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03-20-2017, 12:06 AM
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Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Posts: 6,761
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Spring Has Stung!
May you greet it as you will.
Incoming!
Spring’s the most aggressive season
gagging us beyond all reason.
Sunshine’s closer and it warms us
but its power soon bombards us
with exploding spores and buds
nourished by old winter’s muds
raising sap in waking trees
teenaged kids above their knees,
and geezers fighting beyond reason
raise their lances one more season.
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Ralph
Last edited by RCL; 03-23-2017 at 05:29 PM.
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03-22-2017, 02:15 AM
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Join Date: Sep 2001
Location: Arizona, USA
Posts: 1,844
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I got one, Ralph. Somebody needs to get this green ball rolling.
This is a bit stodgy and imitative, one of my way older poems. But what the hey, it's Spring & all -
A Light
Winter comes with tapered days
and wreathes in muffled whites and grays
all hint of color; the distressed
trees shiver now, like girls undressed.
The glass that hardens on the lake
looks almost deeper than the ache
in these two hands that hang like chains,
all Summers rifled from the veins
where fever burned some time before,
before the closing of a door,
before the silence and the drouth
of a blasted heart, a barren mouth.
Step forth, snow-mantled Death, and strew
your blight upon the living, brew
up storms, that all the birds take wing.
You'll be a fool again, come Spring.
- WAB
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03-22-2017, 02:56 AM
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Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: Old South Wales (UK)
Posts: 6,667
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The trouble with this thread is that the poems we post here are visible to those who might condemn them as "published". I was about to add one but stayed my hand when I realised it is currently with an editor being considered for a journal. Also, to put a poem that's published already feels like cheating and, worse, vanity posting. I think many of us may be trammelled by these considerations.
The Black History thread was different in that there was an element of discussion and we were posting other people's poetry, and the "news of the day" threads call for ephemeral squibs.
I may be wrong, but I didn't want you to feel sidelined, Ralph and Bill.
What say you, Jayne?
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03-23-2017, 01:51 AM
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Join Date: Sep 2001
Location: Arizona, USA
Posts: 1,844
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I kind of considered that, Ann, but then I thought, I have no intention of trying to publish the poem I posted here anyway. Maybe in an appendix of juvenilia in that BIG book long after I'm dead?
Maybe we could just post Spring poems by other poets?
Then again, it's Ralph's thread...Whad'ya say, Ralph?
Jayne?
Ann?
Maria!! Maria!!
Hi! Julie!
Last edited by William A. Baurle; 03-23-2017 at 01:55 AM.
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03-23-2017, 03:10 AM
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Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: Old South Wales (UK)
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So far as I know, there's no rule to suggest that "own poetry" should not be posted on D&A. That's one of the ways it's different from the other forums.
I just wanted you to understand why I, for one, and possibly many others, do not join in with our own work on some of these threads.
I'll post a favourite poem by a favourite poet. I have never written anything even half as good...
Spring
By Gerard Manley Hopkins
Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.
What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden. – Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.
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03-23-2017, 11:58 AM
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Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Los Angeles, CA
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Yes, any and all favorites about spring are what I meant to say, and "as you will" didn't say it! Thanks for the Hopkins, one of my favorites. Oh, and this isn't one I intended to publish, more for the fun of it.
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Ralph
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03-24-2017, 12:07 AM
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Join Date: Sep 2001
Location: Arizona, USA
Posts: 1,844
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One of the greatest Spring poems ever, by one of the most underrated American poets from C20:
***
Winter's End
Once in a wood at winter's end,
The withered sun, becoming young,
Turned the white silence into sound:
Bird after bird rose up in song.
The skeletons of snow-blocked trees
Linked thinning shadows here and there,
And those made mummy by the freeze
Spangled their mirrors on cold air.
Whether they moved — perhaps they spun,
Caught in a new but known delight —
Was hard to tell, since shade and sun
Mingled to hear the birds recite.
No body of this sound I saw,
So glassed and shining was the world
That swung on a sun-and-ice seesaw
And fought to have its leaves unfurled.
Hanging its harvest in between
Two worlds, one lost, one yet to come,
The wood's remoteness, like a drum,
Beat the oncoming season in.
Then every snow bird on white wings
Became its tropic counterpart,
And, in a renaissance of rings,
I saw the heart of summer start.
— Howard Moss
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03-24-2017, 03:22 PM
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Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Posts: 6,761
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dingaling
Julie, I look forward to hearing it sung.
Bill, I mean to read more of Moss.
__________________
Ralph
Last edited by RCL; 04-08-2017 at 03:27 PM.
Reason: back to the shop
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03-28-2017, 02:18 AM
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Join Date: Sep 2001
Location: Arizona, USA
Posts: 1,844
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SONNET 98
From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April dress'd in all his trim
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,
That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him.
Yet nor the lays of birds nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odour and in hue
Could make me any summer's story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew;
Nor did I wonder at the lily's white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
Yet seem'd it winter still, and, you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play.
— The Man Who Needs No Introduction
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04-08-2017, 01:08 PM
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Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Posts: 6,761
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Spring Lite
The Force
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
drives my flesh fuse, afire from friction—
love’s detonator.
And I am numb to knowing fact or fiction,
my brain exploding when I know her.
After a first line by Dylan Thomas
__________________
Ralph
Last edited by RCL; 04-08-2017 at 11:45 PM.
Reason: L3, love's for my
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