Steve, that Nemerov poem is one of my all-time favorites, and I tend to wave it around in front of people who demand to know the difference between poetry and "cut-up prose."

Here's another good one. I know nothing about the poet except that her book won the Washington House Publishing Prize in 1985, but I admire the heck out of this poem:


The Mother In Line 28

The poem is not the poet.
The mother in line 28
is not the poet's mother or child
and each time a poem opens a door
to a room of pans or pearls
it is the poem's room;
it is the poet's plan.

The heart that is bleeding
in stanza two
is not the heart of the poet.
The poet is elsewhere,
singing along with a piano player.
The heart in the poem won't heal.
The poet's own heart is strong.

--Elaine Magarell

From "On Hogback Mountain,"
pub by Washington Writers Publishing House, 1985


Marilyn


------------------
Marilyn L. Taylor

[This message has been edited by Marilyn Taylor (edited March 22, 2006).]

Marilyn,

That's a fine poem. Good to see you here. I hope your next posting on this site is not going to be in 2010.

On a slightly different note, here's one by John Whitworth:

They Fuck You Up, Do Publishers
(A Farewell to Secker and Warburg)

They fuck you up do publishers.
Against them there is no defence.
No letter, postcard, phone-call stirs
The puddle of their indolence.

Each author's fucked up in his turn.
Each contract is a poison pellet.
And specially must poets learn
That verse don't sell, and they don't sell it.

Man hands on manuscript to man,
Who leaves the thing in St Tropez.
Get out as quickly as you can
And write a television play.

(from Tennis and Sex and Death, Peterloo 1989)

Gregory

So much great stuff on this thread! The Whitworth-after- Larkin is painfully brilliant, Gregory.

Here's one from Stanley Kunitz (from Passing Through: The Later Poems..)

The Round


Light splashed this morning
on the shell-pink anemones
swaying on their tall stems;
down blue-spiked veronica
light flowed in rivulets
over the humps of the honeybees;
this morning I saw light kiss
the silk of the roses
in their second flowering,
my late bloomers
flushed with their brandy.
A curious gladness shook me.

So I have shut the doors of my house,
so I have trudged downstairs to my cell,
so i am sitting in semi-dark
hunched over my desk
with nothing for a view
to tempt me
but a bloated compost heap,
steamy old stinkpile,
under my window;
and I pick my notebook up
and I start to read aloud
the still-wet words I scribbled
on the blotted page:
"Light splashed..."

I can scarcely wait till tomorrow
when a new life begins for me,
as it does each day,
as it does each day.

*********************

Christine.

This thread is awesome. So much good stuff. Of course, it's much hard to write a good poem about poetry than it is to read a good poem about poetry.

Blackberry Eating
Galway Kinnell


I love to go out in late September
among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries
to eat blackberries for breakfast,
the stalks very prickly, a penalty
they earn for knowing the black art
of blackberry-making; and as I stand among them
lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berries
fall almost unbidden to my tongue,
as words sometimes do, certain peculiar words
like strengths or squinched,
many-lettered, one-syllabled lumps,
which I squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well
in the silent, startled, icy, black language
of blackberry -- eating in late September.

-Dan

Pope's "Essay on Criticism." Hands down.

Too long to post so here's a reminder:
http://www.poemhunter.com/p/m/poem.a...095&poem=32941

What we need is an anthology on that forbidden of forbiddens, (good) poems on poetry. (Does one exist already?)

Robin

P.S. Hey! I just noticed I have TWO stars! Wow!



[This message has been edited by Robin-Kemp (edited March 31, 2006).]

Lawrence Ferlinghetti:


Constantly Risking Absurdity

Constantly risking absurdity
and death
whenever he performs
above the heads
of his audience
the poet like an acrobat
climbs on rime
to a high wire of his own making
and balancing on eyebeams
above a sea of faces
paces his way
to the other side of the day
performing entrachats
and sleight-of-foot tricks
and other high theatrics
and all without mistaking
any thing
for what it may not be
For he's the super realist
who must perforce perceive
taut truth
before the taking of each stance or step
in his supposed advance
toward that still higher perch
where Beauty stands and waits
with gravity
to start her death-defying leap
And he
a little charleychaplin man
who may or may not catch
her fair eternal form
spreadeagled in the empty air
of existence



[This message has been edited by RCL (edited March 31, 2006).]

