Shout-out to Members Who Read Poetry!! - Page 2

My writing is doggerel, although I wanted nothing more than to be an epic poet when I was a young man. I've read some good stuff though, including the following epics:

Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained
Iliad twice (same translation I think)
Odyssey three times (three different translations, including Chapman)
Aeneid (Fitzgerald I think)
Divine Comedy (in translation; especially liked Paradiso)
The Faerie Queene
The Canterbury Tales (if you want to call that an epic)

Also all major poems plus much more from the Romantic era (everything Keats ever wrote, including both volumes of his letters), 90% of Shakespearean dramas plus the sonnets, many other Elizabethan and other dramas, all the other biggies including Pope, Donne, etc. Not much knowledge about the Victorian eras and forward, although I kind of like that drunk guy who lived under the stairs in St. Louis or wherever and killed himself.

I don't really read poetry and I certainly don't produce it although I have been known to throw a few words together in the past.

However, the greatest poem I have ever read is by John Fuller and called Valentine:

The things about you I appreciate

May seem indelicate:

I'd like to find you in the shower

And chase the soap for half an hour.

I'd like to have you in my power

And see your eyes dilate.

I'd like to have your back to scour

And other parts to lubricate.

Sometimes I feel it is my fate

To chase you screaming up a tower

Or make you cower

By asking you to differentiate

Nietzsche from Schopenhauer.

I'd like successfully to guess your weight

And win you at a fete.

I'd like to offer you a flower.

I like the hair upon your shoulders,

Falling like water over boulders.

I like the shoulders, too: they are essential.

Your collar-bones have great potential

(I'd like all your particulars in folders

Marked _Confidential_).

I like your cheeks, I like your nose,

I like the way your lips disclose

The neat arrangement of your teeth

(Half above and half beneath)

In rows.

I like your eyes, I like their fringes.

The way they focus on me gives me twinges.

Your upper arms drive me berserk.

I like the way your elbows work,

On hinges.

I like your wrists, I like your glands,

I like the fingers on your hands.

I'd like to teach them how to count,

And certain things we might exchange,

Something familiar for something strange.

I'd like to give you just the right amount

And get some change.

I like it when you tilt your cheek up.

I like the way you nod and hold a teacup.

I like your legs when you unwind them.

Even in trousers I don't mind them.

I like each softly-moulded kneecap.

I like the little crease behind them.

I'd always know, without recap,

Where to find them.

I like the sculpture of your ears.

I like the way your profile disappears

Whenever you decide to turn and face me.

I'd like to cross two hemispheres

And have you chase me.

I'd like to smuggle you across frontiers

Or sail with you at night into Tangiers.

I'd like you to embrace me.

I'd like to see you ironing your skirt

And cancelling other dates.

I'd like to button up your shirt.

I like the way your chest inflates.

I'd like to soothe you when you're hurt

Or frightened senseless by invertebrates.

I'd like you even if you were malign

And had a yen for sudden homicide.

I'd let you put insecticide

Into my wine.

I'd even like you if you were the Bride

Of Frankenstein

Or something ghoulish out of Mamoulian's

_Jekyll and Hyde_.

I'd even like you as my Julian

Of Norwich or Cathleen ni Houlihan.

How melodramatic

If you were something muttering in attics

Like Mrs Rochester or a student of Boolean

Mathematics.

You are the end of self-abuse.

You are the eternal feminine.

I'd like to find a good excuse

To call on you and find you in.

I'd like to put my hand beneath your chin,

And see you grin.

I'd like to taste your Charlotte Russe,

I'd like to feel my lips upon your skin,

I'd like to make you reproduce.

I'd like you in my confidence.

I'd like to be your second look.

I'd like to let you try the French Defence

And mate you with my rook.

I'd like to be your preference

And hence

I'd like to be around when you unhook.

I'd like to be your only audience,

The final name in your appointment book,

Your future tense.

