Poet's Corner (1 Viewer)

[Neil Middlemiss]

Any poets or poetry lovers out there?


I am a lover of poetry, Thomas Hardy perhaps being my most treasured poet. I have also written poetry over the years and thought about sharing some of my favourite pieces but wasn't sure of there was anyone else brave or willing enough to share their works too


So I thought I'd ask.


In the meantime, here is perhaps my favourite poem of all time, by the great Thomas Hardy.


The Going


Why did you give no hint that night

That quickly after the morrow's dawn,

And calmly, as if indifferent quite,

You would close your term here, up and be gone

Where I could not follow

With wing of swallow

To gain one glimpse of you ever anon!


Never to bid good-bye,

Or lip me the softest call,

Or utter a wish for a word, while I

Saw morning harden upon the wall,

Unmoved, unknowing

That your great going

Had place that moment, and altered all.


Why do you make me leave the house

And think for a breath it is you I see

At the end of the alley of bending boughs

Where so often at dusk you used to be;

Till in darkening dankness

The yawning blankness

Of the perspective sickens me!


You were she who abode

By those red-veined rocks far West,

You were the swan-necked one who rode

Along the beetling Beeny Crest,

And, reining nigh me,

Would muse and eye me,

While Life unrolled us its very best.


Why, then, latterly did we not speak,

Did we not think of those days long dead,

And ere your vanishing strive to seek

That time's renewal? We might have said,

"In this bright spring weather

We'll visit together

Those places that once we visited."


Well, well! All's past amend,

Unchangeable. It must go.

I seem but a dead man held on end

To sink down soon. . . . O you could not know

That such swift fleeing

No soul foreseeing—

Not even I—would undo me so!

Thomas Hardy

 

[Sam Posten]

I like e. e. cummings, Samuel Coleridge Taylor and Robert Frost. This is my favorite Frost Poem:

Fire and Ice
By 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 say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/frost/fireice.htm

Anyone lived in a pretty how town is my favorite e.e. cummings poem

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/11856

 

[Neil Middlemiss]

Thanks Sam! Frost was indeed a very clever poet. I think the allure of poetry has always been the clever, powerful use of language in abstract ways - the ability to surprise - in addition to the philosophical musings.


In my college days I was (perhaps not unexpectedly,) drawn to beat poetry. I'll have to dig out my old Ginsberg and Kerouac to see what draws me in again.


I'd not heard that Cummings performance before, so thanks for sharing!

 

[Sam Posten]

I hadn't heard it either and it was way different than I would have expected. I always heard it said in a voice like Capote's, dunno why.

 

[Citizen87645]

I'm not familiar with a lot of poets, but many of Frost's poems in "A Boy's Will" resonated with me in a big way after college.

 

[Neil Middlemiss]

I'm not familiar with a lot of poets, but many of Frost's poems in "A Boy's Will" resonated with me in a big way after college.

I'd not read this collection, but browsing through it this evening came across this terrific piece:


A Dream Pang


I had withdrawn in forest, and my song
Was swallowed up in leaves that blew alway;
And to the forest edge you came one day
(This was my dream) and looked and pondered long,
But did not enter, though the wish was strong:
You shook your pensive head as who should say,
'I dare not--too far in his footsteps stray--
He must seek me would he undo the wrong.


Not far, but near, I stood and saw it all
Behind low boughs the trees let down outside;
And the sweet pang it cost me not to call
And tell you that I saw does still abide.
But 'tis not true that thus I dwelt aloof,
For the wood wakes, and you are here for proof.

 

[Neil Middlemiss]

Well, I hope I'm not the only person who writes their own poetry AND has an enthusiasm for home theater


In case I am, and bravely I will admit, I'll share one of my poems that I wrote back in 2004 - I believe for an open mic event at work. I hope there are others out there who would share something they've written too!


Woken

I took myself out of a sleep, deeper than the galaxy goes

Sunny glows, open window, weeping pillow tapping my shoulder.

Up and swimming toward the door, ripples across the floor, no paper anymore on the welcome mat.

The yard is a yellow brick road.

I paused

I’m still sleeping. Glowing sun not creeping through open windows. Pillows not weeping and my shoulder utterly untapped.

I am sleeping deeper than the galaxy goes

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Thanks for sharing, Neil! I enjoyed your poem and admire your bravery in being the first to post an original

 

[Neil Middlemiss]

Okay - here's a poem I wrote over 20 years ago when I was just out of college in the UK.


Hoping that other's will share their own work, or some of their favorite pieces from other poets out there!

