The greatest poet of the 20th century (not named Eliot)?

[mitchum]

Anne Sexton
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDcARJqtqFs

[barb162]

1. Maybe Robert Frost

[elleng]

12. Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

[EFerrari]

19. He should be in the running.

Choose Something Like a Star

by Robert Frost - 1947

O Star (the fairest one in sight),
We grant your loftiness the right
To some obscurity of cloud --
It will not do to say of night,
Since dark is what brings out your light.
Some mystery becomes the proud.
But to be wholly taciturn
In your reserve is not allowed.

Say something to us we can learn
By heart and when alone repeat.
Say something! And it says "I burn."
But say with what degree of heat.
Talk Fahrenheit, talk Centigrade.
Use language we can comprehend.
Tell us what elements you blend.

It gives us strangely little aid,
But does tell something in the end.
And steadfast as Keats' Eremite,
Not even stooping from its sphere,
It asks a little of us here.
It asks of us a certain height,
So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may choose something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid.

[Aristus]

2. e e cummings

All the proof you need:


somewhere i have never travelled, 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 color 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

[elleng]

9. Buffalo Bill 's

defunct
who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
Jesus

he was a handsome man
and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death

[mitchum]

13. That is probably my favorite by cummings...

and he has lots of good ones.

The novelist Harry Crews has "how do you like your blueeyed boy Mister Death" tattooed on his arm. He had it done years before the tattoo explosion.

[Joe Fields]

83. I will gladly vote for e.e. cummings

:toast:

On edit, I would have to include Bob Dylan, as well.

Don't anyone tell me he is not a poet.

[Paladin]

3. Wallace Stevens. (n/t)

[elleng]

10. Sunday Morning

Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a cockatoo
Upon a rug mingle to dissipate
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.
She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
Encroachment of that old catastrophe,
As a calm darkens among water-lights.
The pungent oranges and bright, green wings
Seem things in some procession of the dead,
Winding across wide water, without sound.
The day is like wide water, without sound,
Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet
Over the seas, to silent Palestine,
Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.


http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/sunday-morning/

[EFerrari]

17. One semester when my students were just too stressed out to live

I offered extra credit to anyone who could recite "The House was Quiet and the World was Calm" to me in office hours.

[Chan790]

4. That's a tough one.

I can make arguments for:

• Sylvia Plath
• Ted Hughes
• Sharon Olds
• Ezra Pound
• William Carlos Williams
• Allen Ginsburg
• Ranier Marie Rilke
• Amiri Baraka

in addition to the people already named...

but in my heart I know it's

• Dylan Thomas
  
  edit: I can't make an argument for Frost. I think he was a hack writing pop-crap drivel.

[mitchum]

5. I know what you mean; I can make arguments for all of them (and Larkin)...

but Sexton does it for me
more than anyone else

[elleng]

6. The force that through the green fuse drives the flower

Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-force-that-through-the-green-fuse-drives-the/

[mitchum]

8. That is one of his most beautiful

[EFerrari]

18. There was no hackery in Frost. What people make of him was hackery.

[XemaSab]

31. Word

n/t

[EFerrari]

33. Death of the Hired Man

MARY sat musing on the lamp-flame at the table
Waiting for Warren. When she heard his step,
She ran on tip-toe down the darkened passage
To meet him in the doorway with the news
And put him on his guard. “Silas is back.” 5
She pushed him outward with her through the door
And shut it after her. “Be kind,” she said.
She took the market things from Warren’s arms
And set them on the porch, then drew him down
To sit beside her on the wooden steps. 10

“When was I ever anything but kind to him?
But I’ll not have the fellow back,” he said.
“I told him so last haying, didn’t I?
‘If he left then,’ I said, ‘that ended it.’
What good is he? Who else will harbour him 15
At his age for the little he can do?
What help he is there’s no depending on.
Off he goes always when I need him most.
‘He thinks he ought to earn a little pay,
Enough at least to buy tobacco with, 20
So he won’t have to beg and be beholden.’
‘All right,’ I say, ‘I can’t afford to pay
Any fixed wages, though I wish I could.’
‘Someone else can.’ ‘Then someone else will have to.’
I shouldn’t mind his bettering himself 25
If that was what it was. You can be certain,
When he begins like that, there’s someone at him
Trying to coax him off with pocket-money,—
In haying time, when any help is scarce.
In winter he comes back to us. I’m done.” 30

“Sh! not so loud: he’ll hear you,” Mary said.

