Poetry

[Padraig]

Emily Dickinson wrote more than 1700 published poems and I have not yet finished reading them. They are all thought provoking, not only in content but in style, syntax, grammar and punctuation. Her poems do not have titles, so the first line is necessary for reference. I admire them and read them from time to time, frequently feeling like sharing on here. I wonder if this one reminds anybody of a particular person?

A precious - mouldering pleasure -'tis -
To meet an Antique Book -
In just the Dress his Century wore -
A privilege- I think -

His venerable Hand to take -
And warming in our own -
A passage back - or two - to make
To Times when he - was young -

His quaint opinions - to inspect
His thoughts to ascertain
On Themes concern our mutual mind -
The Literature of Man -

What interested Scholars - most -
What Competitions ran -
When Plato - was a Certainty -
And Sophocles - a Man -

When Sappho - was a living Girl -
And Beatrice wore
The Gown that Dante - deified -
Facts centuries before

He traverses - familiar -
As One should come to Town -
And tell you all your Dreams - were true -
He lived - where Dreams were born -

His presence is Enchantment -
We beg him not to go -
Old Volumes shake their Vellum heads
And tantalize - just so -

Emily Dickinson 1862 Published 1890

[vinteuil]

.
So she went into the garden
to cut a cabbage-leaf
to make an apple-pie;
and at the same time
a great she-bear, coming down the street,
pops its head into the shop.
What! no soap?
So he died,
and she very imprudently married the Barber:
and there were present
the Picninnies,
and the Joblillies,
and the Garyulies,
and the great Panjandrum himself,
with the little round button at top;
and they all fell to playing the game of catch-as-catch-can,
till the gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots.


Samuel Foote [1720-1777]
.

[Mandryka]

They that have power to hurt, and will do none,
That do not do the thing they most do show,
Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,
Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow;
They rightly do inherit heaven’s graces,
And husband nature’s riches from expense;
They are the lords and owners of their faces,
Others, but stewards of their excellence.
The summer’s flower is to the summer sweet,
Though to itself, it only live and die,
But if that flower with base infection meet,
The basest weed outbraves his dignity:
For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester, smell far worse than weeds.

[eighthobstruction]

.
So she went into the garden
to cut a cabbage-leaf
to make an apple-pie;
and at the same time
a great she-bear, coming down the street,
pops its head into the shop.
What! no soap?
So he died,
and she very imprudently married the Barber:
and there were present
the Picninnies,
and the Joblillies,
and the Garyulies,
and the great Panjandrum himself,
with the little round button at top;
and they all fell to playing the game of catch-as-catch-can,
till the gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots.


Samuel Foote [1720-1777]
.

....very similar structure ??/word distribution to - She came in through the Bathroom Window...Beatles....

[Forget It (U2079353)]

For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester, smell far worse than weeds.

Corruptio optimi quae est pessima.

[Padraig]

For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester, smell far worse than weeds.

Also with reference to the cooking thread where f f was wondering how best to improve the flavour of her beloved peas; and, indeed, just to see and hear mint receive a deserved accolade.

Mint

It looked like a clump of small dusty nettles
Growing wild at the gable of the house
Beyond where we dumped our refuse and old bottles:
Unverdant ever, almost beneath notice.

But, to be fair, it also spelled promise
And newness in the backyard of our life
As if something callow yet tenacious
Sauntered in green alleys and grew rife.

The snip of scissor blades, the light of Sunday
Mornings when the mint was cut and loved:
My last things will be the first things slipping from me.
Yet let all things go free that have survived.

Let the smells of mint go heady and defenceless
Like inmates liberated in that yard.
Like the disregarded ones we turned against
Because we'd failed them by our disregard.

Seamus Heaney The Spirit Level 1996

https://www.google.com/search?q=seamus+heaney+mint&oq=seamus+heaney+mint&aqs=chrome..69i57j0i512j0i15i22i30j69i65.13322j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:58682a52,vid:xc1Wprr-HYA

[johncorrigan]

I read this translated poem in a selection by Philip McDaragh from the recent London Review of Books.

