Poetry In, Poetry Out
I’m beginning to think in poems.
The more that lyrics become my obsession and little God Poems before sleep become my ritual, the more my thoughts turn poetic. I sleep better because of it. I leave my thoughts alone as soon as I end one on a good line. I want to end every day that way, on a good line, and let it echo into my dreams.
I’m reading more poetry than I ever have. Is it any wonder I’ve never been particularly poetic; I used to hate poetry (unless it sounded like a song). I read philosophy and psychology books and that was about it. Made occasional exceptions for fiction books like Dune that are as much philosophy and psychology as they are fiction. Now I’m reading Emerson journals and God poems every day and suddenly I can write songs.
I may be on to something.
Send me your favorite poems.
Here’s a God Poem for you.
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26 Responses to “Poetry In, Poetry Out”
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Dylan Thomas’ Do not go gentle into that good night, Stevie Smith’s Not Waving but Drowning (how apt), and anything by John Hegley because he’s genius. Oh, and for the big kid in me, Chocolate Cake by Michael Rosen. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
(That was never gonna work with the capitals!)
Keep being fab, Brooke.
you want a poem..actually i been trying to turn into a song for a long time maybe you help.
The demon in my View
by alysa pratt
The powerful darkness consumes my soul
Im vunerable so full of need
Not much longer can i take it
before my heeart begins to bleed.
i speak yet noone hears me
im here yet noone sees
too them im just a shadow
thats hidden by the trees.
my inside are so empty
My eyes are blank and raw
My mind has been destroyed
From living by their law.
On the outside I wear a cover
just a lonely shell
the victim is inside me she knows but will not tell.
Deep inside the pain lives on
My thoughts are sad and true
and all i see before me
is the demon in my view.
Verry nice! I like it….I saw a cool one the other day too….I’ll see if I can find it and send it to you. I like those kinds of poems too, the ones that stir the soul…..not the prissy, rhymey ones. Have a great weekend, sweetie!
Here’s one you might like:
Somebody said that it couldn’t be done,
But he with a chuckle replied
That maybe it couldn’t, but he would be one
Who wouldn’t say so till he tried.
- Edgar Albert Guest
AWesome. Thanks dudes! (and moms). : )
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Alysa, yours is beautiful, but are you okay?
speaking of john hegley, this happened to me on thursday. it’s a kind of poem/song thing but Dylan should still be able to sleep at night.
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True Story 25/10/07
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There’s no John Hegley in my Waterstone’s
No John Hegley
No John Hegley
But there’s a display in the middle of the floor for Sharon Osbourne
So that’s all right, then
That’s all right, then
And there’s a myriad of shelves devoted to TV chefs
Manga comics, even football refs
But there’s no John Hegley in my Waterstone’s
No John Hegley
.
I asked a woman who worked in my Waterstone’s
For John Hegley
John Hegley
She typed a name into the computer, probably spelt incorrectly
And asked, “Who is he?”
“What does he do?”
She must have been about fifty, could have worked there twenty years
I was standing there embarrassed, almost shed a tear
For this poor woman in my Waterstone’s
And for John Hegley
.
“Is there a poetry section in my Waterstone’s?
With John Hegley?
John H-e-g-l-e-y?”
She pointed me in the direction of three dusty shelves
Out of the way
Next to the café
But there was nothing bar the triumvirate of Shakespeare, Ayers and Greer
All of a sudden I really needed a beer
Not with this woman from Waterstone’s
But with John Hegley
.
I legged it down the steps of my Waterstone’s
Less John Hegley
Less John Hegley
Through the local interest section detailing ships and mines
That’s history
That’s part of me
I struggled past a throng queuing for Nigella Lawson
That great author Alan Titchmarsh and guitar tab for Orson
No, I won’t ever look again in my Waterstone’s
I won’t ever look again in my Waterstone’s
No, I won’t ever look again in my Waterstone’s
For John Hegley.
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(it’s such a pity i can’t sing or play guitar!)
Have you read T.S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men?” I really think that reading it outloud to yourself can be a very pleasant experience…particularly because some of the stanzas are so inscrutable that you lose track of anything but the sound of the words while other stanzas are so clear that they resound to your very soul…at least, to some people’s very soul. I like the idea of poems before sleep, but I couldn’t see the link that your hyperlink went to. Computers are so nonsensical sometimes…May your day be rife with merriment.
