I usually hate poetry. I find the preciousness of each word irritating. I have never seen a poem in the New Yorker that I could parse worth a damn.

That said, I went off on a drunken W. B. Yeats kick, and somehow wound up on this one by our boy Bukowski. It would be immoral to post this in PGC.

--

Roll The Dice

if you’re going to try, go all the
way.
otherwise, don’t even start.

if you’re going to try, go all the
way.
this could mean losing girlfriends,
wives, relatives, jobs and
maybe your mind.

go all the way.
it could mean not eating for 3 or 4 days.
it could mean freezing on a
park bench.
it could mean jail,
it could mean derision,
mockery,
isolation.
isolation is the gift,
all the others are a test of your
endurance, of
how much you really want to
do it.
and you’ll do it
despite rejection and the worst odds
and it will be better than
anything else
you can imagine.

if you’re going to try,
go all the way.
there is no other feeling like
that.
you will be alone with the gods
and the nights will flame with
fire.

do it, do it, do it.
do it.

all the way
all the way.

you will ride life straight to
perfect laughter, its
the only good fight
there is.

This will obviously be a tough thread to fly like the Wright Bros., so I bring you:

Burning the Cat
By W.S. Merwin

In the spring, by the big shuck-pile
Between the bramble-choked brook where the copperheads
Curled in the first sun, and the mud road,
All at once it could no longer be ignored.
The season steamed with an odor for which
There has never been a name, but it shouted above all.
When I went near, the wood-lice were in its eyes
And a nest of beetles in the white fur of its armpit.
I built a fire there by the shuck-pile
But it did no more than pop the beetles
And singe the damp fur, raising a stench
Of burning hair that bit through the sweet day-smell.
Then thinking how time leches after indecency,
Since both grief is indecent and the lack of it,
I went away and fetched newspaper,
And wrapped it in kerosene and put it in
With the garbage on a heaped nest of sticks:
It was harder to burn than the peels of oranges,
Bubbling and spitting, and the reek was like
Rank cooking that drifted with the smoke out
Through the budding woods and clouded the shining dogwood.
But I became stubborn: I would consume it
Though the pyre should take me a day to build
And the flames rise over the house. And hours I fed
That burning, till I was black and streaked with sweat;
And poked it out then, with charred meat still clustering
Thick around the bones. And buried it so
As I should have done in the first place, for
The earth is slow, but deep, and good for hiding;
I would have used it if I had understood
How nine lives can vanish in one flash of a dog's jaws,
A car or a copperhead, and yet how one small
Death, however reckoned, is hard to dispose of.

Post a few of your own. Don't be shy about taste, or some irrational need to explain.

UNTITLED
By anonymous bathroom graffiti artist

There once was a man from Peru
Who slept one night in a canoe
While dreaming of Venus,
He played with his [CENSORED]
And woke up with a handful of goo.

John Keats / John Keats / John / Please put your scarf on.

When Rod McKuen died, poetry died.

One of the few poems that says all that needs saying, is by Lewis Carroll.




I'll tell thee everything I can:
There's little to relate.
I saw an aged aged man,
A-sitting on a gate.
"Who are you, aged man?" I said.
"And how is it you live?"
And his answer trickled through my head,
Like water through a sieve.

He said "I look for butterflies
That sleep among the wheat:
I make them into mutton-pies,
And sell them into the street.
I sell them unto men," he said,
"Who sail on stormy seas;
And that's the way I get my bread--
A trifle, if you please."

But I was thinking of a plan
To dye one's whiskers green,
And always use so large a fan
That they could not be seen.
So, having no reply to give
To what the old man said,
I cried "Come, tell me how you live!"
And thumped him on the head.

His accents mild took up the tale:
He said "I go my ways,
And when I find a mountain-rill,
I set it in a blaze;
And thence they make a stuff they call
Rowland's Macassar-Oil--
Yet twopence-halfpenny is all
They give me for my toil."

But I was thinking of a way
To feed oneself on batter,
And so go on from day to day
Getting a little fatter.
I shook him well from side to side,
Until his face was blue:
"Come, tell me how you live," I cried,
"And what it is you do!"

He said "I hunt for haddocks' eyes
Among the heather bright,
And work them into waistcoat buttons
In the silent night.
And these I do not sell for gold
Or coin of silvery shine,
But for a copper halfpenny,
And that will purchase nine.

"I sometimes dig for buttered rolls,
Or set limed twigs for crabs:
I sometimes search the grassy knolls
For wheels of Hansom-cabs.
And that's the way" (he gave a wink)
"By which I get my wealth--
And very gladly will I drink
Your Honour's noble health."

I heard him then, for I had just
Completed my design
To keep the Menai bridge from rust
By boiling it in wine.
I thanked him much for telling me
The way he got his wealth,
But chiefly for his wish that he
Might drink my noble health.

