24 posts tagged “poems”

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New Billy Collins Poems From His New Book.

Ballistics: Poems
Ballistics: Poems
Billy Collins

Addendum, by Billy Collins


What I forgot to tell you in that last poem
if you were paying attention at all
was that I really did love her at the time. 

The maritime light in the final lines
might have seemed contrived, 
as false as any puffed up italian sonnet, 

and the same could be said
for the high cliffside flowers
I claimed to have introduced to her hair

and sure, the many imaginary moons
I said were circling our bed as we slept, 
the cosmos enclosed by the walls of the room. 

But the truth is we loved 
to take long walks on the windy shore
not the shore between the sea of her

and the symbolic land of me, 
but the real shore of empty shells, 
the sun rising, the water running up and back. 
--------------------
I like this poem. I think Billy Collins latest book of poems was written during a divorce. I like this one too: 

from "What Love Does" by Billy Collins

Even as the ink is drying
on her name, it is off
to visit someone in another city, 

a city with two steeples
rows of brick chimney pots, 
and a school with a tree lined entrance.

It will travel through the night to get there
and it will arrive like an archangel
through an iron gate no one ever seemed to notice 
   before
-------------------
I like the part about the school with a tree lined entrance--love must have been visiting a married couple this time around. A poem with a light touch about missing someone.  



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Greenhouse Poems

Root Cellar by Theodore Roethke


Nothing would sleep in that cellar, dank as a ditch,
Bulbs broke out of boxes hunting for chinks in the dark,
Shoots dangled and drooped,
Lolling obscenely from mildewed crates,
Hung down long yellow evil necks, like tropical snakes.
And what a congress of stinks!--
Roots ripe as old bait,
Pulpy stems, rank, silo-rich,
Leaf-mold, manure, lime, piled against slippery planks.
Nothing would give up life:
Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath.

This poem is about how it feels to be not a noble person, but a down and dirty person, the kind of person who would never die a noble death, but who would chew glass to win, and how that's actually refreshing and alive. The villain is usually the best character--well not in Harry Potter.  

Child On Top Of A Greenhouse by Theodore Roethke

The wind billowing out the seat of my britches,
My feet crackling splinters of glass and dried putty,
The half-grown chrysanthemums staring up like accusers,
Up through the streaked glass, flashing with sunlight,
A few white clouds all rushing eastward,
A line of elms plunging and tossing like horses,
And everyone, everyone pointing up and shouting!

Moss-Gathering by Theodore Roethke

To loosen with all ten fingers held wide and limber
And lift up a patch, dark-green, the kind for lining cemetery baskets,
Thick and cushiony, like an old-fashioned doormat,
The crumbling small hollow sticks on the underside mixed with roots,
And wintergreen berries and leaves still stuck to the top,—
That was moss-gathering.
But something always went out of me when I dug loose those carpets
Of green, or plunged to my elbows in the spongy yellowish moss of the marshes:
And afterwards I always felt mean, jogging back over the logging road,
As if I had broken the natural order of things in that swampland;
Disturbed some rhythm, old and of vast importance,
By pulling off flesh from the living planet;
As if I had committed, against the whole scheme of life, a desecration.

The strangest thing is Rand and I gathered moss all the time when we were little to replant is as carpets in our forts, but i remember feeling this same way. I always felt weird removing the moss. 

Roethke: "In a dark time, the eye begins to see. We think by feeling. What is there to know?"

2 comments Tags: authors, poems, poets, greenhouses

What I am looking for is a fall poem about Wiccans

I like everything by Louise Gluck. What does it all mean?? who knows. 


All Hallows

Even now this landscape is assembling.
The hills darken. The oxen
Sleep in their blue yoke,
The fields having been
Picked clean, the sheaves
Bound evenly and piled at the roadside
Among cinquefoil, as the toothed moon rises:

This is the barrenness
Of harvest or pestilence
And the wife leaning out the window
With her hand extended, as in payment,
And the seeds
Distinct, gold, calling
Come here
Come here, little one

And the soul creeps out of the tree. 

Louise Glück
druids at stone henge--dont worry!

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childe roland to the dark tower came

Early Supper

by Barbara Howes (1914-1996)

Laughter of the children brings
          The kitchen down with laughter.
While the old kettle sings
Laughter of children brings
To a boil all savory things.
          Higher than beam or rafter,
Laughter of the children brings
          The kitchen down with laughter.

