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Post by spiderwort on Jan 31, 2024 2:21:14 GMT
N. Scott Momaday was the first Native American to win the Pulitzer Prize for his great novel, "House Made of Dawn." He passed away on January 24. May he rest in peace.
The Delight Song of Tsoai-talee
I am a feather on the bright sky I am the blue horse that runs in the plain I am the fish that rolls, shining, in the water I am the shadow that follows a child I am the evening light, the lustre of meadows I am an eagle playing with the wind I am a cluster of bright beads I am the farthest star I am the cold of dawn I am the roaring of the rain I am the glitter on the crust of the snow I am the long track of the moon in a lake I am a flame of four colors I am a deer standing away in the dusk I am a field of sumac and the pomme blanche I am an angle of geese in the winter sky I am the hunger of a young wolf I am the whole dream of these things
You see, I am alive, I am alive I stand in good relation to the earth I stand in good relation to the gods I stand in good relation to all that is beautiful I stand in good relation to the daughter of Tsen-tainte You see, I am alive, I am alive
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Post by Nalkarj on Feb 1, 2024 17:19:33 GMT
A Toccata of Galuppi’sby Robert Browning IOh Galuppi, Baldassaro, this is very sad to find! I can hardly misconceive you; it would prove me deaf and blind; But although I take your meaning, ’tis with such a heavy mind! IIHere you come with your old music, and here’s all the good it brings. What, they lived once thus at Venice where the merchants were the kings, Where Saint Mark’s is, where the Doges used to wed the sea with rings? IIIAy, because the sea’s the street there; and ’tis arched by … what you call … Shylock’s bridge with houses on it, where they kept the carnival: I was never out of England—it’s as if I saw it all. IVDid young people take their pleasure when the sea was warm in May? Balls and masks begun at midnight, burning ever to mid-day, When they made up fresh adventures for the morrow, do you say? VWas a lady such a lady, cheeks so round and lips so red,— On her neck the small face buoyant, like a bell-flower on its bed, O’er the breast’s superb abundance where a man might base his head? VIWell, and it was graceful of them—they’d break talk off and afford— She, to bite her mask’s black velvet—he, to finger on his sword, While you sat and played Toccatas, stately at the clavichord? VIIWhat? Those lesser thirds so plaintive, sixths diminished, sigh on sigh, Told them something? Those suspensions, those solutions—“Must we die?” Those commiserating sevenths—“Life might last! we can but try! VIII“Were you happy?”—“Yes.”—“And are you still as happy?”—“Yes. And you?” —“Then, more kisses!”—“Did I stop them, when a million seemed so few?” Hark, the dominant’s persistence till it must be answered to! IXSo, an octave struck the answer. Oh, they praised you, I dare say! “Brave Galuppi! that was music! good alike at grave and gay! “I can always leave off talking when I hear a master play!” XThen they left you for their pleasure: till in due time, one by one, Some with lives that came to nothing, some with deeds as well undone, Death stepped tacitly and took them where they never see the sun. XIBut while I sit down to reason, think to take my stand nor swerve, While I triumph o’er a secret wrung from nature’s close reserve, In you come with your cold music till I creep thro’ every nerve. XIIYes, you, like a ghostly cricket, creaking where a house was burned: “Dust and ashes, dead and done with, Venice spent what Venice earned. “The soul, doubtless, is immortal—where a soul can be discerned. XIII“Yours for instance: you know physics, something of geology, “Mathematics are your pastime; souls shall rise in their degree; “Butterflies may dread extinction,—you’ll not die, it cannot be! XIV“As for Venice and her people, merely born to bloom and drop, “Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth and folly were the crop: “What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop? XV“Dust and ashes!” So you creak it, and I want the heart to scold. Dear dear women, with such hair, too—what’s become of all the gold Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old. {Spoiler}N.B. I love Browning, and this is probably my favorite Browning. It’s simultaneously romantic, cynical, creepy, and intensely emotional—in a word, haunting. I’m also intrigued by how it prefigures two of my other favorite poets, T.S. Eliot (who likely borrowed the dramatic monologue from Browning, his denials notwithstanding) and Weldon Kees. Eliot’s famous “Prufrock,” a favorite of mine, sometimes seems like a Browning pastiche.
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Post by mikef6 on Feb 3, 2024 16:51:01 GMT
Elegy for Jane by Theodore Roethke (My student, thrown by a horse)
I remember the neckcurls, limp and damp as tendrils; And her quick look, a sidelong pickerel smile; And how, once startled into talk, the light syllables leaped for her, And she balanced in the delight of her thought, A wren, happy, tail into the wind, Her song trembling the twigs and small branches. The shade sang with her; The leaves, their whispers turned to kissing, And the mould sang in the bleached valleys under the rose. Oh, when she was sad, she cast herself down into such a pure depth, Even a father could not find her: Scraping her cheek against straw, Stirring the clearest water. My sparrow, you are not here, Waiting like a fern, making a spiney shadow. The sides of wet stones cannot console me, Nor the moss, wound with the last light. If only I could nudge you from this sleep, My maimed darling, my skittery pigeon. Over this damp grave I speak the words of my love: I, with no rights in this matter, Neither father nor lover.
