Post your favourite Poems

[Philoctetes]

Excerpt from Ryuichi Tamura's "Every Morning After Killing Thousands of Angels"

(...)

3.
But the boy can see the angels' faces.

4.
What do you do
after you kill them?

I go out walking.

Where?

To a river with a very big bridge over it.

Every morning?

Every morning
while my hands are still bloody.

(...)

[secondwind]

Oboe

Your lips move moist around
my double reed, and I feel
the sad wind rising

through your throat. Some child
of yours is lost. If I were your
psychiatrist, I'd listen,

nod, prescribe. Instead,
I take your breath, shape it, let it find
a passage down this wooden

shaft, curl out around the ankles
of the clarinet. The horns
have forged a monumental

fountain on the stage and now
the strings supply the water,
surging up, looping, falling in

great sobs. The audience is weeping,
but you and I have doubts.
We wind our fiber through

the latticework of their grand art,
hoping someone may hear
the muscled twist

of grief that's seasoned
in a narrow tube, the hollow
music of a long-held breath.

    Conrad Hilberry

[Sergeant Rock]

Oboe

Your lips move moist around...   Conrad Hilberry

The oboe personified    I love it..and love this:

"The horns
have forged a monumental

fountain on the stage and now
the strings supply the water,
surging up, looping, falling in

great sobs...."


I wonder if jochanaan has read the poem.

Sarge

[secondwind]

Glad you liked it, Sarge!  Con Hilberry was one of my professors, my first year in college.  He brought a lot of terrific poets to read at the college and participate in a class in contemporary poetry that I took that year.  It took me awhile to discover that he was at least equal to any of the luminaries he hosted.  The collection that Oboe is from is a set of poems all from the voice of some object (or in the case of Negative Space, non-object).  I was delighted to see that he is still writing, at least as of 2005, the date of this collection, The Fingernail of Luck.  One of the best is written from the voice of one of those electric dog collars that train dogs not to go out of the yard.  (Beg me and I'll type it out and post it!)  I remember him with equal parts fondness, gratitude, and respect.  When a campus critic wannabe savaged my poetry in the campus newspaper after a reading I participated in, I confessed to Hilberry that I fantasized castrating the guy.  His laconic response was that, although he understood my desire, he was afraid I would never be able to fulfill it because of a certain lack of that which I wished to remove.  Needless to say, I've loved him ever since.  Here's another music-themed poem of his, this one from the collection Player Piano, from 1999.  I like it because it speaks to the peculiar magic that bonds performer to audience member and audience members to one another in an effective live performance.

Mstislav Rostropovich
Row J, Top Balcony, Hill Auditorium, Ann Arbor

Far below us, the curved walls converge
to a tiny circle of light.  In it, a bald
man sits, holding a cello between his knees
as a father might hold a child.

He bows the strings simply, telling a story
we all have heard before.  We did not know
each other, but everyone on the steep bank
leans together to follow

the words, the working out of the old plot.
It is as we remember it, but clearer,
everything told just as it must have happened--
the knocking on the door,

the gift of a shirt, the flowers, the dark road.
He catches the lift or falter of each voice
and lets a simile unfold like wood
smoke.  The action goes

as we know it must, tangled in jealously, the bird
lost, the lovers misunderstanding.  The story
pauses and plummets like water over a rock.
Silence.  The cellist reaches for

a handful of high notes--ourselves in the top
balcony.  He finds us right where he left us
and plays us pure and sweet as a bunch of onions
hanging from the rafters.

                                           Conrad Hilberry

[Sergeant Rock]

Glad you liked it, Sarge!  Con Hilberry was one of my professors, my first year in college.

Kalamazoo College, I assume. I'd never heard of Conrad Hilberry. The two poems you posted are the first of his I've read. Love 'em. I found his page at the K College website. It includes a short video in which he describes the Muse handing out Green Stamps 

http://www.kzoo.edu/is/movies/hilberry/hilberrymov.htm

I love that metaphor. I know how hard it is to write a good poem, how much time, how much mental and emotional effort is spent agonizing over words. But every once in a while a poem just flows out of me with absolutely no effort...yes, like cashing in stamps for a free gift. My longest poem--my magnum opus  --came to me that way: in a three hour gush, fueled by an anniversary, good Irish whiskey and John Berryman's Love & Fame.

I was delighted to see that he is still writing, at least as of 2005, the date of this collection, The Fingernail of Luck.

That's one of the few books still available. I'll have to order it. (Just clicked on buy at Amazon...the last copy!)

One of the best is written from the voice of one of those electric dog collars that train dogs not to go out of the yard.  (Beg me and I'll type it out and post it!)

I'm begging, I'm begging! My best friends have a German Shepherd named Mistel (German for Mistletoe) but more often called by her nickname Miststück ("bitch" in the derogatory sense, and literally "piece of crap" or manure) because she's a very willful dog who likes to get her way. My friends installed an invisible fence and Mistel always wears her electronic collar. I'm sure they'd like to read the poem too.