And now, if e'er by chance I put
My fingers into glue,
Or madly squeeze a right-hand foot
Into a left-hand shoe,
Or if I drop upon my toe
A very heavy weight,
I weep, for it reminds me so
Of that old man I used to know--

Whose look was mild, whose speech was slow,
Whose hair was whiter than the snow,
Whose face was very like a crow,
With eyes, like cinders, all aglow,
Who seemed distracted with his woe,
Who rocked his body to and fro,
And muttered mumblingly and low,
As if his mouth were full of dough,
Who snorted like a buffalo--
That summer evening long ago,
A-sitting on a gate

If that was poetry's last breath, it was a sorry death-rattle.

I always figured Lewis Caroll for a JFK conspiracy theorist.

+1 to Lewis Carroll. Those are the poems I remember the most from childhood. I had a good primary school teacher who got us to read him. (I once asked him who his favourite character in all of Lewis Carroll was. The White Knight, he replied.)

Goddamn, the White Knight sings the poem that Zeno posted.

The White Knight traces back to St. Eustace.

(The French have good church named after him. I said a prayer in there once. Like, for real. It was answered.)

With it snowing outside I think of Wallace Stevens and his The Snow Man
I have it posted in the back of my farm.

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and boughs
Of the pine trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare space

For the listener,who listens in the snow,
And nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

spike milligan

Father Thames
Let us look at the River Thames.
One of England's watery gems.
Oily brown, greasy, muddy.
Looking foul, and smells of cruddy.
The conservancey say their cleaning it,
so why is it the colour of sh*t?

This is a poem I wrote when I was bored working in the bookies, watching guys come spend their wages on the games machines.

Thumping thrice the reels spin again
An endless rhythm to an endless toil.
"Yer machines are pish!" comes the cry.
Up and down, but more down than up
Always.

But, lo! Three leprechauns, and up once more!
The lights are more welcoming.
They sing their congratulations
in a fanfare of flashes.

A bus comes and goes and comes again, meanwhile
A meal goes cold;
The would be occupant of an empty chair
is dancing to the reels.

That is one of the best things I've read in a while. Does it have a title?

Maybe you are trying to troll us, and by mistake posted a great poem.

Thumping thrice the reels spin again
An endless rhythm to an endless toil.

Reminds me rhythmically of my boy Yeats:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

If this is some kind of joke, I would like to read the punchline. Great stuff.

I am still knocked out by Quavers.

I don't have any original verse for you, but I will attempt to keep this thread alive with the greatest Irish writer of all time. (If you wish to dispute Yeats' stature, I will be his Republican champion with the weapon of your choice at dawn.)

If only Maud Gonne had not driven him to the brink of insanity, the world would have been spared such masterpieces as:

Under Ben Bulben
By William Butler Yeats

I

Swear by what the Sages spoke
Round the Mareotic Lake
That the Witch of Atlas knew,
Spoke and set the ***** a-crow.

Swear by those horsemen, by those women,
Complexion and form prove superhuman,
That pale, long visaged company
That airs an immortality
Completeness of their passions won;
Now they ride the wintry dawn
Where Ben Bulben sets the scene.

Here's the gist of what they mean.


II

Many times man lives and dies
Between his two eternities,
That of race and that of soul,
And ancient Ireland knew it all.
Whether man dies in his bed
Or the rifle knocks him dead,
A brief parting from those dear
Is the worst man has to fear.
Though grave-diggers' toil is long,
Sharp their spades, their muscle strong,
They but thrust their buried men
Back in the human mind again.


III

You that Mitchel's prayer have heard
`Send war in our time, O Lord!'
Know that when all words are said
And a man is fighting mad,
Something drops from eyes long blind
He completes his partial mind,
For an instant stands at ease,
Laughs aloud, his heart at peace,
Even the wisest man grows tense
With some sort of violence
Before he can accomplish fate
Know his work or choose his mate.


IV

Poet and sculptor do the work
Nor let the modish painter shirk
What his great forefathers did,
Bring the soul of man to God,
Make him fill the cradles right.

Measurement began our might:
Forms a stark Egyptian thought,
Forms that gentler Phidias wrought.

Michael Angelo left a proof
On the Sistine Chapel roof,
Where but half-awakened Adam
Can disturb globe-trotting Madam
Till her bowels are in heat,
Proof that there's a purpose set
Before the secret working mind:
Profane perfection of mankind.

Quattrocento put in paint,
On backgrounds for a God or Saint,
Gardens where a soul's at ease;
Where everything that meets the eye
Flowers and grass and cloudless sky
Resemble forms that are, or seem
When sleepers wake and yet still dream,
And when it's vanished still declare,
With only bed and bedstead there,
That Heavens had opened.

Gyres run on;
When that greater dream had gone
Calvert and Wilson, Blake and Claude
Prepared a rest for the people of God,
Palmer's phrase, but after that
Confusion fell upon our thought.


