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Favourite poems

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Vicky
Posts: 561
Joined: August 30th, 2010, 9:48 am

Re: Favourite poems

#241 Post by Vicky » January 14th, 2011, 8:08 am

Latest post of the previous page:

Thanks, Lewist, I thought maybe I was the only one who hadn't made the connection. It was only when I collected the paper at lunchtime yesterday that I realised the significance of the subject of Ninny's poem.

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Ninny
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Re: Favourite poems

#242 Post by Ninny » January 14th, 2011, 8:40 am

Lewist, you are welcome to read my poem at your group. Please tell them who wrote it, and that she has a book for sale!
I wrote the poem some years ago, after a visit to Australia. My son took me to Toowoomba, and I thought it was utterly beautiful - really an oasis in a desert. I am so sorry about the Australian floods, and Sri Lanka is worse, and Brazil worse than that. If only poetry had the power to make things better!

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Carja
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Joined: September 4th, 2010, 7:58 pm

Re: Favourite poems

#243 Post by Carja » January 14th, 2011, 4:57 pm

My favorite poem.......

The Arrow and the Song - Longfellow

I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.
Laugh often/love much;leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child,a garden patch,or a redeemed social condition;play w/enthusiasm & sing w/exultation;know even 1 life has breathed easier because you lived. This is success.B.A.Stanley

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animist
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Re: Favourite poems

#244 Post by animist » January 15th, 2011, 2:54 pm

Ninny wrote: If only poetry had the power to make things better!
I think it can do, don't you? BTW, hope the family is doing well. I always liked Shelley's poetry, and he believed in the power of poetry to change the world; he was a sort of humanist, all in favour of popular rule and against the tyranny of priests and rulers. This is his well-known poem "Ozymandias", which attempts to show the futility of human vainglory:

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

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animist
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Re: Favourite poems

#245 Post by animist » January 15th, 2011, 3:00 pm

lewist wrote:Animist! I still have the Jazz poems book somewhere. I agree with you about that poem, except I also found it disturbing when I was sixteen and I still do. It is a very effective piece of economical writing.
thanks so much for the feedback, Lewist, and how amazing that you know the book. Do you think it is the fact that these poems were read to a jazz background that gives them their sort of disembodied feel? I have a companion volume called "Beat Poets" (Ginsberg etc), but never got the same feel from it. Poetry and Jazz was a UK movement, I think, and I will inflict a few more on everyone now and then!

thundril
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Re: Favourite poems

#246 Post by thundril » January 16th, 2011, 12:44 am

Ozymandius is chilling, Animist. and it always makes me think of this poem, which suggests to me a viewpoint from the other side of history. (I can't express it any more clearly than that, witthout using paragraphs and chapters:
This is Yeats, writing not long afer the Easter rising. The connection with Ozymandius is, for me, in the last verse mainly; but I would not presume to edit a poem to make a point, so here is the whole, wonderful thing.

The Secon Coming
by William Butler Yeats

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

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animist
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Re: Favourite poems

#247 Post by animist » January 17th, 2011, 6:19 pm

an amazing poem. This is a short one also in the vein of religion and authority, by Norman Cameron:

Forgive me, Sire, for cheating your intent
That I, who should command a regiment,
Do amble amiably here, O God,
One of the neat ones in your awkward squad

I like the phrase "amble amiably", but mainly the odd ironic mix of arrogance and humility

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Lifelinking
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Re: Favourite poems

#248 Post by Lifelinking » January 17th, 2011, 7:47 pm

I like this wry observation on the clergy


I do believe in stone and lime,

a manse of large dimension,

Broad acres for a glebe and farm,

that is my church extension.

My folk may perish if they like -

Christ's name I rarely mention;

I take the stipend due by right

to men of good intention.


Anon, 18th Century,



David Ross (2000) The Pocket Book of Scottish Quotations
"Who thinks the law has anything to do with justice? It's what we have because we can't have justice."
William McIlvanney

thundril
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Re: Favourite poems

#249 Post by thundril » January 17th, 2011, 7:59 pm

And speaking of wry observations, this, by Humbert Wolfe, is one of my personal favourites;
You cannot hope to bribe or twist
(thank God!) the British journalist
But, seeing what the man will do
unbribed, there's no occasion to.

