Q&A with Josh Lanyon discussion
JUST FOR FUN
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Read Me a Poem Sing Me a Song
Mod
by Derek Walcott
Broad sun-stoned beaches.
White heat.
A green river.
A bridge,
scorched yellow palms
from the summer-sleeping house
drowsing through August.
Days I have held,
days I have lost,
days that outgrow, like daughters,
my harbouring arms.
Mod
And you know what? It makes me feel exactly like Joseph Hansen's writing, his description of stagnant, hot afternoons. Beautiful.
Yes, what Johanna said. Visual and evocative.
Mod
"Days I have held,
days I have lost..."
This has the impact of a really good haiku, the way it starts with a description of a place and season, then knocks you over with a deeper sense of time passing, past.
Mod
"Days I have held,
days I have lost..."
This has the impact of a really good haiku, the way it starts with a description of a place and season, then knocks you over with a deeper sen..."
Yes. I love poetry you can practically taste.
Death Is Nothing At All by Henry Scott HollandDeath is nothing at all.
It does not count.
I have only slipped away into the next room.
Nothing has happened.
Everything remains exactly as it was.
I am I, and you are you,
and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged.
Whatever we were to each other, that we are still.
Call me by the old familiar name.
Speak of me in the easy way which you always used.
Put no difference into your tone.
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.
Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.
Let my name be ever the household word that it always was.
Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it.
Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same as it ever was.
There is absolute and unbroken continuity.
What is this death but a negligible accident?
Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?
I am but waiting for you, for an interval,
somewhere very near,
just round the corner.
All is well.
Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost.
One brief moment and all will be as it was before.
How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!
The author, Henry Scott-Holland (1847 - 1918), a priest at St. Paul's Cathedral of London, did not intend it as a poem, it was actually delivered as part of a sermon in 1910. The sermon, titled, "Death the King of Terrors" was preached while the body of King Edward VII was lying in state at Westminster.
http://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem...
I found slightly different versions of this poem, this is especially notable in the endings.
Thank you, Antonella!This one here reminds me of my youth, growing up in California....
Psychoanalysis: An Elegy
Jack Spicer, 1925 - 1965
" What are you thinking about?
I am thinking of an early summer.
I am thinking of wet hills in the rain
Pouring water. Shedding it
Down empty acres of oak and manzanita
Down to the old green brush tangled in the sun,
Greasewood, sage, and spring mustard.
Or the hot wind coming down from Santa Ana
Driving the hills crazy,
A fast wind with a bit of dust in it
Bruising everything and making the seed sweet.
Or down in the city where the peach trees
Are awkward as young horses,
And there are kites caught on the wires
Up above the street lamps,
And the storm drains are all choked with dead branches.
What are you thinking?
I think that I would like to write a poem that is slow as a summer
As slow getting started
As 4th of July somewhere around the middle of the second stanza
After a lot of unusual rain
California seems long in the summer.
I would like to write a poem as long as California
And as slow as a summer.
Do you get me, Doctor? It would have to be as slow
As the very tip of summer.
As slow as the summer seems
On a hot day drinking beer outside Riverside
Or standing in the middle of a white-hot road
Between Bakersfield and Hell
Waiting for Santa Claus.
What are you thinking now?
I’m thinking that she is very much like California.
When she is still her dress is like a roadmap. Highways
Traveling up and down her skin
Long empty highways
With the moon chasing jackrabbits across them
On hot summer nights.
I am thinking that her body could be California
And I a rich Eastern tourist
Lost somewhere between Hell and Texas
Looking at a map of a long, wet, dancing California
That I have never seen.
Send me some penny picture-postcards, lady,
Send them.
One of each breast photographed looking
Like curious national monuments,
One of your body sweeping like a three-lane highway
Twenty-seven miles from a night’s lodging
In the world’s oldest hotel.
What are you thinking?
I am thinking of how many times this poem
Will be repeated. How many summers
Will torture California
Until the damned maps burn
Until the mad cartographer
Falls to the ground and possesses
The sweet thick earth from which he has been hiding.
What are you thinking now?
I am thinking that a poem could go on forever."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_...
It's a shame he died at the age of 40 as a result of alcoholism.
