky;
So up to the housetop the coursers they flew
With the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too—
And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.
He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;
A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.
His eyes—how they twinkled! his dimples, how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard on his chin was as white as the snow;
The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke, it encircled his head like a wreath;
He had a broad face and a little round belly
That shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly.
He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,
And laying his finger aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;
He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.
But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight—
“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!”

Good evening friends of /lit/. Winter is seasonally near and meteorologically here! Let's celebrate with a poem by Mary Oliver before bed.

White-Eyes

In winter
all the singing is in
the tops of the trees
where the wind-bird

with its white eyes
shoves and pushes
among the branches.
Like any of us

he wants to go to sleep,
but he's restless-
he has an idea,
and slowly it unfolds

from under his beating wings
as long as he stays awake.
But his big, round music, after all,
is too breathy to last.

So, it's over.
In the pine-crown
he makes his nest,
he's done all he can.

I don't know the name of this bird,
I only imagine his glittering beak
tucked in a white wing
while the clouds-

which he has summoned
from the north-
which he taught
to be mild, and silent-

thicken, and begin to fall
into the world below
like stars, or the feathers
of some unimaginable bird

that loves us,
that is asleep now, and silent-
that has turned itself
into snow.


Good night friends, and sleep well.

>>17062846
Because they were youthful, as they grow older they'll learn to 'whine'.

Good evening friends of /lit/. It's time to read you all a poem before bed. These winter days often set the stage for meditating on memories of times past.

Here's a poem by William Morris Meredith Jr. He was an American poet and educator was the Poet Laureate Consultant for a time in the '70s.

Winter Verse for His Sister

Moonlight washes the west side of the house
As clean as bone, it carpets like a lawn
The stubbled field tilted eastward
Where there is no sign yet of dawn.
The moon is an angel with a bright light sent
To surprise me once before I die
With the real aspect of things.
It holds the light steady and makes no comment.

Practicing for death I have lately gone
To that other house
Where our parents did most of their dying,
Embracing and not embracing their conditions.
Our father built bookcases and little by little stopped reading,
Our mother cooked proud meals for common mouths.
Kindly, they raised two children. We raked their leaves
And cut their grass, we ate and drank with them.
Reconciliation was our long work, not all of it joyful.

Now outside my own house at a cold hour
I watch the noncommittal angel lower
The steady lantern that's worn these clapboards thin
In a wash of moonlight, while men slept within,
Accepting and not accepting their conditions,
And the fingers of trees plied a deep carpet of decay
On the gravel web underneath the field,
And the field tilting always toward day.


Good night friends, and sleep well.


On another note, if any of you are are artists out there, it would be nice to have a unique drawing for these threads. I was thinking of a drawing of an elderly apu reading to his grandchildren. If any of you are up to the drawing challenge please have at it!

>>17059750
Ubu Roi

Good evening friends of /lit/. I have a long one for you tonight. Over three feet of snow here since last night, the streets are quiet and the shops are empty as we all shovel our ways out.

Here's a snow poem by Lisel Mueller. She and her family successfully fled the Nazi regime and arrived in the States in 1939 when she was just 15. She began writing poetry and published her first collection in 1965.

Not Only The Eskimos - Lisel Mueller

We have only one noun
but as many different kinds:

the grainy snow of the Puritans
and snow of soft, fat flakes,

guerrilla snow, which comes in the night
and changes the world by morning,

rabbinical snow, a permanent skullcap
on the highest mountains,

snow that blows in like the Lone Ranger,
riding hard from out of the West,

surreal snow in the Dakotas,
when you can’t find your house, your street,
though you are not in a dream
or a science-fiction movie,

snow that tastes good to the sun
when it licks black tree limbs,
leaving us only one white stripe,
a replica of a skunk,

unbelievable snows:
the blizzard that strikes on the tenth of April,
the false snow before Indian summer,
the Big Snow on Mozart’s birthday,
when Chicago became the Elysian Fields
and strangers spoke to each other,

paper snow, cut and taped,
to the inside of grade-school windows,

in an old tale, the snow
that covers a nest of strawberries,
small hearts, ripe and sweet,
the special snow that goes with Christmas,
whether it falls or not,

the Russian snow we remember
along with the warmth and smell of furs,
though we have never traveled
to Russia or worn furs,

Villon’s snows of yesteryear,
lost with ladies gone out like matches,
the snow in Joyce’s “The Dead,”
the silent, secret snow
in a story by Conrad Aiken,
which is the snow of first love,

the snowfall between the child
and the spacewoman on TV,

snow as idea of whiteness,
as in snowdrop, snow goose, snowball bush,

the snow that puts stars in your hair,
and your hair, which has turned to snow,

the snow Elinor Wylie walked in
in velvet shoes,

the snow before her footprints
and the snow after,

the snow in the back of our heads,
whiter than white, which has to do
with childhood again each year.


Goodnight friends, and sleep well.

Good evening /lit/. It's once again time for me read you a poem before bed. Tonight we'll be taking a look at a man who most likely didn't experience winter in the same way that the majority of us do. On this cold December evening, let’s consider the following poem by W. S. Merwin. An American poet who wrote more than fifty books of poetry and prose, and produced many works in translation. His writing derived influence from an interest in Buddhist philosophy and deep ecology. Residing in a rural part of Maui, Hawaii, he wrote prolifically and was dedicated to the restoration of the island's rainforests.