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animist
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Re: Favourite poems

#250 Post by animist » January 17th, 2011, 9:47 pm

Stevie Smith is most famous for her poem "Not Waving But Drowning", but the one below is IMO a very humanistic view of life and religion, and is, in its wry way, positive:


Away, melancholy,
Away with it, let it go.

Are not the trees green,
The earth as green?
Does not the wind blow,
Fire leap and the rivers flow?
Away melancholy.

The ant is busy
He carrieth his meat,
All things hurry
To be eaten or eat.
Away, melancholy.

Man, too, hurries,
Eats, couples, buries,
He is an animal also
With a hey ho melancholy,
Away with it, let it go.

Man of all creatures
Is superlative
(Away melancholy)
He of all creatures alone
Raiseth a stone
(Away melancholy)
Into the stone, the god
Pours what he knows of good
Calling, good, God.
Away melancholy, let it go.

Speak not to me of tears,
Tyranny, pox, wars,
Saying, Can God
Stone of man's thoughts, be good?
Say rather it is enough
That the stuffed
Stone of man's good, growing,
By man's called God.
Away, melancholy, let it go.

Man aspires
To good,
To love
Sighs;

Beaten, corrupted, dying
In his own blood lying
Yet heaves up an eye above
Cries, Love, love.
It is his virtue needs explaining,
Not his failing.

Away, melancholy,
Away with it, let it go.

thundril
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Joined: July 4th, 2008, 5:02 pm

Re: Favourite poems

#251 Post by thundril » January 18th, 2011, 11:12 pm

Thanks for this one. It's a new one for me; it's going to take a very long time, I think, to work through all those rich interweavings of words;
Richness.
that's what it looks like;
Not something easy or glib, this one.
I'll have to think about it.

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Griblet
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Re: Favourite poems

#252 Post by Griblet » January 21st, 2011, 4:25 pm

Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode,
The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.
A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire,
And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire;
A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread
The night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head.
I knew no harm of Bonaparte and plenty of the Squire,
And for to fight the Frenchman I did not much desire;
But I did bash their baggonets because they came arrayed
To straighten out the crooked road an English drunkard made,
Where you and I went down the lane with ale-mugs in our hands,
The night we went to Glastonbury by way of Goodwin Sands.
His sins they were forgiven him; or why do flowers run
Behind him; and the hedges all strengthening in the sun?
The wild thing went from left to right and knew not which was which,
But the wild rose was above him when they found him in the ditch.
God pardon us, nor harden us; we did not see so clear
The night we went to Bannockburn by way of Brighton Pier.
My friends, we will not go again or ape an ancient rage,
Or stretch the folly of our youth to be the shame of age,
But walk with clearer eyes and ears this path that wandereth,
And see undrugged in evening light the decent inn of death;
For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen,
Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.

GK Chesterton
A man without religion is like a fish without a bicycle.

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animist
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Re: Favourite poems

#253 Post by animist » January 21st, 2011, 4:36 pm

Griblet wrote:Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode,
The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.

GK Chesterton
thanks, lovely poem, but I notice - for the first time ever - that it is historically inaccurate: the Romans were here before the English, not after! Sorry to be pedantic, and I've got another poem to send over soon!

lewist
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Re: Favourite poems

#254 Post by lewist » January 21st, 2011, 6:20 pm

animist wrote:
lewist wrote:Animist! I still have the Jazz poems book somewhere. I agree with you about that poem, except I also found it disturbing when I was sixteen and I still do. It is a very effective piece of economical writing.
thanks so much for the feedback, Lewist, and how amazing that you know the book. Do you think it is the fact that these poems were read to a jazz background that gives them their sort of disembodied feel? I have a companion volume called "Beat Poets" (Ginsberg etc), but never got the same feel from it. Poetry and Jazz was a UK movement, I think, and I will inflict a few more on everyone now and then!
I have found the Beat Poets book and the Dannie Abse book but I can't find the Jazz Poets. However, the music I am playing in the car at the moment includes Harmony Row by Jack Bruce. He was part of the jazz poetry movement along with Pete Brown and they wrote some of the material together. I think they may even have written things that Cream recorded. Cool music indeed. :)
Carpe diem. Savour every moment.

