| Author | Message | ||
| Jeffrey S. Lange
Intermediate Member Username: runatyr Post Number: 509 Registered: 10-2005 |
While discussing Fernando Pessoa in another thread, I thought about how many of us here have favorite poets and poems. Many of our favorites have affected us deeply, enhanced our lives, and influenced our work. So I thought a thread that paid tribute to our favorites might be both fun and enlightening! No rules, really. Either post a favorite poem or poet of your own and tell us why you made the selection, or simply comment on the favorites of others!  "I had a lover's quarrel with the world." ~Robert Frost | ||
| Fred Longworth
Intermediate Member Username: sandiegopoet Post Number: 882 Registered: 05-2006 |
I would say that Philip Levine has been a strong influence on my writing. His volume What Work Is contains the signature poem "What Work Is." A real gem. I have also gotten much from Sharon Olds. See the poem "I Go Back to May, 1937" in her volume The Gold Cell Fred | ||
| Jeffrey S. Lange
Intermediate Member Username: runatyr Post Number: 510 Registered: 10-2005 |
Hi Wilders, Bear with me for a brief introduction to Fernando Pessoa, one of the great poets of the 20th century. He is compared to Neruda in terms of his overall influence on the poetry of the last hundred years. A Portuguese poet who lived in Lisbon most of his life, the poet died in relative obscurity. Throughout his life he developed multiple personalities, or heteronyms, to write through. A few of these created individuals became famous in their own right, as he made whole persons of them. One familiar with Pessoa's work should have no trouble distinguishing the work of Álvaro de Campos from the work of Ricardo Reis, for example. But we lose much in translation, as is always the case. (Side note about translators: Good translators have to walk a line between the literal translation and the poetic one, neither of which can be achieved completely to begin with... they are often unsung heroes of poetics. One of Pessoa's most well-known translators was Jonathan Griffin, highly respected for his work. Pessoa did also write a few poems in English, but the works cited here are in translation.) Consider this excerpt from "The Tobacconist's" (Even the title is awkward in translation... originally "Tabacaria".) Pessoa's Álvaro de Campos persona wrote this. Campos was the embodiment of feeling, of emotion, and his works express this. Very subjective stuff. "I'll always be the one who waited for someone to open the door in a wall And who sang the song of infinity in a chicken coop, And heard the voice of God in a blocked-up well. Believe in myself? No, nor in anything else ..." Compare that Campos exceprt to an excerpt from his Alberto Caeiro persona, a heteronym sometimes refered to as "the child"... Caeiro tends to describe things as they are, or as he sees them at any rate, without ascribing other qualities or making other connections. His work conveys a sort of child-like wonder in the world around him, and he describes this world in a way that's largely judgment-free. In a sense, he's a "nature poet", and describes himself as such... but he wouldn't fit well with the Romantic nature poets. He's far too removed from his subjects. He lives by what he sees, not what he feels. I love the way he describes himself in "If, After I die" "If, after I die, they should want to write my biography, There's nothing simpler. I've just two dates - of my birth, and of my death. In between the one thing and the other all the days are mine." The world is a matter of the visual. Here's an excerpt from Caeiro's "The Keeper of Sheep": "Metaphysics? What metaphysics do those trees have? That of being green and having crowns and branches And that of giving fruit at their hours, - which is not what makes us think, Us, who don't know to be aware of them." Just writing this reminds me how much more I have to read of Pessoa's work. Ricardo Reis is another of his famous heteronyms, known for being an outspoken pagan, yet I know little enough of his work. It's really like trying to apprehend the work of several distinctly different poets. And if the heteronyms weren't enough, he also wrote a few works under his own name, prompting many more questions about the body of his work and his view of the world. Pessoa is amazing. (Message edited by Runatyr on January 07, 2007) "I had a lover's quarrel with the world." ~Robert Frost | ||
| Jeffrey S. Lange
Intermediate Member Username: runatyr Post Number: 511 Registered: 10-2005 |
