Favorite Poems

todski28 said:

How do I know the translation is correct?
For what it is worth that explains the way I see your writing regardless of leading, or interpretational what ever. Even if you were leading it was already where my head was at. Put my comment to I the shadow, or the wind in the pines my love and tell me it doesn't fit

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no translation is ever correct
although Hamburger (I think the Guardian said) is better known in Munich than England. That says something.
For what it's worth, Celan was at war with the language (German) and a favourite poet of mine, but I was leading - it looks like a mission statement.

twelveoone said:

no translation is ever correct
although Hamburger (I think the Guardian said) is better known in Munich than England. That says something.
For what it's worth, Celan was at war with the language (German) and a favourite poet of mine, but I was leading - it looks like a mission statement.

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Oh it may be a blanket statement but it is congruent with my thoughts on your writing, djinn did some weird emotional shit to my head space for nearly an hour after first read, I the shadow, I kept popping back to read over months becauseit hurt my brain. When I get specifics to your work I will give them as freely as I can but as I have said in the past it is like a cat trying to figure out the theory of relativity.

todski28 said:

Oh it may be a blanket statement but it is congruent with my thoughts on your writing, djinn did some weird emotional shit to my head space for nearly an hour after first read, I the shadow, I kept popping back to read over months becauseit hurt my brain. When I get specifics to your work I will give them as freely as I can but as I have said in the past it is like a cat trying to figure out the theory of relativity.

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Never discuss relativity in West Virgina
thems shootin words.

Hollow Boom Soft Chime: The Thai Elephant Orchestra

BY SARAH LINDSAY

A sound of far-off thunder from instruments
ten feet away: drums, a log,
a gong of salvage metal. Chimes
of little Issan bells, pipes in a row, sometimes
a querulous harmonica.
Inside the elephant orchestra’s audience,
bubbles form, of shame and joy, and burst.
Did elephants look so sad and wise,
a tourist thinks, her camera cold in her pocket,
before we came to say they look sad and wise?
Did mastodons have merry, unwrinkled faces?
Hollow boom soft chime, stamp of a padded foot,
tingle of renaat, rattle of angklung.
This music pauses sometimes, but does not end.

Prathida gently strokes the bells with a mallet.
Poong and his mahout regard the gong.
Paitoon sways before two drums,
bumping them, keeping time with her switching tail.
Sales of recordings help pay for their thin enclosure
of trampled grass. They have never lived free.
Beside a dry African river
their wild brother lies, a punctured balloon,
torn nerves trailing from the stumps of his tusks.
Hollow boom soft chime, scuff of a broad foot,
sometimes, rarely, a blatting elephant voice.
They seldom attend the instruments
without being led to them, but, once they’ve begun,
often refuse to stop playing.

Source: Poetry (May 2011).

Poem within a poem...

From:
LINES COMPOSED A FEW MILES ABOVE TINTERN ABBEY, ON REVISITING THE BANKS OF THE WYE DURING A TOUR.
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

...
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration:--feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered, acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burden of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened:--that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,--
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.

...

And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought,
With many recognitions dim and faint,
And somewhat of sad perplexity,
The picture of the mind revives again:
While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years. And so I dare to hope...



This is the one I come back to again and again. It's a cheat of sorts as the poem in its entirety is not so lovely to me as these pilfered passages blended together.

Meditations in an Emergency
Frank O'Hara (1957)

Am I to become profligate as if I were a blonde? Or religious as if I were French?

Each time my heart is broken it makes me feel more adventurous (and how the same names keep recurring on that interminable list!), but one of these days there’ll be nothing left with which to venture forth.

Why should I share you? Why don’t you get rid of someone else for a change?

I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love.

Even trees understand me! Good heavens, I lie under them, too, don’t I? I’m just like a pile of leaves.

However, I have never clogged myself with the praises of pastoral life, nor with nostalgia for an innocent past of perverted acts in pastures. No. One need never leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes—I can’t even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there’s a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life. It is more important to affirm the least sincere; the clouds get enough attention as it is and even they continue to pass. Do they know what they’re missing? Uh huh.