So ends an autumn day,
         Light ripples on the ceiling,
Dishes are stacked away;
So ends an autumn day,
The children jog and sway
         In comic dances wheeling.
So ends an autumn day,
        Light ripples on the ceiling.

They trail upstairs to bed,
        And night is a dark tower.
The kettle calls; instead
They trail upstairs to bed,
Leaving warmth, the coppery-red
       Mood of their carnival hour.
They trail upstairs to bed,
       And night is a dark tower.

mood of their carnival hour. Do you think this is a happy poem? I read this today over and over--i kept getting a weird emptiness kind of feeling from it even though on the surface it seems happy. something about the dark tower. I googled the dark tower and it comes from the poem childe roland to the dark tower came by robert browning which he said came to him in a dream. it is a very dark poem allegedly. it's hard to read. the line childe roland to the dark tower came comes from king lear--it is said by edgar during the storm scene, when he is pretending to be mad. it is such a brilliant line. childe doesn't mean a little kid but a knight who has not yet proven himself. anyway, all those things--king lear, and the browning poem are about emptiness too. so that's what makes this poem so mysterious. you could read this poem as a happy time in the kitchen with kids and going to bed tired. but then what is the dark tower doing in it? and what is the deal with the kind of scary form, called a triolet--eight lines where the first lines repeat at 4 and 7 and line 2 repeats at 8. i think it is the second line repeating that makes it sounds like something bad is coming. am i alone in this? comment if you agree or disagree.
 
barbara howes

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ode to my socks

"Ode to My Socks" by Pablo Neruda (translated by Robert Bly)

Mara Mori brought me
a pair of socks
which she knitted herself
with her sheepherder's hands,
two socks as soft as rabbits.
I slipped my feet into them
as if they were two cases
knitted with threads of twilight and goatskin,
Violent socks,
my feet were two fish made of wool,
two long sharks
sea blue, shot through
by one golden thread,
two immense blackbirds,
two cannons,
my feet were honored in this way
by these heavenly socks.
They were so handsome for the first time
my feet seemed to me unacceptable
like two decrepit firemen,
firemen unworthy of that woven fire,
of those glowing socks.

Nevertheless, I resisted the sharp temptation
to save them somewhere as schoolboys
keep fireflies,
as learned men collect
sacred texts,
I resisted the mad impulse to put them
in a golden cage and each day give them
birdseed and pieces of pink melon.
Like explorers in the jungle
who hand over the very rare green deer
to the spit and eat it with remorse,
I stretched out my feet and pulled on
the magnificent socks and then my shoes.

The moral of my ode is this:
beauty is twice beauty
and what is good is doubly good
when it is a matter of two socks
made of wool in winter.Latvian mittens to warm 9,000 summit hands
-------------------
what this poem remind me of is latvian mittens. I would love to learn to knit these. latvia is home to the oldest recorded mittens. before a girl was married, she had to fill her whole dowry chest with several hundred mittens, which would be doled out to the groom's family and to people who had helped to plan the wedding. They were also dedicated to cows, sheep and pigs and left in places where the couple would be living. every mitten had to be knit using a different pattern, and each mitten represents its own story, usually about latvian mythology. for example:

Jumis

Jumis - (from root jum- roof-) was the god of sky and fertility, symbolising also the germ of life and mysteriousness. He is associated with „double-plants,” such as two corn stalks or trees which have grown together and share a trunk or stem. During harvesting, some stalks of the crops are bent to the ground and secured in that location with stones. He is depicted as a short man with clothes that resemble ears of wheat, hops and barley.

 

zalktis

 

Zalktis - was the god of well-being and fertility, about whom little is known. He was associated with snakes.

 

krusts 

 

Krusts – (the Cross) the oldest ornamentation in all cultures. It guards, blesses and brings happiness.

 

 

 saule


Saule - (The Sun) was the goddess of the sun and fertility, patron goddess of the unlucky, including orphans. She was the mother of the daughters of the sun and lived on top of a mountain and flew across the sky on her chariot. At night, she sailed across the sea. She is a beloved Baltic Sun Goddess sometimes recognised as a red apple, setting in the west. Saule is reborn as her daughter, the morning star at the Winter Solstice.

