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Post by Deleted on Apr 23, 2009 7:35:42 GMT
This is a very eclectic place.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 27, 2009 14:28:18 GMT
Going through piles of papers this weekend I came across this poem I wrote @1978 or so.
My father was a farmer shaved with big hands on his straightedge wiping grey foam onto a newspaper fold at the kitchen table white chipped pan warm dirty water he stared out at the fields never missed a spot
His eyes were set deep like a crop he'd always hoped for and he talked so slow that when he died and they laid him out in the parlor and all the farmers swallowed hard and their women cried I sat waiting for his next word.
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 27, 2009 14:51:43 GMT
*swallowing very hard and blinking*
Thank you for that, Casimira. So beautiful and so spare, but you make us see it. I am stunned by your ability to condense so much -- a life, really, and the stunned reaction of the bereaved -- into such succinct beauty.
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Post by Jazz on Apr 27, 2009 15:03:35 GMT
Your poem is austere and beautiful, thank you.
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Post by tillystar on Apr 27, 2009 15:49:27 GMT
I love your poem Casimera, it is beautiful and very touching.
While reading it bought to memory a Seamus Heany poem that I have always liked; the images your poem throw up in my mind were similiar to the ones from this poem. They share a earthy, solid beauty...and while I was searching for it I remembered that you mentioned you were brought up on a potato farm.
Anyhow...although I love this poem, the last verse always jarrs.
Digging Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests; as snug as a gun.
Under my window a clean rasping sound When the spade sinks into gravelly ground: My father, digging. I look down
Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds Bends low, comes up twenty years away Stooping in rhythm through potato drills Where he was digging.
The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft Against the inside knee was levered firmly. He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep To scatter new potatoes that we picked Loving their cool hardness in our hands.
By God, the old man could handle a spade, Just like his old man.
My grandfather could cut more turf in a day Than any other man on Toner's bog. Once I carried him milk in a bottle Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up To drink it, then fell to right away Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods Over his shoulder, digging down and down For the good turf. Digging.
The cold smell of potato mold, the squelch and slap Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge Through living roots awaken in my head. But I've no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests. I'll dig with it.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 27, 2009 17:11:14 GMT
Thank you. Tilly,what a beautiful poem,does indeed capture all that earthiness. My brother will enjoy it when I send it to him. He worked on the farm for many years after my father's death with my uncle and cousins. Thanks
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Post by happytraveller on Apr 28, 2009 12:23:13 GMT
Casimira, this poem is absolutely beautiful. You are skilled !
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Post by gyro on Apr 28, 2009 19:05:59 GMT
Casi: I was thinking your poem was a bit vague and tried too hard to be oblique, but the second half slayed me. Well done.
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Post by palesa on Apr 28, 2009 19:58:03 GMT
beautiful
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Post by Deleted on Apr 28, 2009 20:45:45 GMT
It is indeed lovely, and this is coming from someone who is immune to poetry.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 29, 2009 3:18:35 GMT
Thank you.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 30, 2009 13:39:48 GMT
T.S. Eliot - The Hollow Men - part I
We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless As wind in dry grass Or rats' feet over broken glass In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour, Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom Remember us--if at all--not as lost Violent souls, but only As the hollow men The stuffed men.
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Post by gyro on Apr 30, 2009 19:11:23 GMT
I thought you didn't like poetry ?
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Post by Deleted on Apr 30, 2009 19:32:01 GMT
I explained that.
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Post by gyro on May 1, 2009 5:20:34 GMT
You did ?
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Post by tillystar on May 3, 2009 14:04:47 GMT
For some reason Pam Ayres and her comedy performance poetry has been in my mind today. When I was little I loved this poem and used to read it over and over again, trying very hard to get the right accent...
I found this one while I was looking for the other, its not comedy like her usual stuff:
While I was googling
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Post by Deleted on May 7, 2009 3:36:36 GMT
La Strada by George Bilgere
A dollar got you a folding chair in the drafty lecture hall with a handful of the other wretched grad students.
Then the big reels and low tech chatter of a sixteen-millimeter projector.
