Poetry
 

Poetry is arguably a dying art form. I happen to enjoy it. I'm not a fan of the inaccessible works you may get in your lit class-- not that the stuff isn't anthologized for a good reason.

I am not a poet, just a fan. Even if I did write, I doubt I would have the balls to share it, so kudos to those who do.

I really enjoy modern/contemporary poets and their works. There are several literary magazines and on-line publications with a lot of good stuff from some very relevant poets.

I'm creating this thread to share some poems that I love. PLEASE feel free to add any you please or share any poets you like.

Some of my favorites:
Pablo Neruda
Kim Addonizio
Ash Bowen
Sylvia Plath
Emily Dickinson
William Meredith, just to list a few

This is one of my all-time favorites. It's the actual poet, Geoffrey Brock(who teaches at Arkansas), reading the poem, and the crude animation is amusing. Below the video is the actual poem.



It was so simple: you came back to me
And I was happy. Nothing seemed to matter
But that. That you had gone away from me
And lived for days with him—it didn’t matter.
That I had been left to care for our old dog
And house alone—couldn’t have mattered less!
On all this, you and I and our happy dog
Agreed. We slept. The world was worriless.

I woke in the morning, brimming with old joys
Till the fact-checker showed up, late, for work
And started in: Item: it’s years, not days.
Item: you had no dog. Item: she isn’t back,
In fact, she just remarried. And oh yes, item: you
Left her, remember? I did? I did. (I do.)

Geoffrey Brock

I couldn't help but to share one more this evening. This is a freakin awesome poem. There is no doubt that in his time, Pablo, pulled more ass than a toilet seat.


“Sonnet XVII

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way than this:

where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep. ”
― Pablo Neruda

Really nice stuff man/ woman! Keep posting please! :)

Wow.... this is unbelievable. Thank you.

^^ Neruda has many great poems, this one happens to be my favorite. His book of love sonnets is pretty amazing. Sonnet form isn't the easiest to write in and it's all been translated from Spanish. Imagine what is lost in translation. Neruda was pretty loved and famous. He's Chilean, supported communism, and served as a diplomat. There is a movie about him which I happen to enjoy: Il Postino.


And I'm a woman. And I'm afraid I've revealed myself to be a huge poetry nerd :)

This poem is a little dark and menacing. I like a strong last line. I found it in Best New Poets 2011.

Jennifer Luebbers
Recess

Spring, and a man took a girl to the woods by the schoolyard.
Police hovered in helicopters; they hemmed the trees in tape.

The recess monitor circled with a bronze bell, its rusty clapper

a tongue to warn. The jump rope was a thick braid touched
to the pavement, and a choir of mouths sang

Cinderella, dressed in yella, Went downtown to meet a fella.

How I wanted to be the girl gone missing. How I wanted the world
to watch. I thought to go to the woods in white,

weave a chain of daisies for my throat, a garland

of dandelion to stain my hands, a crown of pollen to seed
my hair. To tie my wrists with ropes

to a tree. To wait for the police, the priest, the teacher, my father--

any dangerous man who might come to save. Who among them
would unbind my wrists?

Who among them would bear the knife?

One more from Best New Poets 2011. Another poem on the darker side. The theme today seems to be child abuse.

Ash Bowen
How Gravity Hated Us

My sister was the first to learn how gravity hated
our family--a spinning plunge into the gorge

of echoy quartz when she failed to cling
to air like Father imagined. Her hollow bones

made him certain she'd been born
for flight so he'd splayed her among the tools of his shop

and stripped the rivets from her body,
took her inside his shower and shaved her

nose into a beak. Her talons scratched
for balance as she crept across her perch,

eyes rolling over the canyons as she stumbled
into free-fall and Earth climbed up to meet her.

She rose, coughing teeth into her palms,
shivering impact rubble from her shoulders,

trembling in the feathery shadow of our father
whose fingers were already fitting me with wings.

How to write an erotic letter
 

This is great. I love the letter to the father.

Anthony Farrington

HOW TO WRITE AN EROTIC LETTER

You must empty yourself first. Erase
everything you’ve written. If you’re naked,
revise all your clothes back on. Anyway,
they’re all you have. What matters
is the taking them off. Begin with a title
“Concerning insatiable carnal urges.”
Attach a handwritten note that says,
Keep your hair down and If you come here,
I’ll tell you something awful about someone perfect. Scathing
and lovely to hear. Remember,

each time, each letter is an entire love affair, say
‘A’ is for almost. ‘B’
is the emptiness that follows. The letter ‘O’
is what the body believes.