 

mēness
Mēness - (Moon) was the god of the moon and war. He was one of the suitors of the Saules meitas (the Suns daughters). Mēness counted the stars and determined that Auseklis was missing, and stole Auseklis' bride. He was usually a rival of Saule, the sun, his wife who sheared him into pieces after discovering his adultery. Alternative names include Mehness, Meness, and Mėnulis in Lithuanian mythology.

 

LaimaLaima - (Luck) was the personification of fate and of luck, both good and bad. She was associated with childbirth, marriage, death, prolificacy, and domesticity. She was also the patron of pregnant women.

 

MāraMāra - (Mary) is the highest-ranking goddess, a female  Dievs (God). She may be thought of as the alternate side of Dievs (like in Yin Yang). Other Latvian goddesses, sometimes all of them, are considered her alternate aspects.


Auseklis
 

Auseklis - (from root aust- dawn-) also called Lielais Auseklis ("great Auseklis"). He was associated with Venus, and with both Meness and Saule, the moon and the sun. He is the symbol of the morning star, the usher of the new day.

 

 

ūsiņš 

Ūsiņš - was the god of horses, bees and light, mentioned by Jesuit Joannis Stribingius in 1606. His symbol indicates a sun-carriage. He took care of horses during the summer, then transferred the power to Mārtiņš at the festival of Mārtiņi.

 

 

Dievs

Dievs - (god) was the supreme god. The same word refers to the Christian deity in modern Latvian. In ancient Latvian mythology, Dievs was not just the father of the gods, he was the essence of them all. Every other deity was a different aspect or manifestation of Dievs; this is most true with Māra and Laima. The name Dievs was also interpreted as Sky. Though he courted Saule, no actual wife is known. His sons are known as Dieva deli (Sons of God). He is historically the same god of Indo-European religion as Tyr, Zeus, Jupiter and Dyaus Pita. 

 

Jānis 

Jānis - (or Jahnis) was a deity associated with Jāņi, the Midsummer's Night festival. After Christianization, he was associated with John the Baptist, through a process of syncretism. Once every  year, Jānis at midsummer came to bring luck and fertility to the people of Latvia. In modern Latvia, it is very popular name for males.





here is the link for this info! 

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genius poem

Lamb

by Michael Dennis Browne

Saw a lamb being born
Saw the shepherd chase and grab a big ewe
and dump her on her side.
Saw him rub some stuff from a bottle on his hands. 
Saw him bend and reach in. 
Heard two cries from the ewe.
Two sharp quick cries. Like high grunts.
Saw him pull out a slack white package.
Saw him lay it out on the ground.
Saw him kneel and take his teeth to the cord. 
Saw him slap the package around.
Saw it not move. 
Saw him bend and put his mouth to it and blow.
DOing this calmly, half kneeling.
Saw him slap it around some more. 
Saw my mother watching this. Saw Angela. Saw Peter. 
Saw Mimi, with a baby in her belly. 
Saw them standing in a row 
by the dry stone wall, in the wind. 
Saw the package move. 
Saw it was stained with red and  yellow. 
Saw the shepherd wipe red hands on the ewe's wool. 
Heard the other sheep in the meadow calling out. 
Saw the package shaking its head. 
Saw it try to stand. Saw it nearly succeed. 
Saw it have to sit and think about it a bit. 
Saw a new creature's first moment's of thinking. 
Felt the chill blowing through me. 
Heard the shepherd say: 
"Good day for lambing. Wind dries them out." 
Saw the package start to stand. Get half-way. Kneeling. 
Saw it push upward. Stagger, push. And make it. 
Stand, standing. 
Saw it surely was a lamb, a lamb, a lamb. 
Saw a lamb being born!

This is what I feel about a lot of things. You see what's happening. But all the while you feel an almost subconscious feeling of excitement, but you could never say why. This poem doesn't try to say why, it just conveys the exact feeling of watching something special happening that could be totally ordinary too, and feeling like you are bursting with an unknown feeling. it is like the feeling of being moved by art. There you are just looking at a painting or thinking a certain idea and all of a sudden--a feeling of excitement rises up in you. I also like how the last lines rhyme, which conveys that feeling of playful excitement. "stand standing/ saw it surely was a lamb, a lamb, a lamb." i think i felt this while looking at the dreamer by picasso in Las Vegas which steve wynn put his elbow through! in person the colors are much warmer and more beautiful
   

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remember cricket magazine?

gods, that was a good magazine. it really brings back the memories of bagels and goat cheese and the old blue leather couches at the house, fall days, having bangs, and hannah anderson leggings and such. now i like to read O magazine and the New Yorker, along with every other magazine in print, but they don't really compare. it's still in print! i'd like to get a subscription. 

