John’s posting on the English: Curriculum Issues thread about the novels that have influenced us has got me thinking about the poems that we may have liked and enjoyed. I doubt many people have been influenced as such by poetry, but I would like to see us sharing our favourite poems; whether by naming, or linking to a copy of them on the Internet, or even posting them complete.

What poems have you enjoyed; albeit nursery rhymes or classics, and why? (I bet most of us remember at least one from our childhood!)

Poster first: ‘Night Train’ by John Betjeman. Just how cool was the rhythm in that poem? As a kid I loved the way it EXACTLY matched the steam trains that took me to my Yorkshire Granny’s house. (Adrienne Rich was also a great influence, of course, as I say in John's thread!).

The lack of response is interesting and it got me thinking. At Primary level children are still very much enjoying poetry and they come into Secondary level enthused by it and interested in more poems. By the time they reach the end of their GCSEs their enjoyment has turned to active dislike in most cases. That is a great pity and a sad reflection on the way we treat poetry at schools. Even many English teachers are nervous about teaching poetry and few read it for pleasure. Novels, on the other hand, are accessible to most readers.

I love teaching poetry and for 2 years taught in an all girls' high school where THEY all loved poetry. We have lots of very good modern Australian poets who probably don't get much exposure in the UK - Judith Wright, Gwen Harwood, Kenneth Slessor, Les Murray (who wrote on of the best modern love poems I've read and I'll try to get it and put it on here for you) to name a few.
The Lady of Shallot had most influence on me because we had to learn the whole lot by heart and I can still recite it - a wonderful party trick for new classes!!

THERE ARE SOME MEN
by Leonard Cohen

There are some men
who should have mountains
to bear their names through time
Grave markers are not high enough
or green
and sons go far away to lose the fist
their father's hand will always seem

I had a friend he lived and died
in mighty silence and with dignity
left no book son or lover to mourn.
Nor is this a mourning song
but only a naming of this mountain
on which I walk
fragrant, dark and softly white
under the pale of mist
I name this mountain after him.

What a coincidence? I was just about to post on this thread about great lyric writers such as Leonard Cohen.

I was going to make the point that I have found poetry fairly irrelevant to my life (I have to admit that I have been guilty of using Andrew Marvel’s To His Coy Mistress as one of my seduction techniques).

My generation was much more influenced by song writers such as Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Randy Newman, Don McLean, Janis Ian, etc.

BIRD ON THE WIRE

Like a bird on the wire,
like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free.
Like a worm on a hook,
like a knight from some old fashioned book
I have saved all my ribbons for thee.
If I, if I have been unkind,
I hope that you can just let it go by.
If I, if I have been untrue
I hope you know it was never to you.

Like a baby, stillborn,
like a beast with his horn
I have torn everyone who reached out for me.
But I swear by this song
and by all that I have done wrong
I will make it all up to thee.
I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch,
he said to me, "You must not ask for so much."
And a pretty woman leaning in her darkened door,
she cried to me, "Hey, why not ask for more?"

Oh like a bird on the wire,
like a drunk in a midnight choir have tried in my way to be free.

My choice from the wonderful Mr. C. would be Sisters of Mercy (If your life is a leaf/That the seasons tear off and condemn/They will bind you with love/That is graceful and green as a stem...)

All my favourite poets are blokes (I have a soft spot for Christina Rossetti, though). Donne, Herbert, Marvell, Coleridge, Tennyson, Yeats and Auden. Among many wonderful pieces I will suggest these:

Donne: A Nocturnall upon S. Lucies Day
Herbert: The Flower
Marvell: The Garden
Coleridge: Frost at Midnight (see the link to this on my home page)
Tennyson: "Tears, idle tears" (one of the songs from The Princess)
Yeats: The Host of the Air and Sailing to Byzantium (tie)
Auden: Look, Stranger or Legend (another tie)

I might also slip in Dylan Thomas's Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night and Thom Gunn's Sunlight.

Dame Helen Gardner reckoned that real poetic merit lies in longer pieces - she was championing T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets at the time. These tend to work more like novels or works of philosophy - as well as the Four Quartets, I rate Dante's Comedy (read in translation only) and Tennyson's In Memoriam.