"The Chief Speaks"
by
Marin Sorescu
(Translated from the Romanian by
John Hartley Williams & Hilde Ottschofski)

Write, write! Read, read! Poetry heapbig communication energy discharge. Quick mindheart trail. Poetry medicine man go nailbed trance. Him continuous selfelectricity bliss. Ulululu! Hurtmyflesh! Learn poetry blanket smokeverse. Bigtime startnew! Read doublesided nature joypain! Read poetryearthmaker joymessage! Good vibrations!

Me long time poetry medicine man. Whiteman knowledge no true shaman guessknowledge. Whiteman firemouth iron horse knowledge. Me go tribeheart highpeak mystery hunting ground. Make good smokeverse. Send bigstrong heap powerful tribestory message. Whiteman firejourney nowhere. Poetrytribe goodplace storysmoke anywhere.

Me nothing-else-to-do man. Me poetryman. Me nothing-else-to-do poetrymysterycracker man. Go highpeak hunting ground. Crack heapbig mysterynut!

Whiteman not worry mysterygone. Whiteman not care lose mysterynut. Me find it. Make goodcloud poetrystory. Make strongbrave poetrystory. Make cloudspirit mysterycrack poetrystory. Heapgood vibrations. Oweee!

Oldtime poetrysmoke make reader happy. Oldtime versemusic good spellthing. Tribe listen. Tribe dance. Oldtime poetrymedicine man lose magicpoetryspell. Oldtime poetrymagicspell go faroffplace. Tribe no listen. Tribe no dance. Tribe go fishing. Tribe play lacrosse. Tribe drink heapbig firewater. Heapbig sadtribe falldown falldown. Need poetrymagic ear reading! Need poetrymagic listen reading! Ulululu! Oweee!

Oldtime storybook poetryman longtime dead. Newtime poetryman no good tribe mysteryspeak. Newtime poetryman need bigreaderfriend. Newtime poetryman need listenreader. Newtime poetryman heapbig difficult situation.

Earthmaker say newtime come. Earthmaker say newtime no bigfriend reader yesterdaytribestuff! Quick quick oldtime smokeverse poetryman! Make memory newshape! Ulululu! Oldtime smokeverse poetryman him bigload heavy steephill poetrywalk! Him no like walkheavy uphill. Earthmaker bigfriend oldtime poetryman. Earthmaker say poetryman make newtime quickquick. Make newtime downhill whizzfast cloud true! Make walklight uphill whizzfast skynew! Ulululu! Oweee!

Bigfriend poetryreader! How!

Thanks, Michael, for the Billy Collins, and Daniel for the Kinnell. Those are favorites of mine too. Here's one from a young contemporary sonnet-master:


And Then There Is That Incredible Moment,

when you realize what you’re reading,
what’s being revealed to you, how it is not
what you expected, what you thought
you were reading, where you thought you were heading.
Then there is that incredible knowing
that surges up in you, speeding
your heart; and you swear you will keep on reading,
keep on writing until you find another not going
where you thought—and until you have taken
someone on that ride, so that they take in
their breath, so that they let out their
sigh, so that they will swear
they will not rest until they too
have taken someone the way they were taken by you.

--Kate Light


[This message has been edited by Christine Robins (edited April 01, 2006).]

This thread can't possibly go on a minute longer without Wordsworth's splendid tribute to the sonnet, which was almost solely responsible for bringing the form back into fashion in the 19th c! Here it is:

Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room;
And hermits are contented with their cells;
And students with their pensive citadels;
Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom,
Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,
High as the highest Peak of Furness-fells,
Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells;
In truth the prison, unto which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me,
In sundry moods, 'twas pastime to be bound
Within the Sonnet's scanty plot of ground;
Pleased if some Souls (for such there needs must be)
Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,
Should find brief solace there, as I have found.

Marilyn

This thread wants the following meta-poem on it:

The Thought-Fox by Ted Hughes

I imagine this midnight moment's forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock's loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.

Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:

Cold, delicately as the dark snow,
A fox's nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business

Till, with sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.