If she writes in a letter,
Sometimes our bodies are too much for us,
quote her. How she turns you on
turns her on. You can
quote me on that.

I am remembering the sweep of your hair, the light
on your breasts, your beautiful eyes expanding;
I am remembering the slickness inside you—
how wet, how deliciously warm. I think
of your uncontrollable breath; I think
of your nipples kissing my chest; I think
of your mouth on my neck and the sweet taste
of your tongue in my mouth.

Set aside nothing for later. Call this,
I was kissing and sucking and wanting so badly
to **** you silly, silly. And erase it. But enjoy it first.

Feel free to write a pretend letter to her father.
Quote from it: “Dear her father, Sir, we are sorry to inform you, sir,
of the mysterious demise of your daughter. It seems she was somehow—
sorry to say this indelicately—****ed to death…obviously
a scandalous affair. Ropes and long-necked bottles and,
oh, we mustn’t go on. A man was dead too, sir—exhaustion it seems
or dementia. With sincere regrets,
I am yours.”

If she uses the word **** in her letters
you use the word ****
but at the end of the letter only. This
is not prudery, it is teasing
and she will appreciate it.

I want my face in your hair,
your perfume in my breath,
my finger tips softly
touching the sides of your ribs, your waist,
your thighs, your breast, your face—what is important here,
in this letter, your hand must touch her, in this letter,
so she wants, over and over, what is not there.

If you’re foolish enough to write Oh God prematurely,
you deserve what you don’t get. As a cautionary measure,
delete all references to god: Jesus it feels so good and Holy ****.
Consider keeping: God, you are so slick; so goddamn delicious.
But you’ve already used slick once. Now three times. There is nothing wrong
with I want to hear your voice coming and coming
but admit, it’s a one-shot phrase.

Damp cotton will open caves in your mind.
Promise her: I need you
electric in my mouth. Write: Concerning the art of seduction
and leave it at that. Tease her: Truth or dare? End
before you’ve said everything. Realize

everything you are, in this letter, precedes you—
which is the loneliness of writing. What you want
is never now. That’s the essence of desire. What she reads is always past;

that’s despair. Think about how—
if she could—she would swallow the world
(pillow and all) take it all inside—
all of you—so it could come shattering out
again. But don’t fool yourself,

this letter needs to be filled with sorrow. Write:
Sometimes I wish I could be in your body
so I could feel what you feel. Sometimes,
I wish you could be in my body—your own name amazingly
on the tip of your new tongue, the smell of you
(I mean me) in your fresh mind,
seeing your old body arch away from your new body,
hearing seeing feeling what was once you
hold her breath; hearing her becoming, coming

apart all around you. And then your own foreign release
beyond your whole body. The cracking—
it feels so open—this desire, almost to weep. Then
weep. In the space of a letter you once were.

you do not know me if you think i will not kill you
 

This poem is GREAT. Read it. Another love poem. My spouse and I have a similar agreement. My favorite line: "I tell you you do not/know me if you think I will not/kill you."

The Promise by Sharon Olds

With the second drink, at the restaurant,
holding hands on the bare table,
we are at it again, renewing our promise
to kill each other. You are drinking gin,
night-blue juniper berry
dissolving in your body, I am drinking Fume,
chewing its fragrant dirt and smoke, we are
taking on earth, we are part soil already,
and wherever we are, we are also in our
bed, fitted, naked, closely
along each other, half passed out
after love, drifting back
and forth across the border of consciousness,
our bodies buoyant, clasped. Your hand
tightens on the table. You're a little afraid
I'll chicken out. What you do not want
is to lie in a hospital bed for a year
after a stroke, without being able
to think or die, you do not want
to be tied to a chair like a prim grandmother,
cursing. The room is dim around us,
ivory globes, pink curtains,
bound at the waist - and outside,
a weightless, luminous, lifted-up
summer twilight. I tell you you do not
know me if you think I will not
kill you. Think how we have floated together
eye to eye, nipple to nipple,
sex to sex, the halves of a creature
drifting up to the lip of matter
and over it - you know me from the bright, blood-
flecked delivery room, if a lion
had you in its jaws I would attack it, if the ropes
binding your soul are your own wrists, I will cut them.