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Post by Pippen on Feb 4, 2024 23:27:17 GMT
Funeral Blues (”Stop all the clocks”)aka -The Four Weddings and a Funeral Poem W.H. Auden
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead, Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves, Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood. For nothing now can ever come to any good.
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Post by Nalkarj on Feb 6, 2024 4:08:56 GMT
The Return of the Exile by George Seferis, trans. Rex Warner
“Old friend, what are you looking for? After those many years abroad you come With images you tended Under foreign skies Far away from your own land.”
“I look for my old garden; The trees come only to my waist, The hills seem low as terraces; Yet when I was a child I played there on the grass Underneath great shadows And used to run across the slopes For hours and hours, breathless.”
“My old friend, rest a little. You will soon get used to it. Together we will climb The hill paths that you know; Together we will sit and rest Underneath the plane trees’ dome; Little by little they’ll come back to you.”
“I look for my old house, The house with the tall windows Darkened by the ivy, And for that ancient column The landmark of the sailor. How can I get into this hutch? The roof’s below my shoulders And however far I look I see men on their knees; You’d say that they were praying.”
“My old friend, can’t you hear me? You will soon get used to it. Here is your house in front of you, And at this door will soon come knocking Your friends and your relations To give you a fine welcome.”
“Why is your voice so far away? Raise your head a little higher That I may grasp the words you say, For as you speak you seem to grow Shorter still and shorter As though you were sinking down into the ground.”
“My old friend, just think a little. You will soon get used to it; Your homesickness has built for you A non-existent land with laws Outside the earth and man.”
“Now I hear nothing,—not a sound. My last friend too has sunk and gone. How strange it is, this levelling All around from time to time: They pass and mow here Thousands of scythe-bearing chariots.”
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Post by Nalkarj on Feb 13, 2024 21:17:29 GMT
Why Reason Can’t Overcome an Irrational Fear by A.E. Stallings
The phobia whispers to me that I am special, His chosen, fondly disheveling my nerves with his fingers. Statistics, he scoffs, are for those without destinies, Who are less safe in cars, more likely hit by lightning Than to plummet out of the sky in an aeroplane. Logic, seducing with cool, promiscuous numbers, Will exchange me for another. But dread will not leave me.
We are soulmates, he says, and in another death We invented flight. Remember the sun on our backs, The feathers loosening from the sticky wax When the heavens disowned us like two meteors And we shattered the flat mirror of the ocean?
Most thoughtful of bridegrooms, on our honeymoon He holds my fidgety heart as our flight takes off And I weep for love of everyone on the plane, For the earth, a robin’s egg in a porcelain cup, Because none of them knows they are doomed should I fall asleep, Blink my dry vigilance, get cozy with hope, That only the force of my fear is lifting us up.
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Post by mikef6 on Feb 16, 2024 5:55:57 GMT
Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers by Adrienne Rich
Aunt Jennifer’s tigers prance across a screen, Bright topaz denizens of a world of green. They do not fear the men beneath the tree; They pace in sleek chivalric certainty.
Aunt Jennifer’s fingers fluttering through her wool Find even the ivory needle hard to pull. The massive weight of Uncle’s wedding band Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer’s hand.
When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by. The tigers in the panel that she made Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid.
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Post by Nalkarj on Feb 28, 2024 23:55:59 GMT
A Hundred Years from Now by David Shumate
I’m sorry I won’t be around a hundred years from now. I’d like to see how it all turns out. What language most of you are speaking. What country is swaggering across the globe. I’m curious to know if your medicines cure what ails us now. And how intelligent your children are as they parachute down through the womb. Have you invented new vegetables? Have you trained spiders to do your bidding? Have baseball and opera merged into one melodic sport? A hundred years… My grandfather lived almost that long. The doctor who came to the farmhouse to deliver him arrived in a horse-drawn carriage. Do you still have horses?
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sam
Nick Nack
Posts: 235
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Post by sam on Mar 5, 2024 8:57:46 GMT
Bluebird by Charles Bukowski
there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I'm too tough for him, I say, stay in there, I'm not going to let anybody see you. there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I pour whiskey on him and inhale cigarette smoke and the whores and the bartenders and the grocery clerks never know that he's in there.
there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I'm too tough for him, I say, stay down, do you want to mess me up? you want to screw up the works? you want to blow my book sales in Europe? there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I'm too clever, I only let him out at night sometimes when everybody's asleep. I say, I know that you're there, so don't be sad. then I put him back, but he's singing a little in there, I haven't quite let him die and we sleep together like that with our secret pact and it's nice enough to make a man weep, but I don't weep, do you?