And thinking even more about California... Here's a bit of John Muir:On no subject are our ideas more warped and pitiable than on death...Let children walk with nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and as beautiful as life, and that the grave has no victory, for it never fights. All is divine harmony.
- Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf, p.41-42
Pollution, defilement, squalor are words that never would have been created had man lived conformably to Nature. Birds, insects, bears die as cleanly and are disposed of as beautifully as flies. The woods are full of dead and dying trees, yet needed for their beauty to complete the beauty of the living.... How beautiful is all Death!
- John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir, (1938), pg. 222.
This is the place I go to when I need food for my soul. Thank you for posting these lovely poems and thoughts.
Mtsnow13 wrote: "Thank you, Antonella!This one here reminds me of my youth, growing up in California....
Psychoanalysis: An Elegy
Jack Spicer, 1925 - 1965"
Thank you. I had never heard of him and I looked him up. I found this article: http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/arti...
He is very interesting biographically. Not just gay, but a member of the Mattachine Society, which is to say, very cutting edge. Refused to sign the Loyalty Oath at UC in 1950, which is to say again, very cutting edge, and it lost him his TAship, & he didn’t really have any other way to make a living, so his politics had a concrete dimension. Wow!
Mod
What Anne says. It's always so exciting to click open this topic. It's like opening a surprise gift. You never know what's inside, but you're sure it's something lovely and touching.
Thank you Mtsnow and Antonella for today's inspiring gifts! :-)
Antonella wrote: "Mtsnow13 wrote: "Thank you, Antonella!This one here reminds me of my youth, growing up in California....
Psychoanalysis: An Elegy
Jack Spicer, 1925 - 1965"
Thank you. I had never heard of him ..."
Wow. After digging even further, I feel empathy towards him, as he had alienated so many of his friends. Just before his death their was promise that he might make a comeback of sorts.. So sad. And the alienation from his family, not even because he was gay as of this point:
He was the elder of two sons. His parents, Dorothy Clause and John Lovely Spicer, were Midwesterners who met and married in Hollywood and ran a small hotel business. They followed the era’s conventional beliefs about child development and sent Spicer to Minnesota when he was three to live with his grandmother during his mother’s pregnancy.
This sudden rift left Spicer with a lasting resentment toward his brother and a sense of alienation from his family. Years later, when Spicer left his family in Los Angeles to attend the University of California at Berkeley, he refused to talk about his past and became so secretive that many believed him to be an orphan.
http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/ja...
Mtsnow13 wrote: "Wow. After digging even further, I feel empathy towards him, as he had alienated so many of his friends. Just before his death their was promise that he might make a comeback of sorts.. So sad. And the alienation from his family, not even because he was gay as of this point:"Thank you for digging deeper. So interesting, and so sad!
Josh wrote: "Midsummer Tobagoby Derek Walcott
Broad sun-stoned beaches.
White heat.
A green river.
A bridge,
scorched yellow palms
from the summer-sleeping house
drowsing through August...."
There is so much poetry in so few words and even the two word title tells you a lot, the season and the place. I should read some more Walcott. He deserved the Nobel prize.
David Whyte's 251 word poem rather suffers in comparison to Walcott's. If I were Whyte I'd have taken it through another couple of drafts and pared it back so that the stronger lines
...What shape waits in the seed of you
to grow and spread its branches
didn't get so buried in the undergrowth of the rest of the poem.
Antonella wrote: "Death Is Nothing At All by Henry Scott HollandDeath is nothing at all.
It does not count.
I have only slipped away into the next room.
Nothing has happened.
Everything remains exactly as it was..."
This reminded me of Christina Rossetti's poem on a similar theme.
Remember
Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you planned:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
Antonella wrote: Thank you. I had never heard of him and I looked him up. I found this article: http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/arti......"Fascinating article Antonella, especially about his writing process and the poetic conversations with the dead Garcia Lorca.
Johanna wrote: "Anne wrote: "This is the place I go to when I need food for my soul. Thank you for posting these lovely poems and thoughts."What Anne says. It's always so exciting to click open this topic. It's like opening a surprise gift. You never know what's inside, but you're sure it's something lovely and touching...."