“I want him to: he’ll have to soon or late.”

“He’s worn out. He’s asleep beside the stove.
When I came up from Rowe’s I found him here,
Huddled against the barn-door fast asleep, 35
A miserable sight, and frightening, too—
You needn’t smile—I didn’t recognise him—
I wasn’t looking for him—and he’s changed.
Wait till you see.”

“Where did you say he’d been?” 40

“He didn’t say. I dragged him to the house,
And gave him tea and tried to make him smoke.
I tried to make him talk about his travels.
Nothing would do: he just kept nodding off.”

“What did he say? Did he say anything?” 45

“But little.”

“Anything? Mary, confess
He said he’d come to ditch the meadow for me.”

“Warren!”

“But did he? I just want to know.” 50

“Of course he did. What would you have him say?
Surely you wouldn’t grudge the poor old man
Some humble way to save his self-respect.
He added, if you really care to know,
He meant to clear the upper pasture, too. 55
That sounds like something you have heard before?
Warren, I wish you could have heard the way
He jumbled everything. I stopped to look
Two or three times—he made me feel so queer—
To see if he was talking in his sleep. 60
He ran on Harold Wilson—you remember—
The boy you had in haying four years since.
He’s finished school, and teaching in his college.
Silas declares you’ll have to get him back.
He says they two will make a team for work: 65
Between them they will lay this farm as smooth!
The way he mixed that in with other things.
He thinks young Wilson a likely lad, though daft
On education—you know how they fought
All through July under the blazing sun, 70
Silas up on the cart to build the load,
Harold along beside to pitch it on.”

“Yes, I took care to keep well out of earshot.”

“Well, those days trouble Silas like a dream.
You wouldn’t think they would. How some things linger! 75
Harold’s young college boy’s assurance piqued him.
After so many years he still keeps finding
Good arguments he sees he might have used.
I sympathise. I know just how it feels
To think of the right thing to say too late. 80
Harold’s associated in his mind with Latin.
He asked me what I thought of Harold’s saying
He studied Latin like the violin
Because he liked it—that an argument!
He said he couldn’t make the boy believe 85
He could find water with a hazel prong—
Which showed how much good school had ever done him.
He wanted to go over that. But most of all
He thinks if he could have another chance
To teach him how to build a load of hay——” 90

“I know, that’s Silas’ one accomplishment.
He bundles every forkful in its place,
And tags and numbers it for future reference,
So he can find and easily dislodge it
In the unloading. Silas does that well. 95
He takes it out in bunches like big birds’ nests.
You never see him standing on the hay
He’s trying to lift, straining to lift himself.”

“He thinks if he could teach him that, he’d be
Some good perhaps to someone in the world. 100
He hates to see a boy the fool of books.
Poor Silas, so concerned for other folk,
And nothing to look backward to with pride,
And nothing to look forward to with hope,
So now and never any different.” 105

Part of a moon was falling down the west,
Dragging the whole sky with it to the hills.
Its light poured softly in her lap. She saw
And spread her apron to it. She put out her hand
Among the harp-like morning-glory strings, 110
Taut with the dew from garden bed to eaves,
As if she played unheard the tenderness
That wrought on him beside her in the night.
“Warren,” she said, “he has come home to die:
You needn’t be afraid he’ll leave you this time.” 115

“Home,” he mocked gently.

“Yes, what else but home?
It all depends on what you mean by home.
Of course he’s nothing to us, any more
Than was the hound that came a stranger to us 120
Out of the woods, worn out upon the trail.”

“Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.”

