(edit title) Poetry anyone? Options

[Jules]

I happen to be a bit of a fan of poetry, both ancient and modern. Just wondering if any of you, especially regulars here, like poetry? If so lets discuss or post our favourites, and give them critical analysis. Here's one I found a few days ago on the interenet that has had me beguiled since I read it. Typicaly and unashamedly "Della Cruscan" romantic English I know, but sublime in its own context:



If questioning would make us wise
No eyes would ever gaze in eyes;
If all our tale were told in speech
No mouths would wander each to each.

Were spirits free from mortal mesh
And love not bound in hearts of flesh
No aching breasts would yearn to meet
And find their ecstasy complete.

For who is there that lives and knows
The secret powers by which he grows?
Were knowledge all, what were our need
To thrill and faint and sweetly bleed?.

Then seek not, sweet, the "If" and "Why"
I love you now until I die.
For I must love because I live
And life in me is what you give.

[Julie Ryman]

I LOVED that Jules.

[Jules]

Unfortunatley I can't claim to have composed it, but if you like it you should definately read "Madness" by Robert Merry, Absouloutley brilliant, about unrequited love, both bitter and sweet in the English style (similar to Byron without the verbosity) a true masterpiece.

PS I'm glad at least one person checked out this thread, I love poetry, from Sappho to Huges, It is for, me at least, the ultimate expression of human emotion.

[Julie Ryman]

I love poetry. Always have. Thanks for sharing that.

[Jules]

Have you read any Sappho?

[Jules]

PS I came a bit late to it myself. Always thought it was a sissys thing when I was younger, now at last I'm free of other peoples opinions, and I just can't get enough.

[Julie Ryman]

I've read some, but it's been awhile. No doubt she composed some of the most moving love poetry ever!

[Jules]

Oh yes, "Peer of Immortal Gods" and all her other works. Strange, yet beautiful, that someone who lived in the early 6th century BC can drive my heart with such paired down and powerfully driven verse, as someone who stands alive before me today.

[Julie Ryman]

So sad that so much of her work has been lost, which can make it hard to analize. But no less beautiful. I'm going to go back to what I've read before, it's been quite awhile.

[Jules]

Yes, your undoubtedly right, the lauconas make understanding her difficult, although I would suggest that that is nothing compared to the the lack of poetry from her peers. She was almost certainly a genius, one who gave us such unfortunate terms as Lesbian, but simultaniously gave us lines that still leave me gasping for breath:

Peer of Immortal gods he seems to me,
That man who sits beside you,
Who now can listen,
Private, and close, So close
To your sweet sounding voice, and your lovely passionatte laughter,
Ah, for how as ever that sends the heart pounding within my breast...



my toungue cleaves to my mouth etc...

[Julie Ryman]

I've read that someone once called her poetry"as refreshing as the morning breeze." I couldn't say it any better. I do remember there being very few who affected me as she-amazing indeed.

[Jules]

If I could be as bold : Dawn comes with rosy fingers.

[Jules]

She still is,
Beautiful.
makes me feel like a schoolboy, with a crush on his teacher...

[*Guest*]

Lovely stuff.

Mr. Monday has already criticized my taste in poetry, but I'll risk further scorn by restating it.

Charles Bukowski, Sylvia Plath, Dorothy Parker, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Allen Ginsberg, Edgar Allan Poe, Lewis Carroll, Langston Hughes, Emily Dickinson, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Jack Kerouac, Dylan Thomas, Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, and others. Some stuff I have a more occasional taste for, like Shakespeare, Milton, Yeats, Swinburne, and Tennyson.

A current favorite:

Making Love to Concrete by Audre Lorde

An upright abutment in the mouth
of the Willis Avenue bridge
a beige Honda leaps the divider
like a steel gazelle inescapable
sleek leather boots on the pavement
rat-a-tat-tat best intentions
going down for the third time
stuck in the particular

You cannot make love to concrete
if you care about being
non-essential wrong or worn thin
if you fear ever becoming
diamonds or lard
you cannot make love to concrete
if you cannot pretend
concrete needs your loving

To make love to concrete
you need an indelible feather
white dresses before you are ten
a confirmation lace veil milk-large bones
and air raid drills in your nightmares
no stars till you go to the country
and one summer when you are twelve
Con Edison pulls the plug
on the street-corner moons Walpurgisnacht
and there are sudden new lights in the sky
stone chips that forget you need
to become a light rope a hammer
a repeatable bridge
garden-fresh broccoli two dozen dropped eggs
and a hint of you
caught up between my fingers
the lesson of a wooden beam
propped up on barrels
across a mined terrain

between forgiving too easily
and never giving at all.

[Julie Ryman]

Hey Melanie! You have good taste. I love Plath, Dickinson, and my favorite-Poe.