For the improper purpose that John suggests, I would commend writing one's own. They won't be as good as the classics, but they may be more unique to the recipient...

When pupils tell me they "don't like poetry" I tend to refer them to the index page of www.poetry.com which features over 5.1 million poets - you've read them all and none of them is good enough for you? That's a bit picky!

I would choose Common Denominator by Andrea R Taylor (which is available here)She writes the kind of poetry that just won't behave. A bit like John Lennon in that respect.

I do this despite the fact that I think it is dangerous to choose a living poet because I bitterly remember the fate of Roger McGough who accepted an MBE from Margaret Thatcher - thus spitting on everything his poetry was about. (spitting is slightly more polite than what I was going to say there).

This is one of Les Murray's short poems. He's considered our best modern poet and is widely taught in Autralian schools. Haven't found the love poem I was looking for, but will keep trying.


The Meaning of Existence

Everything except language
knows the meaning of existence.
Trees, planets, rivers, time
know nothing else. They express it
moment by moment as the universe.
Even this fool of a body
lives it in part, and would
have full dignity within it
but for the ignorant freedom
of my talking mind.


from
Poems the Size

http://www.lesmurray.org/index.htm

More of his poems here.

Sometimes it is a good idea not to worry about what a poem is supposed to mean, but to just enjoy whatever it is that the sensation it creates in us is.

I would really love it if this thread could be some continuous process where members of this forum just post up whatever felt good to them (poem or songm or prose extract) - with no thought about its supposed educational value.

As educators, do we not do more for our charges than meet some sort of of political or social imperative? We should surely give experience to the child?

And so to ourselves, I would argue.

Let us nurture each other. In these times of stress, let us give each other a boost - a connection - and post a poem, or an extract of prose - all without long-winded explanations - as a simple offering, if we are capable of that - of something that affects us in some way.

Without any need to explain ourselves.

I for one, enjoy the poems that members have already posted and I thank you.

I would like to share this poem with you. I haven't experienced what it talks of, but I do know that this is one hell of a strong woman. If you want to give it real effect (and can do it), read it aloud in a Southern USA woman's voice.


And Still I Rise

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.


PS Andrew, would you post your first choice for us to read?

I agree about just sharing what you love. I found the one I was looking for - it just appeals to me as a modern love poem

Definition of Loving

Thank you for love, no matter what its outcome,
that leads us to the window in the dark,
that adds another otherness to others,
that holds out stars as if they were first diamonds
found in a mine that had been long closed down,
that hands out suns and makes us ask each morning:
What else do we need, picnickers in time?
Thank you for love that does not hang on answers,
that says, " Enough's enough, to love is plenty...."
- by such signs do we know the world exists,
amo ergo sum, thank you for that.
The miles, the years, the lives that lie beween,
- they always lay there, and they always will,
but look, the loved one spans that dizzy distance
by the act of being, and we lovers turn
our faces steadily thou-wards as a field
of sunflowers like a tracking station turns,
charting its meaning by the westering sun.

Bruce Dawes (another fine Australian poet)_

I would have thought this song/poem by Janis Ian could be used in the classroom.

I leaned the truth at seventeen
that love was meant for beauty queens
And high school girls with clear-skinned smiles
who married young and thenretired.
The valentines I never knew,
the Friday night charades of youth
Were spent on one more beautiful.
At seventeen I learned the truth.

And those of us with ravaged faces,
lacking in the social graces,
Desperatly remained at home,
inventing lovers on the phone
Who called to say, "Come dance with me,"
and murmured vague obscenities.
It isn't all it seems at seventeen.

A brown-eyed girl in hand-me-downs
whose name I never could pronounce
Said, "Pity, please, the ones who serve;
they only get what they deserve.
The rich relationed hometown queen
marries into what she needs.
A guarantee of company
and haven for the elderly."

So remember those who win the game
lose the love they sought to gain.
In debentures of quality and dubious integrity.
Their small-town eyes will gape at you
in dull surprise when payment due
Exceeds accounts received at seventeen.