What Anne and Johanna say. I tend to save this topic for when I want it, and I haven't looked for a few weeks and there are so many good things here! Thanks to Antonella and Caroline and Josh and Mtsnow for all the wonderful poetry.
My ninth grade English teacher was awesome. My class studied this poem to learn about the parts of speech and I still love it. We all laughed a lot that year and I have such fond memories of that class. Thank you, Ms. Rees, for teaching me grammar and for making it so much fun. Jabberwocky
By Lewis Carroll
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”
He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
Alison wrote: "My ninth grade English teacher was awesome. My class studied this poem to learn about the parts of speech and I still love it. We all laughed a lot that year and I have such fond memories of that c..."Thank you for sharing this cheerful poem, and your happy school memories.
I found out that there are lots of translations of it:
http://www76.pair.com/keithlim/jabber...
Alison wrote: "My ninth grade English teacher was awesome. My class studied this poem to learn about the parts of speech and I still love it. We all laughed a lot that year and I have such fond memories of that c..."This was a fun one! Thank you, Alison, for sharing!
Alison wrote: "My ninth grade English teacher was awesome. My class studied this poem to learn about the parts of speech and I still love it. We all laughed a lot that year and I have such fond memories of that c..."So funny!
Mod
Heh. I can imagine you guys having fun with this. It's great. :-)
"Alison wrote: "My ninth grade English teacher was awesome. My class studied this poem to learn about the parts of speech and I still love it. We all laughed a lot that year and I have such fond mem..Antonella wrote:
I found out that there are lots of translations of it:."
How wonderful that it has been translated into so many other languages, even Klingon! I'm just imagining an international Jammerwoch festival at which a representative of each country gets a chance to get up and recite their national version of the poem. There could also be fancy dress prizes for the translator who looks most like the Jabberwocky.
Alison - my English classes at school were never that much fun.
Caroline wrote: " "Alison wrote: "My ninth grade English teacher was awesome. My class studied this poem to learn about the parts of speech and I still love it. We all laughed a lot that year and I have such fond m..."It hasn't been translated into Norwegian :(. I'm deeply wounded and sad, it must be an oversight... :)
Anne wrote: It hasn't been translated into Norwegian :(. I'm deeply wounded and sad, it must be an oversight... :)..."But here it is in Norwegian være glad Anne.
Caroline wrote: "Anne wrote: It hasn't been translated into Norwegian :(. I'm deeply wounded and sad, it must be an oversight... :)..."But here it is in Norwegian være glad Anne."
Jeg er glad! I'm happy! Thank you Caroline. It's a fun translation, too :)
I was speaking with a friend tonight who has been searching for a job for some time, and I thought of this poem by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886):Hope is the Thing with Feathers
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
Susan wrote: "I was speaking with a friend tonight who has been searching for a job for some time, and I thought of this poem by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886):Hope is the Thing with Feathers
Hope is the th..."
Oh, this is so beautiful! Thank you. It's just what I needed today. Bless you.
Susan wrote: "I was speaking with a friend tonight who has been searching for a job for some time, and I thought of this poem by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886):Hope is the Thing with Feathers"
Such a great poem, thank you!
Mod
Hope is the Thing with Feathers"
This is a poem I go back to every once in a while because I find it so lovely and uplifting. Thank you for posting it, Susan.
HOME by Somali poet Warsan Shireno one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well
your neighbors running faster than you
breath bloody in their throats
the boy you went to school with
who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory
is holding a gun bigger than his body
you only leave home
when home won’t let you stay.
no one leaves home unless home chases you
fire under feet
hot blood in your belly
it’s not something you ever thought of doing
until the blade burnt threats into
your neck
and even then you carried the anthem under
your breath
only tearing up your passport in an airport toilets
sobbing as each mouthful of paper
made it clear that you wouldn’t be going back.
you have to understand,
that no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land
no one burns their palms
under trains
beneath carriages
no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck
feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled
means something more than journey.