I remember him with equal parts fondness, gratitude, and respect.  When a campus critic wannabe savaged my poetry in the campus newspaper after a reading I participated in, I confessed to Hilberry that I fantasized castrating the guy.  His laconic response was that, although he understood my desire, he was afraid I would never be able to fulfill it because of a certain lack of that which I wished to remove.

  Great story!

Are we ever going to see some of your poetry here?

Sarge

[Marc]

My favourite Dutch poet is Rutger Kopland.
Here's my fave poem by him:

Zoals de pagina's van een krant
in het gras langzaam om
slaan in de wind, en het is de wind
niet, die dit doet,

zoals wanneer een deken in de avond,
buiten, ligt alsof hij ligt
te slapen, en het is de deken
niet, zo

niets is het, niets dan de verdrietige
beweging van een hand, de weerloze
houding van een lichaam,

en er is geen hand, er is
geen lichaam, terwijl ik toch
zo dichtbij ben.

Translation by James Brockway:

Like the pages of a newspaper
flapping slowly to and fro in the grass
and it is not the wind
that is doing this,

as when of an evening, a blanket,
left outdoors, lies as though it lay
asleep, and it is not the blanket,
so near it is

to being nothing, nothing but the grieving
gesture of a hand, the vulnerable
attitude of a body,

and there is no hand, there is
no body, while I, after all,
am so close.

Taken from the collection: Rutger Kopland, Memories of the Unknown. London, Harvill Press, 2001.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Memories-Rutger-Kopland/dp/1860468950

[secondwind]

Okay, Sarge, since you begged, here it is!

Electric Collar

I'm the cop you've hired
to enforce your petty ordinance.
Whenever Jessie races

toward the street beyond
the planted wire, I have to shoot
these bolts of fire

to her throat.  But I love
that six-month hound.  All day, I rub
the soft hairs of her neck

and she murmurs news
of everything under the leaves
and on the wind.  These shocks--

as if someone made you whip
your daughter for roller-skating
in the park.  I have a plan.

Tonight I'll burnish up my brass,
unwrap my arms from Jessie's neck,
and snake my way into your

jewelry box.  While you're considering
an item to set off your blouse,
I'll curl my languid leather

underneath your hand.
You'll take me to your throat
a Gucci touch, discreetly

punk.  Then we'll step out--
high fashion, night air cool and moist,
and the streetlight, waiting.

             Conrad Hilberry

Just a little sinister, huh?


Thanks for posting the link to his webpage.  I didn't even know it existed, and it was great to watch the little video clip of him talking about the green stamps, and listen to him reading Tongue--man, that hurts just to read it! Hilberry has a one-of-a-kind voice, and it was good to hear it again. 

As to my poetry, well, I'm still gun-shy from the last time I trotted some of it out in public, some 37 years ago or so.  We'll see. 

Marc, thanks for the Kopland poem, and thanks especially for the translation!  I was struggling along, line by line, combining my college German and my year and a half of living in the Hague, and almost making sense of it, when I scrolled down to see the last stanza and found -- the translation!  Which helped a lot.  I've never read anything by Rutger Kopland.  Come to think of it, I probably haven't read anything by any Dutch poet. 

[Sergeant Rock]

Okay, Sarge, since you begged, here it is!

Electric Collar...

That was not what I expected: a collar sympathetic to the dog    But maybe there's psychological truth there. When we get close to someone, we tend to empathize with them. And what could be closer than a dog and his collar?

Just a little sinister, huh?

No kidding    I don't think my friends are going to like this. They haven't replied yet but I'm pretty sure they won't see the humor...black as it is.

Thanks for posting the link to his webpage.  I didn't even know it existed, and it was great to watch the little video clip of him talking about the green stamps, and listen to him reading Tongue--man, that hurts just to read it! Hilberry has a one-of-a-kind voice, and it was good to hear it again.

I'm glad now I went looking for him. Isn't the web wonderful? For almost forty years I hadn't seen or heard from my best friend at university. Her trail just disappeared. Two years ago I found her biography on the web, indicating she was a character on a long-running TV show. I saw her again that day on youtube 

As to my poetry, well, I'm still gun-shy from the last time I trotted some of it out in public, some 37 years ago or so.  We'll see. 

I understand. Poetry is so personal it takes an enormous amount of courage (and not a little ego, and a pinch of self-delusion  ) to make it public. Hey, Emily Dickinson couldn't even do it. Whenever I feel the urge to share (thankfully, it doesn't happen often), I remember something John Berryman said:"Whenever you write anything you run the risk of making a fool of yourself." Revealing it to the public is an even greater risk.

There, I've just made it easier for you 

Sarge

[Sergeant Rock]

Okay, Sarge, since you begged, here it is!
Electric Collar

I received email from my friends, commenting on the poem. He wrote: "Cute poem, but not really accurate" and he preceded to give me a lecture on how the dog is trained to accept the boundaries of the invisible fence, saying the shocks are not so bad (how would he know? ).

She wrote: "My immediate reaction was that it's not my style but then it kinda fascinated me.  It reminds me of Die Aerzte Lied, and my sick sense of black humor likes this one!"