To those of us who know the pain
of valentines that never came,
And those whose names were never called
when choosing sides for basketball.
It was long ago and far away;
the world was much younger than today
And dreams were all they gave away for free
to ugly duckling girls like me.

We all play the game and when we dare
to cheat ourselves at solitaire.
Inventing lovers on the phone,
repenting other lives unknown
That call and say, "Come dance with me,"
and murmur vague obscenities
At ugly duckling girls like me at seventeen.

I became familiar with these two poems on a visit to Middlebury, Vermont. Robert Frost used to have a summer cabin near Middlebury, which my wife and I visited. There's a restaurant called "Fire and Ice" in Middlebury. Nice memories!

Fire and Ice
Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire;
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Click here to here the poem read:
http://hucklesby.f2o.org/tutorial10/cases/case2/rf.htm

Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening
Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Another favourite of mine of (naturally) of my Irish wife:

The Lake Isle of Innisfree
William Butler Yeats

I shall arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon's a purple glow,
And evening's full of the linnet's wings

I shall arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or in the pavement's gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

It's a lovely place!

In contrast, not far from where I live - in the land of Paul Brent (Ricky Gervais):

Slough
John Betjeman

Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isn't fit for humans now,
There isn't grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!

Come, bombs and blow to smithereens
Those air -conditioned, bright canteens,
Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans,
Tinned minds, tinned breath.

Mess up the mess they call a town -
A house for ninety-seven down
And once a week a half a crown
For twenty years.

And get that man with double chin
Who'll always cheat and always win,
Who washes his repulsive skin
In women's tears:

And smash his desk of polished oak
And smash his hands so used to stroke
And stop his boring dirty joke
And make him yell.

But spare the bald young clerks who add
The profits of the stinking cad;
It's not their fault that they are mad,
They've tasted Hell.

It's not their fault they do not know
The birdsong from the radio,
It's not their fault they often go
To Maidenhead

And talk of sport and makes of cars
In various bogus-Tudor bars
And daren't look up and see the stars
But belch instead. (YUP, THAT SUMS UP WHERE I LIVE!)

In labour-saving homes, with care
Their wives frizz out peroxide hair
And dry it in synthetic air
And paint their nails.

Come, friendly bombs and fall on Slough
To get it ready for the plough.
The cabbages are coming now;
The earth exhales.

I love the pictures that Wordsworth creates in 'The daffodils' and in this one here, 'Upon Westminster Bridge'

Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This city now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky:
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifuly steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

Of course there are a whole lot of rather less serious poems - this one is dedicated to you historians......

"My teacher wasn't half as nice as yours seems to be.
His name was Mister Unsworth and he taught us history.
And when you didn't know a date he'd get you by the ear
And start to twist while you sat there quite paralysed with fear.
He'd twist and twist and twist your ear and twist it more and more.
Until at last the ear came off and landed on the floor.
Our class was full of one-eared boys. I'm certain there were eight.
Who'd had them twisted off because they didn't know a date.
So let us now praise teachers who today are all so fine
And yours in particular is totally divine."

Thanks to Roald Dahl for that one

Christine asked me to post this poem here. This is my first post to the forum, and it seems appropriate. I found the poem while browsing for the meaning of the word secheresse. It was a musical instruction on my son's piece of Bach piano music: egal et secheresse. I guessed "equal and dry" none too helpfully. Anyway, here's the poem; it's rather beautiful:

Stillness. Beauty.

How can such

Noble grace

Bring such

Lonely endings?

Bestowed the honour

Of the world in

A watchglass

Shapeless arms

Steal a cry and

I weep.



Abandoning myself to

The will of the tide

I find my soul screaming

For secheresse

And my throat grows hoarse

As always.



Nothing left but

Ghastly wails.

Mimicked by

The waves

I stare at the

Motionless surface

So grey

A reflection of pain

Greets my streaming eyes

Is that what I've become?

Throw back my head

Laugh painful sobs

In joy.



Abandoning myself to the will

Of the tide

I find myself screaming

For secheresse

And my throat grows hoarse as always

As always.


