Member: devondoyle

Poet of the Day: Seamus Heaney

I. Death of a Naturalist

All year the flax-dam festerd in teh heart
Of the townland; green and heavy headed
Flax had rottered there, weighted down by huge sods.
Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun.
Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles
Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell.
There were dragon-flies, spotted butterflies,
But best of all was the warm thick slobber
Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water
In the shade of the banks. Here, every spring,
I would fill jampotfuls of the jellied
Specks to range on window-sills at home,
On shelves at school, and wait and watch until
The fattening dots burst into nimble-
Swimming tadpoles. Miss Walls would tell us how
The daddy frog was called a bullfrog,
And how he croaked, and how the mammy frog
Laid hundreds of little eggs and this was
Frogspawn. You could tell the weather by frogs too
For they were yellow in the su and brown
In rain.

__Then one hot day when fields were rank
With cowdung in the grass, the angry frogs
Invaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hedges
To a coarse croaking that I had not heard
Before. The air was thick with a bass chorus
Right down the dam, gross-bellied frogs were cocked
On sods; their loose necks pulsed like snails. Some
__hopped:

The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat
Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting.
I sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kings
Were gathered there for vengeance, and I knew
That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.

II. Mid-Term Break

I sat all morning in the college sick bay,
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At two o'clock our neighbours drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying --
He had always taken funerals in his stride --
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand

And tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble'.
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,
He lay int eh four foot box as in his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four foot box, a foot for every year.

III. The Early Purges

I was six when I first saw kittens drown.
Dan Taggart pitched them, 'the scraggy wee shits',
Into a bucket; a frail metal sound.

Soft paws scraping like mad. But their tiny din
Was soon soused. They were slung on the snout
Of the pump and the water pumped in.

'Sure isn't it better for them now?' Dan said.
Like wet gloves they bobbed and shone till he sluiced
Them out on the dunghill, glossy and dead.

Suddenly frightened, for days I sadly hung
Roudn the yard, watching teh three sogged remains
Turn mealy and crisp as old summer dung

Until I forgot them. But the fear came back
When Dan trapped big rats, snared rabbits, shot crows
Or, with a sickening tug, pulled old hens' necks

Still, living displaces false sentiments
And now, when shrill pups are prodded to drown,
I just shrug, 'Bloody pups'. It makes sense:

'Prevention of cruelty' talk cuts ice in town
Where they consider death unnatural,
But on well-run farms pests have to be kept down.

(I think from now on I'll just do it every once in a while, focus on a poet, and post numerous poems, two or three.)

posted by RSHabroptilus at 2:29 am (EST) on Nov 16, 2009

It's okay. It's not as good as its title, and there's really not a lot to it at all. Very shallow, but fun. I guess.

posted by RSHabroptilus at 5:55 pm (EST) on Nov 10, 2009

Poet of the Day: Jacques Prévert

I.

In merrygorounds of lies
The red horse of your smile
Goes round
And I stand rooted there
With the sad whip of reality
And i have nothing to say
Your smile is as true
As my home truths.

II.

Un cheval s'ecroule au milieu d'une allee
Les feuilles tombent sur lui
Notre amour frissonne
Et le soleil aussi.

III.

I am as I am
I'm made that way
When I feel like laughing
I burst right out
I love the one who loves me
Is it my fault especially
If it's not the same one
I love each time
I am as i am
I'm made that way
What else do you expect
What do you expect of me

I'm made to please
And can't change that
My heels are too high
My back too bent
My breasts much too hard
And my eyes too circled
And after all
What's it to you
I am as i am
I please whom I please
What's it to you
What happened to me
Yes I loved someone
Yes someone loved me
As children love each other
Simply knowing to love
love love...
Why ask me
I'm here to please you
And can't change that.

I've been glimpsing through my old copy of Leaves of Grass lately. So beautiful, Whitman's natural poetry. You need to find an old ragged pocket copy somewheres to carry with you everywheres for a few quick glances each and every day.

posted by RSHabroptilus at 1:08 am (EST) on Nov 6, 2009

Your mom sounds like a good poet.

POEM:

http://www.ucsc.edu/oncampus/currents/98...