Thank you Fred, that's exactly the sort of thing I was hoping for. I know nothing of Levine, so that gives me a new jumping-off point. "I had a lover's quarrel with the world." ~Robert Frost | ||
| Gary Blankenship
Senior Member Username: garyb Post Number: 10196 Registered: 07-2001 |
Several Far East poets influence me to a great degree - Wang Wei and his fellow masters and the Japanese haiku masters. But the two that have made the most impression are William Carlos Williams, unique to himself, and Nishiwaki Junzaburo, easily the best poet of the last 100 years. Some of their work is online though Nishiwaki is almost impossible to find... Why, the orientals teach the value of minimal, of using the least words to say the most - a lesson I still have not learned. WCW and NJ are both one of a kind writing poems like nothing before or after but with a style I fine totally appealing. http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/119 And the only poem by NJ I can find: http://www.home.ix.netcom.com/~kyamazak/lit/_Jpoet/nishiwaki_amb_song_of_love.htm Smiles. Gary A River Transformed The Dawg House July FireWeed more War/Peace | ||
| Barbara Martin
New member Username: babs Post Number: 13 Registered: 01-2007 |
Hi Jeff! I'm so glad you started this thread. I have just recently spread my wings to seek out new-to-me poets. Your thread is proving to be quite enlightening. First, let me say you were right in steering me towards Pessoa. So far I find his many voices fascinating. It will be no surprise when I say I'm not familiar with Phillip Levine either. I have been reading a lot lately about William Carlos Williams and his extensive influence on "beat" poetry, but have yet to actually read his poems -another must to add to my list. I think it's important to know a poet's influences. It helps the reader to understand our own work. Personally, I found an immediate connection in my youth with Emily Dickinson's work. I also enjoy dark and surreal like Edgar Allan Poe and Jim Morrison. Since I've already chatted here too long, I'll share a short Jim Morrison poem: Dancing and thrashing the reptile summer They'll be here long before we're gone Sunning themselves on the marble porch Raging w/in against the slow heat Of an invaded Town The Kingdom is ours | ||
| ~M~
Board Administrator Username: mjm Post Number: 9259 Registered: 11-1998 |
I am currently swooning over the work of Wislawa Szymborska. American poet Robert Hass has said, "she is unquestionably one of the greatest living European poets. She's accessible and deeply human and a joy -- though it is a dark kind of joy." In 1996, Szymborska was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Frankly, I'm trying to figure out what took them so long to recognize her. Her volume, "Wislawa Szymborska: Poems New and Collected (1957-1997)" is a treasure. It should be required reading for every practicing poet. Poets and other writers would probably most appreciate this one: The Joy of Writing by Wislawa Szymborska Why does this written doe bound through these written woods? For a drink of written water from a spring whose surface will xerox her soft muzzle? Why does she lift her head; does she hear something? Perched on four slim legs borrowed from the truth, she pricks up her ears beneath my fingertips. Silence -- this word also rustles across the page and parts the boughs that have sprouted from the word "woods." Lying in wait, set to pounce on the blank page, are letters up to no good, clutches of clauses so subordinate they'll never let her get away. Each drop of ink contains a fair supply of hunters, equipped with squinting eyes behind their sights, prepared to swarm the sloping pen at any moment, surround the doe, and slowly aim their guns. They forget that what's here isn't life. Other laws, black on white, obtain. The twinkling of an eye will take as long as I say, and will, if I wish, divide into tiny eternities, full of bullets stopped in mid-flight. Not a thing will ever happen unless I say so. Without my blessing, not a leaf will fall, not a blade of grass will bend beneath that little hoof's full stop. Is there then a world where I rule absolutely on fate? A time I bind with chains of signs? An existence become endless at my bidding? The joy of writing. The power of preserving. Revenge of a mortal hand. | ||
| "A-Bear"
Senior Member Username: dane Post Number: 1959 Registered: 11-1998 |