My eyes are vague blue, like the sky, and change all the time; they are indiscriminate but fleeting, entirely specific and disloyal, so that no one trusts me. I am always looking away. Or again at something after it has given me up. It makes me restless and that makes me unhappy, but I cannot keep them still. If only I had grey, green, black, brown, yellow eyes; I would stay at home and do something. It’s not that I am curious. On the contrary, I am bored but it’s my duty to be attentive, I am needed by things as the sky must be above the earth. And lately, so great has their anxiety become, I can spare myself little sleep.

Now there is only one man I love to kiss when he is unshaven. Heterosexuality! you are inexorably approaching. (How discourage her?)

St. Serapion, I wrap myself in the robes of your whiteness which is like midnight in Dostoevsky. How am I to become a legend, my dear? I’ve tried love, but that hides you in the bosom of another and I am always springing forth from it like the lotus—the ecstasy of always bursting forth! (but one must not be distracted by it!) or like a hyacinth, “to keep the filth of life away,” yes, there, even in the heart, where the filth is pumped in and courses and slanders and pollutes and determines. I will my will, though I may become famous for a mysterious vacancy in that department, that greenhouse.

Destroy yourself, if you don’t know!

It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so. I admire you, beloved, for the trap you’ve set. It's like a final chapter no one reads because the plot is over.

“Fanny Brown is run away—scampered off with a Cornet of Horse; I do love that little Minx, & hope She may be happy, tho’ She has vexed me by this Exploit a little too. —Poor silly Cecchina! or F:B: as we used to call her. —I wish She had a good Whipping and 10,000 pounds.” —Mrs. Thrale.

I’ve got to get out of here. I choose a piece of shawl and my dirtiest suntans. I’ll be back, I'll re-emerge, defeated, from the valley; you don’t want me to go where you go, so I go where you don’t want me to. It’s only afternoon, there’s a lot ahead. There won’t be any mail downstairs. Turning, I spit in the lock and the knob turns.


******************

If you want to see this poem with O'Hara's line breaks, go here. Is this prose or poetry? Frank O'Hara says poetry and I agree.

The Colonel by Carolyn Forche

WHAT YOU HAVE HEARD is true. I was in his house. His wife carried
a tray of coffee and sugar. His daughter filed her nails, his son went
out for the night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol on the
cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on its black cord over
the house. On the television was a cop show. It was in English.
Broken bottles were embedded in the walls around the house to
scoop the kneecaps from a man's legs or cut his hands to lace. On
the windows there were gratings like those in liquor stores. We had
dinner, rack of lamb, good wine, a gold bell was on the table for
calling the maid. The maid brought green mangoes, salt, a type of
bread. I was asked how I enjoyed the country. There was a brief
commercial in Spanish. His wife took everything away. There was
some talk then of how difficult it had become to govern. The parrot
said hello on the terrace. The colonel told it to shut up, and pushed
himself from the table. My friend said to me with his eyes: say
nothing. The colonel returned with a sack used to bring groceries
home. He spilled many human ears on the table. They were like
dried peach halves. There is no other way to say this. He took one
of them in his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a water
glass. It came alive there. I am tired of fooling around he said. As
for the rights of anyone, tell your people they can go fuck them-
selves. He swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held the last
of his wine in the air. Something for your poetry, no? he said. Some
of the ears on the floor caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the
ears on the floor were pressed to the ground.

Angeline said:

If you want to see this poem with O'Hara's line breaks, go here. Is this prose or poetry? Frank O'Hara says poetry and I agree.

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Frank O'Hara!
poetry as it stands or sits or lies owes more to Frank than Billy (any Billy), just sayin

twelveoone said:

Frank O'Hara!
poetry as it stands or sits or lies owes more to Frank than Billy (any Billy), just sayin

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I was torn between posting Meditations and A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island, but I like that Meditations looks so much like prose and is so clearly poetry.

Hey, you can do that?

Bien loin d'ici

C'est ici la case sacrée
Où cette fille très parée,
Tranquille et toujours préparée,

D'une main éventant ses seins,
Et son coude dans les coussins,
Écoute pleurer les bassins:

C'est la chambre de Dorothée.
— La brise et l'eau chantent au loin
Leur chanson de sanglots heurtée
Pour bercer cette enfant gâtée.

Du haut en bas, avec grand soin.
Sa peau délicate est frottée
D'huile odorante et de benjoin.
— Des fleurs se pâment dans un coin.

http://fleursdumal.org/poem/316

— Charles Baudelaire

like a basin is Dorthy
lies your heart surgically removed
I'm sorry you were expecting poetry
a translation of this?

I would be remiss
not to celebrate the lifeless
of this, celebrate with a demitasse
and kiss your derriere farewell

Angeline said:

I was torn between posting Meditations and A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island, but I like that Meditations looks so much like prose and is so clearly poetry.

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Poem
by Frank O’Hara

Lana Turner has collapsed!
I was trotting along and suddenly
it started raining and snowing
and you said it was hailing
but hailing hits you on the head
hard so it was really snowing and
raining and I was in such a hurry
to meet you but the traffic
was acting exactly like the sky
and suddenly I see a headline
LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!
there is no snow in Hollywood
there is no rain in California
I have been to lots of parties
and acted perfectly disgraceful
but I never actually collapsed
oh Lana Turner we love you get up


there is a really funny story behind this

Love Song: I and Thou

BY ALAN DUGAN

Nothing is plumb, level, or square:
the studs are bowed, the joists
are shaky by nature, no piece fits
any other piece without a gap
or pinch, and bent nails
dance all over the surfacing
like maggots. By Christ
I am no carpenter. I built
the roof for myself, the walls
for myself, the floors
for myself, and got
hung up in it myself. I
danced with a purple thumb
at this house-warming, drunk
with my prime whiskey: rage.
Oh I spat rage’s nails
into the frame-up of my work:
it held. It settled plumb,
level, solid, square and true
for that great moment. Then
it screamed and went on through,
skewing as wrong the other way.
God damned it. This is hell,
but I planned it. I sawed it,
I nailed it, and I
will live in it until it kills me.
I can nail my left palm
to the left-hand crosspiece but
I can’t do everything myself.
I need a hand to nail the right,
a help, a love, a you, a wife.

greenmountaineer said:

Love Song: I and Thou

BY ALAN DUGAN

Nothing is plumb, level, or square:
the studs are bowed, the joists
are shaky by nature, no piece fits
any other piece without a gap
or pinch, and bent nails
dance all over the surfacing
like maggots. By Christ
I am no carpenter. I built
the roof for myself, the walls
for myself, the floors
for myself, and got
hung up in it myself. I
danced with a purple thumb
at this house-warming, drunk
with my prime whiskey: rage.
Oh I spat rage’s nails
into the frame-up of my work:
it held. It settled plumb,
level, solid, square and true
for that great moment. Then
it screamed and went on through,
skewing as wrong the other way.
God damned it. This is hell,
but I planned it. I sawed it,
I nailed it, and I
will live in it until it kills me.
I can nail my left palm
to the left-hand crosspiece but
I can’t do everything myself.
I need a hand to nail the right,
a help, a love, a you, a wife.

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One of my favorites by Mr. Dugan. I'll post the other one when I get back.

......

Emily Dickinson, XI

MUCH madness is divinest sense
To a discerning eye;
Much sense the starkest madness.
'T it the majority
In this, as all, prevails.
Assent, and you are sane;
Demur,-you're straightway dangerous,
And handled with a chain.

José
Carlos Drummond de Andrade

What now, José?
The party's over,
the lights are off,
the crowd's moved on,
the night's grown cold,
what now, José?
what now, you?
you who are nameless,
who make fun of others,
you who write verses,
who love, protest,
what now, José?

Got no woman,
got no speech,
got no love,
can't drink,
can't smoke,
can't even spit,
the night's grown cold,
the day didn’t come,
the tram didn’t come,
laughter didn’t come
utopia didn’t come
and everything ended
and everything fled
and everything rotted
what now, José?

What now, José?
Your sweet words,
your moment of fever,
your feasting and fasting,
your library,
your gold mine,
your suit of glass,
your incoherence,
your hatred - what now?

Key in hand
you want to open the door,
but no door exists;
you want to die in the sea,
but the sea has dried;
you want to go to Minas,
Minas no longer exists;
José, what now?

If you could scream,
if you could groan,
if you could play
a Viennese waltz,
if you could sleep,
if you could tire,
if you could die...
But you don't die,
you are stubborn, José!

Alone in the dark
like a beast of the wild,
without any theogony,
without even a naked wall
to lean against,
without a black horse
to gallop away,
You march, José!
José, where to?


Original version (in Portuguese):

E agora, José?
A festa acabou,
a luz apagou,
o povo sumiu,
a noite esfriou,
e agora, José?
e agora, você?
você que é sem nome,
que zomba dos outros,
você que faz versos,
que ama, protesta?
e agora, José?

Está sem mulher,
está sem discurso,
está sem carinho,
já não pode beber,
já não pode fumar,
cuspir já não pode,
a noite esfriou,
o dia não veio,
o bonde não veio,
o riso não veio,
não veio a utopia
e tudo acabou
e tudo fugiu
e tudo mofou,
e agora, José?

E agora, José?
Sua doce palavra,
seu instante de febre,
sua gula e jejum,
sua biblioteca,
sua lavra de ouro,
seu terno de vidro,
sua incoerência,
seu ódio – e agora?

Com a chave na mão
quer abrir a porta,
não existe porta;
quer morrer no mar,
mas o mar secou;
quer ir para Minas,
Minas não há mais.
José, e agora?

Se você gritasse,
se você gemesse,
se você tocasse
a valsa vienense,
se você dormisse,
se você cansasse,
se você morresse…
Mas você não morre,
você é duro, José!

Sozinho no escuro
qual bicho-do-mato,
sem teogonia,
sem parede nua
para se encostar,
sem cavalo preto
que fuja a galope,
você marcha, José!
José, para onde?

Thanks, Tsotha, I enjoyed it very much. Is this your translation? Well done! I strangled through it in Portuguese so that I can enjoy the rhyming which obviously could not be in English. I think, I got a lot out of it.
Some brave decisions like translating "duro" to "stubborn" have to be and I like them as they stand, as I cannot think of anything better giving the essence of Jose's… stubbornness.
Much more musical in the original, but People that cannot get to the sonics of it at least they can get to the meaning, thanks to your effort.
There are, I think, oceans of poetry that I don’t know.
Give us some more of Carlos Drummond de Andrade, or whatever. I don’t read often this thread, but 90% of it I like so far.
E agora, Tsotha?

Tzara said:

One of my favorites by Mr. Dugan. I'll post the other one when I get back.

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Drunken Memories Of Anne Sexton

The first and last time I met
my ex-lover Anne Sexton was at
a protest poetry reading against
some anti-constitutional war in Asia
when some academic son of a bitch,
to test her reputation as a drunk,
gave her a beer glass full of wine
after our reading. She drank
it all down while staring me
full in the face and then said
"I don't care what you think,
you know," as if I was
her ex-what, husband, lover,
what? And just as I
was just about to say I
loved her, I was, what,
was, interrupted by my beautiful enemy
Galway Kinnell, who said to her
"Just as I was told, your eyes,
you have one blue, one green"
and there they were, the two
beautiful poets, staring at
each others' beautiful eyes
as I drank the lees of her wine.

Tzara said:

Drunken Memories Of Anne Sexton

The first and last time I met
my ex-lover Anne Sexton was at
a protest poetry reading against
some anti-constitutional war in Asia
when some academic son of a bitch,
to test her reputation as a drunk,
gave her a beer glass full of wine
after our reading. She drank
it all down while staring me
full in the face and then said
"I don't care what you think,
you know," as if I was
her ex-what, husband, lover,
what? And just as I
was just about to say I
loved her, I was, what,
was, interrupted by my beautiful enemy
Galway Kinnell, who said to her
"Just as I was told, your eyes,
you have one blue, one green"
and there they were, the two
beautiful poets, staring at
each others' beautiful eyes
as I drank the lees of her wine.

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Damn that's good. And thanks to you and GM for the intro to this poet.

Angeline said:

Damn that's good. And thanks to you and GM for the intro to this poet.

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Seconded!

twelveoone said:

Mit wechselndem Schlüssel
schliesst du das Haus auf, darin
der Schnee des Verschwiegenen treibt.
Je nach dem Blut, das dir quillt
aus Aug oder Mund oder Ohr,
wechselt dein Schlüssel.

Wechselt dein Schlüssel, wechselt das Wort,
das treiben darf mit den Flocken.
Je nach dem Wind, der dich fortstösst,
ballt um das Wort sich der Schnee.

- Paul Celan

With a variable key
you unlock the house in which
drifts the snow of that left unspoken.
Always that key you choose
depends on the blood that spurts
from your eye or your mouth or your ear.

You vary the key, you vary the word
that is free to drift with the flakes.
What snow ball will form round the word
depends on the wind that rebuffs you.

trans Michael Hamburger

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Oh my god. I have been wracking my brain for Celan's name for weeks, and you've posted one of his poems. Thank you!

Limits, Jorge Luis Borges

Of all the streets that blur in to the sunset,
There must be one (which, I am not sure)
That I by now have walked for the last time
Without guessing it, the pawn of that Someone

Who fixes in advance omnipotent laws,
Sets up a secret and unwavering scale
for all the shadows, dreams, and forms
Woven into the texture of this life.

If there is a limit to all things and a measure
And a last time and nothing more and forgetfulness,
Who will tell us to whom in this house
We without knowing it have said farewell?

Through the dawning window night withdraws
And among the stacked books which throw
Irregular shadows on the dim table,
There must be one which I will never read.

There is in the South more than one worn gate,
With its cement urns and planted cactus,
Which is already forbidden to my entry,
Inaccessible, as in a lithograph.

There is a door you have closed forever
And some mirror is expecting you in vain;
To you the crossroads seem wide open,
Yet watching you, four-faced, is a Janus.

There is among all your memories one
Which has now been lost beyond recall.
You will not be seen going down to that fountain
Neither by white sun nor by yellow moon.

You will never recapture what the Persian
Said in his language woven with birds and roses,
When, in the sunset, before the light disperses,
You wish to give words to unforgettable things.

And the steadily flowing Rhone and the lake,
All that vast yesterday over which today I bend?
They will be as lost as Carthage,
Scourged by the Romans with fire and salt.

At dawn I seem to hear the turbulent
Murmur of crowds milling and fading away;
They are all I have been loved by, forgotten by;
Space, time, and Borges now are leaving me.

VenusButterflies said:

Oh my god. I have been wracking my brain for Celan's name for weeks, and you've posted one of his poems. Thank you!

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funny, right before I had eye trouble I got a book of Borges' poems.
And now I can't find it!
Celan I can't read but in very small and sporadic doses, it troubles me just to even think about him.
Best

d. a. levy, from Cleveland Undercovers

but that was then
NOW i am, and do not expect
tomorrow or yesterday today.
instead I write in exstacy
and when someone stops to say
"Hey, that's not true!"
i yell backwards,
"For who.. . . . . . and fuck rhyme."
i have a city to cover with lines,
with textured words &
the sweaty brick-flesh images of a
drunken tied-up whorehouse cowtown
sprawling and brawling in its back.

This following poem is to me one of the great poems of the 20th century and it has been translated into English a few times but I don’t have a translation handy so I'm having a go at it myself, just for the hell of it.
I keep the original punctuation as I find it in Greek. The name "Ithaca" is used in plural in the last line of the original and it makes more sense to keep it so in English.


By Constantine Cavafi (1863-1933)

ITHACA

When you set out on your way for Ithaca,
wish that the road will be long,
full of adventures, full of knowledge.
Don’t be afraid of the Laestrygonians and the Cyclops,
of the angry Poseidon,
such things you will never find on your way,
if your thought remains lofty, if elite emotion
touches your spirit and your body.
The Laestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the wild Poseidon you will not meet,
if you don’t carry them in your psyche,
if your psyche does not erect them in front of you.

Wish for the road to be long.
For many summer mornings to come
when with what a pleasure, with what a joy
you'll be arriving for the first time in new ports;
you will stop in Phoenician stalls,
and the fine merchandise you will obtain,
mother of pearl and corrals, amber and ebony,
and every kind of hedonic herb,
as many as you can, abundant, hedonic herbs;
in many Egyptian towns you must go,
to learn and learn again from the wise.

You must have always Ithaca in your mind.
Arriving there is your destination.
But don’t rush your trip at all.
It is better if your trip lasts for many years;
and as an old man you finally moor on the island,
rich with all you profited on the way,
not expecting Ithaca to give you wealth.

Ithaca gave you the beautiful trip.
Without her you would not have set out.
She does not have anything more to give you.

And if you find her poor, Ithaca did not cheat you.
Wise as you have become, with so much experience,
Already you have understood what is signified by "Ithacas."



ΙΘΑΚΗ

Σα βγεις στον πηγαιμό για την Ιθάκη,
να εύχεσαι νάναι μακρύς ο δρόμος,
γεμάτος περιπέτειες, γεμάτος γνώσεις.
Τους Λαιστρυγόνας και τους Κύκλωπας,
τον θυμωμένο Ποσειδώνα μη φοβάσαι,
τέτοια στο δρόμο σου ποτέ σου δεν θα βρεις,
αν μεν' η σκέψις σου υψηλή, αν εκλεκτή
συγκίνησις το πνεύμα και το σώμα σου αγγίζει.
Τους Λαιστρυγόνας και τους Κύκλωπας,
τον άγριο Ποσειδώνα δεν θα συναντήσεις,
αν δεν τους κουβανείς μες στην ψυχή σου,
αν η ψυχή σου δεν τους στήνει εμπρός σου.

Να εύχεσαι νάναι μακρύς ο δρόμος.
Πολλά τα καλοκαιρινά πρωϊά να είναι
που με τι ευχαρίστησι, με τι χαρά
θα μπαίνεις σε λιμένας πρωτοειδωμένους;
να σταματήσεις σ' εμπορεία Φοινικικά,
και τες καλές πραγμάτειες ν' αποκτήσεις,
σεντέφια και κοράλλια, κεχριμπάρια κ' έβενους,
και ηδονικά μυρωδικά κάθε λογής,
όσο μπορείς πιο άφθονα ηδονικά μυρωδικά;
σε πόλεις Αιγυπτιακές πολλές να πας,
να μάθεις και να μάθεις από τους σπουδασμένους.

Πάντα στο νου σου νάχεις την Ιθάκη.
Το φθάσιμον εκεί ειν' ο προορισμός σου.
Αλλά μη βιάζεις το ταξίδι διόλου.
Καλλίτερα χρόνια πολλά να διαρκέσει;
και γέρος πια ν' αράξεις στο νησί,
πλούσιος με όσα κέρδισες στο δρόμο,
μη προσδοκώντας πλούτη να σε δώσει η Ιθάκη.

Η Ιθάκη σ' έδωσε τα' ωραίο ταξίδι.
Χωρίς αυτήν δεν θάβγαινες στον δρόμο.
Άλλα δεν έχει να σε δώσει πια.

Κι αν πτωχική την βρεις, η Ιθάκη δεν σε γέλασε.
Έτσι σοφός που έγινες, με τόση πείρα,
ήδη θα το κατάλαβες οι Ιθάκες τι σημαίνουν.