 Cricket Magazine: December 2007 Issue by Cricket Magazine GroupCricket Magazine: March 2008 Issue by Cricket Magazine GroupCricket Magazine: August 2007 Issue by Cricket Magazine GroupCricket Magazine: November 2007 Issue by Cricket Magazine Group

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here's one to memorize

Advice


Someone dancing inside us 
learned only a few steps: 
the "Do-Your-Work" in 4/4 time, 
the "What-Do-You-Expect" Waltz. 
He hasn't noticed yet the woman 
standing away from the lamp. 
the one with black eyes 
who knows the rumba. 
and strange steps in jumpy rhythms 
from the mountains of Bulgaria. 
If they dance together, 
something unexpected will happen; 
if they don't, the next world 
will be a lot like this one. 

Bill Holm

reminded me of this book for some reason
and this: quentin blake
i remember reading this book by quentin blake which was so great. it was about how to draw and try to capture the essence of somebody or something no matter whether it looks perfect or not

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how to memorize a poem in little to no time!

i'll share a secret with you from my memory book...let's say you want to memorize a poem to be a little more like alden smith. There is an incredibly easy way. first break down the poem into the main ideas. then link those thoughts together with a ridiculous association, and the poem will come rushing back to you! let's take an example, how about that monica lewinsky poem:


Sunshine by Tom Simon

We would tell jokes
We would talk about our childhoods
Talk about current events

I was always giving him 
My stupid ideas
About what i thought should be done
in the administration or
Different views on things

I think back on it
And he always mad me smile
When i was with him

It was a lot of--
He was sunshine

Now break the poem down into key words. I would say the first key word is joking. the second is acting stupid. the third is smiling. the fourth and final is sunshine. now link these up with three links. first link joking and acting stupid. then link acting stupid and smiling. and finally link smiling and sunshine.

here are some sample links

1. picture the stupids from the book the stupids all wearing joker costumes
2. picture that when you smile your teeth spell out the word stupid. 
3. then picture instead of the sun, you see smiling lips 
 
if the links are ridiculous enough you'll never forget them. you could also try making the links into one continuous story like, a joker in a harlequin outfit is practicing acting stupid in a mirror, he smiles at himself and then the sun incinerates him. might not be ridiculous enough though. anyway, this will totally jog your memory. you may only have to read over a poem, even a much longer one a couple of times and you'll have the whole thing! you could memorize thousands of poems this way, or for that matter any kind of information or article or book you care to memorize. i've tried it and it works. 

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look at this

As i was looking for the other poems, i found this in the insomnia chapter of the book Poet's Choice.

By Osip Mandelstam, translated by Clarence Brown and W. S Merwin

Insomnia. Homer. Taut Sails. 
I've read to the middle of the list of ships:
the strung out flock, the stream of cranes
that once rose above Hellas.

Flight of cranes crossing strange Borders, 
leaders drenched with the foam of the gods, 
where are you sailing? What would Troy be to you, 
Men of Achaea, without Helen? 

The sea--Homer--it's all moved by love. But to whom
shall I listen? No sounds now from Homer, 
and the black sea roars like a speech 
and thunders up the bed. 

What I like about this, besides just liking the whole thing, is how it seems like the border between being awake and falling asleep, when you start seeing vivid flashes of dream-like images and worlds, and having really random nonsensical associations. Also i found this in another book: 
 
The Wave from the Aeneid, translated by Robert Pinsky

As when far off in the middle of the ocean
A breast-shaped curve of wave begins to whiten
And rise above the surface, then rolling on
Gathers and gathers until it reaches land
Huge as a mountain and crashes among the rocks
With a prodigious roar, and what was deep
comes churning up from the bottom in mighty swirls
Of sunken sand and living things and water--

So in the springtime every race of people
And all the creatures on earth or in the water,
Wild animals and flocks and all the birds
In all their painted colors, all rush to charge
Into the fire that burns them: love moves them all. 

This is the wave thundering up the bed. And the wave churning up all the stuff, the sunken sand and living things and water, from the deep is like what happens when we churn up dreamlike visions at night.  Also do you think W. S Merwin was inspired to write his poem about beds and rushing water (see last post) by this first poem? 
edward hopper

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