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It's (not) National Poetry Month (anymore but people still want poems)
Quoth
the RavenMiami, FL FOR REALRegistered User regular
the RavenMiami, FL FOR REALRegistered User regular
Go read a poem, you dummy.
Edit: you can also write a poem every day like some crazy people are doing.
Eyes Fastened With Pins
by Charles Simic
How much death works,
No one knows what a long
Day he puts in. The little
Wife always alone
Ironing death's laundry.
The beautiful daughters
Setting death's supper table.
The neighbors playing
Pinochle in the backyard
Or just sitting on the steps
Drinking beer. Death,
Meanwhile, in a strange
Part of town looking for
Someone with a bad cough,
But the address somehow wrong,
Even death can't figure it out
Among all the locked doors...
And the rain beginning to fall.
Long windy night ahead.
Death with not even a newspaper
To cover his head, not even
A dime to call the one pining away,
Undressing slowly, sleepily,
And stretching naked
On death's side of the bed.
Edit: you can also write a poem every day like some crazy people are doing.
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Or is reading the only thing that is good for your head?
WCW not only has the best name ever, but some of the best poems ever.
you can write it too
i am doing that
edit: but read some or else you are an idiot
There was a Hitler one I posted on here a while ago that argued that yeah, Hitler sucked, but he was also pretty straight forward in why he was evil so he is pretty easy to remember as opposed to all the evil people that are more complicated, like Kim Jong Ill and his daddy issues.
I've since moved on to Vignettes, which I guess some people would call "prose poetry" but to do so might be "illiterate."
However, the ring will never leave your finger, and you will be unable to ever describe to another living person what you see.
My brain just doesn't work that way.
then again there are boxer briefs so what do I know
However, the ring will never leave your finger, and you will be unable to ever describe to another living person what you see.
Alternatively: where is kovak with the broetry?
However, the ring will never leave your finger, and you will be unable to ever describe to another living person what you see.
my goodness you're so clever, how can anyone else ever hope to equal the magnitude of your genius
get out of my thread you silly goose
Man, fuck the haters, do your own thing.
I'm with you.
I have a wow one about my warlock
In a duel and taking a lickin'...
The warlock exclaimed, "I'm no chicken...."
"I'm facing defeat,..."
"But the next time we meet,..."
"You're in for a nasty butt kickin'."
hey now, what if that poster is alfred hitchcock
dude has issues with birds
However, the ring will never leave your finger, and you will be unable to ever describe to another living person what you see.
However, the ring will never leave your finger, and you will be unable to ever describe to another living person what you see.
Are the fools who write streams of text
And throw in the odd purple word
Linebreaks do not a poem make
But it's not as if they care
dude has bigger issues
like being dead
But you wrote one of the greatest poems of all time!
Yeah, it's stuff like this that I read and am all just, "Yup, those sure are some words." Now, this is not a criticism of the poem at all. For all I know, this could be a really good poem.
But if someone did tell me that this is a good poem, I could not even begin to tell you why. I just don't get it. I've never been able to. I don't know what makes poetry good or bad.
If you like the rhythm of it, or it uses words you think are pretty
You don't have to get more complicated than that, if you don't want to
i think you are actually really good at titling things, which is hard
and the actual writing is fine
but i think you need more imagery and less sort of... straight opinion type stuff
my opinion and two dollars buys you coffee
Streamline to instantaneous
voucher in / voucher out
system.
The plot is self-referential
The bitch
wants me to guess.
Does a cell phone
call to answer
voicemail
Does a good poet
get in my head?
Vise versa?
Snaketails.
However, the ring will never leave your finger, and you will be unable to ever describe to another living person what you see.
then read some real poems, crab man
jeez do i have to do everything for you
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 etherised 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!]
It is 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.
yeah, you definitely CAN get much much more complicated, but it really comes down to "this is a good idea/image told in interesting words with some kind of pacing/rhythm"
However, the ring will never leave your finger, and you will be unable to ever describe to another living person what you see.
fuck the libertines
However, the ring will never leave your finger, and you will be unable to ever describe to another living person what you see.
Good find.
well, alternately you are alienating poets, who tend to rely on/seek out strong imagery
it's your call and that's cool, gotta know your audience, but even david sedaris uses imagery to get his points across
i don't necessarily mean symbolic imagery specifically, but like... concrete details can say a lot more than a kind of vague abstract statement, if that makes sense
Don't write for the audience, Zoel. Write for yourself.