You can find the original at: http://www.angelfire.com/de3/stopaskingwhy/stillnes.htm; I cannot find the poet's name.


Steve

I love poetry - a great poem CAN change your life! I'm a big Frost fan, and use his poem "Design" whenever I teach the impact of Darwinism on human thought. In my copy of "Complete Poems.." it is on the facing page from "On a Bird Singing in its Sleep" - which I also use.

I just got a book entitled "10 Poems that can change your life". Although I don't "like" all the poems in the book, they're all worth a read. I especially found Pablo Neruda's poem "Shoes" wonderful.

I also have a video of Bill Moyers series on poetry - "Fooling with Words". I'll take a look at it when the dust settles around here - maybe New Years! There's a tremendous poem read on that tape which always brings me to tears, by a poet whose name I can't recall. His lover is dying (I suppose of AIDS...the poet is gay) and wants a dog. Maybe some of you know it...

"I Saw the Number '5' in Gold" is another great one. And by the way, "Love that Dog" is one great book about the power of art (in this case, poetry) to heal.

Replace "Clifton" with "Dartford" in this one and you'll get my drift

CLIFTON by TE Brown

I’m here at Clifton, grinding at the mill
My feet for thrice nine barren years have trod;
But there are rocks and waves at Scarlett still,
And gorse runs riot in Glen Chass—thank God!

Alert, I seek exactitude of rule,
I step, and square my shoulders with the squad;
But there are blaeberries on old Barrule,
And Langness has its heather still—thank God!

There is no silence here : the truculent quack
Insists with acrid shriek my ears to prod,
And, if I stop them, fumes ; but there’s no lack
Of silence still on Carraghyn—thank God!

Pragmatic fibs surround my soul, and bate it
With measured phrase, that asks the assenting nod;
I rise, and say the bitter thing, and hate it—
But Wordsworth’s castle’s still at Peel—thank God!

O broken life ! O wretched bits of being,
Unrhythrnic, patched, the even and the odd!
But Bradda still has lichens worth the seeing,
Thank God, Thank God!

Well, an admission from the outset: I'm a history teacher and have been deeply influenced by some of the poetry of the First World War. Having visited the battlefields of the Great War on many occasions, they never fail to leave an indelible mark on me.

No doubt a few of you will be familiar with the story of Lieutenant Noel Hodgson of the 1st Devonshire Regiment who at the age of 23 wrote his last poem before attacking at Mametz on the Somme. Hodgson predicted his own death at the hands of a German machine gun situated in a nearby cemetery. He is buried alongside many of his fallen comrades at The Devonshire Cemetery at Mansel Copse, including his superior, Captain Duncan Martin. Martin was 30 years old when he led his men into battle, but he too feared the destructive capacity of that same German machine gun. He even made a plasticine model of the area and showed it to his superiors prior to the attack in an attempt to get them to call off the offensive. I've been to that cemetery and listened to Hodgson's poem, 'Before Action', being read out by one of my colleagues, as we stood beside his grave. This episode really brought home to me that the soldiers who lost their lives in the conflict were real people and made me feel very humble indeed.


BEFORE ACTION by Noel Hodgson

By all the glories of the day
And the cool evening's benison,
By the last sunset touch that lay
Upon the hills when day was done,
By beauty lavishly outpoured
And blessings carelessly received,
By all the days that I have lived
Make me a soldier, Lord.

By all of all man's hopes and fears,
And all the wonders poets sing,
The laughter of unclouded years,
And every sad and lovely thing;
By the romantic ages stored
With high endeavour that was his
By all his mad catastrophes
Make me a man, O Lord.

I, that on my familiar hill
Saw with uncomprehending eyes
A hundred of They sunsets spill
Their fresh and sanguine sacrifice,
Ere the sun swings his noonday sword
Must say good-bye to all of this;--
By all delights that I shall miss,
Help me to die, O Lord.