Rod McKuen I have no special bed. I give myself to those who offer love. Can it be wrong? Lonely rivers going to the sea give themselves to many brooks in passing. So it is with me undiscovered and alone till someone says the magic word. You'll see me then some weekend waiting and if you do say hello. From "Stanyan Street & Other Sorrows, 1965, 1966 | ||
| Jeffrey S. Lange
Intermediate Member Username: runatyr Post Number: 513 Registered: 10-2005 |
I'm loving all the comments, poems, and links! Thanks everyone, I hope we continue to see member favorites here, this is both fun and enlightening. "I had a lover's quarrel with the world." ~Robert Frost | ||
| Fred Longworth
Intermediate Member Username: sandiegopoet Post Number: 892 Registered: 05-2006 |
Oh no, Rod McKuen! [Fred has seizure, eyes roll up in head, crashes to carpet by computer -- paramedics on the way!] | ||
| Cornelius Vanvig
Intermediate Member Username: corneliusvanvig Post Number: 339 Registered: 08-2005 |
Just to show that to find good poetry you don't have to go to exotic locals or track down writers in other languages, here is Ron Rash, a regional poet from the Carolinas. His poetry can be a bit somber and stark at times, with sprinklings of ironic humor, but it is highly disciplined and noted for the seven-syllable line. And he isn't afraid to tell a story. His subject matter is his family, the region and their intertwining histories. While this may not be his finest poem, it provides a sampling of what he is all about. The Exchange Between Wytheville, Virginia and the North Carolina line, he meets a wagon headed where he's been, seated beside her parents a dark-eyed girl who grips the reins in her fist, no more than sixteen, he's guess as they come closer and she doesn't look away or blush but allows his eyes to hold hers that moment their lives pass. He rides into Boone at dusk, stops at an inn where he buys his supper, a sleepless night thinking of fallow fields still miles away, the girl he might not find the like of again. When dawn breaks he mounts his roan, then backtracks, searches three days hamlets and farms, any smoke rising above the tree line before he heads south, toward home, the French Broad's valley where spring unclinches the dogwood buds as he plants the bottomland, come night by candlelight builds a butter churn and cradle, cherry headboard for the bed, forges a double-eagle into a wedding ring and then back to Virginia and spends five weeks riding and asking from Elk Creek to Damascas before he finds the wagon tethered to the hitching post of a crossroads store, inside the girl who smiles as if she'd known all along his gray eyes would search until they found her. She asks one question, his name, as her eyes study the gold smoldering there between them, the offered palm she lightens, slips the ring on herself so he knows right then the woman she will be, bold enough match for a man rash as his name. | ||
| Jeffrey S. Lange
Intermediate Member Username: runatyr Post Number: 522 Registered: 10-2005 |
Many thanks to all who've contributed to this thread. I still haven't read Szymborska... this is another good reminder for me to do that, in addition to reading the many other poets listed here. I'm saving this thread to my hard drive! Thanks all, Jeff "I had a lover's quarrel with the world." ~Robert Frost | ||
| Hephaestes
Member Username: hephaestes Post Number: 52 Registered: 12-2006 |
My Father in a White Space Suit by Yehuda Amichai My father, in a white space suit, walks around with the light, heavy steps of the dead over the surface of my life that doesn't hold onto a thing. He calls out names: This is the Crater of Childhood. This is an abyss. This happened at you Bar Mitzvah. These are white peaks. This is a deep voice from then. He takes specimens and puts them away in his gear: sand, words, the sighing stones of my dreams. He surveys and determines. He calls me the planet of his longings, land of my childhood, his childhood, our childhood. "Learn to play the violin, my son. When you are grown-up, music will help you in difficult moments of loneliness and pain." That's what he told me once, but I didn't believe him. And then he floats, how he floats, into the grief of his endles white death. (Message edited by hephaestes on January 15, 2007) "Then I went back into the house and wrote. It is midnight. The rain is beating on the windows. It was not midnight. It was not raining." -- Samuel Beckett (Molloy) | ||
| Jim Doss
Senior Member Username: jimdoss Post Number: 2775 Registered: 12-2003 |
