Favourite Poet/Poem (1 Viewer)

[billygannon]

Carol Ann Duffy

Prayer

Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.

Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child's name as though they named their loss.

Darkness outside. Inside, the radio's prayer -
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.

 

[jonah]

I like your other posts, but I think I'm deathly allergic to carol ann duffy

 

[nooleen]

How come?

I enjoyed the Leaving Cert English course.
Didn't believe in the 'Irish poets only' option like some
Thomas Hardy question was dead straightforward that year

Sylvia Plath's Daddy is very good.

i notice a distinct lack of seamus heaney all the same
and evan feckin boland


that was nearly a poem, by god

i think i met seamus heaney once, but i was bolloxed, so it might have been a dream..

 

[billygannon]

I like your other posts, but I think I'm deathly allergic to carol ann duffy

To be fair it's not her best poem - but why are you deathly allergic to her?

 

[Nate Champion]

My favourite poet is probably James Tate. It's more prose poetry - quirky, amusing, often disturbing vignettes of varying length.

Here's a shorter one:

The Camel

I recieved the strangest thing in the mail
today. It's a photograph of me riding a camel
in the desert. And yet I have never ridden a
camel, or even been in a desert. I am wearing
a jellaba and akeffiyeh and I'm waving a rifle.
I have examined the photo with a magnifying
glass and it is definitely me. I can't stop
looking at the photo. I have never even dreamed
of riding a camel in the desert. The ferocity
in my eyes suggests I am fighting some kind of
holy way, that I have no fear of death. I must
hide this photo from my wife and children. They
must not know who I really am. I must not know.

 

[Nate Champion]

Also, this beauty by James Dickey. His command of language makes my skin prickle.

[FONT=&quot]The Driver [/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]At the end of the war I arose[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]From my bed in the tent and walked[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Where the island fell through white stones[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Until it became the green sea.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Into light that dazzled my brain[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Like the new thought of peace, I walked[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Until I was swimming and singing.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Over the foundered landing craft[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]That took the island, I floated,[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]And then like a thistle came[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]On the deep wind of water to rest[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Far out, my long legs of shadow down-[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]pointing to ground where my soul[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Could take root and spring as it must.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Below me a rusted halftrack[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Moved in the depths with the movement[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]One sees a thing take through tears[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Of joy, or terrible sorrow,[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]A thing which in quietness lies[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Beyond both. Slowly I sank[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]And slid into the driver’s shattered seat.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Driving through the country of the drowned[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]On a sealed, secret-keeping breath,[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Ten feet under water, I sat still,[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Getting used to the burning stare[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Of the wide-eyed dead after battle.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]I saw, through the sensitive roof –[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]The uneasy lyrical skin that lies[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Between death and life, trembling always –[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]An airplane come over, perfectly[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Soundless, but could not tell[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Why I lived, or why I was sitting,[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]With my lungs being shaped like two bells,[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]At the wheel of a craft in a wave[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Of attack that broke upon coral.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]“I become pure spirit,” I tried[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]To say, in a bright smoke of bubbles,[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]But I was becoming no more[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Than haunted, for to be so[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Is to sink out of sight, and to lose[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]The power of speech in the presence[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Of the dead, with the eyes turning green,[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]And to leap at last for the sky[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Very nearly too late, where another[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Leapt and could not break into[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]His breath, where it lay, in battle[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]As in peace, available, secret,[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Dazzling and huge, filled with sunlight,[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]For thousands of miles on the water.[/FONT]





[FONT=&quot][/FONT]

 

[Anthem]

THE SNOWMAN
by
Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

 

[St. Fechin]

While I was getting my hair cut today I thought about this poem by Paul Farley:

The Barber's Lull

Unwinding from my crown, a weather system
of hair, anticyclonic since a birthroom
howl of laughter at the dark mohican
I was issued with. I’ve watched him work his way

clockwise about the cow’s-licks and the split-ends
of my youth, and now can feel his hot breath
as he does around the ears, sense his scissors’
ticking screw-pin, granular snicks.