La Strada,Rashoman,HMS Potemkkin La Belle e Ie Bete,before Disney got his hands on it. And The Bicycle Thief, and for God's sake La Strada.
You can't find them at the video store anymore. Only the latest G-rated animated pixilated computer generated prequels. That's just the way it goes.
Even if you could you'd see them on DVD restored,colorized,scratch free on a plasma screen TV with your wife, your dog,your degree. You'd get up to answer the phone,check on the baby.
You're just not young enough or poor enough,or miserable enough anymore to see,really see.
Les Enfants du Paradis,or Ikira or the 400 Blows,or for God's sake La Strada.
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Post by bixaorellana on May 7, 2009 4:11:36 GMT
Oh. my. gosh.
!
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Post by gyro on May 7, 2009 6:39:06 GMT
hmmmm ........
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Post by gyro on May 7, 2009 6:41:44 GMT
This little piggy This little piggy caught a virus This little piggy's bleary eyed This little piggy has swine flu This little piggy has died And this little piggy went wee wee wee wee. You lock us up, it's such a dirty trick We never see the sun It's barbaric. You ought to let us out and do it quick And then we'd never ever make you sick.
. .
Felix Dennis, May 2009
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Post by Deleted on May 8, 2009 5:19:05 GMT
My tomatoes are riper than your wooden shoes And your artichokes resemble my girl
At the market place there was a tomato & an artichoke and both were dancing round a turnip who turned on the root
Dance tomato dance artichoke your wedding day will be clear as the gaze of carps The wooden shoes contemplate us while crying tears of overripe pears and when they sing they make a noise from the grave which explodes & brings forth a corpse The corpse beats his hands like a pebble on a window pane and says No you will not have my tomato at that price
— Benjamin Péret, "Without Tomatoes No Artichokes," translated by Cheryl Seaman
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Post by bixaorellana on May 8, 2009 5:40:27 GMT
"clear as the gaze of carps"
Love it!
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Post by gyro on May 8, 2009 5:43:07 GMT
I would comment/ask a quesion on the translation of that poem, but I fear K would take it as MORE evidence of me stalking him ...
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Post by Deleted on May 8, 2009 12:15:31 GMT
An interesting point though G. I've often wondered about how poets and other writers feel or take to translations of their work. I've had the desire to know other languages not just to speak but to be able to read some of my favorite poets and writers in their native tongue. To be able to read Lorca for instance or Neruda as they wrote it. I remember reading Verlaine I think it was,in the original French and was blown away. That was a long time ago,couldn't do it now,don't remember enough of the French I took. Rilke in German,I could go on...
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Post by gyro on May 8, 2009 12:28:56 GMT
I haven't made a point yet.
(Go on, K, that one's wide open for a clever repost ..... !)
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Post by Deleted on May 8, 2009 13:59:33 GMT
I only repost when I don't have a ripost.
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Post by gyro on May 8, 2009 23:03:57 GMT
Do you mean I spelllllt it rwongly ?
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Post by Deleted on May 9, 2009 2:42:37 GMT
Before the Trip by Jim Harrison
When old people travel,it's for relief from a life they know too well, not routine but the very long slope of disbelief in routine,the unbearable lightness of brushing teeth that aren't all there, the weakened voice calling out for the waiter who doesn't turn, the drink that was neither here nor there is now a singular act of worship. The sun that rises every day says I don't care to the torments of love and hate that once pushed one back and forth on the blood's red wagon. All dogs have become beautiful in the way they look at cats and wonder what to do. Breakfast is an event and bird flu only a joke of fear the world keeps playing. On the morning walk the horizon is ours when we wish . We know that death is a miracle for everyone or so the gods say in a whisper of rain in the immense garden we couldn't quite trace.
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Post by gyro on May 9, 2009 23:05:46 GMT
I like that poem, but hate the way it is segmented in style.
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Post by bixaorellana on May 9, 2009 23:42:24 GMT
I love that poem. Is that by Jim Harrison the novelist? I never read a poem by him before. The "segmenting" (?) seems very natural and correct for the poem.
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