Poems and Poets

[woodenswan]

There was a couple of years back some major honour or award (cant remember what exactly) bestowed on Salman Rushdie.

Too celebrate this there was a - in conversation with Salman Rushdie type event. Very good stuff. More intelligence displayed in an hour than in 60 years of Jay leno type shows around the world.

For the second part Salmans great friend going back 40 years - my avatar, came on to if possible make the conversation even more epic.

On the undercard (before that main event) first 1 other friend of Salman and then Christopher spoke alone to a questioner and the audience about Salman and their friendship.

Hitchens and Salman were each challenged to recite a major poem from memory.

Here is what happened

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdtADw9a6H8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1la_ykW3n2g

especially loved the walrus and the carpenter. Salman is one of my fav authors actually
great people, both of them. some unbeliavable Hitchens quotes as well, lined up amongst the videos offered by utube thx

 

[More Strides than Rides]

i'm not trolling, but i just don't get poetry. the reason i'm even bothering to comment is because it is fascinating to me that many people do appear to be moved by poetry. it just seems like pretentious twaddle to me....

Obviously I can't speak for others, but I appreciate the ability to articulate complex things, things that I cannot quite express even if I fully understand them. Poetry is just one style to convey those meanings, among literature, film, music, lectures/speakers, ect.

For example, as a teacher, I have my answer for why I want to be a teacher rooted in my experience and philosophy. I know my answer well from my preparation, interviews, or socializing. But still, Taylor Mali (the video I posted) puts into words some of those ambiguous and abstract feelings into words that I hadn't felt comfortable or competent to express myself.

That ability is not unique to poets, but people who specialize in exploring the human condition.

 

[L'arriviste]

I have somewhat Dickensian memories of cram-learning the poems of WH Auden by rote in the half-light of a winter's morning before the dreaded 'Double English'. I'll now recite a few lines entirely from memory...

Night Train, WH Auden (recite in train-style rhythm)

This is the night train crossing the border,
Bringing the cheque and the postal order.
Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,
The shop at the corner, the girl next door...

There were over 100 lines in total. These are the only ones I still remember almost 20 years later.

Now I enjoy poetry set to music. I'm thinking here of Linton Kwesi Johnson, a poet who documents the Jamaican experience in London. He was an important figure in the troubles of the 1980s in South London.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAdEBed3BSE

 

[lancaster]

at school we had to learn by heart a new poem every year.

I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan's poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

an Irish airman foresees his death. W B Yeats

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Meh. That never really did it for me. The images are alright I guess but for some reason I find them rather simplistic and they are repeated all the time.

When it comes to poetry about WWII I find these much more powerful:

Günter Eich: Inventur

I remember studying that.

As to the constant repetition in Todesfuge, that's kind of the point - a) it increases with intensity with repetition as well as reinforcing the daily grind that survival was in that position (with Celan being the only survivor of his family of course), and b) it imitates the form taken by a musical fugue, as referenced in the title, with the same refrains coming in and out.

 

[Christian]

I remember studying that.

As to the constant repetition in Todesfuge, that's kind of the point - a) it increases with intensity with repetition as well as reinforcing the daily grind that survival was in that position (with Celan being the only survivor of his family of course), and b) it imitates the form taken by a musical fugue, as referenced in the title, with the same refrains coming in and out.

You are right of course but still - for some reason the images "schwarze Milch" and "goldenes Haar/aschenes Haar" just seem a little simple to me. Maybe I just prefer Eich's style to portray this particular theme. Some people even said there could be no poetry after Auschwitz, hence the very reduced style of the time. I was unaware that Celan was a concentration camp survivor, so if that's the way he sees best to write about it he has every right to do so, I just prefer Eich's style.

Another example you might know is Neruda's "Oda al átomo", similarly concise as Eich but still a very refined language. A very rare example of how poetry can go together with such horrific events:

La aurora
se había consumido.
Todos los pájaros
cayeron calcinados.
Un olor
de ataúd,
gas de las tumbas,
tronó por los espacios.
Subió horrenda
la forma del castigo
sobrehumano,
hongo sangriento, cúpula,
humareda,
espada
del infierno.
Subió quemante el aire
y se esparció la muerte
en ondas paralelas
(...)

 

[Bag_O_Wallet]

This Is the First Thing

This is the first thing
I have understood:
Time is the echo of an axe
Within a wood.

