Author
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Topic: Poetry
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zanya Knowflake Posts: 196 From: Registered: Oct 2007
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posted November 19, 2007 02:13 PM
Meeting the British We met the British in the dead of winter. The sky was lavender
and the snow lavender-blue. I could hear, far below, the sound of two streams coming together (both were frozen over) and no less strange, myself calling out in French across that forest- clearing. Neither General Jeffrey Amherst nor Colonel Henry Bouquet could stomach our willow-tobacco. As for the unusual scent when the Colonel shook out his hand- kerchief: C'est la lavende, une fleur mauve comme le ciel.* They gave us six fishhooks and two blankets embroidered with smallpox. --Paul Muldoon
*"It is lavender, a flower as mauve as the sky."
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zanya Knowflake Posts: 196 From: Registered: Oct 2007
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posted November 19, 2007 02:44 PM
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zanya Knowflake Posts: 196 From: Registered: Oct 2007
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posted November 19, 2007 02:44 PM
PeachesA mouthful of language to swallow: stretches of beach, sweet clinches, breaches in walls, pleached branches; britches hauled over haunches; hunched leeches, wrenched teachers. What English can do: ransack the warmth that chuckles beneath fuzzed surfaces, smooth velvet richness, plashy juices. I beseech you, peach, clench me into the sweetness of your reaches. --Peter Davison
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zanya Knowflake Posts: 196 From: Registered: Oct 2007
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posted November 19, 2007 11:29 PM
Losing a Language A breath leaves the sentences and does not come back yet the old still remember something that they could say
but they know now that such things are no longer believed and the young have fewer words many of the things the words were about no longer exist the noun for standing in mist by a haunted tree the verb for I the children will not repeat the phrases their parents speak somebody has persuaded them that it is better to say everything differently so that they can be admired somewhere farther and farther away where nothing that is here is known we have little to say to each other we are wrong and dark in the eyes of the new owners the radio is incomprehensible the day is glass when there is a voice at the door it is foreign everywhere instead of a name there is a lie nobody has seen it happening nobody remembers this is what the words were made to prophesy here are the extinct feathers here is the rain we saw --W.S. Merwin
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zanya Knowflake Posts: 196 From: Registered: Oct 2007
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posted November 19, 2007 11:45 PM
The Dead Butterfly 1
Now I see its whiteness is not white but green, traced with green and resembles the stones of which the city is built, quarried high in the mountains. 2 Everywhere among the marigolds the rainblown roses and the hedges of tamarisk are white butterflies this morning, in constant tremulous movement, only those that lie dead revealing their rockgreen color and the bold cut of the wings --Denise Levertov
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zanya Knowflake Posts: 196 From: Registered: Oct 2007
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posted November 20, 2007 07:08 AM
Tide Pools Faith's a tide, it seems, ebbs and flows responsive to action and inaction. Remain in stasis, blown sand stings your face, anemones shrivel in rock pools no wave renews. Clear the littered beach, clear the lines of a forming poem, the waters flood inward. Dull stones again fulfill their glowing destinies, and emptiness is a cup, and holds the ocean.
--Denise Levertov
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zanya Knowflake Posts: 196 From: Registered: Oct 2007
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posted November 20, 2007 07:11 AM
Wish for a Young Wife My lizard, my lively writher, May your limbs never wither, May the eyes in your face Survive the green ice Of envy's mean gaze; May you live out your life Without hate, without grief, And your hair ever blaze, In the sun, in the sun, When I am undone, When I am no one.
--Theodore Roethke
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zanya Knowflake Posts: 196 From: Registered: Oct 2007
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posted November 20, 2007 11:57 AM
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zanya Knowflake Posts: 196 From: Registered: Oct 2007
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posted November 20, 2007 11:57 AM
You Were Wearing You were wearing your Edgar Allan Poe printed cotton blouse. In each divided up square of the blouse was a picture of Edgar Allan Poe. Your hair was blonde and you were cute. You asked me, "Do most boys think that most girls are bad?" I smelled the mould of your seaside resort hotel bedroom on your hair held in place by a John Greenleaf Whittier clip. "No," I said, "it's girls who think that boys are bad." Then we read Snow- bound together. And ran around in an attic, so that a little of the blue enamel was scraped off my George Washington, Father of His Country, shoes.
Mother was walking in the living room, her Strauss Waltzes comb in her hair. We waited for a time and then joined her, only to be served tea in cups painted with pictures of Herman Melville As well as with illustrations from his book Moby-Dick and from his novella, Benito Cereno. Father came in wearing his Dick Tracy necktie: "How about a drink, everyone?" I said, "Let's go outside a while." Then we went onto the porch and sat on the Abraham Lincoln swing. You sat on the eyes, mouth, and beard part, and I sat on the knees. In the yard across the street we saw a snowman holding a garbage can lid smashed into a likeness of the mad English king, George the Third. --Kenneth Koch
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zanya Knowflake Posts: 196 From: Registered: Oct 2007
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posted November 22, 2007 02:03 AM
Self-Protection When science starts to be interpretive It is even more unscientific than mysticism.
To make self-preservation and self-protection the first law of existence Is about as scientific as making suicide the first law of existence, And amounts to very much the same thing. A nightingale singing at the top of his voice Is neither hiding himself nor preserving himself nor propagating his species; He is giving himself away in every sense of the word; And obviously, it is the culminating point of his existence. A tiger is striped and golden for his own glory. He would certainly be much more invisible if he were grey-green. And I don't suppose the ichthyosaurus sparkled like the humming-bird, No doubt he was khaki-coloured with muddy protective colouration, So why didn't he survive? As a matter of fact, the only creatures that seem to survive Are those that give themselves away in flash and sparkle And gay flicker of joyful life; Those that go glittering abroad With a bit of splendour. Even mice play quite beautifully at shadows, And some of them are brilliantly piebald. I expect the dodo looked like a clod, A drab and dingy bird. --D.H. Lawrence
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NosiS Moderator Posts: 335 From: FL USA Registered: Apr 2004
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posted November 22, 2007 12:21 PM
I meant to thank you for these earlier, zanya!IP: Logged |
NosiS Moderator Posts: 335 From: FL USA Registered: Apr 2004
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posted November 22, 2007 12:22 PM
BTW, my fav. so far is "Peaches", but (in fairness) I haven't read all of them. Keep 'em coming!IP: Logged |