“I should have called it
Something you somehow haven’t to deserve.” 125

Warren leaned out and took a step or two,
Picked up a little stick, and brought it back
And broke it in his hand and tossed it by.
“Silas has better claim on us you think
Than on his brother? Thirteen little miles 130
As the road winds would bring him to his door.
Silas has walked that far no doubt to-day.
Why didn’t he go there? His brother’s rich,
A somebody—director in the bank.”

“He never told us that.” 135

“We know it though.”

“I think his brother ought to help, of course.
I’ll see to that if there is need. He ought of right
To take him in, and might be willing to—
He may be better than appearances. 140
But have some pity on Silas. Do you think
If he’d had any pride in claiming kin
Or anything he looked for from his brother,
He’d keep so still about him all this time?”

“I wonder what’s between them.” 145

“I can tell you.
Silas is what he is—we wouldn’t mind him—
But just the kind that kinsfolk can’t abide.
He never did a thing so very bad.
He don’t know why he isn’t quite as good 150
As anyone. He won’t be made ashamed
To please his brother, worthless though he is.”

“I can’t think Si ever hurt anyone.”

“No, but he hurt my heart the way he lay
And rolled his old head on that sharp-edged chair-back. 155
He wouldn’t let me put him on the lounge.
You must go in and see what you can do.
I made the bed up for him there to-night.
You’ll be surprised at him—how much he’s broken.
His working days are done; I’m sure of it.” 160

“I’d not be in a hurry to say that.”

“I haven’t been. Go, look, see for yourself.
But, Warren, please remember how it is:
He’s come to help you ditch the meadow.
He has a plan. You mustn’t laugh at him. 165
He may not speak of it, and then he may.
I’ll sit and see if that small sailing cloud
Will hit or miss the moon.”

It hit the moon.
Then there were three there, making a dim row, 170
The moon, the little silver cloud, and she.

Warren returned—too soon, it seemed to her,
Slipped to her side, caught up her hand and waited.

“Warren,” she questioned.

“Dead,” was all he answered. 175

[elleng]

34. Thanks

:cry:

[XemaSab]

36. Thank you for this. If you don't think Frost is one of the freakiest authors in the English language

you're not reading him right.



THE OFT-REPEATED DREAM

She had no saying dark enough
For the dark pine that kept
Forever trying the window-latch
Of the room where they slept.

The tireless but ineffectual hands
That with every futile pass
Made the great tree seem as a little bird
Before the mystery of glass!

It never had been inside the room,
And only one of the two
Was afraid in an oft-repeated dream
Of what the tree might do.

[Chan790]

38. I'd say that's a distinct possibility...

as is often the case with something emulatable, opinions of the original work are dragged down by the inferior works it inspires.

Someone I know once said "I hate Frost, all bad greeting card poetry reads like The Road Less Traveled." I can understand that; I can barely watch Casablanca because it seems so cliched, it itself in reality is not cliched at all, but was a wildly successful and original work...everything ripped off from it by other people has become cliched.

[EFerrari]

53. The Road Less Traveled can be read as a tongue in cheek, ironic statement.

And you are so right about Casablanca. I had to wait a long time to be able to see it without all that cr@p jingling around in my head -- to the point where I finally noticed all the wonderful MUSIC in the film. lol

[XemaSab]

69. Given the rest of Frost's work

"The Road Less Traveled" is not a happy poem.

[willing dwarf]

66. Well said.

[Withywindle]

22. And death shall have no dominion

Dead men naked they shall be one
with the man in the wind and the west moon
When the bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone
they shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again
Though lovers be lost, love shall not
And death shall have no dominion.




(I just typed that from memory. Yeah, Dylan Thomas is in my heart too.)

[willing dwarf]

65. I believe you sell Frost far short

Frost had a tremendous gift to use the common tongue and find its poetry. He made a tremendous contribution to the effort to keep alive the craft in the contemporary era.

I think it is easy to miss the depth and real poetic power of Frost, to see him as being too accessible -- but his work has led in a whole group of excellent poets -- Donald Hall, W.D. Snodgrass, Galway Kinnell all seem to have a relationship to the work of Frost.

