09-09-2014, 09:07 PM (This post was last modified: 09-09-2014, 09:09 PM by billy.)
here's one that i dredged up after posting in another thread. this of all poems probably locked me into poetry as a reader more than any other of the poems i'd read.
i think with this poem he captures humanity. after reading some of his poetry it almost seems to be ironic. i was told it reads more like prose but to me this real poetry. i could blitz the crap out of it with feedback but that make me very stupid
Charles' Bukowski's
The History Of One Tough Motherfucker
he came to the door one night wet thin beaten and
terrorized
a white cross-eyed tailless cat
I took him in and fed him and he stayed
grew to trust me until a friend drove up the driveway
and ran him over
I took what was left to a vet who said,"not much
chance…give him these pills…his backbone
is crushed, but is was crushed before and somehow
mended, if he lives he'll never walk, look at
these x-rays, he's been shot, look here, the pellets
are still there…also, he once had a tail, somebody
cut it off…"
I took the cat back, it was a hot summer, one of the
hottest in decades, I put him on the bathroom
floor, gave him water and pills, he wouldn't eat, he
wouldn't touch the water, I dipped my finger into it
and wet his mouth and I talked to him, I didn't go any-
where, I put in a lot of bathroom time and talked to
him and gently touched him and he looked back at
me with those pale blue crossed eyes and as the days went
by he made his first move
dragging himself forward by his front legs
(the rear ones wouldn't work)
he made it to the litter box
crawled over and in,
it was like the trumpet of possible victory
blowing in that bathroom and into the city, I
related to that cat-I'd had it bad, not that
bad but bad enough
one morning he got up, stood up, fell back down and
just looked at me.
"you can make it," I said to him.
he kept trying, getting up falling down, finally
he walked a few steps, he was like a drunk, the
rear legs just didn't want to do it and he fell again, rested,
then got up.
you know the rest: now he's better than ever, cross-eyed
almost toothless, but the grace is back, and that look in
his eyes never left…
and now sometimes I'm interviewed, they want to hear about
life and literature and I get drunk and hold up my cross-eyed,
shot, runover de-tailed cat and I say,"look, look
at this!"
but they don't understand, they say something like,"you
say you've been influenced by Celine?"
"no," I hold the cat up,"by what happens, by
things like this, by this, by this!"
I shake the cat, hold him up in
the smoky and drunken light, he's relaxed he knows…
it's then that the interviews end
although I am proud sometimes when I see the pictures
later and there I am and there is the cat and we are photo-
graphed together.
he too knows it's bullshit but that somehow it all helps.
After reading the ongoing thread about 'Talent' for the past couple of days I keep on thinking about this "Genius" piece of work by Mark Twain.
Genius
Genius, like gold and precious stones,
is chiefly prized because of its rarity.
Geniuses are people who dash of weird, wild,
incomprehensible poems with astonishing facility,
and get booming drunk and sleep in the gutter.
Genius elevates its possessor to ineffable spheres
far above the vulgar world and fills his soul
with regal contempt for the gross and sordid things of earth.
It is probably on account of this
that people who have genius
do not pay their board, as a general thing.
Geniuses are very singular.
If you see a young man who has frowsy hair
and distraught look, and affects eccentricity in dress,
you may set him down for a genius.
If he sings about the degeneracy of a world
which courts vulgar opulence
and neglects brains,
he is undoubtedly a genius.
If he is too proud to accept assistance,
and spurns it with a lordly air
at the very same time
that he knows he can't make a living to save his life,
he is most certainly a genius.
If he hangs on and sticks to poetry,
notwithstanding sawing wood comes handier to him,
he is a true genius.
If he throws away every opportunity in life
and crushes the affection and the patience of his friends
and then protests in sickly rhymes of his hard lot,
and finally persists,
in spite of the sound advice of persons who have got sense
but not any genius,
persists in going up some infamous back alley
dying in rags and dirt,
he is beyond all question a genius.
But above all things,
to deftly throw the incoherent ravings of insanity into verse
and then rush off and get booming drunk,
is the surest of all the different signs
of genius.
To gaze at a river made of time and water
and remember Time is another river.
To know we stray like a river
and our faces vanish like water.
To feel that waking is another dream
that dreams of not dreaming and that the death
we fear in our bones is the death
that every night we call a dream.
To see in every day and year a symbol
of all the days of man and his years,
and convert the outrage of the years
into a music, a sound, and a symbol.
To see in death a dream, in the sunset
a golden sadnesssuch is poetry,
humble and immortal, poetry,
returning, like dawn and the sunset.
Sometimes at evening there's a face
that sees us from the deeps of a mirror.
Art must be that sort of mirror,
disclosing to each of us his face.
They say Ulysses, wearied of wonders,
wept with love on seeing Ithaca,
humble and green. Art is that Ithaca,
a green eternity, not wonders.