Philip Larkin

------

November 3

I'm sitting in a cafe,
drinking a Coke.

A fly is sleeping
on a paper napkin.

I have to wake him up,
so I can wipe my glasses.

There's a pretty girl I want to look at.

Richard Brautigan

----

The cow taking a big
dreamy crap, turning
to look at me

Jack Kerouac

 

[Libertine Seguros]

You are right of course but still - for some reason the images "schwarze Milch" and "goldenes Haar/aschenes Haar" just seem a little simple to me. Maybe I just prefer Eich's style to portray this particular theme. Some people even said there could be no poetry after Auschwitz, hence the very reduced style of the time. I was unaware that Celan was a concentration camp survivor, so if that's the way he sees best to write about it he has every right to do so, I just prefer Eich's style.

Another example you might know is Neruda's "Oda al átomo", similarly concise as Eich but still a very refined language. A very rare example of how poetry can go together with such horrific events:

La aurora
se había consumido.
Todos los pájaros
cayeron calcinados.
Un olor
de ataúd,
gas de las tumbas,
tronó por los espacios.
Subió horrenda
la forma del castigo
sobrehumano,
hongo sangriento, cúpula,
humareda,
espada
del infierno.
Subió quemante el aire
y se esparció la muerte
en ondas paralelas
(...)

I think the reason for the simple imagery was that life in the camps was simply a matter of those very basic things; there wasn't even the variety shown by Eich in his Inventur. Celan's style of reading certainly alienated many of his contemporaries too. Plus also, there is a distinct lack of willingness to describe the harsh realities of the situation in flowery, pretentious language; the same lack of pretension is shown in a different way by Eich.

Celan's later stuff becomes very obtuse and abstract, whimsical and something I can't really get into, perhaps as a reaction to the directness with which he dealt with some pretty horrific experiences in his work.

 

[Zam_Olyas]

This is cool

 

[Christian]

Celan's later stuff becomes very obtuse and abstract, whimsical and something I can't really get into, perhaps as a reaction to the directness with which he dealt with some pretty horrific experiences in his work.

I don't know any of his other poems, it appears he is mostly known for his Todesfuge. I think it is also the most famous poem (there are probably very few) regarding this topic, giving me personally the sense that it is overused. Kind of like a good song that you have just heard too often over the years and then gets a little old.

On another note here is my favourite extract from Faust. In this particular scene, (verses 1224 - 1237), he is attempting to translate the new testament ("Das heilige Original") into German ("mein geliebtes Deutsch"):

Geschrieben steht: "Im Anfang war das Wort!"
Hier stock' ich schon! Wer hilft mir weiter fort?
Ich kann das Wort so hoch unmöglich schätzen,
Ich muss es anders übersetzen,
Wenn ich vom Geiste recht erleuchtet bin.
Geschrieben steht: Im Anfang war der Sinn.
Bedenke wohl die erste Zeile,
Dass deine Feder sich nicht übereile!
Ist es der Sinn, der alles wirkt und schafft?
Es sollte stehn: Im Anfang war die Kraft!
Doch, auch indem ich dieses niederschreibe,
Schon warnt mich was, dass ich dabei nicht bleibe,
Mir hilft der Geist! Auf einmal seh ich Rat
Und schreibe getrost: Im Anfang war die Tat!

 

[RedheadDane]

First part of my advent-poem

Today we light a candle clear
an angel sings in sky.
Sings of peace
upon this earth,
to each and everyone.
Sings of a time
when wars all end
and we join hands together,
to firm a circle throughout the world
where no one is left out.

The rest will follow... later

 

[Zam_Olyas]

First part of my advent-poem

Today we light a candle clear
an angel sings in sky.
Sings of peace
upon this earth,
to each and everyone.
Sings of a time
when wars all end
and we join hands together,
to firm a circle throughout the world
where no one is left out.

The rest will follow... later

i was just about to ask you to share more of your poems

 

[Tank Engine]

Haven't read poetry for a while, but certainly did do a few years back

I like Szymborska, seemingly simple, but subtle and can be read at different levels.
Jabberwocky is sheer genius.

As for the common tongue, here's a bit of Dylan .... Thomas that is

A Process in the Weather of the Heart

A process in the weather of the heart
Turns damp to dry; the golden shot
Storms in the freezing tomb.
A weather in the quarter of the veins
Turns night to day; blood in their suns
Lights up the living worm.