“What Do Women Want?”

By Kim Addonizio

I want a red dress.
I want it flimsy and cheap,
I want it too tight, I want to wear it
until someone tears it off me.
I want it sleeveless and backless,
this dress, so no one has to guess
what’s underneath. I want to walk down
the street past Thrifty’s and the hardware store
with all those keys glittering in the window,
past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old
donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers
slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,
hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.
I want to walk like I’m the only
woman on earth and I can have my pick.
I want that red dress bad.
I want it to confirm
your worst fears about me,
to show you how little I care about you
or anything except what
I want. When I find it, I’ll pull that garment
from its hanger like I’m choosing a body
to carry me into this world, through
the birth-cries and the love-cries too,
and I’ll wear it like bones, like skin,
it’ll be the goddamned
dress they bury me in.

This strike me as "short stories".I like my poems to rhyme.

Some of these are narrative poems, so it is fitting to think they are "short stories"

Poetry doesn't have to rhyme. It comes in many different forms-- just like music.

So here's a rhyming poem. A favorite of mine from Plath. This poem is a villanelle. These particular poems have a refrain and there is a definite rhyme scheme-- all the second lines rhyme(or in this case, a slant rhyme). Besides the repeating pattern, the content is a favorite subject.

Mad Girl
Sylvia Plath

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"

katsy, I also love poetry and so I'm glad you made this thread!

Recently, thanks to someone who joined MusicBanter and was here briefly, I learned about the poet Philip Larkin. I'm very happy I did, because Larkin wrote a poem that is now one of my favorites:

* * * * *

The Mower by Philip Larkin (1922 - 1985)

The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found
A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,
Killed. It had been in the long grass.

I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world
Unmendably. Burial was no help:

Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.

I like Larkin, though I have never read that one before. I enjoyed it very much, thanks for posting! It's nice to have another poetry fan around.

Read this one yesterday on Verse Daily, and WOW. It is truly beautiful.

The Comet
Emma Törzs

I re-named the comet but nothing stuck. What do I know of bone-
deep lonely, of the beautiful freeze, of running a circuit through the
stars until all landmarks are my own staring eyes: of families
in general, what do I know? Say I'm young. Say I am the aftertaste
of all my parents' grief, a childhood spent in the downwind
of chicken blood, recurring dreams of being left behind—my mother
kneeling by the VCR to watch a video of her lost daughter—
and this is Hell: believing you can be a lens and meet your
loved ones' eyes beyond the screen, smacking your pain against glass
like a doomed swallow The half-life of loss is forever.There is hope
we don't get over. When my son began to die, I did not record
his voice, but let him simmer, speechless, in my memory, while I tried
to gain the faith to think we'd meet again. I held his fist against my lips,
I closed my teeth around the juncture of his throat and chest, I said
you'll be the fire of the sun, and I will circle you until you draw me close,
until our nearness breaks me into pieces and you burn me whole.
I would have ripped his heart out and consumed it if I'd thought
that it would choke me: I would have been the eternal mouth.
Say I'm young. Say the speeding rock of my body is as bright
as any resurrection, and I have time to shake before I hit the earth.

everything this guy does rips my heart out and gives me hope simultaneously. it's definitely spoken word, and i'm not privy to the vernacular of poetry classifiers, so i don't know if it belongs here, but's a bunch of words coming out of a guy's mouth and it's so god damn beautiful...

PAN, thanks for posting. I would say it belongs here, spoken word is a performance art and the speaker here is for sure using poetry. He has some really great/witty/clever lines. Interestingly enough, after I did some research, today's spoken word originated from the poetry of the Harlem Renaissance.

So, I've decided to share a poem from one of the greats from that time. Langston Hughes is not a favorite of mine, but the following is pretty heavily anthologized. He does have a book of short stories, "The Ways of White Folks", which I happen to like very much.

Langston Hughes
"The Negro Speaks of Rivers"

I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

Currently I'm living in Italy,and here I started to love Hermeticism,which is a suggestive form of poetry. I'll post a couple of my favorite ones.