[MiddleFingerMom]

7. I don't know about greatest.... but my favorite? Gary Soto.

.
.
.
.
.
ORANGES
.
The first time I walked
With a girl, I was twelve,
Cold, and weighted down
With two oranges in my jacket.
December. Frost cracking
Beneath my steps, my breath
Before me, then gone,
As I walked toward
Her house, the one whose
Porch light burned yellow
Night and day, in any weather.
A dog barked at me, until
She came out pulling
At her gloves, face bright
With rouge. I smiled,
Touched her shoulder, and led
Her down the street, across
A used car lot and a line
Of newly planted trees,
Until we were breathing
Before a drugstore. We
Entered, the tiny bell
Bringing a saleslady
Down a narrow aisle of goods.
I turned to the candies
Tiered like bleachers,
And asked what she wanted -
Light in her eyes, a smile
Starting at the corners
Of her mouth. I fingered
A nickel in my pocket,
And when she lifted a chocolate
That cost a dime,
I didn't say anything.
I took the nickel from
My pocket, then an orange,
And set them quietly on
The counter. When I looked up,
The lady's eyes met mine,
And held them, knowing
Very well what it was all
About.

Outside,
A few cars hissing past,
Fog hanging like old
Coats between the trees.
I took my girl's hand
in mine for two blocks,
Then released it to let
Her unwrap the chocolate.
I peeled my orange
That was so bright against
The gray of December
That, from some distance,
Someone might have thought
I was making a fire in my hands.
.
.
.

[mitchum]

15. I really like that

I will have to look for more of his work

[elleng]

29. That is BEAUTIFUL, and new to me. THANK YOU!

[hobbit709]

11. Tuli Kupferberg

[elleng]

14. Dorothy Parker!!!

A Pig's-Eye View of Literature

The Lives and Times of John Keats,
Percy Bysshe Shelley, and
George Gordon Noel, Lord Byron

Byron and Shelley and Keats
Were a trio of Lyrical treats.
The forehead of Shelley was cluttered with curls,
And Keats never was a descendant of earls,
And Byron walked out with a number of girls,
But it didn't impair the poetical feats
Of Byron and Shelley,
Of Byron and Shelley,
Of Byron and Shelley and Keats.

Coda

There's little in taking or giving,
There's little in water or wine;
This living, this living, this living
Was never a project of mine.
Oh, hard is the struggle, and sparse is
The gain of the one at the top,
For art is a form of catharsis,
And love is a permanent flop,
And work is the province of cattle,
And rest's for a clam in a shell,
So I'm thinking of throwing the battle-
Would you kindly direct me to hell?

Comment

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania.

One Perfect Rose

A single flow'r he sent me, since we met.
All tenderly his messenger he chose;
Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet -
One perfect rose.

I knew the language of the floweret;
'My fragile leaves,' it said, 'his heart enclose.'
Love long has taken for his amulet
One perfect rose.

Why is it no one ever sent me yet
One perfect limousine, do you suppose?
Ah no, it's always just my luck to get
One perfect rose.

Resumé

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.



:rofl:

[EFerrari]

16. I would have to go with Pound

and I love Ann Sexton and don't particularly like Ezra. But he was the better maker.

[mitchum]

21. I was defending Pound's work to Mrs mitchum this afternoon...

she finds it to be atrocious. I told her to read more than just the Cantos. She said that she would.

[EFerrari]

25. Thank you for this thread, mitchum.

You helped me remember things that I love.

:pals:

[mitchum]

26. You are very welcome

Several weeks ago, I went searching on youtube because I wanted to hear Sexton's actual voice.
I was really surprised that they had nothing by Big Jim Dickey. Because he really did spend a lot of time "barnstorming for poetry"

Me? I am a wretched poet, but I still love the stuff :)

[willing dwarf]

67. I love a lot of Pound's early work

Seems like he was the last lyrical poet-- some of those early images were so rich, so loaded with a density and sweetness. And his translations, what a gift! -- and yet he wrote some of the starkest modern verse early on too. It's hard to believe that it was 1917 when he wrote In A Station of the Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd ;
Petals on a wet, black bough


But his later stuff? The Cantos -- just too many personal connections and tangents for me to follow. Perhaps there's more to the later stuff than the jumble I find whenever I look at them, but it requires more than I am prepared to give him.