--------Kenneth Patchen

(Yes, you have to click it, it's a picture-poem.)

posted by RSHabroptilus at 4:18 pm (EST) on Nov 3, 2009

I didn't read Old Possum, I just noticed I forgot to add it on here.

POEM.

It's August and I have not
read a book in six months
except something called The Retreat From Moscow
by Caulaincourt.
Nevertheless, I am happy
riding in a car with my brother
and drinking from a pint of Old Crow.
We do not have any place in mind to go,
we are just driving.
If I closed my eyes for a minute
I would be lost, yet
I could gladly lie down and sleep forever
beside this road.
My brother nudges me.
Any minute now, something will happen.

-----Raymond Carver-----

I think I like his poetry more than his fiction, which I like less and less the more I read.

And since I just read it...

At night, when the sea cradles me
And the pale star gleam
Lies down on its broad waves,
Then I free myself wholly
From all activity and all the love
And stand silent and breathe purely,
Alone, alone cradled by the sea
That lies there, cold and silent, with a thousand lights.
Then I have to think of my friends
And my gaze sinks into their gazes
And I ask each one, silent, alone:
"Are you sill mine?"
Is my sorrow a sorrow to you, my death a death?
Do you feel from my love, my grief,
Just a breath, just an echo?"

And the sea peacefully gazes back, silent,
And smiles: no.
And no greeting and no answer comes from anywhere.

------Hermann Hesse-----------

I enjoy his books, but his poetry was just boring. And repetitive. This was one of the better ones, IMO.

posted by RSHabroptilus at 7:21 pm (EST) on Oct 27, 2009

POEM.

The best thing
about being famous

is when you walk
down the street

and people turn round
to look at you

and bump into things.

--------Roger McGough--------

Just read his book last night. Largely mediocre, mostly humorous word games (read: rhyming). Actually reminds me a lot of that stuff you were writing, in that it'd fit nicely in a kid's book. There were some really cool poems, but nothing mindblowing. I also read this O'San book I found at the library sale. Worst fucking poetry. Like, ever.

posted by RSHabroptilus at 7:36 pm (EST) on Oct 26, 2009

I particularly enjoyed your recent scathing review. And that on FB your reason for writing it was to cheer yourself up.

posted by Bakerina at 4:47 am (EST) on Oct 26, 2009

POEM. (To match your lameness.)

雨ニモマケズ
風ニモマケズ
雪ニモ夏ノ暑サニモマケヌ
丈夫ナカラダヲモチ
慾ハナク
決シテ瞋ラズ
イツモシヅカニワラッテイル
一日ニ玄米四合ト
味噌ト少シノ野菜ヲタベ
アラユルコトヲ
ジブンヲカンジョウニ入レズ�...
ヨクミキキシワカリ
ソシテワスレズ
野原ノ松ノ林ノ蔭ノ
小サナ萱ブキノ小屋ニイテ
東ニ病気ノ子供アレバ
行ツテ看病シテヤリ
西ニツカレタ母アレバ
行ツテソノ稲ノ束ヲ負ヒ
南ニ死ニソウナ人アレバ
行ツテコワガラナクテモイイ�...
北ニケンカヤソショウガアレ�...
ツマラナイカラヤメロトイイ
ヒデリノトキハナミダヲナガ�...
サムサノナツハオロオロアル�...
ミンナニデクノボウトヨバレ
ホメラレモセズ
クニモサレズ
ソウイウモノニ
ワタシハナリタイ

-------------宮沢 賢治---------------

Or, one of his poems as translated by our hero, Gary Snyder, from his book The Back Country:

"Dawn"
Rolling snow turned peach-color
_______________the moon
______left alone in the fading night
makes a soft cry in teh heavens
and once more
drinks up the scattered light

(parasamgate, bodhi, svaha!)

