[Philip Quinlan]

Originally Posted by Brian Watson

...there's something odd about the phrasing "and turn over slightly"... Sorry, I feel quite disgusted with how very little poetry I honestly like. I don't get most of it.

Brian

I think the phrase you quote goes exactly to my liking of the poem for its understatement, but chacun à son goût.

Your second statement I totally agree with, personally. That's some of the point of this thread. So much poetry that is out there I find disappointing too.

But I'm eternally in love with the idea of poetry and its possibilities, which in themselves seem endless.

Best

Philip

[Brian Watson]

Philip,
I find poetry harder to enjoy than music or painting. It's impossible to quantify breadth, but I wonder if most people's tastes are wider in the other arts than in poetry.

Petra,
that's cool, I was just reading a review of William Jay Smith the other day, by Merrill. It flashed such tantalizing excerpts as:

Waking below the level of the sea,
You wake in peace; the gardens look
Like roofs of palaces beneath the water,
And into the sea the land hooks...

rgrds,
B.

[John Whitworth]

Here is the perfect poem. If you know a better one then tell me what it is.

On My First Son by: Ben Jonson (1572-1637)

Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;

My sinne was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy;

Seven yeeres tho' wert lent to me, and I thee pay,

Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.

O, could I loose all father, now. For why

Will man lament the state he should envie?

To have so soon scap'd worlds and fleshes rage,

And, if no other miserie, yet age?

Rest in soft peace, and, ask'd, say here doth lye

Ben. Johnson his best piece of poetrie.

For whose sake, hence-forth, all his vowes be such,

As what he loves may never like too much.

[Petra Norr]

.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
.

[Philip Quinlan]

Hi Petra

Yes, of course, it's like "Desert Island Discs" - Shakespeare and the (King James) Bible are a given! Flawless but not sterile, intelligent but full of humanity and down to earth too.

John W

I hereby add your poem (the Jonson, which I had forgotten) to my personal list.

PQ

[Roger Slater]

This one by Yeats is maybe not "great" but I do think it's "perfect":


Though you are in your shining days,
Voices among the crowd
And new friends busy with your praise,
Be not unkind or proud,
But think about old friends the most:
Time’s bitter flood will rise,
Your beauty perish and be lost
For all eyes but these eyes.

[Orwn Acra]

If we're going to take blind stabs at the perfect poem, I'll throw in this one:

the Ballad of Persse O'Reilly

Have you heard of one Humpty Dumpty
How he fell with a roll and a rumble
And curled up like Lord Olofa Crumple
By the butt of the Magazine Wall,

Of the Magazine Wall,
Hump, helmet and all?

He was one time our King of the Castle
Now he's kicked about like a rotten old parsnip.
And from Green street he'll be sent by order of His Worship
To the penal jail of Mountjoy

To the jail of Mountjoy!
Jail him and joy.

He was fafafather of all schemes for to bother us
Slow coaches and immaculate contraceptives for the populace,
Mare's milk for the sick, seven dry Sundays a week,
Openair love and religion's reform,

And religious reform,
Hideous in form.

Arrah, why, says you, couldn't he manage it?
I'll go bail, my fine dairyman darling,
Like the bumping bull of the Cassidys
All your butter is in your horns.

His butter is in his horns.
Butter his horns!

Hurrah there, Hosty, frosty Hosty, change that shirt on ye,
Rhyme the rann, the king of all ranns!

Balbaccio, balbuccio!

We had chaw chaw chops, chairs, chewing gum, the chicken-pox and china chambers
Universally provided by this soffsoaping salesman.
Small wonder He'll Cheat E'erawan our local lads nicknamed him.
When Chimpden first took the floor

With his bucketshop store
Down Bargainweg, Lower.

So snug he was in his hotel premises sumptuous
But soon we'll bonfire all his trash, tricks and trumpery
And 'tis short till sheriff Clancy'll be winding up his unlimited company
With the bailiff's bom at the door,

Bimbam at the door.
Then he'll bum no more.

Sweet bad luck on the waves washed to our island
The hooker of that hammerfast viking
And Gall's curse on the day when Eblana bay
Saw his black and tan man-o'-war.

Saw his man-o'-war
On the harbour bar.

Where from? roars Poolbeg. Cookingha'pence, he bawls
Donnez-moi scampitle, wick an wipin'fampiny
Fingal Mac Oscar Onesine Bargearse Boniface
Thok's min gammelhole Norveegickers moniker
Og as ay are at gammelhore Norveegickers cod.

A Norwegian camel old cod.
He is, begod.

Lift it, Hosty, lift it, ye devil, ye! up with the rann, the rhyming rann!

It was during some fresh water garden pumping
Or, according to the Nursing Mirror, while admiring the monkeys
That our heavyweight heathen Humpharey
Made bold a maid to woo

Woohoo, what'll she doo!
The general lost her maidenloo!

He ought to blush for himself, the old hayheaded philosopher,
For to go and shove himself that way on top of her.
Begob, he's the crux of the catalogue
Of our antediluvial zoo,

Messrs Billing and Coo.
Noah's larks, good as noo.

He was joulting by Wellinton's monument
Our rotorious hippopopotamuns
When some bugger let down the backtrap of the omnibus
And he caught his death of fusiliers,

With his rent in his rears.
Give him six years.

'Tis sore pity for his innocent poor children
But look out for his missus legitimate!
When that frew gets a grip of old Earwicker
Won't there be earwigs on the green?

Big earwigs on the green,
The largest ever you seen.

Suffoclose! Shikespower! Seudodanto! Anonymoses!

Then we'll have a free trade Gael's band and mass meeting
For to sod him the brave son of Scandiknavery
And we'll bury him down in Oxmanstown
Along with the devil and the Danes,

With the deaf and dumb Danes,
And all their remains.

And not all the king's men nor his horses
Will resurrect his corpus
For there's no true spell in Connacht or hell
That's able to raise a Cain.

--James Joyce

Would you change a word of it? No, because it makes no sense! But I could read it again and again and never get bored because it's practically gibberish.

[John Whitworth]

I'll buy that. The whole of Finnegans Wake with none of the pain, Orwn.

[Orwn Acra]

Thanks, John. I really want to like Finnegans Wake but I just can't do it. The idea behind it sounds spectacular, an infinite onion where I can peel away as many layers of language as I like and still never get to the center of it. Endless entertainment! But I quit after 10 pages.

[Philip Quinlan]

Finnegans Wake is a great book to dip into, though - for inspiration or off-beat quotes.