Chris Sweeney makes the point that many secondary school pupils "actively dislike" poetry. Many adults ( particularly those men who regard poetry as a "cissy" activity) have an antipathy to poetry. This may have something to do with the perception that poetry is "difficult", or as Chris puts it, less "accessible" than prose. It could also be associated with a reluctance to deal with personal feelings or emotions - many people feel awkward and embarrassed when a person shares their innermost feelings with them. As a teenager, I shared this antipathy towards poetry, but ironically it was a poem that attacked the whole notion of poetry that made me think again. This poem was "Poetry" by William Wantling ( 1932-1974 ). William Wantling was a Korean War veteran who became dependant on drugs after being given morphine to treat severe burns received in combat. As a result of his heroin addiction, Wantling served 5 years in San Quentin prison. The following poem, therefore, comes as much from his personal experience as a prison inmate as his creativity as a poet. (If you are upset by foul language and swearing, read no further - I do not want to offend anyone, but I feel the power of the poem would be weakened if it was censored ).

Poetry

I've got to be honest. I can
make good word music and rhyme

at the right times and fit words
together to give people pleasure

and even sometimes take their
breath away - but it always

somehow turns out kind of phoney.
Consonance and assonance and inner

rhyme won't make up for the fact
that I can't figure out how to get

down on paper the real or the true
which we call life. Like the other

day. The otherday I was walking
on the lower exercise yard here

at San Quentin and this cat called
Turk came up to a friend of mine

and said Ernie, I hear you're
shooting on my kid. And Ernie

told him So what punk? and Turk
pulled out his stuff and shanked

Ernie in the gut only Ernie had a
metal tray in his shirt. Turk's

shank bounced right off him and
Ernie pulled his stuff out and of

course Turk didn't have a tray and
caught it dead in the chest, a bad

one, and the blood that came to his
lips was a bright pink, lung blood,

and he just laid down in the grass
and said Shit. Fuck it. Sheeit.

Fuck it. And he laughed a long
time, softly, until he died. Now

what could consonance or assonance or
even rhyme do to something like that ?




William Wantling

If you would like to read a short account of Wantling's life and his poetry see the site at
http://www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine...ord.asp?id=5743

Can we have this thread as a sticky or something? I would like it to be an on-going thing for the life of this Board (or a year or two, at least).

Positive male role models for poetry are in such short supply that I feel privileged to read the contributions here from men - and a special thanx to Steve, Chris, John, Andy and David. [and yes, Graham - are not the Irish something? As my Eire-hubby will stand testimony!)

I hope folk keep posting them. (Thanks to the sisterhood too as represented by Angie , eh?)

Here is an unusual poem that completely lowers the tone - but maybe a sense of humour matters also, even among serious professional- or don't you agree?:

The Lollipop-lady’s Dirge

Does anyone think of me, here in the snow,
Doing my duty so brave and so true,
Minding the traffic and trying to feel noble
While my feet turn to ice and my nose goes blue?

I ask no reward (except wages, of course),
For I have to admit, though I don’t think I should,
That it isn’t as if I was dragged here by force.
But I would like you sometimes to think of me,
And though I’d much rather a hot cup of tea,
I’ll be glad to make do with your sympathy.

It puzzles me sometimes to know why I do it:
The mothers keep asking, and what can I say?
Do I plead I’m insane or deprived - or what -
For standing out here on such a cold day?

The children are sweet (and the money’s quite nice,
though it doesn’t explain why I do it, at all).
I meet lots of people (I know that’s quite pleasant);
I shout at the lorries which helps me keep warm -
but it doesn’t explain why each day I quite happily
Drag myself out here to stand in the storm.

I’ve been a bank-clerk, a shop girl, a cleaner,
A wonderful mother, a fairly good wife.
I’ve got good prospects: I’m bright and I’m willing
So I can look forward towards a good life.

I’m not lacking in courage, the world is my oyster,
And if you don’t mind, I think I’m quite nice.
But I can’t understand it - it’s driving me dotty
For there’s something I really would like to know:
Can you teachers tell me from inside your warm rooms
Why on earth it’s ME standing out in the snow!

Christine Sweeney: Lollipop-lady extraordinaire from September 1981-Jan 1983 – daydreaming of my ambition to become a teacher instead! (And then I did.)