To Alyson, I must tell you in honesty and kindness that this is not your best work, for the best is yet to come. This is but the skeleton to hang your masterwork on. Here is my suggestion: Write the poem again on a piece of lined paper and skip every other line. Once you finish, try replacing the lines of the original poem with a line that roughly approximates what the next step would be in your mind from the line before it. Now skibble over the original lines and try to make the new lines make sense together. I am trying to be brief, so this is not a very clear explanation, but I believe this could make a very good start. In my humble opinion there is too much telling and not enough showing in your poem. Come up with an overarching metaphore that staring at your inner demon(s) works with. Read Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and think how reflection could be a part of your image of the demon…is it a demon silloette? (By the way, there is a very early Edgar Allen Poe poem with a very similar ending, and I would check out his early poem, “Alone” as it serves in my view to crystalize his brilliance in a very approachable way.) Okay, if I write any more I fear this will be stretching the boundaries of “brief” so I’ll just end with, GOOD LUCK and KEEP IT UP!
John Hegley is a star. His performances are a joy. There’s one that goes something like:
When he lost his mind
We helped him find
it
It was behind the bin
The one that had it in
For him…
Roger McGough has been called ‘the patron saint of English poetry’. I prefer his humorous work:
Cousin Nell
Married a frogman
In the hope
That one day he would turn into a handsome prince.
Instead
He turned into a sewage pipe
Near Gravesend
And was never seen again.
Rupert Brooke’s ‘Grantchester’ is a masterpiece but I’m not sure how well it crosses the Atlantic - very, very English.
Oh, and anything by Robert Frost.
Awesome stuff. Suggestions-wise and otherwise.
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Never heard of John Hegley, but I’ve read his name so many times in the past 2 minutes that I’m going to have to wikipedia him. So it is true… repetition works…
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The Brooke is awesome.
The Brooke is awesome.
The Brooke is awesome.
The Brooke is awesome.
The Brooke is awesome.
The Brooke is awesome.
The Brooke is awesome.
The Brooke is awesome.
The Brooke is awesome.
The Brooke is awesome.
The Brooke is awesome.
The Brooke is awesome.
The Brooke is awesome.
The Brooke givehermoney.
So, this isn’t my thing. I don’t write on other peoples websites…ever…until tonight. Brooke, I was deeply moved by your version of Neil Young’s Long May You Run. Your voice is sweet without being overpowering. Such a quality is hard to find in a singer. Also, I like you’re since of hidden ness. This being said, here is a poem that I wrote and would like to share:
Untitled
In times of desperation,
colors don’t really matter much.
Fear tears at the very soul.
It’s not that beauty fades…
but that it has no meaning here.
There is a wound that opens and closes.
The helplessness that shows others
who we really are
and the hatred,
the shame,
at standing alone—
naked,
as we try
to cover ourselves
with just two palms.
O how unfair the world is at times!
But if we should love others,
and they should love us,
we would find that we
no longer must hide
and shrink away from their sight.
Rather, we could walk into the light
and let others see our
private places.
Naked.
P.S.
If you enjoyed Emerson, perhaps you would like the writings of Thomas Merton or Chuang Tzu. Both men were recluses. One a Catholic, the other a Taoist. I always feel at home in their writings. Good luck!
On the subject of repetition:
This is the way the World ends!
This is the way the World ends!
This is the way the World ends!
…not with a bang but a wimper.
I noticed no one ever responds to my posts, which is fine…yeah, I admit I never really get online enough to keep up anyway, but I fear the frailty of this internet medium when I see snippets and phrases blowing out into the wind and then going nowhere. I was interested to see what the writer of the earlier poem might think of my suggestions. Oh well…
I guess I might as well go read John Hegley. However, I must say I think this Nate fellow is quite a guy. I like his attitude. May you comment many times more, Nate, for if tasteless people are insipid, you most certainly have warrated the title, Nate the Sipid! (Quite tasteful, I should think!)
Nate, that really is a good poem! (I just had to add that. Honestly, I loved it!)
Nate: I must second The Conductor! It’s beautiful.
Favorite part:
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“It’s not that beauty fades…
“But that it has no meaning here.”
COnductor:
Why does that repeated part seem so familiar?
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hey, don’t fret when nobody responds to your comments. You’re speaking into a vast, dark void. I mean look at this place! People come, occasionally comment, then forget about it, generally. There is a ’subscribe to comments’ option for those who have RSS readers, but many don’t. I think most of my audience are much less nerdy than me, with a few exceptions (y’all know who you are, I say fondly).