VIGIL
(BY GIUSEPPE UNGARETTI)

A whole night

thrown near

the body

of a slain comrade

his mouth

snarling

at the full moon

his clawed

fingers

ripping

into my silence

I wrote

letters full of love


Never did I

so

cling to life.


XENIA

(BY EUGENIO MONTALE)

Your arm in mine, I've descended a million stairs at least.
And now that you're not here, a void yawns at every step.
Even so our long journey was brief.
I'm still en route, with no further need
of reservations, connections, ruses,
the constant contempt of those who think reality
is what one sees.
I’ve descended millions of stairs giving you my arm,
not of course because four eyes see better.
I went downstairs with you because I knew
the only real eyes, however darkened,
belonged to you.

I love poets reading their poetry. I don't know why, but my favorite has been Sylvia Plath reading "Daddy."



I love her speaking voice. Also, there are several lines in this poem which give me absolute chills. I know, it's very, very well-know, but I think that's for good reason. It's really fantastic.

So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root,
The voices just can't worm through.

If I've killed one man, I've killed two--
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.

There's a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.

Also, TS Eliot reading "The Hollow Men" gives me chills. I actually read this for a public speaking class.



And Bukowski reading his poems, wonderful.


I chose "Style," because Bukowski says the word 'style' better than any person who has ever lived. Also I love this poem.

And, just for kicks, my favorite thing Christopher Walken has ever done:

Spoken word is more about performance than poetry. The problem (depending on your perspective)/ strength (depending on your perspective) is that there are cliches stacked on cliches. Therefore, we "identify" with the poem/speaker because we've heard the sentiment before.

Having said that, there are lots of witty turns-of-phrase in spoken word, which is its saving grace.

Plath is one of my favorites and this is one of my favorites by her husband, Ted Hughes-- who is kind of a big deal all on his own.


"Lovesong"

He loved her and she loved him.
His kisses sucked out her whole past and future or tried to
He had no other appetite
She bit him she gnawed him she sucked
She wanted him complete inside her
Safe and sure forever and ever
Their little cries fluttered into the curtains

Her eyes wanted nothing to get away
Her looks nailed down his hands his wrists his elbows
He gripped her hard so that life
Should not drag her from that moment
He wanted all future to cease
He wanted to topple with his arms round her
Off that moment's brink and into nothing
Or everlasting or whatever there was

Her embrace was an immense press
To print him into her bones
His smiles were the garrets of a fairy palace
Where the real world would never come
Her smiles were spider bites
So he would lie still till she felt hungry
His words were occupying armies
Her laughs were an assassin's attempts
His looks were bullets daggers of revenge
His glances were ghosts in the corner with horrible secrets
His whispers were whips and jackboots
Her kisses were lawyers steadily writing
His caresses were the last hooks of a castaway
Her love-tricks were the grinding of locks
And their deep cries crawled over the floors
Like an animal dragging a great trap
His promises were the surgeon's gag
Her promises took the top off his skull
She would get a brooch made of it
His vows pulled out all her sinews
He showed her how to make a love-knot
Her vows put his eyes in formalin
At the back of her secret drawer
Their screams stuck in the wall

Their heads fell apart into sleep like the two halves
Of a lopped melon, but love is hard to stop

In their entwined sleep they exchanged arms and legs
In their dreams their brains took each other hostage

In the morning they wore each other's face

Ted Hughes

More Neruda

Don't Go Far Off

Don't go far off, not even for a day, because --
because -- I don't know how to say it: a day is long
and I will be waiting for you, as in an empty station
when the trains are parked off somewhere else, asleep.

Don't leave me, even for an hour, because
then the little drops of anguish will all run together,
the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift
into me, choking my lost heart.

Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve on the beach;
may your eyelids never flutter into the empty distance.
Don't leave me for a second, my dearest,

because in that moment you'll have gone so far
I'll wander mazily over all the earth, asking,
Will you come back? Will you leave me here, dying?

Pablo Neruda

I've decided to post some prose. I like this stuff, it's all related and easy/quick to read. I think you will enjoy. I beleive you would call it a verse essay.