Her's another of the Australian Les Murray's that might appeal to the boys (or the boys in the men!+


The Harleys

Blats booted to blatant
dubbing the avenue dire
with rubbings of Sveinn Forkbeard
leading a black squall of Harleys
with Moe Snow-Whitebeard and

Possum Brushbeard and their ladies
and, sphincter-lipped, gunning,
massed in leather muscle on a run,
on a roll, Santas from Hell
like a whole shoal leaning

wide wristed, their tautness stable
in fluency, fast streetscape dwindling,
all riding astride, on the outside
of sleek grunt vehicles, woman-clung,
forty years on from Marlon.


from
Conscious and Verbal, 1999

If I had to choose only one poem, it would be one of Robert Frost's and most probably I'd say, The Road Not Taken. It is the poem that has the most influence on me. I also like Coleridge, Tennyson, Hardy, Plath, H.D. and Wordsworth's poems.
And...of course, the wonderful Annabell Lee by Poe.

The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost

Gacela of the Dark Death

by Federico García Lorca


I want to sleep the dream of the apples,
to withdraw from the tumult of cemetries.
I want to sleep the dream of that child
who wanted to cut his heart on the high seas.

I don't want to hear again that the dead do not lose their blood,
that the putrid mouth goes on asking for water.
I don't want to learn of the tortures of the grass,
nor of the moon with a serpent's mouth
that labors before dawn.

I want to sleep awhile,
awhile, a minute, a century;
but all must know that I have not died;
that there is a stable of gold in my lips;
that I am the small friend of the West wing;
that I am the intense shadows of my tears.

Cover me at dawn with a veil,
because dawn will throw fistfuls of ants at me,
and wet with hard water my shoes
so that the pincers of the scorpion slide.

For I want to sleep the dream of the apples,
to learn a lament that will cleanse me to earth;
for I want to live with that dark child
who wanted to cut his heart on the high seas.

JFK had Robert Frost read a poem at his inaguration, a tradition that I don't believe has been kept by subsequent presidents.

Frost was pretty old at the time, and I don't think you could understand him, as it was really cold, freezing weather and he was an old man, but the idea of having a poet laurient has been lost in the midest. (I just made that word up).

America's great poets begin earlier, but Walt Whitman really put poets on the map, and was one of the first poets I can imagine who actually made a living off of his work, without having to teach. Leaves of Grass set the tone for generations of poets to come, forgoing the rhime and creating a new beat and setting the iAmerican improvisional spirit loose upon the world.

Whitman, who happens to be from my hometown of Camden, New Jersey, was later superseeded by Alan Ginsberg, whose Howl! actually made mainstream media for being banned, a sure measure of greatness.

Personally, I was struck by WBY's The Second Coming, and later got wrapped up in a malstroms that you must survive to really understand the poem.

I thought Yeats the Ultimate Perfect Genius who understood everything, and after taking an Irish literature course at University of Dayton (Ohio), under Prof. O'Donnell, I ventured to Yeat's grave in Sligo, under Ben Bulben, in the old church yard, where his stone reads: Cast a cold eye on life on death, horseman pass by.

I had earlier been to Trinity College, Dublin, where I went to the library to view the Book of Kells, where they turn one page a day, and some of Yeat's original hand written work.
Shocked, and dismayed I was, of seeing crossed out words and entire lines, and editing marks that made me realize that Yeats, the Irish genius, was not perfect.

I later got a hoot out of Woody Allen's New Yorker column called The Irish Genius, which mimics Yeats very well.

Besides Prof. O'Donnell, the only other person I knew who made a living writing poetry was Pete Dunn, at Stockton College (NJ), who recently won a Pulitizer (Good show Peter).

Then there's this Haiku poet from Camden, whose name escapes me at the moment, but whose burried near Whitman's tomb (at Harleigh),

a podium
facing the lake,
his epitat.

I would say that two of the greatest poets writing in the English language and living today are Bob Dylan (heir to Whitman and Ginsberg), and Bruce Springsteen.