[XemaSab]

20. Phil Levine or Robinson Jeffers

:)

[MiddleFingerMom]

24. My poetry professor... and Gary Soto, whose piece I posted above...

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
...were both begat of Glover Davis...
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
...who was begat of Phillip Levine -- all out of San Diego State.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
I met Phillip at a reading in Pennsylvania in which he read (among
others) his piece, "Gin" -- introducing it in part by saying that
sometimes he felt people praised his works to him because they
felt he so desperately wanted to hear that praise.
.
After the reading, I walked up and met him and told him that I
had particularly liked "Gin".
.
He smiled and asked, "Really?"
.
"No," I said, "I just figured you really wanted to hear that."
.
He gave me a look that momentarily identified me as a world-class
asshole -- then got it and started laughing.
.
We ended up going out drinking together. Nice, FUN guy.
.
.

[XemaSab]

27. He's a good guy

He taught at Fresno for AGES.

[MiddleFingerMom]

41. It WAS CSU, Fresno...

.
.
.
...all these years I've been misremembering San Diego State.
.
.
.
And I SWEAR there was a poet named Glover Davis somewhere in the mix,
though I can't find hide nor hair of him anywhere, now.
.
.

[The Midway Rebel]

32. +1 for Robinson Jeffers

I gasped and sobbed the first time I read "Hurt Hawks".

[Withywindle]

23. A few possibilities.

THAT is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

(whole poem)

Magnificent, mourned no more, marred of heart, mind behind, mar-
ried dreamed, mortal changed--Ass and face done with murder.
In the world, given, flower maddened, made no Utopia, shut under
pine, almed in Earth, blamed in Lone, Jehovah, accept.
Nameless, One Faced, Forever beyond me, beginningless, endless,
Father in death. Tho I am not there for this Prophecy, I am unmarried, I'm
hymnless, I'm Heavenless, headless in blisshood I would still adore
Thee, Heaven, after Death, only One blessed in Nothingness, not
light or darkness, Dayless Eternity--
Take this, this Psalm, from me, burst from my hand in a day, some
of my Time, now given to Nothing--to praise Thee--But Death
This is the end, the redemption from Wilderness, way for the Won-
derer, House sought for All, black handkerchief washed clean by weeping
--page beyond Psalm--Last change of mine and Naomi--to God's perfect
Darkness--Death, stay thy phantoms!

II
Over and over--refrain--of the Hospitals--still haven't written your
history--leave it abstract--a few images
run thru the mind--like the saxophone chorus of houses and years--
remembrance of electrical shocks.
By long nites as a child in Paterson apartment, watching over your
nervousness--you were fat--your next move--
By that afternoon I stayed home from school to take care of you--
once and for all--when I vowed forever that once man disagreed with my
opinion of the cosmos, I was lost--
By my later burden--vow to illuminate mankind--this is release of
particulars--(mad as you)--(sanity a trick of agreement)--
But you stared out the window on the Broadway Church corner, and
spied a mystical assassin from Newark,
So phoned the Doctor--'OK go way for a rest'--so I put on my coat
and walked you downstreet--On the way a grammarschool boy screamed,
unaccountably--'Where you goin Lady to Death'? I shuddered--
and you covered your nose with motheaten fur collar, gas mask
against poison sneaked into downtown atmosphere, sprayed by Grandma--
And was the driver of the cheesebox Public Service bus a member of
the gang? You shuddered at his face, I could hardly get you on--to New
York, very Times Square, to grab another Greyhound--

(excerpt)


Playing her parchment moon
Precosia comes
along a watery path of laurels and crystal lights.
The starless silence, fleeing
from her rhythmic tambourine,
falls where the sea whips and sings,
his night filled with silvery swarms.
High atop the mountain peaks
the sentinels are weeping;
they guard the tall white towers
of the English consulate.
And gypsies of the water
for their pleasure erect
little castles of conch shells
and arbors of greening pine.