&

"Cow"
An ayrshire cow
playing, rubbing her horns in the grass,
_____________in the misty soile,
at her back the pulp factory fires
scorch the night clouds.
over low dunes
the sea booms
____________a brass moon
like you could scoop up and swallow

so the cow feels pretty good
playing now
tapping the fence with her horns

----------Miyazawa Kenji----------

I actually brought all my books of poetry with me now, so I'll have them to look through and probably read a bunch of untouched ones this week. Woo. I really love Snyder's translations of Miyazawa's stuff. Really need to pick up some of his own books sometime.

posted by RSHabroptilus at 11:34 pm (EST) on Oct 25, 2009

I haven't read Clive Barker in years, but I loved his 'Weaveworld'. I have remembered the ones I enjoyed as a teenager: LJ Smith and her Night World series. Probably too young for you now, but I wanted to share my realisation!

posted by brokenangelkisses at 7:42 am (EST) on Oct 24, 2009

POTD:

http://7.media.tumblr.com/37jsqloFrpdoel...

posted by RSHabroptilus at 4:04 am (EST) on Oct 24, 2009

Hmmm, I had forgotten. Thx.

You probably read this one in high school, but it's a good one, and I just got a book by him finallllly today at the library sale.

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers to last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal.
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

-----Wallace Stevens (remember Hemingway beat the shit out of him out in Key West once)-----

Yowch.

posted by RSHabroptilus at 11:28 pm (EST) on Oct 23, 2009

Jeez, I found it. Really hard to find.
Called "Springer Mountain."

I'm reading this book called Book of Daniel for a class. Pretty damn boss. Way better than it sounded. Yep.

posted by RSHabroptilus at 9:04 pm (EST) on Oct 22, 2009

Baw it was just some idiot who was offended you trashed her beliefs, most likely. (Twilight was flagged a couple of times....)

POTD.

"The Moon"

A web of sewer, pipe, and wire connects each house to the others.

In 206 a dog sleeps by the stove where a small gas leak causes him
to have visions; visions that are rooted in nothing but gas.

Next door, a man who has decided to buy a car part by part
excitedly unpacks a wheel and an ashtray.

He arranges them every which way. It’s really beginning to take
shape.

Out the garage window he sees a group of ugly children
enter the forest. Their mouths look like coin slots.



A neighbor plays keyboards in a local cover band.
Preparing for an engagement at the high school prom,

they pack their equipment in silence.

Last night they played the Police Academy Ball and
all the officers slow-danced with target range silhouettes.



This year the theme for the prom is the Tetragrammaton.

A yellow Corsair sails through the disco parking lot
and swaying palms presage the lot of young libertines.

Inside the car a young lady wears a corsage of bullet-sized rodents.
Her date, the handsome cornerback, stretches his talons over the
molded steering wheel.

They park and walk into the lush starlit gardens behind the disco
just as the band is striking up.

Their keen eyes and ears twitch. The other couples
look beautiful tonight. They stroll around listening
to the brilliant conversation. The passionate speeches.

Clouds drift across the silverware. There is red larkspur,
blue gum, and ivy. A boy kneels before his date.

And the moon, I forgot to mention the moon.

----------David Berman. Again. Come on, you don't see the Brautigan-ness? The metaphors and imagery? Is it just me?????-----------

I'll look for the Dickey. If I can find it I'll post it. I don't remember what it's called, tho.

posted by RSHabroptilus at 8:56 pm (EST) on Oct 22, 2009

Don't be dissin' Dickey! I studied that lifeguard one once. I wish I could have found the one w/ him hunting a deer with a bow&arrow before saying F That and instead throwing down his bow and running after the deer, transforming into a deer himself. Really good stuff.

Anyway, cool. If you haven't heard Silver Jews I recommend it. I'd like to get Berman's book of poetry sometime, Actual Air. His stuff ain't bad, but mostly ain't great neitha. Reading it now, I think I spot a bit of Brautigan influence. Do you?

BTW McSweeney's seems to be having a huge sale on backissues. $5 each most of them. I dunno if you'd be interested in that. http://store.mcsweeneys.net/index.cfm/fu...

posted by RSHabroptilus at 10:18 pm (EST) on Oct 21, 2009

P(s)OTD:

She woke me up at dawn,
her suitcase like a little brown dog at her heels.

I sat up and looked out the window
at the snow falling in the stand of blackjack trees.

A bus ticket in her hand.

Then she brought something black up to her mouth,
a plum I thought, but it was an asthma inhaler.

