apple-bringer!

Well, this isn't exactly what I had in mind. It just won't do. I was thinking you'd post some Auden, since you seem to like him pretty well.

Maybe move on to dead poets? Or live ones that don't visit this site or moderate this thread?

-eaf

I once knew an old Pentecostal preacher who told me, "I don't go on what I'm feeling, but I like to feel what I'm going on." Tom, you're stating a preference for living in a world where disharmonies are resolved, but that's a preference (or a psychological bent). That you are "highly concerned" about these things doesn't impose a moral imperative for the rest of us to follow.

I'm an accountant; I balance the books and bring order to people's financial chaos. But my daughter can go merrily along with her check book unreconciled for months as she accumulates overdraft notices. It drives me crazy but she couldn't be more unconcerned. And she is quite happy.

I think you're trying to prescribe general principles where there are none. Aristotle tried it and people even followed them; then art stagnated for 1000 or so years.

[This message has been edited by Wild Bill (edited May 14, 2004).]

To me, this is turning into a thread on hetero-metrical odes...always an interesting topic.

Several by Justice, one of Berryman's, and now one by Stallings...which is incontestably the best. I will start a thread on this sort of hetero-metrical poem.

To anticipate, I think Tom has a point-- the Justice examples aren't, in fact, very good. Wrong topic, wrong voice, wrong texture and tone. Odes need to be dramatic, generally first-person, and drenched in feeling...there can be no other justification for the metrical liberties of irregular line lengths and rhyme schema. The Justice examples look like drafts of poems that have yet to be pulled into form. This is not so with the Stallings example.

diprinzio-greg,

I thought there might be responses like this, and I tried to prevent them with the above, 'I do not know Alicia Stallings except a what is here on erato, and my claim is that I personally try to give credit where credit is due.' Besides, what good is bringing apples to Alicia going to do for me? She has already called some of my poetry "nonsense," but I still like her poetry.

eaf,

You are mistaken somehow about how I consider Auden. Personally I can't stand Auden, and I am not hesitant to say so. eaf, I don't want to consider dead poets right now. The male poet I mentioned above, yet named, that I like, does not visit erato, and I need to find his books to bring up what think, so I can quote.

TJ

Tom,

Whoops, I thought you admired Auden. You'd mentioned him in another thread I started. Something about smelling alcohol when you read his stuff.

Anyhoo, I'll bide my time until I see what ya post. I like Stallings too, but it'd be nice to see something a little further from home...

-eaf

Tom, you have a tin ear. No, Stallings isn't near Justice or Auden and when she reads this thread I'm thinking she'll tell you so herself, which, by the way, I don't for a minute believe will convince you.

diprinzio is mostly right. I like Alicia's poem very much,
as I like so much of her work. But, in my opinion, if
you don't like Justice, you don't like poetry.

eaf,

I thought you read what I said about Auden slightly off. I said I could smell the alcohol when I read him, and all that goes with alcoholism, inconsistency, sloppiness, lack of self-honesty, etc. (In the poems. In person he may half been a very nice person, I don't know.)

diprinzio,

I think Justice and Auden will fade and that Stallings will stay. However, you are right; she could very well inform me of my great ignorance.

robert mezey,

of any here, you are venerable, and I listen to you carefully. But in the same manner the way we failed to communicate about pleasure and passion regarding poetry, we will probably not communicate about, 'if you don't like Justice, you don't like poetry.' robert, I don't like poetry. I either love something or hate something. I don't leave the house and consider what I will 'like' today.

Justice writes with thoughts, not poetry.

I know I need a couple days to write up another poet.

TJ

OK. Now that we know Tom has completely lost it...


In Bertram's Garden
by Donald Justice

Jane looks down at her organdy skirt
As if it somehow were the thing disgraced,
For being there, on the floor, in the dirt,
And she catches it up about her waist,
smooths it out along one hip,
And pulls it over the crumpled slip.

On the porch, green-shuttered, cool,
Asleep is Bertram, that bronze boy,
Who, having wound her around a spool,
Sends her spinning like a toy
Out to the garden, all alone,
To sit and weep on a bench of stone.

Soon the purple dark must bruise
Lily and bleeding-heart and rose,
And the little Cupid lose
Eyes and ears and chin and nose,
And Jane lie down with others soon,
Naked to the naked moon.

To the Unknown Lady Who Wrote the Letters Found in the Hatbox

To be sold at auction.... 1 brass bed, 1 walnut secretary...bird cages, a hatbox of old letters...

What, was there never any news?
And were your weathers always fine,
Your colds all common, and your blues
Too minor to deserve one line?

Between the lines it must have hurt
To see the neighborhood go down,
Your neighbor in his undershirt
At dusk come out to mow the lawn.

But whom to turn to to complain,
Unless it might be your canaries,
And only in bird language then?
While slowly into mortuaries

The many-storied houses went
Or in deep, cataracted eyes
Displayed their signs of want: FOR RENT
And MADAM ROXIE WILL ADVISE.

Sonnet to My Father

Father, since always now the death to come
Looks naked out from your eyes into mine,
Almost it seems the death to come is mine
And that I also shall be overcome,
Father, and call for breath when you succumb,
And struggle for your hand as you for mine
In hope of comfort that shall not be mine
Till for the last of me the angel come.
But, father, though with you in part I die
And glimpse beforehand that eternal place
Where we forget the pain that brought us there,
Father, and though you go before me there,
Leaving this likeness only in your place,
Yet while I live, you do not wholly die.



[This message has been edited by diprinzio (edited May 16, 2004).]