Playing her parchment moon
Precosia comes.
The wind sees her and rises,
the wind that never slumbers.
Naked Saint Christopher swells,
watching the girl as he plays
with tongues of celestial bells
on an invisible bagpipe.

Gypsy, let me lift your skirt
and have a look at you.
Open in my ancient fingers
the blue rose of your womb.

Precosia throws the tambourine
and runs away in terror.
But the virile wind pursues her
with his breathing and burning sword.

The sea darkens and roars,
while the olive trees turn pale.
The flutes of darkness sound,
and a muted gong of the snow.

Precosia, run, Precosia!
Or the green wind will catch you!
Precosia, run, Precosia!
And look how fast he comes!
A satyr of low-born stars
with their long and glistening tongues.

Precosia, filled with fear,
now makes her way to that house
beyond the tall green pines
where the English consul lives.

Alarmed by the anguished cries,
three riflemen come running,
their black capes tightly drawn,
and berets down over their brow.

The Englishman gives the gypsy
a glass of tepid milk
and a shot of Holland gin
which Precosia does not drink.

And while she tells them, weeping,
of her strange adventure,
the wind furiously gnashes
against the slate roof tiles.

(whole poem, in translation)


Also, I really wanted to offer up Diane Di Prima for consideration, but couldn't manage to find even excerpts of "Loba" online. What's up with THAT?

[Syrinx]

28. ALI!

[EFerrari]

30. Was he the father of hiphop?

:)

[Xipe Totec]

35. Pablo Neruda

If You Forget Me by Pablo Neruda
I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mP0CkbbNfVU

[Capn Sunshine]

37. +++

Amo a Pablo Neruda con la onda de forma aplastante del pensamiento que ha construido en mi curso de la vida.

Uno de mis favoritos:

Saddest Poem

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.

Write, for instance: "The night is full of stars,
and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance."

The night wind whirls in the sky and sings.

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

On nights like this, I held her in my arms.
I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her.
How could I not have loved her large, still eyes?

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
To think I don't have her. To feel that I've lost her.

To hear the immense night, more immense without her.
And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass.

What does it matter that my love couldn't keep her.
The night is full of stars and she is not with me.

That's all. Far away, someone sings. Far away.
My soul is lost without her.

As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her.
My heart searches for her and she is not with me.

The same night that whitens the same trees.
We, we who were, we are the same no longer.

I no longer love her, true, but how much I loved her.
My voice searched the wind to touch her ear.

Someone else's. She will be someone else's. As she once
belonged to my kisses.
Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her.
Love is so short and oblivion so long.

Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,
my soul is lost without her.

Although this may be the last pain she causes me,
and this may be the last poem I write for her.

[Xipe Totec]

62. That is a favorite of mine as well nt

[Ghost of Tom Joad]

39. Langston Hughes

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/let-america-be-america-again/

[LWolf]

40. There's no such thing as greatest poet.

There are just great poets.

Here are a few, but not all, from the 20th century:

William Stafford
Thich Nhat Hahn
Maxine Kumin
Dylan Thomas
Auden
Sylvia Plath
Samih al-Kasim
Robinson Jeffers
Gwendolyn Brooks

[mitchum]

43. I agree, but wanted to get people flaming one another over poetry

I keed! I keed! :)

[LWolf]

48. lol

Here ya go:

A vote for an independent poet is a vote for the enemy!!!!



On top of that, I could provide you with a poem about woodchucks by a poet from my list...

[EFerrari]

55. LOL

I actually don't agree that there isn't a "greatest" because nobody's brain did what Pound's did. He was like Mozart, from a different dimension.

But the 20th was a miraculous century for poetry. Which is nice for us junkies. :party:

[LWolf]

56. It is nice.

I don't do "favorites" or "greatests" of anything, for that very reason. In any category, I have lots of "favorites," and plenty that I think are "great."

Too many to choose just one. Or was that a commercial slogan?