The Calendar of Birds
translated from the Book of Leinster, anonymous, 12th century

From the ninth of January
all birds welcome the dawn
into their dim underwood,
whatever the hour of its rising.

On the eighth of April
the flickering swallows meet us
so we can ask, where
have they been since October.

On the happy feast of Ruadan
every beak is opened, and from this,
the seventeenth of May, the cuckoo
calls non-stop in her thicket.

In Tallaght, birds pause their songs
on the ninth of July for Mael Ruain,
undefeated by the carrion crow,
the bird of war. We pray for her protection.

Across cold seas the barnacle geese arrive
on the day of Ciaran the joiner’s son.
On the feast of wise St Cyprian,
the brown stag bellows on the red plain.

Six thousand white years
the world has had good weather,
but seas will break in everywhere
as night ends and birds scream.

Sweet as yet is their song of praise
to the Lord God in heaven,
the shining King of the clouds –
be glad and listen to their call.

Philip McDaragh

[vinteuil]

.
I was tickled (I can't recall what I was really looking for at the time) by the litany of Heresies in this work (I think the longest poem in the English language.)

Psyche, or, Loves mysterie in XX canto's, displaying the intercourse betwixt Christ and the soule
(from : Canto xv The Poyson )

283.
From these great Parents came that numerous Spawn
Of most portentous Gnosticks, Antitacts,
Ptolemaits, Ophites, Cainites: Monsters known
By the Profession of such shamelesse Facts
As Hell would blush at; which yet unto them
Truths and Religions Puritie did seem.

284.
Next these, about the boules brim licking lay
The Nazareens, amongst whose sneaking fire
Were both Pseudagius and Authades; They
Who tainted Psyche with their Heresie.
No sooner she beheld them, but her breast
She smote, and by the stroke her fault confest.

285.
But after these appear'd the Marcosites
Epiphanes, Secundus, Isidore;
Bold Cordonists, and fond Heracleonites
Marcion, Apelles, with blasphemous store
Of their Disciples; Lucan, Luciun,
Photinus, Basiliscus, Hermogen.

286.
Then proud Montanus; with Quintilians,
Ascites, Pepuzians; and Artotyrites,
Priscillians, Pharisaik, Tatians,
Abstemious yet profane Severianites;
Archontiks, Adamites, Quartadecimans,
Fond Alogists, and Melchisedekians.

287.
Tertullianists, Arabiks, Symmachists,
Homousiasts, Elxites, Origenians,
Valesians, and presumptuous Catharists,
Hydroparastates, Patripassians.
Apostoliks, Angeliks, Chiliasts,
Samosatenian Paulianists.

288.
Mad Maniches, outrageous Donatists,
Curs'd Arians, Colluthians, Audianites,
Shamelesse Photinians, Macedonianists,
Acrians, Acacians, Eustathites:
Eunomians, Messalians, Luciferians,
Hypsistarists, Agnoites, Apollinarians.

289.
Timotheans, Seleucians, Collyridians,
New coin'd Priscillians, with Proclianites:
Foule-mouth'd Jovinianists, and black Helvidians;
Bonosians, Campensians, Agapites;
Pelagius, Nestorius, Eutyches,
Accompani'd with all their Progenies.


Joseph Beaumont [13 March 1616 – 23 November 1699]

[french frank]

.
I was tickled (I can't recall what I was really looking for at the time) by the litany of Heresies in this work (I think the longest poem in the English language.)[I]

Would have been even longer if he'd had access to Wikipedia.

I rather liked Triclavianism ("Belief that three, rather than four nails were used to crucify Christ and that a Roman soldier pierced him with a spear on the left, rather than the right side.").

