Have you read any good poetry lately? Please include some samples.

I’ve recently stumbled upon a poem I haven’t previously read by this author…I really like it.

the boys i mean are not refined by e. e. cummings

the boys i mean are not refined
they go with girls who buck and bite
they do not give a fuck for luck
they hump them thirteen times a night

one hangs a hat upon her tit
one carves a cross on her behind
they do not give a shit for wit
the boys i mean are not refined

they come with girls who bite and buck
who cannot read and cannot write
who laugh like they would fall apart
and masturbate with dynamite

the boys i mean are not refined
they cannot chat of that and this
they do not give a fart for art
they kill like you would take a piss

they speak whatever’s on their mind
they do whatever’s in their pants
the boys i mean are not refined
they shake the mountains when they dance

@Simone_De_Beauvoir Very cute, but you lose the grammar prize, of course. :-)

There is no such thing as good poetry.

I feel that this statement is helpful because I would hate for anyone else to have to ingest all of the Joyce, Elliot, and Suess that I did, only to come to the same conclusion.

@zenele Naturally, :)

I was just reading Canto IV of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. Exquisite;

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean-roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin-his control
Stops with the shore; – upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man’s ravage, save his own,
When, for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknell’d, uncoffin’d, and unknown.
...
And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
Borne like thy bubbles, onward; from a boy
I wantoned with thy breakers – they to me
Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
Made them a terror – ‘twas a pleasing fear,
For I was as it were a child of thee,
And trusted to thy billows far and near,
And laid my hand upon thy mane – as I do here.

I love Byron. Of course, he’s is best heard aloud. Shelley and Keats, Coleridge, Yeats, Pope, Kipling, Blake, Shakespeare, Tennyson, Dickinson….sigh. All really are better read out loud.

“Roses are red, Violets are Blue and you will be too, when I get done with you.”

Only good poem ever written.

I recently received a huge book filled with Edgar Allan Poe’s work, and I loved A Dream Within A Dream.

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

I recently purchased and read Nox by Anne Carson. It’s an exquisite book. It’s actually a box that contains an accordian of paper which is a painstaking one-word-per-page translation of Catullus 101, a poem he wrote to his dead brother. At the same time it is a memoir of Ms. Carson’s own dead brother. It’s the best book I’ve read this year, and I’ve read quite a lot. I won’t copy her final translation of the poem here. I wouldn’t want to spoil the fun you might have of finding the book and learning about these beautiful words yourself.

Today I have been reading the Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius. There are a number of poems within the story. It would be too long to paste and would bore you. Ah, a sample:

Virtue cowers in dark retreats,
Crime’s foul stain the righteous beareth,
Perjury and false deceits
Hurt not him the wrong who dareth;
But whene’er the wicked trust
In ill strength to work their lust,
Kings, whom nations’ awe declareth
Mighty, grovel in the dust.

Why does a strange discordance break
The ordered scheme’s fair harmony?
Hath God decreed ‘twixt truth and truth
There may such lasting warfare be,
That truths, each severally plain,
We strive to reconcile in vain?

Or is the discord not in truth,
Since truth is self consistent ever?
But, close in fleshly wrappings held,
The blinded mind of man can never
Discern—so faint her taper shines—
The subtle chain that all combines?

Ah! then why burns man’s restless mind
Truth’s hidden portals to unclose?
Knows he already what he seeks?
Why toil to seek it, if he knows?
Yet, haply if he knoweth not,
Why blindly seek he knows not what?

Boethius

I’m always surprised by people’s intense hatred of poetry and their need to express that hatred just in case anyone wants to know.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir . . . that doesn’t even rhyme.

@Blondesjon You’re correct.

In tears I saw you sinking
I watched you fade away;
My heart was fully broken,
You fought so hard to stay

But When I saw you sleeping,
So peaceful, free from pain
I could not wish you back
To suffer that again.

A million times I needed you
One million times I cried;
If love could have saved you
You never would have died.

If I could only have one wish
One dream that would come true,
I’d pray to God with all my heart
For yesterday and you.

I don’t know the author of this poem, but it makes me cry every time I read it. It’s a poem that hepled me a lot.

@Blondesjon Poetry doesn’t have to rhyme. it just has to sound like shit.