Art is endless like a river flowing,
passing, yet remaining, a mirror to the same
inconstant Heraclitus, who is the same
and yet another, like the river flowing.
- Jorge Luis Borges
i used to know a lotta stuff, but i still have eight cats
billy wrote:welcome to the site. make it your own, wear it like a well loved slipper and wear it out. ella pleads:please click forum titles for posting guidelines, important threads. New poet? Try Poetic DevicesandWard's Tips
(10-14-2014, 03:37 PM)rayheinrich Wrote: The Art of Poetry
To gaze at a river made of time and water
and remember Time is another river.
To know we stray like a river
and our faces vanish like water.
To feel that waking is another dream
that dreams of not dreaming and that the death
we fear in our bones is the death
that every night we call a dream.
To see in every day and year a symbol
of all the days of man and his years,
and convert the outrage of the years
into a music, a sound, and a symbol.
To see in death a dream, in the sunset
a golden sadnesssuch is poetry,
humble and immortal, poetry,
returning, like dawn and the sunset.
Sometimes at evening there's a face
that sees us from the deeps of a mirror.
Art must be that sort of mirror,
disclosing to each of us his face.
They say Ulysses, wearied of wonders,
wept with love on seeing Ithaca,
humble and green. Art is that Ithaca,
a green eternity, not wonders.
Art is endless like a river flowing,
passing, yet remaining, a mirror to the same
inconstant Heraclitus, who is the same
and yet another, like the river flowing.
- Jorge Luis Borges
Loved this poem. The Heraclitus river flowing reference was the cherry on top of a masterpiece
(10-14-2014, 03:37 PM)rayheinrich Wrote: The Art of Poetry
To gaze at a river made of time and water
and remember Time is another river.
To know we stray like a river
and our faces vanish like water.
To feel that waking is another dream
that dreams of not dreaming and that the death
we fear in our bones is the death
that every night we call a dream.
To see in every day and year a symbol
of all the days of man and his years,
and convert the outrage of the years
into a music, a sound, and a symbol.
To see in death a dream, in the sunset
a golden sadnesssuch is poetry,
humble and immortal, poetry,
returning, like dawn and the sunset.
Sometimes at evening there's a face
that sees us from the deeps of a mirror.
Art must be that sort of mirror,
disclosing to each of us his face.
They say Ulysses, wearied of wonders,
wept with love on seeing Ithaca,
humble and green. Art is that Ithaca,
a green eternity, not wonders.
Art is endless like a river flowing,
passing, yet remaining, a mirror to the same
inconstant Heraclitus, who is the same
and yet another, like the river flowing.
- Jorge Luis Borges
I'd say Ulysses was wearied of much more than mere wonders, and that I enjoy the poem very much, and its recycling of themes that leads one to ponder the simplest of things that would otherwise be taken for granted.
To be taken for granite, strong stuff, that Brooklyn bridge, those Roeblings John Augustus,
Washington, and Emily (a self-taught civil engineer the equal of her husband)...
And that CAT!, Bukowski, Twain, Williams, Borges, Heraclitus... tough motherfucker's all;
and us, lest we forget, and us as well.
i used to know a lotta stuff, but i still have eight cats
Gloss on the Coming of Autumn
- Jorge de Sena (trans Richard Zenith)
The body does not wait. Neither for us
nor for love. This groping of hands,
researching with such reticence
the warm, silky aridness
that twitches from embarrassment
in movements quick and random;
this groping attended not by us
but by a thirst, a memory, whatever
we know about touching the bared
body that does not wait; this groping
that doesn't know, doesn't see, doesn't
dare to be afraid of feeling scared…
The body's so hasty! All is over and done
when one of us, or when love, has come.
i used to know a lotta stuff, but i still have eight cats
For every bird there is this last migration:
Once more the cooling year kindles her heart;
With a warm passage to the summer station
Love pricks the course in lights across the chart.
Year after year a speck on the map, divided
By a whole hemisphere, summons her to come;
Season after season, sure and safely guided,
Going away she is also coming home.
And being home, memory becomes a passion
With which she feeds her brood and straws her nest,
Aware of ghosts that haunt the heart’s possession
And exiled love mourning within the breast.
The sands are green with a mirage of valleys;
The palm-tree casts a shadow not its own;
Down the long architrave of temple or palace
Blows a cool air from moorland scarps of stone.
And day by day the whisper of love grows stronger;
That delicate voice, more urgent with despair,
Custom and fear constraining her no longer,
Drives her at last on the waste leagues of air.
A vanishing speck in those inane dominions,
Single and frail, uncertain of her place,
Alone in the bright host of her companions,
Lost in the blue unfriendliness of space,
She feels it close now, the appointed season:
The invisible thread is broken as she flies;
Suddenly, without warning, without reason,
The guiding spark of instinct winks and dies.
Try as she will, the trackless world delivers
No way, the wilderness of light no sign,
The immense and complex map of hills and rivers
Mocks her small wisdom with its vast design.
