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December 22nd, 2009
greatpoets
[romanticxnight]
 | 07:35 pm - The News- Arda Collins
At last, terror has arrived.
Next door, the house has gone up in flames.
A woman runs from the burning wreck, her face smeared
with blood and ashes. She screams that her children are kidnapped.
It's truly exciting, and what more would anyone ask?
For a rare and beautiful egg to present itself in the grass?
For sex with the liquor store owner to progress into something meaningful?
You don't know what I've done in front of the mirror.
I've pulled my shorts up high like a thong. I've walked back and forth
doing little kicks and making faces. I've stopped, I've stared.
I try to get my mind around the sight of myself. I make a face.
Of great seriousness. I imagine that I've just received
a large and upsetting piece of news. Then I look into my eyes.
Can I guess what I am thinking? Can I tell you what it is?
--
I have a request- does anyone have some Christmas/holiday love poems? Thanks in advance :)
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December 21st, 2009
greatpoets
[bohemiabythesea]
 | 07:41 pm - Carol Ann Duffy - Cold
Carol Ann Duffy
Cold
It felt so cold, the snowball which wept in my hands,
and when I rolled it along in the snow, it grew
till I could sit on it, looking back at the house,
where it was cold when I woke in my room, the windows
blind with ice, my breath undressing itself on the air.
Cold, too, embracing the torso of snow which I lifted up
in my arms to build a snowman, my toes, burning, cold
in my winter boots; my mother's voice calling me in
from the cold. And her hands were cold from peeling
then dipping potatoes into a bowl, stopping to cup
her daughter's face, a kiss for both cold cheeks, my cold nose.
But nothing so cold as the Februrary night I opened the door
in the Chapel of Rest where my mother lay, neither young, nor old,
where my lips, returning her kiss to her brow, knew the meaning of cold.
(Published in Poetry Review 99:2, Summer 2009.)
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December 20th, 2009
greatpoets
[schadenfreudeli]
 | 02:12 pm - "It Denotes" by Julius Chingono
"It Denotes"
If you walk by
And find me,
Lying on my side, curled
Like a comma
On a street corner
With no blanket
To cover myself
I am not in a coma
It denotes . . .
Stop briefly
And ponder over these times.
If you find me
Lying on my side
Legs stretched and straight
Head and shoulders
Bent forward, towards my loins
Like a question mark
It denotes . . .
Provide explanations . . .
Why certain people
Happen to sleep
On street pavements.
If you find me
Lying on my back
My whole body stretched
At a horizontal attention
like an exclamation mark
It denotes . . .
I am in shock
Do not bother
I will recover.
And when you find me coiled
My head between my legs
Round like a full stop
It denotes . . .
Stop and render first aid
Subject freezing.
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greatpoets
[orange_fell]
 | 01:52 am - "They"
"They"
Siegfried Sassoon
The Bishop tells us: "When the boys come back
"They will not be the same; for they'll have fought
"In a just cause: they lead the last attack
"On Anti-Christ; their comrades' blood has bought
"New right to breed an honourable race,
"They have challenged Death and dared him face to face."
"We're none of us the same!" the boys reply.
"For George lost both his legs; and Bill's stone blind;
"Poor Jim's shot through the lungs and like to die;
"And Bert's gone syphilitic: you'll not find
"A chap who's served that hasn't found some change."
And the Bishop said: "The ways of God are strange!"
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greatpoets
[aimlesswanderer]
 | 12:37 am - Selecting a Reader -- Ted Kooser
Selecting a Reader
by Ted Kooser
First, I would have her be beautiful,
and walking carefully up on my poetry
at the loneliest moment of an afternoon,
her hair still damp at the neck
from washing it. She should be wearing
a raincoat, an old one, dirty
from not having money enough for the cleaners.
She will take out her glasses, and there
in the bookstore, she will thumb
over my poems, then put the book back
up on its shelf. She will say to herself,
"For that kind of money, I can get
my raincoat cleaned." And she will.
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December 19th, 2009
greatpoets
[dirrtypop01]
 | 01:15 pm - Request: contemporary poetry
Hi all,
I have a request, and I hope that's okay. For an assignment, I have to write a book review of a book/volume of contemporary poetry. Here, that's being defined as released within the past 3 years. I don't have a very well grasp (read: any) of poetry that's this recent, and I'm wondering if anyone here would care to give me some recommendations of some books that would fit for this assignment, and that you think would be interesting and good to review.
Thanks for any recommendations you can offer.
Current Music: Brand New - Jesus Christ | Powered by Last.fm
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December 18th, 2009
greatpoets
[suddenlynita]
 | 04:54 pm - The Looking Glass
The Looking Glass---Kamala Das
Getting a man to love you is easy
Only be honest about your wants as Woman.
