The Solution to Global Warming

[_Blixa]

Blixa:

Isn't free-verse poetry a form of cheating?

no.

Jesus. what a question.

[_Doctor Steuss]

no.

Jesus. what a question.

E. E. Cummings? ;)

[_Moniker]

Walt Whitman was such a cheater!

But I'm not in the mood for Walt, so here's some D.H. Lawrence. I don't know if anyone (well I'm sure Blixa does) reading this thread is familiar with his life, but it's fairly interesting. Because of his sexual themes he was censored and considered a pornographer.

Mystery

Now I am all
One bowl of kisses,
Such as the tall
Slim votaresses
Of Egypt filled
For a God's excesses.

I lift to you
My bowl of kisses,
And through the temple's
Blue recesses
Cry out to you
In wild caresses.

And to my lips'
Bright crimson rim
The passion slips,
And down my slim
White body drips
The shining hymn.

And still before
The altar I
Exult the bowl
Brimful, and cry
To you to stoop
And drink, Most High.

Oh drink me up
That I may be
Within your cup
Like a mystery,
Like wine that is still
In ecstasy.

Glimmering still
In ecstasy,
Commingled wines
Of you and me
In one fulfil
The mystery.

[_Moniker]

I was reading Billy Collin's poetry and came across this:

Japan


Today I pass the time reading
a favorite haiku,
saying the few words over and over.

It feels like eating
the same small, perfect grape
again and again.

I walk through the house reciting it
and leave its letters falling
through the air of every room.

I stand by the big silence of the piano and say it.
I say it in front of a painting of the sea.
I tap out its rhythm on an empty shelf.

I listen to myself saying it,
then I say it without listening,
then I hear it without saying it.

And when the dog looks up at me,
I kneel down on the floor
and whisper it into each of his long white ears.

It's the one about the one-ton temple bell
with the moth sleeping on its surface,

and every time I say it, I feel the excruciating
pressure of the moth
on the surface of the iron bell.

When I say it at the window,
the bell is the world
and I am the moth resting there.

When I say it at the mirror,
I am the heavy bell
and the moth is life with its papery wings.

And later, when I say it to you in the dark,
you are the bell,
and I am the tongue of the bell, ringing you,

and the moth has flown
from its line
and moves like a hinge in the air above our bed.

I've read this a few times now... just something about it is so stunningly beautiful to me. I don't know what it is... Why is that? Something can make my pulse quicken, my eyes widen, my mind peak -- and yet I don't know why! I love this poem!

[_Doctor Steuss]

Kakinomoto no Hitomaro:


Eight Thousand Spears,
The mighty god,
In the Eightfold Island land
Could not take a wife.
Afar, afar
In the land of Koshi
A clever maiden
Lived, he heard;
A most singular maiden
Lived there, he heard.
A'courting
Did he go.
Courting
Back and forth.
His sword belt
Not undone,
His cloak, too,
Not unfastened,
At the maiden's
Door, wherein she slept,
He hammers,
'While I've stood here
Knocking over and over,
While I've stood here,
In the mountains green,
The ground thrush has sung;
The birds of the fields,
The pheasants are calling;
The bird of the garden,
The cockerel, crows.
Sad it might be but,
You calling birds
You birds you,
I wish you'd stop,
You rowdy
Messengers of the skies!'
The words,
The spoken words
Are like this.

[_Blixa]

Not that it follows from Moniker and Steuss's Japponaise, but here's something I like a lot:

Black Cat

A ghost, though invisible, still is like a place
your sight can knock on, echoing; but here
within this thick black pelt, your strongest gaze
will be absorbed and utterly disappear:

just as a raving madman, when nothing else
can ease him, charges into his dark night
howling, pounds on the padded wall, and feels
the rage being taken in and pacified.

She seems to hide all looks that have ever fallen
into her, so that, like an audience,
she can look them over, menacing and sullen,
and curl to sleep with them. But all at once

as if awakened, she turns her face to yours;
and with a shock, you see yourself, tiny,
inside the golden amber of her eyeballs
suspended, like a prehistoric fly.

Rainer Maria Rilke

[_Doctor Steuss]

Rainer Maria Rilke

Is this Rainer's original formatting? If so, I kind of dig the anti-new-line-capitalization dilly. Fight the machine, down with the man...

Seriously though, I think it's kind of cool (I'm amused by the little things).

[_Blixa]

Rainer Maria Rilke

Is this Rainer's original formatting? If so, I kind of dig the anti-new-line-capitalization dilly. Fight the machine, down with the man...

Seriously though, I think it's kind of cool (I'm amused by the little things).

Good question...I should check my German/English edition...

In german it seems that only what are the beginnings of sentences capitalized and the odd noun (always capitalized in german) that starts a line. So the answer is yes, but it works out differently because the line breaks are different: two stanzas of four lines followed by one stanza of 10 lines. Thus, Rilke's version has two more lines!

I'd have to look more carefully to see where Stephen Mitchell (the translator) has fused lines---I read German very slowly and I'm kinda busy now..

[_Doctor Steuss]

Good question...I should check my German/English edition...

In german it seems that only what are the beginnings of sentences capitalized and the odd noun (always capitalized in german) that starts a line. So the answer is yes, but it works out differently because the line breaks are different: two stanzas of four lines followed by one stanza of 10 lines. Thus, Rilke's version has two more lines!

I'd have to look more carefully to see where Stephen Mitchell (the translator) has fused lines---I read German very slowly and I'm kinda busy now..

Oft times I wonder if you realize how fantastic you are.

Really.

<--- Just some dim-witted kid that didn't get much official schoolin' beyond the crap the public paid for.

[_Blixa]

Uh, I looked sumptin' up ina book I has...