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I’m looking into forums (even though I’ve never liked forums) — good forums, if there are any, with good wordpress integration and stuff. I think I may have found a decent one. Vanilla forums? anyone familiar with them? anyway, hopefully we can make this place less of an echo chamber and more of a cozy campfire. That’s my goal with that. Suggestions are welcomed.
For The Conductor,
I’m glad that at least someone liked my poem. Poems are like songs, most intimate. I wish I could say that my poem was about the reconciling of two lovers or some other romantic image. However, the truth is this…
About a year ago, I was living in Florida completing a six-month college internship. When the time came for me to leave Florida and come back to Colorado, I stopped by the apartment office in order to sign-out. When I walked into the office, I noticed that the office attendant was an incredibly beautiful and attractive woman. As I was signing out, she informed me that I had signed a 12 month lease and not a 6 month lease. Unfortunately, the woman explained to me that I would have to pay the consequences of my mistake for 1.) breaking my lease and 2.) not giving proper notice of my sudden departure…or in simple terms: I now owed the apartment complex $1,500.
When she said this, I was shocked and completely taken by surprise. I didn’t have an extra $1,500 floating around to give away. After a few moments of fumbling around with my words, I asked her if there was anything that I could do in order not to pay this amount. She gave me the usual, “I’m sorry, sir, but there is nothing that I can do.” At this point I panicked and retorted in an angry voice, “Don’t you care at all?! Don’t you try to work with people?!” What I was really saying was, “I can’t believe you could be so cold and not give two shits about my problem! Fuck you!”
Then the strangest thing happened. Instead of taking offence at my pointed, personal attack, she became full of compassion and began to really sympathize and work with my problem. After some consultation with the other members in the office, she was able to reduce the amount that I owed to $350. When I left the office, I realized the incredible kindness that this beautiful stranger had given to me. I was so moved by her concern for me, a total stranger, that I wrote this poem in honor of her.
For Brooke,
You’ll have to read the above for this to be understandable.
When I wrote the line, “It’s not that beauty fades…but that it has no meaning here.” I was referring to the woman’s physical beauty. Her outward beauty seemed to have so much worth and value, yet during my moment of crisis, this external beauty became meaningless. The only true beauty that was able to shine and have meaning was the woman’s inner beauty: her sincere love and genuine concern for a stranger.
Beautiful, Nate!
Here’s a great one by Billy Collins called “Lanyard”:
The other day as I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room
bouncing from typewriter to piano
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
I found myself in the “L” section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word, Lanyard.
No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one more suddenly into the past.
A past where I sat at a workbench
at a camp by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid thin plastic strips into a lanyard.
A gift for my mother.
I had never seen anyone use a lanyard.
Or wear one, if that’s what you did with them.
But that did not keep me from crossing strand over strand
again and again until I had made a boxy, red and white lanyard for my mother.
She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted teaspoons of medicine to my lips,
set cold facecloths on my forehead
then led me out into the airy light
and taught me to walk and swim and I in turn presented her with a lanyard.
“Here are thousands of meals” she said,
“and here is clothing and a good education.”
“And here is your lanyard,” I replied,
“which I made with a little help from a counselor.”
“Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth and two clear eyes to read the world.” she whispered.
“And here,” I said, “is the lanyard I made at camp.”
“And here,” I wish to say to her now,
“is a smaller gift. Not the archaic truth,
that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took the two-toned lanyard from my hands,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless worthless thing I wove out of boredom
would be enough to make us even.”
Here’s one I wrote this past Christmas:
http://poor-brother.blogspot.com/2007/12/emmanuel-and-elmanuim.html
A bit of verse (composed in a parkling lot in Maine):
“LOT”
The crow
mussel color
spied among the nearby world
decided I was either bemused
or brother
and hopped back onto its crumpled papers
using boneweight hollow
to counterpoint the inward probing
of black beak.
It knew
Tomato was there.
It knew
Bread with mayonnaise
was there.
It knew pallid shavings of Lettuce
were there.
A car glanced past unknowingly.
The crow leaped from its litter
nocked to fly.
No challenge came.
It ate
then crossed the sky.
__________________________________________________
ED M.
Thanks for feeding me your poetry! delicious and nutritious. :)
Thanks for the feedback. I like how your comments section turns all my letters into caps. IT MAKES ME FEEL VERY IMPORTANT!
Thanks Kester. I’m glad you like the ALL-CAPS. Most people hate it, including me. I haven’t bothered to figure out how to fix it yet because I’m going to just completely change my theme/design soon.
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But in the meantime, I’m glad it makes you feel important! It makes me feel really loud!
That’s how you can tell you’re important. Just ask Bill O’Reilly.