Two of my favorites are James Wright and Gerald Stern. In Response to a Rumor That the Oldest Whorehouse in Wheeling, West Virginia, Has Been Condemned I will grieve alone, As I strolled alone, years ago, down along The Ohio shore. I hid in the hobo jungle weeds Upstream from the sewer main, Pondering, gazing. I saw, down river, At Twenty-third and Water Streets By the vinegar works, The doors open in early evening. Swinging their purses, the women Poured down the long street to the river And into the river. I do not know how it was They could drown every evening. What time near dawn did they climb up the other shore, Drying their wings? For the river at Wheeling, West Virginia, Has only two shores: The one in hell, the other In Bridgeport, Ohio. And nobody would commit suicide, only To find beyond death Bridgeport, Ohio. -- James Wright **************************************** The Dancing In all these rotten shops, in all this broken furniture and wrinkled ties and baseball trophies and coffee pots I have never seen a post-war Philco with the automatic eye nor heard Ravel's "Bolero" the way I did in 1945 in that tiny living room on Beechwood Boulevard, nor danced as I did then, my knives all flashing, my hair all streaming, my mother red with laughter, my father cupping his left hand under his armpit, doing the dance of old Ukraine, the sound of his skin half drum, half fart, the world at last a meadow, the three of us whirling and singing, the three of us screaming and falling, as if we were dying, as if we could never stop--in 1945-- in Pittsburgh, beautiful filthy Pittsburgh, home of the evil Mellons, 5,000 miles away from the other dancing--in Poland and Germany-- oh God of mercy, oh wild God. -- Gerald Stern (Message edited by jimdoss on January 17, 2007) My Blog Loch Raven Review Editor Trakl Translations | ||
| Hephaestes
Member Username: hephaestes Post Number: 58 Registered: 12-2006 |
Lot's Wife by Anna Akhmatova Translated by Max Hayward and Stanley Kunitz And the just man trailed God's shining agent, over a black mountain, in his giant track, while a restless voice kept harrying his woman: "It's not too late, you can still look back at the red towers of your native Sodom, the square where once you sang, the spinning-shed, at the empty windows set in the tall house where sons and daughters blessed your marriage-bed." A single glance: a sudden dart of pain stitching her eyes before she made a sound . . . Her body flaked into transparent salt, and her swift legs rooted to the ground. Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem too insignificant for our concern? Yet in my heart I never will deny her, who suffered death because she chose to turn. "Then I went back into the house and wrote. It is midnight. The rain is beating on the windows. It was not midnight. It was not raining." -- Samuel Beckett (Molloy) | ||
| Tumbus Thitch
New member Username: tumbusthitch Post Number: 7 Registered: 01-2007 |
This is a poem I stumbled on by Can-American poet Mark Strand. It's one of those which had the effect of changing my life upon reading, the room clearly moved, although I don't know why. "The Dreadful Has Already Happened" -Mark Strand The relatives are leaning over, staring expectantly. They moisten their lips with their tongues. I can feel them urging me on. I hold the baby in the air. Heaps of broken bottles glitter in the sun. A small band is playing old fashioned marches. My mother is keeping time by stamping her foot. My father is kissing a woman who keeps waving to somebody else. There are palm trees. The hills are spotted with orange flamboyants and tall billowy clouds move beyond them. "Go on, Boy," I hear somebody say, "Go on." I keep wondering if it will rain. The sky darkens. There is thunder. "Break his legs," says one of my aunts, "Now give him a kiss." I do what I'm told. The trees bend in the bleak tropical wind. The baby did not scream, but I remember that sigh when I reached inside for his tiny lungs and shook them out in the air for the flies. The relatives cheered. It was about that time I gave up. Now, when I answer the phone, his lips are in the receiver; when I sleep, his hair is gathered around a familiar face on the pillow; wherever I search I find his feet. He is what is left of my life. | ||
| Hephaestes
Member Username: hephaestes Post Number: 59 Registered: 12-2006 |
You should read Mark Strand's "Dark Harbor". --H "Then I went back into the house and wrote. It is midnight. The rain is beating on the windows. It was not midnight. It was not raining." -- Samuel Beckett (Molloy) |