V

Irish poets learn your trade
Sing whatever is well made,
Scorn the sort now growing up
All out of shape from toe to top,
Their unremembering hearts and heads
Base-born products of base beds.
Sing the peasantry, and then
Hard-riding country gentlemen,
The holiness of monks, and after
Porter-drinkers' randy laughter;
Sing the lords and ladies gay
That were beaten into the clay
Through seven heroic centuries;
Cast your mind on other days
That we in coming days may be
Still the indomitable Irishry.


VI

Under bare Ben Bulben's head
In Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid,
An ancestor was rector there
Long years ago; a church stands near,
By the road an ancient Cross.
No marble, no conventional phrase,
On limestone quarried near the spot
By his command these words are cut:

Cast a cold eye
On life, on death.
Horseman, pass by!

Thanks very much, I just call it 'The Reels', literally the only poem I've ever written haha.

That Bukowski poem is one of my favorites. Reminds me a bit (in viewpoint) of this one by Robert Service:


There's a race of men that don't fit in,
A race that can't stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
And they roam the world at will.
They range the field and they rove the flood,
And they climb the mountain's crest;
Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,
And they don't know how to rest.
If they just went straight they might go far;
They are strong and brave and true;
But they're always tired of the things that are,
And they want the strange and new.
They say: "Could I find my proper groove,
What a deep mark I would make!"
So they chop and change, and each fresh move
Is only a fresh mistake.
And each forgets, as he strips and runs
With a brilliant, fitful pace,
It's the steady, quiet, plodding ones
Who win in the lifelong race.
And each forgets that his youth has fled,
Forgets that his prime is past,
Till he stands one day, with a hope that's dead,
In the glare of the truth at last.
He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance;
He has just done things by half.
Life's been a jolly good joke on him,
And now is the time to laugh.
Ha, ha! He is one of the Legion Lost;
He was never meant to win;
He's a rolling stone, and it's bred in the bone;
He's a man who won't fit in.

There's a Bukowski poem I like that basically says let's get drunk, play Scrabble and screw. I forget the exact wording.

Nice one. First I've heard about "The Bard of the Yukon" since he bluffed Ivey off Kings that time on HSP.

I usually don't like T. S. Eliot ("Prufrock" is insufferable), but here's one of his better works. In college, I thought it was about housepets, but back then I was stoned 24/7.

Genius.com has a surprisingly good analysis, which I will link at the end.

--

ANIMULA
T. S. Eliot

'Issues from the hand of God, the simple soul'
To a flat world of changing lights and noise,
To light, dark, dry or damp, chilly or warm;
Moving between the legs of tables and of chairs,
Rising or falling, grasping at kisses and toys,
Advancing boldly, sudden to take alarm,
Retreating to the corner of arm and knee,
Eager to be reassured, taking pleasure
In the fragrant brilliance of the Christmas tree,
Pleasure in the wind, the sunlight and the sea;
Studies the sunlit pattern on the floor
And running stags around a silver tray;
Confounds the actual and the fanciful,
Content with playing-cards and kings and queens,
What the fairies do and what the servants say.
The heavy burden of the growing soul
Perplexes and offends more, day by day;
Week by week, offends and perplexes more
With the imperatives of 'is and seems'
And may and may not, desire and control.
The pain of living and the drug of dreams
Curl up the small soul in the window seat
Behind the Encyclopædia Britannica.
Issues from the hand of time the simple soul
Irresolute and selfish, misshapen, lame,
Unable to fare forward or retreat,
Fearing the warm reality, the offered good,
Denying the importunity of the blood,
Shadow of its own shadows, spectre in its own gloom,
Leaving disordered papers in a dusty room;
Living first in the silence after the viaticum.

Pray for Guiterriez, avid of speed and power,
For Boudin, blown to pieces,
For this one who made a great fortune,
And that one who went his own way.
Pray for Floret, by the boarhound slain between the yew trees,
Pray for us now and at the hour of our birth.

ANNOTATED VERSION
(Difficulty: High school level)

I think poetry can be hard to read.

My mother was a poet but hardly anyone gets her poetry.

I think your heart has to be in sync with the poet's heart to understand a poem...or at least you have to be able to see things from the poet's viewpoint.

Some people are too self obsessed to be able to project themselves into another person's shoes and understand what they are saying.

Harvard Poetry Contest.

Down to the two finalists, a Harvard Senior and a Texas Aggie, the moderator informs them the final round requires them to recite an impromptu poem using the word Timbuktu...

First contestant - The Harvard Senior...

Riding on in Caravan,
Men on camels two by two,
On into the desert sand,
Destination Timbuktu.

Then the Texas Aggie...

Me and Tim a-huntin' went,
Found three girls in a pop-up tent.
They was three and we was two,
So I bucked one and Timbuktu!

/THREAD, I guess. Thanks for the interesting contributions.

My friend's mother is getting old and crazy.

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night - Dylan Thomas