how have i never seen this before?

1. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse A persona che mai tornasse al mondo, Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero, Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats	5
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question….	10
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,	15
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,	20
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window panes;	25
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;	30
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
In the room the women come and go	35
Talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—	40
(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)
Do I dare	45
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,	50
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all—	55
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?	60
And how should I presume?
And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress	65
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin? .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets	70
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!	75
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?	80
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,	85
And in short, I was afraid.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,	90
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—	95
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;
That is not it, at all.”
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,	100
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:	105
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.” .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .	110
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,	115
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old … I grow old …	120
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.	125
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown	130
Till human voices wake us, and we drown. -T.S. Eliot

Meds by Ganaway

Meds Erin Ganaway They ask how I sleep and I say: like summer preserves, wintering behind a wall of paneled doors, under quilted glass I lay dormant as okra, blackberries and cornhusks, dreams scattered like sunflower seeds resisting packed clay before a farmer takes to tilling, skunk striped and pursed tight to memory. I wake to splintered limbs, a still-born body laced in webs. They say for now sanity is this preservation cupboard, this flayed out waiting for reason to surface like the pressed lips of rain-soaked crops. Previously published in Third Coast, 2011

Cacoethes Scribendi

If all the trees in all the woods were men;
And each and every blade of grass a pen;
If every leaf on every shrub and tree
Turned to a sheet of foolscap; every sea
Were changed to ink, and all earth's living tribes
Had nothing else to do but act as scribes,
And for ten thousand ages, day and night,
The human race should write, and write, and write,
Till all the pens and paper were used up,
And the huge inkstand was an empty cup,
Still would the scribblers clustered round its brink
Call for more pens, more paper, and more ink.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

 

 

 

an oldie but a goodie 

not exactly new to me but new to me today

and it should be shared witheveryone until there is no one left to share it with 

and still it will be being shared

 

is everyone doing a poem for tomorow?

Air Empathy

On the red-eye from Seattle, a two year-old
in the seat behind me screeches

his little guts out. Instead of dreaming
of stuffing a wad of duct tape

into his mouth, I envy him, how he lets
his pain hang out. I wish I too could drill

a pipeline into the fields of ache, tap
a howl. How long would I need to sob

before the lady beside me dropped
her fashion rag, dipped a palm

into the puddle of me? How many
squeals before another passenger

joined in? Soon the stewardess hunched
over the drink cart, the pilot gushing

into the controls, the entire plane, an arrow
of grief, quivering through the sky.

 

---Jeffrey McDaniel

 

The idea of a plane filled with crying people is pretty rad.  I like the way the poem slowly escalates.

-chris

 

 

"Winter in the Boulevard"

Hey everyone! I found this poem, and I think it is just lovely, and also very fitting considering the winter season (although it is almost spring). It like how he personifies the trees and describes them as being "naked in thought" and stripped of their words. I take this to mean that the speaker feels he is more fruitful with his words in the summer season and perhaps more inspired to write, and in the winter season he is caught in reflection.

Winter In The Boulevard

by D.H. Lawrence

The frost has settled down upon the trees

And ruthlessly strangled off the fantasies

Of leaves that have gone unnoticed, swept like old

Romantic stories now no more to be told.

The trees down the boulevard stand naked in

thought,

Their abundant summery wordage silenced, caught

In the grim undertow; naked the trees confront

Implacable winter’s long, cross-questioning brunt.

Has some hand balanced more leaves in the depths

of the twigs?

Some dim little efforts placed in the threads of the

birch?—

It is only the sparrows, like dead black leaves on

the sprigs,

Sitting huddled against the cerulean, one flesh with

their perch.

The clear, cold sky coldly bethinks itself.

Like vivid thought the air spins bright, and all

Trees, birds, and earth, arrested in the after-thought

Awaiting the sentence out from the welkin brought.

I Wish I Had Written That

Papers Due Thursday, March 19th

“Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal” – T. S. Eliot

Select a poem that you especially admire. It may be written in any style. It also may be your “favorite poem,” but its personal meaning to you is not the topic of this assignment. You may think of it as a poem you wish you had written, or a poem that suggests ways that you would like to write your own poems.

Some, I think most, of you have done this before.  I’d like to see folks get out of their comfort zones a bit.  Also, I’m putting the caveat down of avoiding Frost (with possible exceptions), Silverstein, Poe.  Also the further away in time (say the last hundred years) we go with this, the harder this paper gets.  Explaining under what conditions you expect to make poems that contain elements of say, the Elizabethan tradition, requires one to clarify exactly what elements of poetics you would hope to extract from it into an object composed in the language we presently speak. In other words, that’s likely a 25-50 page paper.

Type the poem, as it appears published. Write 3-4 pages describing how you think the poem works, or some aspect of how it might inspire you to write a poem like it. The focus of the paper should be on how the poem works as a poem, and on what relation those functions you see working in it impact your own work.  As such, you should see this assignment as a type of “dry run” for discussing your own work.

The purpose of this assignment is as much creative as academic and should be approached by you as a writer seeking to broaden your own horizons.

The poem should have been published.  Poems by friends, family members and from personal websites could possibly be included, but you should see me first.  It is likely that they will be harder to discuss from this viewpoint. If you have a question about that, check with me.

The poem may address a subject that you wish you could address and are unsure how to.  How does it do this? It may apply diction or method (perspective, some quality of the speaker) that you would like to see in your own work.  What formic qualities does the poem possess that you have either tried or would like to try or have been afraid to try?

This is a poem explication, something that most of you have probably done before, a consideration of the relationship between form, content and effect of a language object.  It is also a consideration of your own work and will be most successful if you can address the poem you choose to that framework.

Poets new to me and Literary Journals

Hello all,

This is going in an email as well, so you can get the links.

Below find a list of ten literary journals that provide a large swath of the contemporary poetry world. I’ve chosen these according to several factors.  First, that they are diverse as a list, containing many different viewpoints about what poetry is/should be. Second is that they are going concerns.  Literary journals tend to have short shelf lives, often disappearing overnight.  If you subscribe to one of these, you will receive magazines. They also all have active web pages which allow you to peruse the kind of material they tend to include. You will be subscribing to the paper and ink version of at least one of these journals.  You will also write a short review of said journal, but more on that later.  You also must submit to at least one (most have online submissions), but more on that anon as well.  Right now, I would like you to peruse them, get a sense of which one you would like to subscribe to.  

AGNI http://www.bu.edu/agni/

BOMB http://bombsite.com/

Fulcrum http://fulcrumpoetry.com/

Fence http://www.fenceportal.org/

Lungfull http://lungfull.org/

Poetry http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/

VOLT http://www.voltpoetry.com/html/Current_Issue.html

Conduit http://www.conduit.org/

Conjunctions http://www.conjunctions.com/archive.htm

Beloit Poetry Journal http://www.bpj.org/

Also here is where you should post for poets “new to me”.  Let’s everyone get a post up by the weekend. They do not need to be long or involved and they needn’t respond to the same critical criteria each time.  It could be something as simple as, “I like the image in line three”, or “I heard this poet lived in and wrote about Detroit, and I like/hate/have family there, so thought I would check them out”.  And we should not be afraid to point out “I don’t have a sense of what this poem is trying to do,…..I don’t get it”.

Electronic Poetry Center at SUNY Buffalo http://epc.buffalo.edu/

Penn Sound Audio Poetry Source http://www.writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/

Academy of American Poets http://www.poets.org/

Ron Silliman’s Blog http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/