Stand nude before the glass with him
So that he sees himself the stronger one
And believes it so, and you so much more
Softer, younger, lovelier.
Admit your Admiration.
Notice the perfection Of his limbs,
his eyes reddening under The shower,
the shy walk across the bathroom floor,
Dropping towels, and the jerky way he Urinates.
All the fond details that make
Him male and your only man.
Gift him all,
Gift him what makes you woman,
the scent of Long hair,
the musk of sweat between the breasts,
The warm shock of menstrual blood,
and all your Endless female hungers.
Oh yes,getting A man to love is easy,
but living Without him
afterwards may have to be Faced.
A living without life when you move
Around, meeting strangers, with your eyes that
Gave up their search, with ears that hear only
His last voice calling out your name and your
Body which once under his touch had gleamed
Like burnished brass, now drab and destitute.
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greatpoets
[crashing_buses]
 | 09:59 am - Juliana Spahr - Some of We and the Land That Was Never Ours
Note: Someone was singing we are all in this world together. There were some grapes. Someone was feeding the sparrows, making them perch on the thumb and eat out of the hand if they wanted any food. The sparrows preferred to eat on the ground. In memory there was a story of a French grandfather who left early in my father's life, moved to Canada, and died by falling off a horse. We were tourists. There were long lines. My mother waited in them. I sat outside and took notes. I thought about the vines that grew in France, then came as cuttings to California, then went back to France after a blight. I thought about who owned what. And divisions. And songs sung in bars. And inaugural poems. I was just trying to figure out this day. I came home and used a translation machine to push my notes back and forth between French and English until a new sort of English came out, this poem.
1
We are all. We of all the small ones are. We are all. We of all the small ones are. We are in this world. We are in this world. We are together. We are together. And some of we are eating grapes. Some of we are all eating grapes. Some of we are all eating. We are all in this world today. Some of we are eating grapes today in this world. And some of we let ourselves eat grapes. In the eating of grapes. We of all the small ones are what eats grapes. In the world of grapes. Eating grapes. We of all the small ones are what eats. Some of we are all together in the grapes. We of all the small ones are today in this world. In this world. By eating grapes. To eat grapes. Some of we let ourselves eat grapes today in this world. Some of we let ourselves be all together in the grapes. In the world of the grapes. In this world. In the grapes. In the grapes. In taste. In the taste. In fermentation. In fermentation. In wine. Out of the wine. In fresh tight skin. In the fresh tight skin. In seed. Out of seed. In moisture. In moisture. In today. In today. We are all in this world together. We of all the small ones are together in this world. In the we are all together. In we let ourselves be all together. Some of we are eating. Some of we let ourselves eat. Some of we are all together eating grapes. Some of we let ourselves be all the grapes to be eaten together. In this place. In this place. In the eating. While eating. In the grapes some of we are all eating. In all the undeniable grapes of we let us leave itself let ourselves be what eats. In the eating of grapes. By eating grapes. We are all today. We of all the small ones are today. The grapes in the eating. In the we are. In the are. In the grapes are. Eating grapes. In the we the world. In the together. Some of we are all in this world together eating grapes.
( Read more... )
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greatpoets
[suddenlynita]
| 12:02 am - Jibananda Das
When once I have gone out of this body
Shall I not come back to this earth again?
May I come back again
On some winter night
With the pitiful flesh of an ice-cold orange
To the bedside of some dying man I know
Jibananda Das
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December 17th, 2009
greatpoets
[thetasteless]
 | 04:18 pm - .
The Intruder
by David R. Slavitt
He broke in, picking the lock, or having stolen
a key, and he knew the code to disarm the alarm,
some homeless guy, a crazy street-person, harmless
you’d think, but you’re wrong: he likes it here, and he stays.
He rummages through my closets and dresser drawers
and tries on my clothing, which happens, of course, to fit him.
He runs my comb through his hair. He uses my toothbrush.
He lies down on my side of the bed for a nap.
He has settled in. In the mornings, he sits at my place
and has his coffee and toast, reading my paper.
He borrows my car and drives to meet my classes;
during my office hours he meets with my students.
We don’t look at all alike, but he’s living my life.
I try to signal my friends with whom he dines
or my wife with whom he is sleeping: "This isn’t me.
He’s an impostor. How can you not have noticed?
He’s old! He’s nasty. Also, he’s clearly crazy!
How can he fool you this way? And how can you stand him?"
They pay me no mind, pretending not to have noticed.
Could they somehow be in on this together?
But what is his purpose? Was he also displaced
from apartment, job, and wife? Did that turn him desperate?
And must I go out now myself to find a victim,
break into his house, and begin living his life?