Faraway Planets​

​

Faraway planets, upon me glare​

as I, to you, with heavenly stare​

do list in mind the places​

to see and the many faces​

to bury an embrace, as on​

I roam through the universes garden.​

​

Faraway, untouchable globes​

blanket the plain, the darkest robe​

speckled by your unending light​

that lightly breathes through the night​

until you soak away again​

to the nothingness from where you came.​

​

Faraway, simply too far from me​

I wish that I could someday be​

amongst your consuming dreams​

of dark and light that so endlessly seem​

to play inside each other’s way​

all through the night and then our day.​

​

By Neil Middlemiss​

June 9th, 1994​

 

[Neil Middlemiss]

It's a rainy Friday here in North Carolina, perfect day for some Thomas Hardy. Here's another of his fine pieces.


I Look Into My Glass By Thomas Hardy


I look into my glass,

And view my wasting skin,

And say, “Would God it came to pass

My heart had shrunk as thin!”


For then, I, undistrest

By hearts grown cold to me,

Could lonely wait my endless rest

With equanimity.


But Time, to make me grieve,

Part steals, lets part abide;

And shakes this fragile frame at eve

With throbbings of noontide.

 

[David_B_K]

I cannot write poetry, but do love to read it/hear it. I still have an old recording of Richard Burton reading some great poems, among them Gerard Manley Hopkins' THE LEADEN ECHO and THE GOLDEN ECHO. Hopkins' "sprung rhythms" were beautifully read by Burton.

 

[John Kilduff]

Several years ago, back when I wrote for RetroJunk, I wrote a poem about 80s movies: http://www.retrojunk.com/article/show/2929/the-neon-screen


More germane to the subject, I had a poem published in a national anthology in high school. It was a piece I wrote about surviving high school with the help of friends and loved ones. I'll have to find the book it was located in, but it was published in either 2000 or 2001.


Sincerely,


John Kilduff...


Once I find it, I'll transcribe it.

 

[Dr Griffin]

Neil, I've enjoyed your poems, and I also have an original that is in a universal vein - it has been a work in progress for about a year, and I'm still working on it

But here is a short one I wrote:


TO WHAT END


I have stood too long upon this rock

In a divergent gaze toward purpose

To step into an abyss of longing

And shield a futile pretentious sorrow

But what not have I accorded it

My well worn aversion

To abscond with my fate

And breathe no more the air of discontent

 

[Sam Posten]

Two of my faves have very similar tone, if not theme:

Kubla Khan

By Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round;
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:
And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean;
And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ’twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

and

“Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came”

Robert Browning (1812–89)


MY 1 first thought was, he lied in every word,
That hoary cripple, with malicious eye
Askance to watch the working of his lie
On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford
Suppression of the glee, that purs’d and scor’d 5
Its edge, at one more victim gain’d thereby.

What else should he be set for, with his staff?
What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare
All travellers who might find him posted there,
And ask the road? I guess’d what skull-like laugh 10
Would break, what crutch ’gin write my epitaph
For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare,

If at his counsel I should turn aside
Into that ominous tract which, all agree,
Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescingly 15
I did turn as he pointed: neither pride
Nor hope rekindling at the end descried,
So much as gladness that some end might be.

For, what with my whole world-wide wandering,
What with my search drawn out thro’ years, my hope 20
Dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope
With that obstreperous joy success would bring,—
I hardly tried now to rebuke the spring
My heart made, finding failure in its scope.

As when a sick man very near to death 25
Seems dead indeed, and feels begin and end
The tears and takes the farewell of each friend,
And hears one bid the other go, draw breath
Freelier outside, (“since all is o’er,” he saith,
“And the blow fallen no grieving can amend;”) 30

While some discuss if near the other graves
Be room enough for this, and when a day
Suits best for carrying the corpse away,
With care about the banners, scarves and staves,
And still the man hears all, and only craves 35
He may not shame such tender love and stay.

Thus, I had so long suffer’d, in this quest,
Heard failure prophesied so oft, been writ
So many times among “The Band”—to wit,
The knights who to the Dark Tower’s search address’d 40
Their steps—that just to fail as they, seem’d best.
And all the doubt was now—should I be fit?

So, quiet as despair, I turn’d from him,
That hateful cripple, out of his highway
Into the path the pointed. All the day 45
Had been a dreary one at best, and dim
Was settling to its close, yet shot one grim
Red leer to see the plain catch its estray.

For mark! no sooner was I fairly found
Pledged to the plain, after a pace or two, 50
Than, pausing to throw backward a last view
O’er the safe road, ’t was gone; gray plain all round:
Nothing but plain to the horizon’s bound.
I might go on; nought else remain’d to do.