I've posted the first two essays, the rest can be found at the following link:
Prose » Linebreak

The Sick Book
By Carley Moore
"Hospital Time"

I was nine and away from home for the first time. There was a schedule, but I wasn’t in on it. I started to understand the weird rhythm of doctors—the way they’re never around when you need them or always with another patient or worst of all, in surgery. I went to appointments I didn’t know I had, and always without my parents who were two hours away at their jobs. I began to cultivate irrational fears: the orderly will lose me and I’ll never see my parents again, the nurse will forget to tell my parents I’m having a brain scan and they’ll leave without seeing me, or somehow my roommate and I will become separated and I’ll have to sleep alone.

"For Example"

Like the time I couldn’t get my underwear on. Like the time I wore a body stocking and got painted in plaster. Like the time I was carried home from the zoo. Like the time everyone was way too nice to me at the birthday party. Like the time I fell off the bleachers. Like the time I ate the gravel. Like the time I stepped on a bottle cap and someone’s older brother carried me home bleeding. Like the time I couldn’t walk across the lawn. Like the time when I got extra Valentines for being “special."

Some more prose poetry:

CLAUDIA CORTESE

Dear Claudia—

I don’t know why you made a broken girl. I bury glass in the moonlight, eat Oreos at midnight, dream my skin abuzz with knives. Give me red hair, tits spry as sprites. Make me a Siren on the riverbank, bewitching boys with my liquid song. I’d scissor around them, take what’s mine. When you said I dreamt my father ****ed me, did you imagine your own father rocking above you? It’s true, I hate my belly fat, hide behind the spruce in gym class, but you don’t know why, Claudia. You think I feed worms to Mabel, tell her about the six-pack rings that strangle sea turtles, because I hate her. To love is to suffer, and to suffer is to give yourself to this world. The sun-freckled oak will blacken, night rotting its branches, and this I swear—if you write what happened to me beneath the unlit porch-light, I will wrap your veins around your throat.

Regards,
Lucy

AND THE FOLLOW UP:
CLAUDIA CORTESE

Lucy,

I’ve shorn the doll’s hair, sprinkled the strands on your bed. I know what you crave—welts on the wrist, a punishment, a cry. You need me to live, and I need you to feel. When I wrote you slept in a box, a box within a box, I meant we all need touch and more touch. There’s a razor in the peach, and your sister plants teeth beneath your bed. Stitch those images to your eyes because only time will tell who’s the wolf at your window—if his strings of saliva will bless or burn you. When I said you hoped your father wouldn’t hear the Oreos crunch in your mouth, I meant to say the body remembers woodsmoke and barns, the insects buzzing above you. The cypress is blue-veined and beautiful—your ticket out of this girl-forsaken town.

Love,
Claudia

Brutal
By Andrea Cohen

Brutal to give
the prisoner a window—
a blue sky glimpse—

as if an afterlife
existed. Brutal
for you to parade

in a body
in the same
room where I dream you.

I've been getting into writing sonnets again and recently read and was impressed by the following sonnet, "Coming to Terms," by Catherine Chandler.

Crafted very well, her sonnet describes the somber subject matter with delicacy and immediacy so that the painful loss feels very real to me. I remember those elastic belly panel pants and all the nightmares I had about my unborn baby dying. I'm so glad none of them came true, and so sad that people's worst nightmares sometimes do:

* * *

Coming to Terms -- by Catherine Chandler

I put aside my white smocked cotton blouse,
the pants with the elastic belly panel.
The only music in the empty house
strains from a distant country western channel.
My breasts are weeping. I’ve been given leave —
a week in which to heal and convalesce.
I peel away the ceiling stars, unweave
the year I’d entered on your christening dress.
I rearrange my premises — perverse
assumptions! — gather unripe figs; throw out
the bloodied bedclothes; scour the universe
in search of you. And God. And go about
my business, as my crooked smile displays
the artful look of ordinary days.

* * *

What a great thread Katsy! You have some very lovely pieces here and some talented writers too.

I also have a great love for poetry, erotic and sapphic verse in particular. Hope you don't mind if I add a couple of my favs.

I really, really love that, thanks for sharing.

I am not a poet, but if I were, the sonnet would intimidate me.

"my heart a wordless prayer" -- so many great lines in this.

Please share as many as you like! I love reading new stuff.