We go eyeball to eyeball for the fringe:
he wins, then takes a step back, has a look
at his work, then looks again in the big mirror
at the two of us, looking; and though my mind

is elsewhere – underground in fact, picturing
my long bones set like jewels into a pad
of grave-hair – I sanction him, the first word
that’s passed between us since I took his chair.

He’s been doing me so long it’s all unspoken.
I watch a nod begin in the nape mirror,
then step outside the ring of my own making
and sweep aside such thoughts, until the next time.

 

[Cormcolash]

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[St. Fechin]

For the day that's in it...
'12 O'Clock News' by Elizabeth Bishop, read it here

 

[Thebeard]

Edward Lear FTW:

There was an Old Man of Jamaica,
Who suddenly married a Quaker;
But she cried out, 'Alack!
I have married a black!'
Which distressed that Old Man of Jamaica

There was a Young Person of Crete,
Whose toilette was far from complete;
She dressed in a sack,
Spickle-speckled with black,
That ombliferous person of Crete

There was an Old Man of the Nile,
Who sharpened his nails with a file,
Till he cut out his thumbs,
And said calmly, 'This comes
Of sharpening one's nails with a file

 

[Lili Marlene]

I always hate the way Edward Lear's limericks start and end on the same line 90% of the time.

 

[Mormon Nailer]

I Knew a Woman



I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
The shapes a bright container can contain!
Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,
Or English poets who grew up on Greek
(I'd have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek.)
How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin,
She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and stand;
She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin:
I nibbled meekly from her proffered hand;
She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake,
Coming behind her for her pretty sake
(But what prodigious mowing did we make.)

Love likes a gander, and adores a goose:
Her full lips pursed, the errant note to seize;
She played it quick, she played it light and loose;
My eyes, they dazzled at her flowing knees;
Her several parts could keep a pure repose,
Or one hip quiver with a mobile nose
(She moved in circles, and those circles moved.)

Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:
I'm martyr to a motion not my own;
What's freedom for? To know eternity.
I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.
But who would count eternity in days?
These old bones live to learn her wanton ways:
(I measure time by how a body sways.)

T. Roethke

 

[Jim Daniels]

I Knew a Woman


T. Roethke

That's really something. Poems about women are often marvellous. The one I always remember from the Leavin' was The Planters Daughter.

The Planter's Daughter

When night stirred at sea,
An the fire brought a crowd in
They say that her beauty
Was music in mouth
And few in the candlelight
Thought her too proud,
For the house of the planter
Is known by the trees.

Men that had seen her
Drank deep and were silent,
The women were speaking
Wherever she went --
As a bell that is rung
Or a wonder told shyly
And O she was the Sunday
In every week.
-Austin Clarke-

Not strictly a poem, but I also had a major crush on the girl Bob Dylan wrote poetically about..

Love Minus Zero/No Limit
My love she speaks like silence
Without ideals or violence
She doesn’t have to say she’s faithful
Yet she’s true, like ice, like fire
People carry roses
Make promises by the hours
My love she laughs like the flowers
Valentines can’t buy her

In the dime stores and bus stations
People talk of situations
Read books, repeat quotations
Draw conclusions on the wall
Some speak of the future
My love she speaks softly
She knows there’s no success like failure
And that failure’s no success at all

The cloak and dagger dangles
Madams light the candles
In ceremonies of the horsemen
Even the pawn must hold a grudge
Statues made of matchsticks
Crumble into one another
My love winks, she does not bother
She knows too much to argue or to judge

The bridge at midnight trembles
The country doctor rambles
Bankers’ nieces seek perfection
Expecting all the gifts that wise men bring
The wind howls like a hammer
The night blows cold and rainy
My love she’s like some raven
At my window with a broken wing
-Bob Dylan-

 

[Kermit McDermott]

Tony Wilson always said Shaun Ryder was a poet. Here's an extract from his work.

Son, I'm 30. I only went with your mother 'cause she's dirty.

Beautiful.

 

[ratmonkey]

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