December Night - W.S. Merwin

The cold slope is standing in darkness
But the south of the trees is dry to the touch

The heavy limbs climb into the moonlight bearing feathers
I came to watch these
White plants older at night
The oldest
Come first to the ruins

And I hear magpies kept awake by the moon
The water flows through its
Own fingers without end

Tonight once more
I find a single prayer and it is not for men

Good night friends, and sleep well.

>>17040076
Oh sorry I missed your first question; I first got interested poetry after reading E E Cummings in my high school English class.

>>17039674
Of course friend. Some of my favorites are Dylan Thomas, William Wordsworth, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Walt Whitman, and E E Cummings. But don't just take my word for it there are hundreds more fantastic and great poets. If you ever see any poetry anthologies floating around for a good price, pick them up, you'll almost always be glad you did.

Good evening friends, scholars, countrymen. It's Pop-pop here to read you a poem before bed. It’s Tuesday in mid December with a big Nor'easter in the works forecast for this week. Looks like he's send us a great blanket to tuck us in. Here’s a poem for you by Frederick Louis MacNeice , he was a member of the Auden Group y'know!

Snow - Frederick Louis MacNeice

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes—
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one's hands—
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

Good night friends, and sleep well.

>>17013853
I love you too, friend.

Good evening /lit/, it's your grandfather here again to read you a poem before bed. It's a quiet, cold Saturday night with snow flurries in the air. A time to contemplate how we love.
Here’s a poem by American poet Genevieve Taggard.

Letter in Solitude

Here are autumn certainties:
I will love you and the trees
Go on yellowing and the sun
Stand and pour its radiance down.

Count the seasonal certainties:
I will love you and the trees
Color like a carnival,
Color and refuse to fall,
To show a new aspect of trees
More nearly like themselves than these.

I will love you as I have said:
After all the leaves are shed,
And the sky is fastened down,
And the valley depth is brown,
And the ruts begin to freeze,
There are other certainties.

Surely love you, but with none
Of that radiant tint of sun;
As if a cloud had curled across
The sun, and clung like Iichened moss;

Love you surely, but in a prone
Dogged way, more like a stone;
As if a stone's touch gave a cue
To a clearer love of you.

However absently the eyes
Thinking their inner thoughts may stare
They match within, the sharpened size
Of hillshapes in the cutting air.

And so, by seeing uncovered ground
And outlines gaunter all the time
I see love also winter-bound
And think more simply into rhyme.

And since love gets its tempered sense
From the large fact of altering earth,
I love the winter, stubborn, dense,
And love the storm my love is worth.

Good night friends, and sleep well.

Good evening friends and countrymen. This afternoon, and a beautiful snowy afternoon it was, I was reading through my Blake anthology and I came across a poem I remembered from my school days. A poem called "The Chimney Sweeper." Now at this time in my life I know I was a snot-nosed and hedonistic little punk, so of course there was no enjoyment that I would gather from the legendary Blake. Yet now reading it again with older eyes and wiser mind I appreciate much more than before. It's a simple poem with a simple message, not on the levels of his later work, but it's a comfortable poem for a read before bed, and one thing we can learn from it is that no matter how bleak things be, we are always in His hands.

The Chimney Sweep - William Blake

When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue
Could scarcely cry weep weep weep weep.
So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep.

There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head
That curl'd like a lamb's back, was shav'd, so I said,
"Hush Tom never mind it, for when your head's bare,
You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair."

And so he was quiet, & that very night,
As Tom was a sleeping he had such a sight,
That thousands of sweepers Dick, Joe, Ned & Jack
Were all of them lock'd up in coffins of black.

And by came an Angel who had a bright key,
And he open'd the coffins & set them all free.
Then down a green plain leaping laughing they run
And wash in a river and shine in the Sun.

Then naked & white, all their bags left behind,
They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind.
And the Angel told Tom if he'd been a good boy,
He'd have God for his father & never want joy.

And so Tom awoke and we rose in the dark
And got with our bags & our brushes to work.
Tho' the morning was cold, Tom was happy & warm,
So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.

Good night friends, sleep well.

The Road - Siegfried Sassoon

The Road is throng with women: soldiers pass
And halt, but never see them: yet they're here,
A patient crowd along the sodden grass,
Silent, worn out with waiting, sick with fear.
The Road goes crawling up a long hillside
All ruts and stones and sludge, and the emptied dregs
Of battle thrown in heaps: here, where they died,
Are stretched big-bellied horses with stiff legs;
And dead men, bloody-fingered from the fight,
Stare up at cavern'd darkness winking white.

You in the bomb-scorched kilt, poor-sprawling Jock,
You tottered here and fell, and stumbled on,
Half-dazed for want of sleep: no dream could mock
Your reeling brain with comforts lost and gone.
you did not feel her arms about your knees,
Her blind caress, her lips upon your head:
Too tired for thoughts of home and love and ease,
The Road would serve you well enough for bed.