Schlaf, mein Kindchen, schlafe ein, die Nacht,
die schaut zum Fenster rein.
Der runde Mond, der hat dich gerne, und es leuchten Dir die Sterne.
Schlaf mein Kleines, träume es, bald bist Du im Paradies!
Denn gleich öffnet sich die Tür, und ein Monster kommt zu dir!

Mit seinen elf Augen schaut es dich an,
und schleicht sich an dein Bettchen ran!
Du liegst still da, bewegst dich nicht,
das Monster zerkratzt dir dein Gesicht!

Seine Finger sind lang und dünn,
wehr dich nicht,s hat keinen Sinn!
Und es kichert wie verckt, als es deinen Hals zudrückt! -
Du schreist, doch Du bist allein zu Haus,
das Monster sticht dir die Augen aus!

Dann bist du still und das ist gut!
Es beit Dir in den Hals und trinkt dein Blut!
Ohne Blut bist du bleich wie Kreide,
dann frit es deine Eingeweide!
Dein kleines Bettchen, vom Blut ganz rot,
die Sonne geht auf und du bist tot!

Schlaf,mein Kindchen, schlafe jetzt ein,
am Himmel stehn die Sternelein!
Schlaf, mein Kindchen, schlafe schnell
dein Bettchen ist ein Karussell!
Schlaf, mein Kindchen, schlaf jetzt ein,
sonst kann das Monster nicht hinein!

Sarge

[secondwind]

I enjoyed the Aerzte Lied.  I remember almost enough German to appreicate how sick it is.

Visiting my mother in Florida always results in some interesting book acquisitions.  At the book resale shelves of her local Cultural Center a couple of days ago, 25 cents got me a copy of the Selected Poems of Galway Kinnell.  I've been wallowing in it, so here's an appropriate selection:

Saint Francis and the Sow      
by Galway Kinnell 

The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don't flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as Saint Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

[Antoine Marchand]

One Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three beloved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

-- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) a disaster.

Elizabeth Bishop

[Ataraxia]

Which poetry books would you recommend to me? Thanks in advance.

[Karl Henning]

Anna Akhmatova
William Carlos Williams collected poetry

[Cato]

Which poetry books would you recommend to me? Thanks in advance.

Robert Browning Dramatic Idylls, especially Ivan Ivanovich

See:

http://books.google.com/books?id=qiMAAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA131&lpg=PA131&dq=Robert+Browning+Ivan+Ivanovich&source=bl&ots=p9zgezWxim&sig=tFjpceMExceNH67JcJJCEdOZ8hM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=vJ8OULGBKbKN6AH0_IFg&ved=0CEAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Robert%20Browning%20Ivan%20Ivanovich&f=false

[Zizekian]

Here are a couple of my favorites:

Mutability by Percy Bysshe Shelley

We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;
How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver,
Streaking the darkness radiantly!--yet soon
Night closes round, and they are lost forever:

Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings
Give various response to each varying blast,
To whose frail frame no second motion brings
One mood or modulation like the last.

We rest.--A dream has power to poison sleep;
We rise.--One wandering thought pollutes the day;
We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;
Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:

It is the same!--For, be it joy or sorrow,
The path of its departure still is free:
Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but Mutability.

When I heard the Learn'd Astronomer by Walt Whitman

When I heard the learn'd astronomer;   
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;   
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;   
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,   
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;   
Till rising and gliding out, I wander'd off by myself,   
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,   
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

[Karl Henning]

Well, and I'm a sucker for Leaves of Grass, too!

[Ataraxia]

Today I downloaded a free poetry app to my iPhone and who should pop up but Walter Carlos Williams.

[Ataraxia]

I like this one.

The Night City by W. S. Graham 1918–1986

Unmet at Euston in a dream
Of London under Turner's steam
Misting the iron gantries, I
Found myself running away
From Scotland into the golden city.

I ran down Gray's Inn Road and ran
Till I was under a black bridge.
This was me at nineteen
Late at night arriving between
The buildings of the City of London.

And the I (O I have fallen down)
Fell in my dream beside the Bank
Of England's wall to be, me
With my money belt of Northern ice.
I found Eliot and he said yes

And sprang into a Holmes cab.
Boswell passed me in the fog
Going to visit Whistler who
Was with John Donne who had just seen
Paul Potts shouting on Soho Green.

Midnight. I hear the moon
Light chiming on St Paul's.

The City is empty. Night
Watchmen are drinking their tea,

The Fire had burnt out.
The Plague's pits had closed
And gone into literature.

Between the big buildings
I sat like a flea crouched
In the stopped works of a watch.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Quote from: Marc on 03-07-2010, 15:21:32

Taken from the collection: Rutger Kopland,

Memories of the Unknown. London, Harvill Press, 2001.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Memories-Rutger-Kopland/dp/1860468950



My friend Willem Groenewegen is a pupil of James Brockway's and has been Kopland's translator ever since James Brockway died. Willem is still recovering from Kopland's death, three weeks ago.

[CaughtintheGaze]

Here's I reading Gregory Corso's "Feelings on Getting Older"

http://caughtinthegaze.tumblr.com/post/28808625098/gregory-corsos-feelings-on-getting-older