no one crawls under fences
no one wants to be beaten
pitied
no one chooses refugee camps
or strip searches where your
body is left aching
or prison,
because prison is safer
than a city of fire
and one prison guard
in the night
is better than a truckload
of men who look like your father
no one could take it
no one could stomach it
no one skin would be tough enough
the
go home blacks
refugees
dirty immigrants
asylum seekers
sucking our country dry
niggers with their hands out
they smell strange
savage
messed up their country and now they want
to mess ours up
how do the words
the dirty looks
roll off your backs
maybe because the blow is softer
than a limb torn off
or the words are more tender
than fourteen men between
your legs
or the insults are easier
to swallow
than rubble
than bone
than your child body
in pieces.
i want to go home,
but home is the mouth of a shark
home is the barrel of the gun
and no one would leave home
unless home chased you to the shore
unless home told you
to quicken your legs
leave your clothes behind
crawl through the desert
wade through the oceans
drown
save
be hunger
beg
forget pride
your survival is more important
no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear
saying-
leave,
run away from me now
i dont know what i’ve become
but i know that anywhere
is safer than here.
A poem which Benedict Cumberbatch quoted in his message for a refugee charity:
http://www.theguardian.com/culture/20...
Antonella wrote: "HOME by Somali poet Warsan Shireno one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well
your neighbors running faster than..."
Makes you want to weep doesn't it. Warsan Shire is a wonderfully gifted poet who lives in London but speaks for all those forced to flee by war and who can never go home.
Thank you, Antonella. A heartbreaking poem thats says it all, really.
Mod
This one here reminds me of my youth, growing up in California....
Psychoanalysis: An Elegy
Jack Spicer, 1925 - 1965
" What are you thinking about?
I am thinking of an ear..."
I love that.
Mod
no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well
your neighbors running faster than..."
This is wrenching and terrible. Too easy to visualize with all that the news holds lately.
Mod
Hope is the Thing with Feathers
Hope is the th..."
This poem is like a soft, comfortable eiderdown you pull around you on a rainy afternoon.
Mod
LOL
Grade school memories of reading this one aloud as a class--much giggling.
Mod
Death is nothing at all.
It does not count.
I have only slipped away into the next room.
Nothing has happened.
Everything remains exactly as it ..."
I've read this many times (I didn't realize there were different versions) and it remains a favorite.
The Man In The Glass - Peter Dale Wimbrow Sr. (1934)When you get what you want in your struggle for self
And the world makes you king for a day
Just go to the mirror and look at yourself
And see what that man has to say.
For it isn’t your father, or mother, or wife
Whose judgment upon you must pass
The fellow whose verdict counts most in your life
Is the one staring back from the glass.
He’s the fellow to please – never mind all the rest
For he’s with you, clear to the end
And you’ve passed your most difficult, dangerous test
If the man in the glass is your friend.
You may fool the whole world down the pathway of years
And get pats on the back as you pass
But your final reward will be heartache and tears
If you’ve cheated the man in the glass.
Letter To A Teacher - Abraham LincolnHe will have to learn, I know,
that all men are not just,
all men are not true.
But teach him also that
for every scoundrel there is a hero;
that for every selfish Politician,
there is a dedicated leader…
Teach him for every enemy there is a friend,
Steer him away from envy,
if you can,
teach him the secret of
quiet laughter.
Let him learn early that
the bullies are the easiest to lick…
Teach him, if you can,
the wonder of books…
But also give him quiet time
to ponder the eternal mystery of birds in the sky,
bees in the sun,
and the flowers on a green hillside.
In the school teach him
it is far more honorable to fail
than to cheat…
Teach him to have faith
in his own ideas,
even if everyone tells him
they are wrong…
Teach him to be gentle
with gentle people,
and tough with the tough.
Try to give my son
the strength not to follow the crowd
when everyone is getting on the band wagon…
Teach him to listen to all men…
but teach him also to filter
all he hears on a screen of truth,
and take only the good
that comes through.
Teach him if you can,
how to laugh when he is sad…
Teach him there is no shame in tears,
Teach him to scoff at cynics
and to beware of too much sweetness…
Teach him to sell his brawn
and brain to the highest bidders
but never to put a price-tag
on his heart and soul.
Teach him to close his ears
to a howling mob
and to stand and fight
if he thinks he’s right.
Treat him gently,
but do not cuddle him,
because only the test
of fire makes fine steel.
Let him have the courage
to be impatient…
let him have the patience to be brave.