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December 16th, 2009
greatpoets
[fleaux]
 | 05:53 pm
Star Dust
By Frank Bidart
Above the dazzling city lies starless
night. Ruthless, you are pleased the price of one
is the other. That night
dense with date palms, crazy with the breath-
less aromas of fresh-cut earth,
black sky thronging with light so thick the fixed
unbruised stars bewildered
sight, I wanted you dazzled, wanted you drunk.
As we lie on our backs in close dark parallel furrows newly
dug, staring up at the consuming sky, light
falling does not stop at flesh: each thing hidden, buried
between us now burns and surrounds us,
visible, like breath in freezing air. What you ignore or refuse
or cannot bear. What I hide that I ask, but
ask. The shimmering improvisations designed to save us
fire melts to law. I touched the hem of your garment. You opened
your side, feeding me briefly just enough to show me why I ask.
Melancholy, as if shorn, you cover as ever each glowing pyre
with dirt. In this light is our grave. Obdurate, you say: We
are darkness. We are the city
whose brightness blots the stars from night.
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greatpoets
[kairia]
 | 11:33 pm - Subha-e-Azadi / Dawn of Freedom - Faiz Ahmed Faiz
I can't trust myself to do an adequate job of describing Faiz Ahmed Faiz so hit google or Wikipedia for that. "Dawn of Freedom" was written on the subject of the 1947 partition of the subcontinent into Pakistan and India and for me, the poem's message still lives today. Of course I realize the irony of posting this on December 16th but couldn't resist. /ramble Both the English translation and original Urdu have been provided =)
AUGUST 1947 - DAWN OF FREEDOM
This tattered raiment of darkness
This sputtering of dawn.
This is not the dawn that we had hoped for.
This is not the dawn we had set out for.
Through the darkness,
Towards the last station of the night stars;
Hoping to find the end of our journey,
Somewhere on the distant shore
Of the languishing sea of night,
Where our sorrow-laden ship
Would at last come home to anchor.
Through youth's warm blooded venues
As we traveled,
Many a hand tugged at our cloak
From beauty`s sleepless abode
Many arms and bodies beckoned us
But very dear was the blush of dawn,
And inviting was the glowing raiment
Of the maidens of light.
Brisk was then the desire
And suppressed entirely the thought of fatigue.
Darkness now has cleaved from light,
We hear.
The Journey has finally now ended,
We hear.
How changed are the rules
For those who have struggled painfully.
Permitted now only is the pleasure
From the delusion of attainment;
Forbidden is the persistent pain of struggle.
Alas! Though the spark of vision,
The fire raging in the mind,
The heartache, none has dimmed.
From whither came the gust of dawn's breeze,
And where did it go?
The flickering lamp on the wayside,
Does not know.
The darkness of the night has not ended yet.
The moment of liberation of hearts and minds
Has not come yet.
Keep going, for we have not come
To the end of our journey yet!
( Original text of the poem, in Urdu )
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greatpoets
[velvetine01]
 | 01:25 pm - Refusing the sweetness
Hunger | Jack Gilbert
Digging into the apple
with my thumbs.
Scraping out the clogged nails
and digging deeper.
Refusing the moon color.
Refusing the smell and memories.
Digging in with the sweet juice
running along my hands unpleasantly.
Refusing the sweetness.
Turning my hands to gouge out chunks.
Felling the juice sticky
on my wrists. The skin itching.
Getting to the wooden part.
Getting to the seeds.
Going on.
Not taking anyone's word for it.
Getting beyond the seeds.
from Monolithos
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December 15th, 2009
greatpoets
[moireach]
 | 08:10 pm - Marfa, Linda Gregg
Marfa
Linda Gregg
They said they were going to telephone me
here in faraway Marfa, Texas, to ask me about
my poetry, past and future. I am here struggling
with the desert and used-up words.
Stillness, sacred, death, peace and farness.
With God's body, dreamless and sleeping
while awake. Nothing between me and it.
Empty and willing to be judged by Heaven.
Readiness to be received. God might be the old
version who struck people down because somebody
asked him to. A kind of courtyard for the Mafia.
The desert after rain with a three-colored rainbow.
A place of your-guess-is-as-good-as-mine.
Christ as the sun going down when the border
patrol cars are dragging tires on the dirt road
every evening to look for footprints
the next morning. I keep thinking that if I go
alone into the size of this silence, we can
straighten things out. To know what to question,
and what to believe. How to let my heart
split open. To print in clear light
the changing register of this grand world.
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greatpoets
[astrophage]
 | 04:02 pm - Robert Browning: A Grammarian's Funeral
A Grammarian's Funeral, Shortly After the Revival of Learning in Europe
Robert Browning
Let us begin and carry up this corpse,
Singing together.
Leave we the common crofts, the vulgar thorpes
Each in its tether
Sleeping safe on the bosom of the plain,
Cared-for till cock-crow:
Look out if yonder be not day again
Rimming the rock-row!