So, on I went. I think I never saw 55
Such starv’d ignoble nature; nothing throve:
For flowers—as well expect a cedar grove!
But cockle, spurge, according to their law
Might propagate their kind, with none to awe,
You ’d think; a burr had been a treasure trove. 60

No! penury, inertness and grimace,
In the strange sort, were the land’s portion. “See
Or shut your eyes,” said Nature peevishly,
“It nothing skills: I cannot help my case:
’T is the Last Judgment’s fire must cure this place, 65
Calcine its clods and set my prisoners free.”

If there push’d any ragged thistle=stalk
Above its mates, the head was chopp’d; the bents
Were jealous else. What made those holes and rents
In the dock’s harsh swarth leaves, bruis’d as to baulk 70
All hope of greenness? ’T is a brute must walk
Pashing their life out, with a brute’s intents.

As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair
In leprosy; thin dry blades prick’d the mud
Which underneath look’d kneaded up with blood. 75
One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare,
Stood stupefied, however he came there:
Thrust out past service from the devil’s stud!

Alive? he might be dead for aught I know,
With that red, gaunt and collop’d neck a-strain, 80
And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane;
Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe;
I never saw a brute I hated so;
He must be wicked to deserve such pain.

I shut my eyes and turn’d them on my heart. 85
As a man calls for wine before he fights,
I ask’d one draught of earlier, happier sights,
Ere fitly I could hope to play my part.
Think first, fight afterwards—the soldier’s art:
One taste of the old time sets all to rights. 90

Not it! I fancied Cuthbert’s reddening face
Beneath its garniture of curly gold,
Dear fellow, till I almost felt him fold
An arm in mine to fix me to the place,
That way he us’d. Alas, one night’s disgrace! 95
Out went my heart’s new fire and left it cold.

Giles then, the soul of honor—there he stands
Frank as ten years ago when knighted first.
What honest man should dare (he said) he durst.
Good—but the scene shifts—faugh! what hangman hands 100
Pin to his breast a parchment? His own bands
Read it. Poor traitor, spit upon and curst!

Better this present than a past like that;
Back therefore to my darkening path again!
No sound, no sight as far as eye could strain. 105
Will the night send a howlet of a bat?
I asked: when something on the dismal flat
Came to arrest my thoughts and change their train.

A sudden little river cross’d my path
As unexpected as a serpent comes. 110
No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms;
This, as it froth’d by, might have been a bath
For the fiend’s glowing hoof—to see the wrath
Of its black eddy bespate with flakes and spumes.

So petty yet so spiteful All along, 115
Low scrubby alders kneel’d down over it;
Drench’d willows flung them headlong in a fit
Of mute despair, a suicidal throng:
The river which had done them all the wrong,
Whate’er that was, roll’d by, deterr’d no whit. 120

Which, while I forded,—good saints, how I fear’d
To set my foot upon a dead man’s cheek,
Each step, or feel the spear I thrust to seek
For hollows, tangled in his hair or beard!
—It may have been a water-rat I spear’d, 125
But, ugh! it sounded like a baby’s shriek.

Glad was I when I reach’d the other bank.
Now for a better country. Vain presage!
Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage
Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank 130
Soil to a plash? Toads in a poison’d tank,
Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage—

The fight must so have seem’d in that fell cirque.
What penn’d them there, with all the plain to choose?
No foot-print leading to that horrid mews, 135
None out of it. Mad brewage set to work
Their brains, no doubt, like galley-slaves the Turk
Pits for his pastime, Christians against Jews.

And more than that—a furlong on—why, there!
What bad use was that engine for, that wheel, 140
Or brake, not wheel—that harrow fit to reel
Men’s bodies out like silk? with all the air
Of Tophet’s tool, on earth left unaware,
Or brought to sharpen its rusty teeth of steel.

Then came a bit of stubb’d ground, once a wood, 145
Next a marsh, it would seem, and now mere earth
Desperate and done with; (so a fool finds mirth,
Makes a thing and then mars it, till his mood
Changes and off he goes!) within a rood—
Bog, clay, and rubble, sand and stark black dearth. 150

Now blotches rankling, color’d gay and grim,
Now patches where some leanness of the soil’s
Broke into moss or substances like thus;
Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in him
Like a distorted mouth that splits its rim 155
Gaping at death, and dies while it recoils.

And just as far as ever from the end,
Nought in the distance but the evening, nought
To point my footstep further! At the thought,
A great black bird, Apollyon’s bosom-friend, 160
Sail’d past, nor beat his wide wing dragon-penn’d
That brush’d my cap—perchance the guide I sought.

For, looking up, aware I somehow grew,
Spite of the dusk, the plain had given place
All round to mountains—with such name to grace 165
Mere ugly heights and heaps now stolen in view.
How thus they had surpris’d me,—solve it, you!
How to get from them was no clearer case.