San Antonio
by Naomi Shihab Nye

Tonight I lingered over your name,
the delicate assembly of vowels
a voice inside my head.
You were sleeping when I arrived.
I stood by your bed
and watched the sheets rise gently.
I knew what slant of light
would make you turn over.
It was then I felt
the highways slide out of my hands.
I remembered the old men
in the west side cafe,
dealing dominoes like magical charms.
It was then I knew,
like a woman looking backward,
I could not leave you,
or find anyone I loved more.

Awesomeness:

Traci Brimhall
Incomplete Address To The Lord

When I found that mass of scales and muscle,
saw one anaconda twist around another, watched
a split tongue flick the air, choosing me, black

as the devil’s own and twice as thick, males coiled
around the female tickling her back with their spurs,
I knew I’d give anything to be her. I felt the pulse

in my eyelid, tasted the ants that paraded over
my plantains at night, drank all the darkness out
of my wife’s breast. Lord, I’d rather be crazy

than broken. The city bore its own children who
crawled from the gutters, their eyes in their pockets
and angels’ ashes in their mouths. They don’t believe

you exist even though they wrap slices of lamb
in the pages of the book you wrote for the illiterate
shepherds. I know you know this. You with your name

on the lips of graceless women. You with your face
tattooed on men’s arms. You who weep fire but never
for the dead. My Lord, I admit it. I let the angel win.

He wrapped himself around me, pinned me
to the riverbed, and I rose up wet, reeking, wearing
my shadow like a dress. When I pressed my chest,

milk bled a halo into the water and vanished.
For an hour I was whole, my heart undressed itself.
Temptation wore me down to my socks and assembled

me back into my old body. I’m still the man you made
in the image of who you used to be, my lover turned back
into my rib, and you who gifted me with a second skin,

I don’t want your inch of flesh, your interdisciplinary
erotica, or the heaven you held to my feet like fire.
I want everyone who comes looking for me to find—

^ My favorite lines are "I don't want [...] the heaven you held to my feet like fire" ... and of course the great descriptions of mating snakes!

Today while volunteering in my child's classroom, I read a short volume of children's poetry written by Langston Hughes. I was curious to read the book because I was familiar with little of his poetry. Most of the poems in the book were not memorable to me, but I liked a few, especially the one below:

Merry-Go-Round by Langston Hughes

COLORED CHILD AT CARNIVAL

Where is the Jim Crow section
On this merry-go-round,
Mister, cause I want to ride?
Down South where I come from
White and colored
Can't sit side by side.
Down South on the train
There's a Jim Crow car.
On the bus we're put in the back--
But there ain't no back
To a merry-go-round!
Where's the horse
For a kid that's black?

Merry-Go-Round - A poem by Langston Hughes - American Poems

I wrote a poem whilst away on holiday last week, it's the first time I have written a poem since school although I have written songs. I hope this doesn't contravene the posting rules, this isn't a case of shameless self promotion but mods can delete this post if they deem it to be. Anyway, it's about smoking.

Accusing eyes with faux surprise,
Don't get to see what they despise,
The result of a bad choice made,
The disappointment will not fade,
It's up to me to make the change,
My lifestyle needs to rearrange,
A promise that goes unfulfilled,
The trust in me has long been killed.

Love Langston Hughes. He has a collection of short stories worth checking out, I want to say the title is BLACK LIKE ME. I got it at a garage sale for 50 cents-- one of those awesome finds.

I'm reading this poem next week at an African-American read-in to celebrate Black History Month. I almost went with Soujourner Truth's "Aint I a Woman" which is also below.

"Be Nobody's Darling"
Alice Walker

Be nobody's darling;
Be an outcast.
Take the contradictions
Of your life
And wrap around
You like a shawl,
To parry stones
To keep you warm.
Watch the people succumb
To madness
With ample cheer;
Let them look askance at you
And you askance reply.
Be an outcast;
Be pleased to walk alone
(Uncool)
Or line the crowded
River beds
With other impetuous
Fools.

Make a merry gathering
On the bank
Where thousands perished
For brave hurt words
They said.

But be nobody's darling;
Be an outcast.
Qualified to live
Among your dead.

"Ain't I a Woman" -- speech deleivered to a Women's Rights Convention in 1851
Soujourner Truth



"Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter. I think that between the ******s of the South and the women at the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all this here talking about?

That man over there say that women needs to be helped into carriages, lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed, and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man-when I could get it-and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me. And ain't I a woman?