That's the appropriate country; there, man's thought,
Rarer, intenser,
Self-gathered for an outbreak, as it ought,
Chafes in the censer.
Leave we the unlettered plain its herd and crop;
Seek we sepulture
On a tall mountain, citied to the top,
Crowded with culture!
All the peaks soar, but one the rest excels;
Clouds overcome it;
No! yonder sparkle is the citadel's
Circling its summit.
Thither our path lies; wind we up the heights:
Wait ye the warning?
Our low life was the level's and the night's;
He's for the morning.
Step to a tune, square chests, erect each head,
'Ware the beholders!
This is our master, famous, calm and dead,
Borne on our shoulders.
( Sleep, crop and herd! sleep, darkling thorpe and croft... )
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greatpoets
[velvetine01]
 | 03:55 pm - what poets do between poems
Between Poems | Jack Gilbert
A lady asked me
what poets do
between poems.
Between passions
and visions. I said
that between poems
I provided for death.
She meant as to jobs
and commonly.
Commonly, I provide
against my death,
which comes on.
And give thanks
for the women I have
been privileged to
in extreme.
from Monolithos
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greatpoets
[childecleon]
 | 12:56 pm - Virginitiphobia
Virginitiphobia
-The fear of rape
They took her out to the field in a new black truck
that smelled like apples and the denim
of a young man's thigh. They turned the engine off
but left the radio on, the headlights lighting
the woods to the west, toward the mountains, then
to California. They laid her down
and tied her hands over her head with field-grass.
She could have pulled them free, no problem,
ripped the roots right out of that soft dark dirt.
They told her she was beautiful.
They took off their shirts. She saw the black of their arms
backlit in gold by the truck's headlights.
One of them started to crack a joke, but stopped
halfway in. They took off her shoes
and touched her ankles, but only barely. She waited
for them to lift the hem of her skirt
( Read more... )
-Patrick Ryan Frank
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December 14th, 2009
greatpoets
[little_lady_d]
 | 07:10 pm
Shining with the luster
of moon in autumn
may She, goddess Language,
stripping from my
heart the endless woven darkness,
cast the nature of all things
into light.
Vishvanatha (trans. by Andrew Schelling)
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greatpoets
[smithkingsley]
 | 01:53 pm - A poem for the season
And the Cantilevered Inference Shall Hold the Day
by Michael Blumenthal
Things are not as they seem: the innuendo of everything makes
itself felt and trembles towards meanings we never intuited
or dreamed. Take, for example, how the warbler, perched on a
mere branch, can kidnap the day from its tediums and send us
heavenwards, or how, held up by nothing we really see, our
spirits soar and then, in a mysterious series of twists and turns,
come to a safe landing in a field, encircled by greenery. Nothing
I can say to you here can possibly convince you that a man
as unreliable as I have been can smuggle in truths between tercets
and quatrains on scraps of paper, but the world as we know
is full of surprises, and the likelihood that here, in the shape
of this very bird, redemption awaits us should not be dismissed
so easily. Each year, days swivel and diminish along their inscrutable
axes, then lengthen again until we are bathed in light we were not
prepared for. Last night, lying in bed with nothing to hold onto
but myself, I gazed at the emptiness beside me and saw there, in the
shape of absence, something so sweet and deliberate I called it darling.
No one who encrusticates (I made that up!) his silliness in a bowl,
waiting for sanctity, can ever know how lovely playfulness can be,
and, that said, let me wish you a Merry One (or Chanukah if you
prefer), and may whatever holds you up stay forever beneath you,
and may the robin find many a worm, and our cruelties abate,
and may you be well and happy and full of mischief as I am,
and may all your nothings, too, hold something up and sing.
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greatpoets
[writtenbyhand]
 | 03:53 pm - Tremble - Conchitina Cruz
The boys in her room are hiding in the same places. Who can explain their thrill in finding and being found? One always takes the closet, the other the hollow under her bed. One, two, three, the smaller one counts, and by ten, she is lost in the mystery she's reading, her favorite detective breaking a code, on the verge of understanding -
She turns the page. Downstairs, their mother is turning over another omelette in the pan. Milk, detergent, soy sauce, she recites in the same tone she will use later to say wash your hands, finish your food, take your vitamins. She traces her mother's voice in the lines of the story she hasn't finished but knows very well, the detective about to be caught in the act of deciphering, able to escape with the answers in the end. Her brothers touch base, another game ends and begins, nothing ever lost in the predictable plot. She marks the page with a pamphlet given in school, the story of her body told in a diagram, the way to plot her own cycle taught in five steps.
This is the beauty of the declarative, like gravity, like the roses on the curtains, always abloom. It's as easy as one, two, three, her smaller brother counts, the hollow under her bed shuddering with contained laughter. Ten! he shouts, naming the last number before something explodes, something is thrown out of orbit.
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