Yet half I seem’d to recognize some trick
Of mischief happen’d to me, God knows when— 170
In a bad perhaps. Here ended, then,
Progress this way. When, in the very nick
Of giving up, one time more, came a click
As when a trap shuts—you ’re inside the den.

Burningly it came on me all at once, 175
This was the place! those two hills on the right,
Couch’d like two bulls lock’d horn in horn in fight,
While, to the left, a tall scalp’d mountain … Dunce,
Dotard, a-dozing at the very nonce,
After a life spent training for the sight! 180

What in the midst lay but the Tower itself?
The round squat turret, blind as the fool’s heart,
Built of brown stone, without a counter-part
In the whole world. The tempest’s mocking elf
Points to the shipman thus the unseen shelf 185
He strikes on, only when the timbers start.

Not see? because of night perhaps?—Why, day
Came back again for that! before it left,
The dying sunset kindled through a cleft:
The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay, 190
Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay,—
“Now stab and end the creature—to the heft!”

Not hear? when noise was everywhere! it toll’d
Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears
Of all the lost adventurers my peers,— 195
How such a one was strong, and such was bold,
And such was fortunate, yet each of old
Lost, lost! one moment knell’d the woe of years.

There they stood, ranged along the hill-sides, met
To view the last of me, a living frame 200
For one more picture! in a sheet of flame
I saw them and I knew them all. And yet
Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,
And blew “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.”

 

[Neil Middlemiss]

Several years ago, back when I wrote for RetroJunk, I wrote a poem about 80s movies: http://www.retrojunk.com/article/show/2929/the-neon-screen


More germane to the subject, I had a poem published in a national anthology in high school. It was a piece I wrote about surviving high school with the help of friends and loved ones. I'll have to find the book it was located in, but it was published in either 2000 or 2001.


Sincerely,


John Kilduff...


Once I find it, I'll transcribe it.

Your poem brought a smile to my face...walking down memory lane and those movies - my personal favorite part:


You could call Rumack many things,
But Shirley wasn't one.
The crew all somehow played it straight,
But we, the fans, had fun.





I had a poem published in a national anthology when I was in middle school back in the UK. It was about child abuse (something I had NO first hand knowledge of,) and I riffed the title from a U2 song that I really liked. The poem was called 'Child of the Disappeared." I'll have to track it down and see if I think it holds up today.


Thanks for sharing, John.

 

[Neil Middlemiss]

Two of my faves have very similar tone, if not theme:

and

Sam - I have a thing for long poems (for some reason,) I wrote a 6-part poem that featured 300 lines per poem. I won't subject you to them, but they are among the favorites of all that I have written.


And I loved the two you posted. Certainly kindred themes.

 

[Neil Middlemiss]

Neil, I've enjoyed your poems, and I also have an original that is in a universal vein - it has been a work in progress for about a year, and I'm still working on it

But here is a short one I wrote:


TO WHAT END


I have stood too long upon this rock

In a divergent gaze toward purpose

To step into an abyss of longing

And shield a futile pretentious sorrow

But what not have I accorded it

My well worn aversion

To abscond with my fate

And breathe no more the air of discontent

I love it!

 

[Sam Posten]

I might have to get this:
http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/03/30/enormous-smallness-e-e-cummings-matthew-burgess/?utm_content=bufferf9cc4&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Another favorite!

The Charge of the Light Brigade Alfred, Lord Tennyson 1.
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
"Forward, the Light Brigade!
"Charge for the guns!" he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

2.
"Forward, the Light Brigade!"
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Someone had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

3.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.

4.
Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air,
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wonder'd:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reel'd from the sabre stroke
Shatter'd and sunder'd.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

5.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

6.
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honor the charge they made,
Honor the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred.

Copied from Poems of Alfred Tennyson,

 

[Neil Middlemiss]

This dangerous land
with uncaring hand
was once a soft and gentle earth
exalted by history’s worth
Now it sleeps knowing not
The boy it forgot
The boy that left
Through chosen theft
To break the shore
And know no more
The crashing winds
Or clouds that sinned
For too much rain
To soak again
The greenest fields
Under tree’s, oak shields
Where has that place
Put its face
Where has that world
Crushed and curled
Its grandeur
Its posture
Of the greatest empire
Throughout the entire
Continents of this planet
Of rock, marble, sand and granite
Of seas and rivers, lakes and falls
A fallen empire that history appalls.
Monarchy facades
Faces on playing cards
And royal subjects
Rising to object
To pomp and circumstance
The ridiculous royal dance.
That place I knew
I showed to you
With wonder and disdain
With love and pain
Remember the church
On tourists search
That we bussed to
The hills through
The musty odour
The religious overture
A Cathedral of stone
My heart was not my own
I was never alone...


Excerpt of one of my looooong poems