Wendy, blessings for reminding me of the Hopkins. Of course, having been reminded, now I think of this one too:

Fried Beauty by R. S. Gwynn


Glory be to God for breaded things—
Catfish, steak finger, pork chop, chicken thigh,
Sliced green tomatoes, pots full to the brim
With french fries, fritters, life-float onion rings,
Hushpuppies, okra golden to the eye,
That in all oils, corn or canola, swim


Toward mastication’s maw (O molared mouth!);
Whatever browns, is dumped to drain and dry
On paper towels’ sleek translucent scrim,
These greasy, battered bounties of the South:
Eat them.

(This one's already online in many other places, so I think it's okay to copy here).

I love Catherine Tufariello's "Florida Flowers" poem. I can't find it online, but most of you have her book, I'm sure, and the rest of you should. (I mean, really. Unless you don't buy any poetry books at all, I can't imagine your not buying this one).

Meadows sweet where flames are under,
And a giggle at a wonder;
Visage sage at pantomine;
Funeral, and steeple-chime;
Infant playing with a skull;
Morning fair, and shipwreck'd hull;
Nightshade with the woodbine kissing;
Serpents in red roses hissing;
Cleopatra regal-dress'd
With the aspic at her breast;
Dancing music, music sad,
Both together, sane and mad;
Muses bright and muses pale;
Sombre Saturn, Momus hale; -



- Keats

---



I love lists, though I wish there was a better word than List. They're more like verbal storms, or little ven (n?) diagrams spinning round, building pitch. Where has poetic pitch gone... Mother of god, I'm sounding old. Love Auden's touchstones.
Here's Yeats



...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.

This one is also available online, so I assume it is okay to post it here. A colleague of mine in the music department of my university set it to music.

Susan


Buffalo Commons
by Timothy Murphy

In Antler, Reeder,
Ryder and Streeter,
stray dogs bristle
when strangers pass.

In Brocket, Braddock,
Maddock and Wheelock
dry winds whistle
through broken glass.

The steeples are toppled
and the land unpeopled,
reclaimed by thistle
and buffalo grass.

I like this one, from the Don Paterson-edited 101 Sonnets

from Notes on the Use of the Library
(Basement Annex)

The Principal's other edition of Q,
Scott by the truckload and Fredegond Shove,
Manuals instructing the dead how to do
What they no longer can with the Torments of Love,
Mistaken assumptions concerning The Race,
Twelve-volume memoirs of footling campaigns,
Discredited physics, the Criminal Face,
Confessions of clerics who blew out their brains,
Laws and Geographies (utterly changed),
Travellers journals that led up the creek,
The verbose, the inept, and the clearly deranged,
The languages no one has bothered to speak,
And journals of subjects that do not exist,
What better excuse to go out and get pissed?

Sean O’Brien

The king of the list poem is surely Jacques Prevert, translated by Lawrence Ferlinghetti and by Sarah Lawson. Lawson is better but Ferlinghetti has the French on the opposite page. Prevert's masterpiece is his 'Inventaire' (Inventory). I wonder if it can be googled. I'll try. I did. It can. The only raccoons in poetry that I know of.

Just to return to the proper-name lists, here's a stanza (and a bit) from a poem in Spenserian stanzas by Andrew Waterman, entitled Shore Lines:

Interestingly, the poem was published in 1994, just a year after Carol Ann Duffy's fine poem "Prayer" was published, though Andrew Waterman has said that he didn't know her poem at the time. That poem concludes with the lines:

Here's a beauty by Dorianne Laux.

http://www.thepedestalmagazine.com/g....php?item=6797



Ode to Gray

Mourning dove. Goose. Cat bird. Butcher bird. Heron.
A child’s plush stuffed rabbit. Buckets. Chains.

Silver. Slate. Steel. Thistle. Tin.
Old man. Old woman.
The new screen door.

A squadron of Mirage F-1’s dog fighting
above ground-fog. Sprites. Smoke.
“Snapshot gray” circa 1952.

Foxes. Rats. Nails. Wolves. River stones. Whales.
Brains. Newspapers. The backs of dead hands.

The sky over the ocean just before the clouds
let down their rain.

Rain.

The sea just before the clouds
let down their nets of rain.

Angel fish. Hooks. Hummingbird nests. Battleships.
Teak wood. Seal whiskers. Silos. Railroad ties.

Mushrooms. Dray horses. Sage. Clay. Driftwood.
Crayfish in a stainless steel bowl.

The eyes of a certain girl.

Grain.

Nice Laux poem...

And another example, a quantitative sort of list:

A CONTRIBUTION TO STATISTICS


Out of a hundred people

those who always know better
-fifty-two

doubting every step
-nearly all the rest,

glad to lend a hand
if it doesn't take too long
-as high as forty-nine,

always good
because they can't be otherwise
-four, well maybe five,

able to admire without envy
-eighteen,

suffering illusions
induced by fleeting youth
-sixty, give or take a few,

not to be taken lightly
-forty and four,

living in constant fear
of someone or something
-seventy-seven,

capable of happiness
-twenty-something tops,

harmless singly, savage in crowds
-half at least,

cruel
when forced by circumstances
-better not to know
even ballpark figures,

wise after the fact
-just a couple more
than wise before it,

taking only things from life
-thirty
(I wish I were wrong),

hunched in pain,
no flashlight in the dark
-eighty-three
sooner or later,

righteous
-thirty-five, which is a lot,

righteous
and understanding
-three,

worthy of compassion
-ninety-nine,

mortal
-a hundred out of a hundred.
thus far this figure still remains unchanged.

-- Wislawa Szymborska

http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minst...oems/1267.html

Loved that poem, Rose. Thanks for posting it.

Susan