While JFK took a shine to Two Roads Robert Frost, I shudder to think of who Bush would chose to be poet laurient, an oppointed position, if he had been inclined to do so.

BK

THE GLORY

The glory I betrayed is dormant now
Frozen in the muscle & sinew & bone
Of some John Doe no family will ever be able
To claim back from his pauper’s grave

The glory I betrayed is like the graffiti
On the wall being scrubbed away by new-age
Chemical agents & there will be no trace left
Though the grime behind the stain shall remain

The glory I betrayed was the glory
Of the chase
of wine & women
Not Marx & Lenin

The glory I betrayed is beyond my means;
Hoisted on a mast & bound
For the lands of Lost Property
& Complaints

The glory I betrayed is a flesh-wound
Self-inflicted in child’s play
To a backdrop
Of smoky jazz

The glory I betrayed was not sanctioned
By Country Club members quaffing bonded Scotch
It was dirty/beautiful schoolyard talk;

Attempts to interpret the Dream Seas secrets
As they were illuminated briefly by lightning

The glory I betrayed was in forgetting about
Peter pan & Magic, but there was no
Choice the inner-voice cries,
For the defence never rests

The glory I betrayed in violent overthrow
Of all systems of denial
As specified in the Official Handbook
Of backsliders

But despite all this…
Despite all this, I am not beyond consolation.

You see comrades, I know the revolution is coming…
As it always was… as it always will be

Joe Darcy

James Douglas, in JFK and the Unspeakable, says that he began correspondence with Trapist monk Thomas Merton after reading a poem by Merton in Maryknoll Magazine.

Both James Jesus Angleton and Eugene McCarthy were poets, and JFK particularly liked "Rendezvous, by American Alan Seeger, a Harvard man who joined the French Foreign Legion and was killed in France during WWI.

Douglas writes, JFK "...recited 'Rendezvous' to Jacqueline in 1953 their first night home in Hyannis after their honeymoon. She memorized the poem, and recited it back to him over the years. In the fall of 1963, Jackie taught the words of the poem to their five-year-old daughter, Caroline. It was Caroline who then gave 'Rendezvous' its most haunting rendition."

"On the morning of October 5, 1963, President Kennedy was meeting with his National Security Council in the White House Rose Garden. Caroline suddenly appeared at her father's side. She said she wanted to tell him something. He tried to divert her attention while the meeting continued. Carolin persisted. The president smiled and turned his full attention to his daughter. He told her to go ahead. While the members of the National Security Council sat and watched, Caroline looked into her father's eyes and said:

I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air -
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath -
It may be I shall pass him still.
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow flowers appear.

God knows 'twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear...
But I've a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.

"After Caroline said the poem's final word, 'redndezvous,' Kennedy's national security advisors sat in stunned silence. One of them, describing the scene three decades later, said the bond beteen father and daughter was such that 'it was as if there was 'an inner music' he was trying to teach her."
(p. 224-225)

It's more like what she was trying to teach him - BK

The Rhodora
On being asked, whence is the flower.

In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,
I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,
To please the desert and the sluggish brook.
The purple petals fallen in the pool
Made the black water with their beauty gay;
Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,
And court the flower that cheapens his array.
Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why
This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,
Tell them, dear, that, if eyes were made for seeing,
Then beauty is its own excuse for Being;
Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!
I never thought to ask; I never knew;
But in my simple ignorance suppose
The self-same power that brought me there, brought you.
R.W. Emerson

John Lennon had 2 books of poetry published. In one of them he had a poem called "Our Dad."

It wasn't long before old Dad
got cumbersome, a drag.
He seemed to get the message
and began to pack his bag...


...What luck, we'll have a party
inviting all our friend.
We've only one but she's a laugh,
she let's us all attend.


Kathy

As the mist leaves no scar
On the dark green hill,
So my body leaves no scar
On you, nor ever will.

When wind and hawk encounter
What remains to keep?
So you and I encounter
Then turn, then fall to sleep.

As many nights endure
Without a moon or star,
So will we endure
When one is gone and far.

L Cohen

How great to see this poetry site. Thanks so very much.
Harry Dean