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Post by spiderwort on Mar 7, 2024 17:25:07 GMT
The Swan by Mary Oliver
Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river? Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air – An armful of white blossoms, A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies, Biting the air with its black beak? Did you hear it, fluting and whistling A shrill dark music – like the rain pelting the trees – like a waterfall Knifing down the black ledges? And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds – A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river? And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything? And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for? And have you changed your life?
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Post by Nalkarj on Mar 7, 2024 21:52:59 GMT
Sestina: Like by A.E. Stallings
With a nod to Jonah Winter
Now we’re all “friends,” there is no love but Like, A semi-demi goddess, something like A reality-TV star look-alike, Named Simile or Me Two. So we like In order to be liked. It isn’t like There’s Love or Hate now. Even plain “dislike”
Is frowned on: there’s no button for it. Like Is something you can quantify: each “like” You gather’s almost something money-like, Token of virtual support. “Please like This page to stamp out hunger.” And you’d like To end hunger and climate change alike,
But it’s unlikely Like does diddly. Like Just twiddles its unopposing thumbs-ups, like- Wise props up scarecrow silences. “I’m like, So OVER him,” I overhear. “But, like, He doesn’t get it. Like, you know? He’s like It’s all OK. Like I don’t even LIKE
Him anymore. Whatever. I’m all like … ” Take “like” out of our chat, we’d all alike Flounder, agape, gesticulating like A foreign film sans subtitles, fall like Dumb phones to mooted desuetude. Unlike With other crutches, um, when we use “like,”
We’re not just buying time on credit: Like Displaces other words; crowds, cuckoo-like, Endangered hatchlings from the nest. (Click “like” If you’re against extinction!) Like is like Invasive zebra mussels, or it’s like Those nutria-things, or kudzu, or belike
Redundant fast food franchises, each like (More like) the next. Those poets who dislike Inversions, archaisms, who just like Plain English as she’s spoke — why isn’t “like” Their (literally) every other word? I’d like Us just to admit that’s what real speech is like.
But as you like, my friend. Yes, we’re alike, How we pronounce, say, lichen, and dislike Cancer and war. So like this page. Click Like.
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Post by mikef6 on Mar 14, 2024 18:14:18 GMT
Autobiography of Eve
Ansel Elkins
Wearing nothing but snakeskin boots, I blazed a footpath, the first radical road out of that old kingdom toward a new unknown. When I came to those great flaming gates of burning gold, I stood alone in terror at the threshold between Paradise and Earth. There I heard a mysterious echo: my own voice singing to me from across the forbidden side. I shook awake— at once alive in a blaze of green fire.
Let it be known: I did not fall from grace.
I leapt to freedom.
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Post by spiderwort on Mar 19, 2024 18:50:42 GMT
This is what you should do: Love the earth and sun and animals,
despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks,
stand up for the stupid and crazy,
devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants,
argue not concerning God,
have patience and indulgence toward the people...
reexamine all you have been told in school or church or in any book,
dismiss what insults your very soul,
and your flesh shall become a great poem.
- Walt Whitman
(Excerpt from Preface to 1855 edition, Leaves of Grass)
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Post by spiderwort on Mar 20, 2024 12:53:05 GMT
Song for the Turtles in the Gulf by Linda Hogan
We had been together so very long, you willing to swim with me just last month, myself merely small in the ocean of splendor and light, the reflections and distortions of us, and now when I see the man from British Petroleum lift you up dead from the plastic bin of death, he with a smile, you burned and covered with red-black oil, torched and pained, all I can think is that I loved your life, the very air you exhaled when you rose, old great mother, the beautiful swimmer, the mosaic growth of shell so detailed, no part of you simple, meaningless, or able to be created by any human, only destroyed. How can they learn the secret importance of your beaten heart, the eyes of another intelligence than ours, maybe greater, with claws, flippers, plastron. Forgive us for being thrown off true, forgive our trespasses, in the eddies of the water where we first walked.
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Post by Nalkarj on Mar 22, 2024 18:58:35 GMT
Sunlight on the Garden by Louis MacNeice
The sunlight on the garden Hardens and grows cold, We cannot cage the minute Within its nets of gold; When all is told We cannot beg for pardon.
Our freedom as free lances Advances towards its end; The earth compels, upon it Sonnets and birds descend; And soon, my friend, We shall have no time for dances.
The sky was good for flying Defying the church bells And every evil iron Siren and what it tells: The earth compels, We are dying, Egypt, dying
And not expecting pardon, Hardened in heart anew, But glad to have sat under Thunder and rain with you, And grateful too For sunlight on the garden.
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