[EFerrari]

57. Lay's: "I bet you can't eat just one!"

:rofl:

[LWolf]

58. THAT's it.

I KNEW it was coming from somewhere.

:rofl:

[EFerrari]

54. H.D., Elizabeth Bishop, Roethke, John Crowe Ransom,

Lucille Clifton, Nikki Giovanni, Thom Gunn.

[MiddleFingerMom]

42. There IS such a thing as a GREATEST POET (caps intended)...

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
...and IMneverHO, that poet is...
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
...the reclusive man-of-mystery...
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
...MiddleFingerMom.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
This is the first poem I wrote as an adult...
.
.
.
...and the first one I got published.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
I got better... and at least a LITTLE more serious as I went along,
but this still holds a special place in my memory.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.

[Seneca]

44. Bib Dylan

At least through "John Wesley Harding".

[xchrom]

45. seamus heaney --

Digging

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade,
Just like his old man.

My grandfather could cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, digging down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mold, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.


http://www.seamusheaney.org/seamus_heaney_poems.html

[willing dwarf]

59. Yes, I'm with you on Heaney

He digs like an archaeologist through layers of his psyche, his community, his language. I love the way he takes something very ordinary and makes it holy by looking at it, observing it, lifting it up like the priest lifting up the bread and wine during the mass. He truly brings together the power of words and the sense of reverence in the everyday. And too, he's not a gloppy sentimentalist, going over and over questions of love affairs or aspects of himself.

[xchrom]

61. He surpassed Elliot as far as I'm concerned.

His imagery and language skill is surgeon like.

[willing dwarf]

63. Sort of apples and oranges?

I'd say that TSE was working on finding meaning in what seemed to him an arid land. I think he was very honest in his approach and his effort to write what was true.

Heaney too tells the truth, but he doesn't seem to suffer from the terrible sense of alienation which was such a factor in Eliot's writing and life experience.

For Heaney, life seems a brimming bucket, filled with chestnuts or blackberries or well water...but even in his later work, Eliot was always struggling with his feeling of the void.

Like you, I feel like Heaney has gone farther, but that's because his universe is filled full, while Eliot's is almost a vacuum.

I must say I love discussions about poetry and poets, and don't get enough of them! Thanks!

[xchrom]

70. well it's the battle of the masters

nureyev v balanchine -- that sort of thing.

both are stellar.

i guess in the end i'm in awe of the variety of seamus' work.
and he losses no edge -- also he losses nothing as his age has advanced.


but as far as either are concerned -- they're out of this world.

[willing dwarf]

73. Heaney always felt the long shadow of Yeats

Yeats really defined anew poetry in the modern age. Unlike Eliot who of course was a generation later,I'd say Yeats was looking for a high poetic language which stood outside time. -- I suppose one might argue that Yeats was one of the last pre-Raphaelite era poets and one of the first modern poets.

Still, if I had to spend a month alone with one or the other I'd defintely choose Seamus Heaney and his poetry over Yeats or Eliot.

[xchrom]

74. Yes - and Yeats was really interested in an

Irish poetry - he is astoundingly well versed
In Irish and classical mythology.

Yeats and Joyce blow me away with
Their interliterary references.

How did they DO that?

Heaney and Elliot are as well versed probably -
But it doesn't come through the same.

[willing dwarf]

78. Quite true

Yes, Joyce was like a human sponge! He just absorbed everything, and then could pull it out for later use. Joyce's education was really excellent, having been a student at the Clongowes School and then Belvdedere. Reading Heaney, you can tell that he is really well read-- the depth of meaning and connections to so many layers of culture are there, but it seems like its things themselves which really interest him, things, and how they connect to other things to create a living present day culture. Seemed like Eliot was frozen by his education, brought to a place where he could hardly speak because words were shells and there was no meaning, at least until he found faith. Then the words became disappointing husks, not able to convey well enough what he wanted to say. Yes, I guess with Eliot it feels like he began by believing that the words and the meaning were one, but then, by the time he wrote The Wasteland, he was bitterly disappointed by the emptiness of words, and finally with the Four Quartets he reinvents the language to allow it to work for him, to express the meaning he feels but cannot say...To paraphrase him, every beginning was a "raid on the inarticulate..."