A process in the eye forwarns
The bones of blindness; and the womb
Drives in a death as life leaks out.

A darkness in the weather of the eye
Is half its light; the fathomed sea
Breaks on unangled land.
The seed that makes a forest of the loin
Forks half its fruit; and half drops down,
Slow in a sleeping wind.

A weather in the flesh and bone
Is damp and dry; the quick and dead
Move like two ghosts before the eye.

A process in the weather of the world
Turns ghost to ghost; each mothered child
Sits in their double shade.
A process blows the moon into the sun,
Pulls down the shabby curtains of the skin;
And the heart gives up its dead.

 

[rickshaw]

pure poetry

nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

e.e.cummings

 

[hrotha]

I really need to get me some E.E. Cummings. I like the few bits I've read. Very much. Here's his poem "I Sing of Olaf Glad and Big" turned into a folk song by Bread & Roses.

 

[rickshaw]

every spring

I really need to get me some E.E. Cummings. I like the few bits I've read. Very much. Here's his poem "I Sing of Olaf Glad and Big" turned into a folk song by Bread & Roses.

every year in spring I read his spring poems and and smell the earth waking up. too bad pasting into the wforum does not keep the original shape of the poem.

(Poem #945) O sweet spontaneous
O sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the
doting

fingers of
purient philosophers pinched
and
poked

thee
,has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy

beauty .how
oftn have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy knees
squeezing and

buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
(but
true

to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover

thou answerest


them only with


spring)
-- e e cummings

http://wonderingminstrels.blogspot.com/2001/11/o-sweet-spontaneous-e-e-cummings.html

i think his interpretation is way off the mark, another misunderstood scientist...

 

[RedheadDane]

Well... I'll just randomly spam you guys with my poetry!

I, You, Me, Us

If I were you
And you were me
Who then
Would we really be?
I am
Who you are
You are
Who I am
How do I know
I am you?
How do you know
You are me?
If not for the knowledge
I am me
You are you
I need to know
I am me
To ever comprehend
I am actually you
You need to know
You are you
To ever comprehend
You are actually me
But if you need to know
You are you
To know
You are me
And if I need to know
I am me
To know
I am you
Then how do the "I"
Know the difference
Between me
And you?
And how do the "you"
Know the difference
Between you
And me?
If we don't know
What sets us apart
How can we know
We're not really one?
Then there will be
No distance between us

 

[RedheadDane]

Time for a shameless self-promoting double-post with second part of my advent-poem:

Today we light to candles clear
two angels sing in sky.
Sing of peace, of unity
upon this very earth,
let everyone unite.
Sing of time
when we can be
together as we are,
we will let everyone else in
exactly as they are.

 

[yellowjersey]

i like poems, nothing to share though at the moment

 

[Tank Engine]

One for the clinic, an excerpt from The Raven - Edgar Allan Poe

And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted - nevermore!

 

[oldborn]

Hey RedheadChillPepper I do not want to be rude or something, but you are using tubular glue as motivation right?

 

[RedheadDane]

Wha's tha'?

And what's with the new nickname?

 

[Bag_O_Wallet]

I read Leonard Cohen's Book of Longing earlier in the year. Much of it was written at a Zen monastary on Mount Baldy in California.

It's a bit hit and miss at times, but there are a number of real gems, where he's extremely candid and unapolgetic in talking about wanting what he wants - no matter how old he is, or how much time he spends at the monastary.

 

[oldborn]

Wha's tha'?

And what's with the new nickname?

Never mind you are good kid stay that, RedmiamiheatDane

 

[Quixote]

I'm enjoying this thread, Zam...good idea.
RedHeadDane, your poetry is beautiful. Thanks for sharing with us.

Earlier in this thread, Christian offered a poem by my favorite poet, Pablo Neruda. Here's a stanza from his 20 Poemas de Amor. I'm going to leave it untranslated because the ones I'm finding tonight don't do it justice. If your so inclined, it's número 20.

Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Escribir, por ejemplo: "La noche está estrellada,
y tiritan, azules, los astros, a lo lejos."
El viento de la noche gira en el cielo y canta.
Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Yo la quise, y a veces ella también me quiso.