[johncorrigan]

My Dad died about fifteen years ago, but yesterday was his centenary. I'm on the Isle of Iona at the moment so I jumped on the bike and headed to the Abbey. Thought I'd light a candle for him and my Mum and loiter among the ancient stones with the day trippers gone back over to Mull. I cycled the extra mile or so from the Abbey to the North End of the Island, parked the bike and wandered down to a bench that looks out towards Staffa and the other Treshnish Islands. It's a wonderful spot. In my bag I had a copy of Heaney's 'The Spirit Level'. I opened it randomly at 'A Call' and found myself fancying a wee chat with my old Dad again.

https://youtu.be/Fx-tVq35pUY

[antongould]

My Dad died about fifteen years ago, but yesterday was his centenary. I'm on the Isle of Iona at the moment so I jumped on the bike and headed to the Abbey. Thought I'd light a candle for him and my Mum and loiter among the ancient stones with the day trippers gone back over to Mull. I cycled the extra mile or so from the Abbey to the North End of the Island, parked the bike and wandered down to a bench that looks out towards Staffa and the other Treshnish Islands. It's a wonderful spot. In my bag I had a copy of Heaney's 'The Spirit Level'. I opened it randomly at 'A Call' and found myself fancying a wee chat with my old Dad again.

https://youtu.be/Fx-tVq35pUY

marvellous John

[gurnemanz]

Sorry to lower the tone but the opening lines of this poem have been stuck in my head since I first read them as a teenager in the "Verse and Worse" anthology 60 years ago.

We’ad a bleed’n’ sparrer wot
Lived up a bleed’n’ spaht,
One day the bleed’n’ rain came dahn
An’ washed the bleeder aht.

An’ as ’e layed ’arf drahnded
Dan in the bleed’n’ street
’E begged that bleed’n’ rainstorm
To bave ’is bleed’n’ feet.

But then the bleed’n’sun came aht –
Dried up the bleed’n’ rain –
So that bleed’n’ little sparrer
’E climbed up ’is spaht again.

But, Oh! – the crewel sparrer’awk,
’E spies ’im in ’is snuggery,
’E sharpens up ’is bleed’n’ claws
An’ rips ’im aht by thuggery!

Jist then a bleed’n’ sportin’ type
Wot ’ad a bleed’n’ gun
’E spots that bleed’n’ sparrer’awk
An’ blasts ’is bleed’n’ fun.

The moral of this story
Is plain to everyone –
That them wot’s up the bleed’n’ spaht
Don’t get no bleed’n’ fun.

[smittims]

I sense the influence of Kipling there ('Tommy' etc.), though I don't think he'd approve.

[johncorrigan]

[Padraig]

I would like to recommend a discovery - Julia Copus, an English poet. Any Ordinary Morning is taken from Girlhood, her fourth book.


Any Ordinary Morning
i.m. Adolf Buker (d 19June 1918)

The world is as it is.This morning, for instance,
the primroses are out on the lawn, in clusters
of yellow and carmine; the lilac sways; the washing
ripples on the line. And when I lift
my orange juice to sip and set it down,
the same small chips of sunlight coalesce
on the side of my glass; the old shapes settle again

in the frame of the Kriegs-Chronik, your face at its centre
in black and white, boyish but serious -
too young beneath the spike of your Pickelhaube.
Around you the terrible names persist - Arras,
Verdun - the places you served in, rivers and towns
set in the thick black script of invocations:
Cambrai, Louvement, Monchy-le-Preux, the Scarpe. . .

Adolf Buker, it was not the soldier
in you but the lover who shaped my life.
I think of him now, the morning you left for war.
Your new young wife beside you doesn't know yet
how the story goes. Your final battle
tucked in the future still, she is setting the breakfast
unaware that already my sweetheart's grandmother
is safely landed inside her - meaning I live

not in some other world but here in this one
in which your great grandson returns each evening
at the end of both our working days,and the light
bounces off my glass any ordinary morning,
as i picture it now, catching the gold hairs
on your Marie's brown arms and flashing out
from her silver Kaffeekanne while she pours
another coffee into the kitchen's quiet.

Julia Copus Girlhood, 2019