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Alan C.
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Re: Favourite poems

#255 Post by Alan C. » January 21st, 2011, 6:29 pm

However, the music I am playing in the car at the moment includes Harmony Row by Jack Bruce. He was part of the jazz poetry movement along with Pete Brown and they wrote some of the material together.
Good grief Lewis! Is it not an offence to use a laptop while driving? :wink:
Abstinence Makes the Church Grow Fondlers.

lewist
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Re: Favourite poems

#256 Post by lewist » January 21st, 2011, 9:43 pm

Alan C. wrote:Good grief Lewis! Is it not an offence to use a laptop while driving? :wink:
No, no! The car has cruise control so I nip over the back to make a cup of tea and change the record. Is that a problem or something?
Carpe diem. Savour every moment.

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Alan C.
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Re: Favourite poems

#257 Post by Alan C. » January 21st, 2011, 10:22 pm

Anybody doing anything for Burns night on Tuesday? The shops here are full of haggis and (vacuum packed) pre-cooked neeps, most of which I'm sure will be on sale at half price on Wednesday, much like the turkeys on boxing day.
No, no! The car has cruise control so I nip over the back to make a cup of tea and change the record. Is that a problem or something?
Lewis, if your cruise control is as good as your sat nav, then yes there could be a problem :wink:


Remember Glasgow?
Abstinence Makes the Church Grow Fondlers.

lewist
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Re: Favourite poems

#258 Post by lewist » January 22nd, 2011, 9:55 pm

Alan C. wrote:Remember Glasgow?
Well yes, I seem to remember someone couldn't find the adress and I had to phone my son to get him to google the hotel... once we had the address the satnav found it no problem. I used it in Glasgow today in fact to find the said son's new abode.
Carpe diem. Savour every moment.

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Alan C.
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Re: Favourite poems

#259 Post by Alan C. » January 22nd, 2011, 10:09 pm

lewist wrote:
Alan C. wrote:Remember Glasgow?
Well yes, I seem to remember someone couldn't find the address and I had to phone my son to get him to google the hotel... once we had the address the satnav found it no problem. I used it in Glasgow today in fact to find the said son's new abode.
I meant when we were trying to get to the train station and it tried to take us down a bus/taxi only road. :wink:
It was said tongue in cheek.
Abstinence Makes the Church Grow Fondlers.

Vicky
Posts: 561
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Re: Favourite poems

#260 Post by Vicky » January 23rd, 2011, 9:51 am

This is the Saturday poem from yesterday's Guardian:-

Bonus by Blake Morrison

This poem is my annual bonus...I know, I know,
most folk slog away for a modest return with no extras,
and their work's in the public interest,
teaching and healing and cleaning and stuff. Whereas...

But I'm a poet, and who are you to interfere
if the powers above choose to reward me?
Remember the value of those words I generate
and all I contribute to the economy.

Be warned: if you deprive us poets of our bonuses,
we'll be forced to move and work abroad
in a different language, and London will lose its place
as the poetry hub of the western world.

Is that what you want? No? I thought not.
You're just envious of the cats that got the cream.
Go on, admit it: we're bloody well worth our bonuses.
Every stanza. Every line-break. Every half-rhyme.

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Griblet
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Re: Favourite poems

#261 Post by Griblet » January 23rd, 2011, 10:09 am

Animist wrote:I notice - for the first time ever - that it is historically inaccurate: the Romans were here before the English, not after!
It's by no means one of the world's great poems - just a bit of fun - and I suspect GKC knew that full well. Should he have written, "..the Neolithic hunter-gatherers who re-populated these islands as the glaciers retreated, first trod those pathways which were later to become the rolling English road."? :D
A man without religion is like a fish without a bicycle.

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