I reached under the bed for my menthols
and she asked if I ever thought of cancer.

Yes, I said, but always as a tree way up ahead
in the distance where it doesn't matter

And I suppose a dead soul must look back at that tree,
so far behind his wagon where it also doesn't matter.

except as a memory of rest or water.

Though to believe any of that, I thought,
you have to accept the premise

that she woke me up at all.

&

Walking through a field with my little brother Seth

I pointed to a place where kids had made angels in the snow.
For some reason, I told him that a troop of angels
had been shot and dissolved when they hit the ground.

He asked who had shot them and I said a farmer.

Then we were on the roof of the lake.
The ice looked like a photograph of water.

Why he asked. Why did he shoot them.

I didn't know where I was going with this.

They were on his property, I said.

When it's snowing, the outdoors seem like a room.

Today I traded hellos with my neighbor.
Our voices hung close in the new acoustics.
A room with the walls blasted to shreds and falling.

We returned to our shoveling, working side by side in silence.

But why were they on his property, he asked.

------------David Berman, that guy from the Silver Jews. Great band------------

posted by RSHabroptilus at 3:45 pm (EST) on Oct 21, 2009

Alright, I'll give you another POTD. -_- I'm gonna be recycling writers before soon. I'm running out of faves.

In a stable of boats I lie still,
From all sleeping children hidden.
The leap of a fish from its shadow
Makes the whole lake instantly tremble.
With my foot on the water, I feel
The moon outside

Take on the utmost of its power.
I rise and go our through the boats.
I set my broad sole upon silver,
On the skin of the sky, on the moonlight,
Stepping outward from earth onto water
In quest of the miracle

This village of children believed
That I could perform as I dived
For one who had sunk from my sight.
I saw his cropped haircut go under.
I leapt, and my steep body flashed
Once, in the sun.

Dark drew all the light from my eyes.
Like a man who explores his death
By the pull of his slow-moving shoulders,
I hung head down in the cold,
Wide-eyed, contained, and alone
Among the weeds,

And my fingertips turned into stone
From clutching immovable blackness.
Time after time I leapt upward
Exploding in breath, and fell back
From the change in the children's faces
At my defeat.

Beneath them I swam to the boathouse
With only my life in my arms
To wait for the lake to shine back
At the risen moon with such power
That my steps on the light of the ripples
Might be sustained.

Beneath me is nothing but brightness
Like the ghost of a snowfield in summer.
As I move toward the center of the lake,
Which is also the center of the moon,
I am thinking of how I may be
The savior of one

Who has already died in my care.
The dark trees fade from around me.
The moon's dust hovers together.
I call softly out, and the child's
Voice answers through blinding water.
Patiently, slowly,

He rises, dilating to break
The surface of stone with his forehead.
He is one I do not remember
Having ever seen in his life.
The ground I stand on is trembling
Upon his smile.

I wash the black mud from my hands.
On a light given off by the grave
I kneel in the quick of the moon
At the heart of a distant forest
And hold in my arms a child
Of water, water, water.

--------James Dickey. Yes, the guy who wrote Deliverance. He was surprisingly a badass poet-------------

posted by RSHabroptilus at 11:35 pm (EST) on Oct 20, 2009

It's moments like those that expose the bullshitness of the Internet. We're so fucking incapable of communicating.

I just turned around and saw TBS was on. Some '90s sitcom mixing Nickcoms and Cosby. The fat librarian girl from All That is in it. I haven't seen her for years.

posted by RSHabroptilus at 3:32 am (EST) on Oct 20, 2009

When those stages of insanity and childishness overlap is definitely when you're at your best.

posted by RSHabroptilus at 3:28 am (EST) on Oct 20, 2009

I started reading a book like that once called Astral Dynamics. I had just learned how to lucid dream and wanted to try this astral projection I hear so much about, so I picked up the "Bible" of A.P. and fell into a swamp of dipshit writing and New Age anti-science bullhonkey.

lolarchivedcomments

posted by RSHabroptilus at 3:10 am (EST) on Oct 20, 2009

Archived all comments from July 09 to today.

posted by devondoyle at 12:21 am (EST) on Oct 20, 2009