And Yeats? You're so right about his success in forging the literary consciousness of the Irish people. i mean, it was there all along with the songs and stories, but he elevated it...Made them see that it was actually worthy of real regard, not just to be thrown away in a drunken recitation, but to be mused upon and to inform the duller hours.

Now, what are we writing, you and I? What can we add to the tradition?

[Orrex]

46. That one who wrote the thing about that thing.

[Chan790]

49. This DU member is formally relieved that Orrex no longer wants me to send him naked pictures. n/t

[willing dwarf]

60. W.B. Yeats is above all the rest

I didn't care too much for his politics, but his poetry is superb. He and Seamus Heaney are my absolute favorites, but then too I couldn't forget Allan Ginsburg, William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound and darn;t why not TS Eliot. His Four Quartets is timeless.

I love so many poets. It would be very hard to choose, but if I could only read one poet from the 20th Century, I'd have to choose Yeats.

[WildEyedLiberal]

80. Yes!

Admittedly I'm not as well-read in poetry as I'd like to be, but I absolutely adore Yeats. He could do the most beautiful things with words.

[GCP]

81. Yeats for me, too

"What rough beast,
It's hour come round at least,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born"

Shivers down my arms, every time.

[JCMach1]

47. William Stafford, John Montague

[Brother Buzz]

50. Ogden Nash

[fishwax]

51. Hugh MacDiarmid

He often wrote in Scots, but I find his poetry beautiful even when it's not entirely intelligible. (I'm far from an expert in Old English or in Scots, but I've read enough that I can generally trace out meaning.)

The Watergaw (a watergaw is the partial shaft of a broken rainbow)
Ae weet forenicht i’ the yow-trummle
I saw yon antrin thing
A watergaw wi’ its chitterin’ licht
Ayont the on-ding;
An’ I thocht o’ the last wild look ye gied
Afore ye deed!

There was nae reek I’ the laverock’s hoose
That nicht – an’ nane I’ mine;
But I hae thocht o’ that foolish licht
Ever sin’ syne;
An’ I think that mebbe at lest I ken
What your look meant then


(English Translation)
One wet early evening in the sheep searing season
I saw that occasional, rare thing
A broken shaft of a rainbow with it’s trembling light
Beyond the downpour of the rain
And I thought of the last wild look you gave
Before you died!

The skylark’s nest was dark and desolate
My heart was too
But I have thought of that foolish light
Ever since then
And I think that perhaps at last I know
What your look meant then


You can hear MacDiarmid explain and recite both versions here: http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=1557

[elleng]

52. Thanks for this!

SO MANY rainbows in Scotland!!!

[flvegan]

64. Biz Markie.

Lyrical genius, that one.

[OrwellwasRight]

68. I love The Fury of Overshoes!!!

Anne Sexton is one of my all time faves -- but I love Ogden Nash, W.H. Auden, and Robert Frost as well. And don't forget ee cummings

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_a-eXIoyYA

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

71. Douglas Adams

Inventor of Vogon Poetry.

:hi:

[Brickbat]

72. Carl Sandburg.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

75. We need a TV show, like American Idol of Poetry

or Survivor Poets, or Iron Poet
Maybe even Ultimate Poetry Championship. Two poets enter a cage, only one comes out.

We can settle this, like mature American TV viewers.

:hi:

BTW, in that cage match, my money's on Charles Bukowski. Just don't expect a clean fight.

[mikeytherat]

82. There were Def Poetry Slams/Jams a few years back:

http://www.defpoetryjamontour.com/

http://www.poetryslam.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=88:def-poetry-jam-season-6-is-accepting-auditions-now&catid=1:latest&Itemid=79

mikey_the_rat

[YankeyMCC]

76. Gary Snyder

[willing dwarf]

79. I do like Gary Snyder!

His book Axe Handles was a delightful collection.

[KamaAina]

77. Rod McKuen

:sarcasm: