[OT] Poems

[reutbing0]

Some of my favorites

Walt Whitman

When I heard the learned astronomer.

When I heard the learn'd astronomer.
When the proofs, the figuures, were ranged in columns before me.
When I was shown the charts and diagrams to add, divide and measure them.
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture room.
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself
In the mystical moist night air, and from time to time.
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

Once I Pass'd through a Populous City

ONCE I pass'd through a populous city imprinting my brain for future
use with its shows, architecture, customs, traditions,
Yet now of all that city I remember only a woman I casually met
there who detain'd me for love of me,
Day by day and night by night we were together-all else has long
been forgotten by me,
I remember I say only that woman who passionately clung to me,
Again we wander, we love, we separate again,
Again she holds me by the hand, I must not go,
I see her close beside me with silent lips sad and tremulous.

Emily Dickinson
A bird came down the walk:
He did not know I saw;
He bit an angle-worm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw.

And then he drank a dew
From a convenient grass,
And then hopped sidewise to the wall
To let a beetle pass.

He glanced with rapid eyes
That hurried all abroad,--
They looked like frightened beads, I thought;
He stirred his velvet head

Like one in danger; cautious,
I offered him a crumb,
And he unrolled his feathers
And rowed him softer home

Than oars divide the ocean,
Too silver for a seam,
Or butterflies, off banks of noon,
Leap, splashless, as they swim.


I would also like to mention Ginsberg's Howl and Claude Mckays (or so I believe should look that one up) 'The Harlem Dancer'. O and Theodore Roethke, most notably 'I knew a woman' and Papa's Waltz'. I could mention many more but this a start (for american poetry at least).

 

[Cassiel666]

Hey ForceUser, I had Gunn as a professor at Berkeley before he retired. I'm surprised that at least a few of the people here have read more modern poets like Gunn and Creeley--Gunn is not Black Mountain but those who enjoy him or Creeley will probably also enjoy Denise Levertov, Gary Snyder and their compatriots.

As far as RPG related I'm noticing some major oversights: Dante, for one, even if only the Inferno, is incredible (if your Italian is bad the *best* translation is Mandelbaum's.. it's a work of art in its own right). William Blake also fits the mood of fantasy, and any love elegist is great as far as bards are concerned: Sappho, Catullus, Propertius, Horus, Ovid, Tibellus (I'm over-emphasizing the classics but hey, may as well start at the beginning), Shakespeare, Marlowe, etc. There are also the epics, of course: Homer's poems and Gilgamesh, and for modern occult campaigns James Merrill's book "The Changing Light at Sandover" (3 connected poems published together).

If you want to stretch your metaphysics I recommend Berssenbrugge and Rilke, and Eliot, but you won't get it out of Eliot unless you know what you're doing, so you should read the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita (at least) before you tackle him. There's more even to Prufrock than most people can tell you, but really it's just the beginning of Eliot (figuratively and literally). Big fans of Prufrock should also check out "Inventions of the March Hare."

Not to leave out the women: Sylvia Plath (at least the Ariel poems), Anne Sexton, Louise Gluck, H.D., Marianne Moore, Sulpicia, Sappho and Berssenbrugge and Levertov, whom I already mentioned.

There are hundreds more of course--this is just off the top of my head. More likely than not, though taste depending, you'll enjoy the symbolists too (Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Valery, Verlaine etc.). Jim Morrison was a big Rimbaud fan anyway.

So what am I forgetting?

 

[LcKedovan]

Ok, so I can't say that this one ranks up with the esteemed list above, but I wanted to post one of my favourite poems... one that I wrote when in college. I'll also add one of my "Cthulhuesque" ones after... I wrote these a long time ago, so please forgive if you find them crap

Nice Guys Finish Last

I know I have no chance with you
Lots of money and looks would do
I just don't have what others give
The chance for love is all I have

Once again, nice guys finish last
the way it's always been in past
Maybe I should change my ways,
to the rude and crude that get the babes

Maybe, Right! I'll never switch
My inner self is always this
No matter what will come to pass
I know, nice guys finish last.

© 1995 William Ehgoetz

Deadlands

The flashlight leads the way below
The misty graveyard, covered in snow.
The toppled grave revealed the way
Into the tunnels, dark and grey.
A gurgle echos from the depths,
The realm of ghouls, awakened perhaps?
Creeping, shuffling, coming soon
The creatures undead, bringers of doom.
Uttering chants to forgotten Gods
I pray that I can beat the odds
Of escaping this rancid smelling place
Where vaguely manlike forms erase
the knowledge that they lurk below
The misty graveyard, covered in snow.