And darkness rises from the eastern valleys,
And the winds buffet her with their hungry breath,
And the great earth, with neither grief nor malice,
Receives the tiny burden of her death.
Probably my favourite so far, deals with the subject matter so well, even though it is auto-refferential. Generally, I like Billy Collins quite much. Just to make sure, Billy, you are not him, are you?
Billy Collins:
Introduction to Poetry
I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.
-from poetryfoundation.org
(11-02-2014, 10:39 PM)SimikPK Wrote: Probably my favourite so far, deals with the subject matter so well, even though it is auto-refferential. Generally, I like Billy Collins quite much. Just to make sure, Billy, you are not him, are you?
Billy Collins:
Introduction to Poetry
I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.
-from poetryfoundation.org
some surfers
ponder the science
and miracle of the wave
billy wrote:welcome to the site. make it your own, wear it like a well loved slipper and wear it out. ella pleads:please click forum titles for posting guidelines, important threads. New poet? Try Poetic DevicesandWard's Tips
(11-02-2014, 11:35 PM)ellajam Wrote: some surfers
ponder the science
and miracle of the wave
some surfers
ponder the science
and not the miracle of the wave
some surfers
ponder the miracle
not the science
billy wrote:welcome to the site. make it your own, wear it like a well loved slipper and wear it out. ella pleads:please click forum titles for posting guidelines, important threads. New poet? Try Poetic DevicesandWard's Tips
(11-02-2014, 10:39 PM)SimikPK Wrote: Probably my favourite so far, deals with the subject matter so well, even though it is auto-refferential. Generally, I like Billy Collins quite much. Just to make sure, Billy, you are not him, are you?
Billy Collins:
Introduction to Poetry
I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.
-from poetryfoundation.org
I always did like this Allen Ginsberg poem, but until I heard this version of him reading it I realised that I had misunderstood it in a lot of respects. I suppose it's always best to hear poetry read out by the author, but it can depend a lot on the readers voice and approach. I never expected Allen Ginsberg to be this funny and it has turned what I once thought was a good poem into an excellent poem. It really is well worth listening to.
(11-02-2014, 10:39 PM)SimikPK Wrote: Probably my favourite so far, deals with the subject matter so well, even though it is auto-referential. Generally, I like Billy Collins quite much. Just to make sure, Billy, you are not him, are you?
Yes, that's a wonderful poem. Though, just to be picky, a self-referential (or auto-referential)
poem is a poem that specifically refers to itself. The 'I' in this poem refers to the poem's protagonist
(which is almost surely its author), not the poem.
Here's a poem I love that meets (almost too well) the definition:
The Self-referential Poem -David Berry
This poem does not say what it shows
Its message is deeper than what it knows
Its purpose, buried in its prose
Welcome!
Hello
I am "The Self-referential Poem"
Don't listen to a word I say!
For all you skeptics, I. Maintain the right to. Contain sentence. Fragments
Under article a.13 of my poetic license
I also maintain the right to say whatever I lompish
That's right. You got it.
I am an expression of my author but
My printed manifestation becomes so much more.
By being expressed I am born!
Thank you, author.
Since my conception i have learned that my content can grow
And grow
But in print I am always the same
Nature vs. Nurture
This part of the poem sense
It no verb but it sense
Contextually
Context has been an important part of my growth
It is what separates me from most poems.
I mean so much more than my author intended me to
And yet I am false?
That wasn't a question?
Some short examples stolen from the web:
This is the Title of this Poem
This is the body of this poem
and this is the last line of the poem
---
This Poem Contains Twelve Words
That is if you count the title.
---
and one of mine:
< in this poem the protagonist shoots himself >
bang!
---
i used to know a lotta stuff, but i still have eight cats
(11-07-2014, 07:19 AM)ambrosial revelation Wrote: America - Allen Ginsberg
I always did like this Allen Ginsberg poem, but until I heard this version of him reading it I realised that I had misunderstood it in a lot of respects. I suppose it's always best to hear poetry read out by the author, but it can depend a lot on the readers voice and approach. I never expected Allen Ginsberg to be this funny and it has turned what I once thought was a good poem into an excellent poem. It really is well worth listening to.
Thanks for posting that, I haven't heard it in along time, fun. He was a spellbinding entertainer, sometimes with a drummer boy,
and I got a laugh out of the youtube poster, awetblackbough, I just read up on that from a thread here.
billy wrote:welcome to the site. make it your own, wear it like a well loved slipper and wear it out. ella pleads:please click forum titles for posting guidelines, important threads. New poet? Try Poetic DevicesandWard's Tips
Thanx ray, you are right about the self-referrence, I don't know why i messed up.. probably wasn't paying enough attention. Love your examples, especially the short ones I wonder how to handle the self-refferential poem in a way that it yet has not been done.
wae aye man ye radgie