Then they talk about this thing in the head; what's this they call it? ['Intellect' someone whispers near.] That's right, honey. What's that got to do with women's rights or ******'s rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half-measure full?

Then that little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, because Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Men had nothing to do with Him.

If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again! And now that they are asking to do it, the men better let them! Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner has got nothing more to say."

Sleep wise bird
Strong as can be
Independent and stunning
In all of its glory
Across the tree tops
Forever free

Sleep young butterfly
Wings on the moon
Fly away to another world
Where the grass is greener
And fairy tales are the norm

Sleep rising caterpillar
Going to shed the old
Taking in the new
New coat of identity,
Comforting the ancient
Enchanting the young

Sleep new soul,
For tomorrow is a new day.

Hello, i am a big fan of poetry. I always enjoy to read poem. It is really interesting for me.

poetry is awesome .......
i like it.

OH, this **** is good.

The Quiet World
By Jeffrey McDaniel
In an effort to get people to look
into each other’s eyes more,
and also to appease the mutes,
the government has decided
to allot each person exactly one hundred
and sixty-seven words, per day.

When the phone rings, I put it to my ear
without saying hello. In the restaurant
I point at chicken noodle soup.
I am adjusting well to the new way.

Late at night, I call my long distance lover,
proudly say I only used fifty-nine today.
I saved the rest for you.

When she doesn’t respond,
I know she’s used up all her words,
so I slowly whisper I love you
thirty-two and a third times.
After that, we just sit on the line
and listen to each other breathe.

:) The poem is darling and funny, katsy!

I especially like the humorous situation in which the man's lover has wastefully used up all her words, while he has saved so many of his words just for her. Even though she didn't save any for him, he still uses the rest of his to tell her the most important thing again and again: "I love you, I love you (etc.), I."

I also like the part where they just sit and listen to each other breathe because they've used up their allotment of words. I guess when one gets prank calls where someone is breathing heavily, that must be what is going on. ;)

For you math buffs out there, I checked if the poem's word math adds up, and, satisfyingly, it does!

The man used...
59 words during the day,
11 words when telling her, "I only used fifty-nine today. I saved the rest for you," (apparently, "fifty-nine" counts as one word rather than two), and
97 words by saying, "I love you" 32 and 1/3 times.

Total words used = 167!

* * *

Today I reread a vivid and realistic poem by Mary Oliver that I first read in 2010 at the memorial service of a family friend, whose relatives printed it on the back of the service program.

I remember my dad was with me that day, and so the poem is bitter-sweet to me, since he has now, like our family friend, also had his mind that was "as lightning" come to nothing.

"Morning Walk" by Mary Oliver

Little by little
the ocean

empties its pockets -
foam and fluff;

and the long, tangled ornateness
of seaweed;

and the whelks,
ribbed or with ivory knobs,

but so knocked about
in the sea's blue hands

that their story is at length only
about the wholeness of destruction -

they come one by one
to the shore,

to the shallows,
to the mussel-dappled rocks,

to the rise to dryness,
to the edge of the town,

to offer, to the measure that we will accept it,
this wisdom:

though the hour be whole,
though the minute be deep and rich,

though the heart be a singer of hot red songs
and the mind be as lightning,

what all the music will come to is nothing,
only the sheets of fog and the fog's blue bell -

you do not believe it now, you are not supposed to.
You do not believe it yet - but you will -

morning by singular morning,
and shell by broken shell.

I read this sonnet today and was impressed by how deftly the author not only evokes the feeling of the location described, but also portrays the perspective of the visiting vacationer:

"Tourist in India" by Gail White

Monkeys are urban animals in Delhi,
peacocks are city birds. And everywhere
I’m drowned in waves of men who want to sell me
overpriced souvenirs. I fight for air

and reach the marble shores of my hotel.
Thank God for Lutyens! Where would Delhi be
without the British? They used power well,
spread English, trained the boys that serve my tea.

But O seductive East! Today I found
a Hindu temple, entered and was crowned
with marigolds, made puja, walked around
a lingam thrice and sang “Jai Hanuman”
while monkeys chattered and without a sound
my Christian ghost indulgently looked on.

Nice collection of poems in this thread. Love the Mary Oliver one, and anything by Bukowski.