© 1995 William Ehgoetz



-W.

 

[wighair]

My favourite from HPL...

Polaris - From the short story

Slumber, watcher, till the spheres,
Six and twenty thousand years
Have revolv'd, and I return
To the spot where I now burn.
Other stars anon shall rise
To the axis of the skies;
Stars that soothe and stars that bless
With a sweet forgetfulness:
Only when my round is o'er
Shall the past disturb thy door.

and another by Shelley...

Ozymandius

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattererd visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozimandius, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

 

[reutbing0]

Bump

This is a fascinating thread that deserves a bump. Post your favorites ! (well as long as they are in the Public Domain that is)

 

[Nissien]

A couple of my favourites

Here are a few that I like ...

War Sonnet V. The Soldier -- Rupert Brooke

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.


Us Two -- A.A. Milne

Wherever I am, there's always Pooh,
There's always Pooh and Me.
Whatever I do, he wants to do,
"Where are you going today?" says Pooh ...
"Well, that's very odd 'cos I was too.
Let's go together," says Pooh, says he.
"Let's go together," says Pooh.

"What's twice eleven?" I said to Pooh,
("Twice what?" said Pooh to Me.)
"I think it ought to be twenty two."
"Just what I think myself," said Pooh.
"It wasn't an easy sum to do,
But that's what it is," said Pooh, said he.
"That's what it is," said Pooh.

"Let's look for dragons," I said to Pooh.
"Yes, let's," said Pooh to Me.
We crossed the river and found a few ...
"Yes, those are dragons all right," said Pooh.
"As soon as I saw their beaks I knew.
That's what they are," said Pooh, said he.
"That's what they are," said Pooh.

"Let's frighten the dragons," I said to Pooh.
"That's right," said Pooh to Me.
"I'm not afraid," I said to Pooh,
And I held his paw and I shouted "Shoo!
Silly old dragons!" ... and off they flew.
"I wasn't afraid," said Pooh, said he,
"I'm never afraid with you."

So wherever I am, there's always Pooh,
There's always Pooh and Me.
"What would I do?" I said to Pooh,
"If it wasn't for you," and Pooh said ... "True,
It isn't much fun for One, but Two
Can stick together," says Pooh, says he.
"That's how it is," says Pooh.


I'd also like to mention Tony Harrison's poetry, "Ode to a Nightingale" by Keats, and Robert Browning's "Childe Rowland to the Dark Tower Came" (how can you not love a poem that starts "My first thought was, he lied in every word, That hoary cripple"?).

 

[alsih2o]

c.k. williams gives us :

It Is This Way with Men

They are pounded into the earth
like nails; move an inch,
they are driven down again.
The eart is sore with them.
It is a spiny fruit
that has lost hope
of being raised and eaten.
It can only ripen and ripen.
And men, they too are wounded.
They too are sifted from their loss
and are without hope. The core
softens. The pure flesh softens
and melts. There are thorns, there
are the dark seeds, and they end.

 

[Schmoe]

Two of my favorites

Design
Robert Frost

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth—
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth—
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?—
If design govern in a thing so small.


Bereft
Robert Frost

Where had I heard this wind before
Change like this to a deeper roar?
What would it take my standing there for,
Holding open a restive door,
Looking downhill to a frothy shore?
Summer was past and day was past.
Somber clouds in the west were massed.
Out in the porch's sagging floor
Leaves got up in a coil and hissed,
Blindly struck at my knee and missed.
Something sinister in the tone
Told me my secret must be known:
Word I was in the house alone
Somehow must have gotten abroad,
Word I was in my life alone,
Word I had no one left but God.

 

[Schmoe]

Another masterpiece

One of the most moving poems I've ever read...

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
T.S. Elliot

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question . . .
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair--
[They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!"]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin--
[They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!"]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:--
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all--
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all--
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
. . . . .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? . . .

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

. . . . .

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep . . . tired . . . or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet--and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"--
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: "That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all."

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the
floor--
And this, and so much more?--
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
"That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all."

. . . . .

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old . . .I grow old . . .
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

 

[Schmoe]

Illithid Haiku

Clams

Salty putrescence
Quivering mass of jelly
Chewy, like your brain.


Noah Dowd, copyright 1995