I got addicted to poem analysis since High school. I don't actually enjoy most poems, only ones that are made well-enough for in-depth analysis (made by someone with very much knowledge about english grammar and structure).

Just "reading" poems does not really suit me.

Rubaiyat is cool.

I still write seriously off and on, but more and more for friends or special occasions; like this one the other day for my wife's birthday. It's worthless to anyone else, but her appreciation was worth the smoke break =^)


I’ve got something to say to her

When I think of all the women that I could’ve had
Some of them good, some of them bad
I ain’t no jailbird, but I ain’t no prize
So when she picked me out I was kinda surprised

She said all the words that I would’ve spoken
Which worked out perfect, ‘cause my woman picker’s broken
She said “you’re for me”, and I knew she was right
We’ve never left each other since that very first night

I don’t stay out late, and she don’t cheat
We still hold hands, which I think is kinda neat
I can tell her she’s a pain, as long as I wink
Still lets me pat her butt, when she’s standing at the sink

When we say something mean we usually fess up on our own
Although it may be later or by the telephone
She always stands up for me, even when I have my doubts
Never hear her complain, when the money’s down and out

I know we’ll be together until the very end
You see what started out to be a wife, turned out to be a friend.
We’ve been married now for years, but it doesn’t seem that long
Thank God my life didn’t turn out like a country song.

robin

I guess I'll share my ee cummings rip off (no one steal it! ). Inspired by kate the chemistry major - true story!

http://datalink.homelinux.com/~jeff/docs/chemless.txt

catacresis-
this just popped into my head this morning. I'm in the mountains of West Virginia, so I've only got dialup and I'm too lazy to edit the punctuation at this speed. Thought somebody might get a chuckle out of it though.


The Head-Fier’s Lament

There was a day, when it went my way
And strock buds from an ipod would make me say:
“Isn’t it neat, the music’s so sweet,
I’ve got all I need, my system’s complete.

And then I met, someone on the net,
Who said visit Head-Fi, there’s better stuff yet.
And so it began, the master plan,
For the ultimate sound; I should’ve ran.

Well now I’ve got, more than a lot,
Like custom IEMs, hooked to a balanced Little Dot.
The higher I went, and the more I spent,
I found myself wondering- gear or rent?

I got so low, couldn’t hear two tracks in a row,
I was afraid I was hearing artifacts you know?
Then I said screw it, went 24 bit,
But that meant more equipment I had to get.

Now I’m thinking ‘stats, are they really all that?
I’ve heard they’re the ultimate in SQ and PRAT.
Where will it end, I ask my friend?
Wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then.

I miss Scrypt.

Unfortunately, Blake and Shelley are the two Romantics I don't really feel, although I highly respect the former. I'm surprised that you like Milton but not Wordsworth. They have similarly classical styles to me. I consider The Prelude to be almost the equal of Paradise Lost. Nothing is in fact the equal of Paradise Lost, of course, except the epic that Keats had in him and would have written if he had kept writing past his early twenties.

"There are two ways of disliking poetry: one way is to dislike it, the other is to read [Alexander] Pope" Oscar Wilde

"Very often intellect is poetry's enemy
because it is too much given to imitation
because it lifts the poet to a throne of sharp edges
and makes him oblivious of the fact
that he may suddenly be devoured by ants
or a great arsenic lobster may fall on his head." Garcia Lorca

"If there's no money in poetry, neither is there poetry in money" Robert Graves

Yes, I read [and write] poetry [have been published], and my tastes are eclectic, everything from Michael McClure to Frank Mitchell. The best poem in the world, IMO, is the one at the end of the movie "Never Cry Wolf." Ah!

Laz

Or maybe the best poem in the world is this one:

A Peruvian Dance Song

Wake up, woman
Rise up, woman
In the middle of the street
A dog howls

May the death arrive
May the dance arrive

Comes the dance
You must dance
Comes the death
You can't help it!

Ah! What a chill
Ah! What a wind