Teach him always
to have sublime faith in himself,
because then he will have
sublime faith in mankind.
This is a big order,
but see what you can do…
He is such a fine little fellow,
my son!
From a letter written by Abraham Lincoln to the Headmaster of a school in which his son was studying.
Alison wrote: "My ninth grade English teacher was awesome. My class studied this poem to learn about the parts of speech and I still love it. We all laughed a lot that year and I have such fond memories of that c..."I would loved to have a such a teacher! Thank you for sharing, Alison :-D
Antonella wrote: "HOME by Somali poet Warsan Shireno one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well
your neighbors running faster than..."
Very timely and thought-provoking. Makes me tear up actually...
Mtsnow13 wrote: "The Man In The Glass - Peter Dale Wimbrow Sr. (1934)When you get what you want in your struggle for self
And the world makes you king for a day
Just go to the mirror and look at yourself
And see..."
I like this. Often we are the harshest judges towards ourself. To be friends with the person in the mirror is needed to also feel compassion for others, in my experience.
When a poet reads a poem maybe it goes under ''What We Are Listening to/Watching''... Here is Kei Miller reading The Law Concerning Mermaids
Here is the text: http://themissingslate.com/2014/06/01...
This is another nice poem: The Color of The Singer Man Song
Kei Miller currently teaches Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow.
Antonella wrote: "When a poet reads a poem maybe it goes under ''What We Are Listening to/Watching''... Here is Kei Miller reading The Law Concerning Mermaids
Here is the text: http://themissingslate.com/2014/06/..."
Kei Miller is absolutely great isn't he. I'm going to the Aldeburgh poetry festival in November and will hear him read.
Earlier this week Claudia Rankine won the Forward Poetry prize for Best Collection with Citizen: An American Lyric It is an amazingly powerful book which speaks out about the reality of everyday racism in America. These are prose poems and you can hear Claudia Rankine reading here You are in the dark, in the car, watching the black-tarred street being swallowed by speed; he tells you his dean is making him hire a person of color when there are so many great writers out there.
You think maybe this is an experiment and you are being tested or retroactively insulted or you have done something that communicates this is an okay conversation to be having.
Why do you feel okay saying this to me? You wish the light would turn red or a police siren would go off so you could slam on the brakes, slam into the car ahead of you, be propelled forward so quickly both your faces would suddenly be exposed to the wind.
As usual you drive straight through the moment with the expected backing off of what was previously said. It is not only that confrontation is headache producing; it is also that you have a destination that doesn’t include acting like this moment isn’t inhabitable, hasn’t happened before, and the before isn’t part of the now as the night darkens and the time shortens between where we are and where we are going. ...
Thank you for mentioning Claudia Rankine, dear Caroline.
Antonella wrote: "HOME by Somali poet Warsan Shireno one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well
your neighbors running faster than..."
Wow. That's harrowing. Powerful.
Q&A with Josh Lanyon
Books mentioned in this topic
Mr. Cogito (other topics)Don't Mention the Children (other topics)
Writing Haiku: A Beginner's Guide to Composing Japanese Poetry (other topics)
Dear Writer: Pep Talks & Practical Advice for the Creative Life (other topics)
The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Zbigniew Herbert (other topics)Vanni Bianconi (other topics)
Pablo Neruda (other topics)
Michael Rosen (other topics)
Michael Rosen (other topics)
More...
In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake,
coming back to this life from the other
more secret, moveable and frighteningly honest world
where everything began,
there is a small opening into the new day
which closes the moment you begin your plans.
What you can plan is too small for you to live.
What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough
for the vitality hidden in your sleep.
To be human is to become visible
while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others.
To remember the other world in this world
is to live in your true inheritance.
You are not a troubled guest on this earth,
you are not an accident amidst other accidents
you were invited from another and greater night
than the one from which you have just emerged.
Now, looking through the slanting light of the morning window
toward the mountain presence of everything that can be
what urgency calls you to your one love?
What shape waits in the seed of you
to grow and spread its branches
against a future sky?
Is it waiting in the fertile sea?
In the trees beyond the house?
In the life you can imagine for yourself?
In the open and lovely white page on the writing desk?