**The Poetry Thread **

I know it is a very unimaginative title, but it would be nice to have a place where we can talk about poetry.

Question - How do you read a book of poetry, particularly those books that contain the poems of a single author.

I think it was edwin last year who said he approaches such a book by reading a whole bunch of poems, say ten at a time and then goes back to re-read carefully those poems that have attracted his attention in some way. I tend to give each poem equal weight and will often read them three or four times before moving on.

The idea of some line or image in a poem that immediately grabs your attention is a good place to start in a careful re-read.

Sullivan and The Iguana

The Iguana is a comedian
erasing his body to death,
he is a gladiator retired after performance,
a general waiting for war overseas,

thought Sullivan, his feet on the table.
In the room he looks across
to his green friend sleeping over the bulb
who has ignored the clover and the vetch
that Sullivan picked in deserted lots.

Sullivan is alone
coiling in the rooms light.
From his window he looks down
onto the traffic, people's heads.
he leaves his garbage and soiled grit outside the door.
The room has little furniture.
He pours meals out of tins and packages
and after midnight aims his body to the bed.
From there, every few weeks,
Sullivan watches the ancient friend undress
out of his skin in the rectangle of light
and become young and brilliant green.
Sullivan's brain exercises under the flesh.

Sullivan
,thought the iguana
can turn the light on can turn it off
can open the cage
can hand in clover or hand in lettuce
can forget to change the water.

Michael Ondaatje

Nice idea for a thread, Barry. On the question, I tend more towards your method than edwin's. I also usually read the poem out loud at least once. Because I'm bit of completist, in the sense that I feel bad about skipping parts or poems, the reading-aloud bit can really cause problems, e.g. when trying to read all of The Faerie Queene out loud. I also read verse dramas out loud, so I was often forced to pull an all-nighter when writing a content test on a play during my undergraduate years. I felt that I might miss some nuance if I didn't read it out loud. Crazy, I know, but there you have it.

BTW, that's an interesting poem by Ondaatje. I just hope that we aren't going to have that whole copyright discussion again. ;-)

No set way -- but I can't be scientific about it. Picking it up again usually means going back some way to reread myself to where I was. When I finish I've usually read the poems several times, usually, if they are grabbing me, if I just do not understand them. I do read aloud (can clear blocks to understanding amazingly well), but not necessarily every one, wish I could, favourites I may record myself reading for the ipod, I enjoy practicing that reading and how the intent of phrasing in my head is different from my delivery, once I have got over the shock of hearing myself. Don't think I could give each poem equal weight, as they won't have equal weight for me.

I tend to read by skimming quickly, stopping for the ones that catch my eye somehow. Very bad method, I know.

Well, I never read cover to cover, I guess I more or less do as dukedom does, wander through the collection, stopping to pick poem flowers along the way. On the next trip through the book, I might pick different flowers or stop to throw some rocks into the pond:-)

Poetry books had me completely confounded for the longest time. I had no idea how to approach them, because they aren't like other books. You can't just sit and read them through. My reading of poetry is still very experimental.

The first method I found that worked was to read a single poem a day, each day. That way I would have all day to think about the one poem I had read, and without confusing it with all the others.

The way I do it now depends on the type of poetry in the book. I try to get a sense of how much I can read and take in at once. Then I'll do one of two things. At night, I'll read a small amount, sometimes just one poem, and go to sleep. Or, when I sit down to read, I'll start with the book of poetry and read a small section first, then go on to something else. I like this because of how it affects my reading of the next book. The poems put me in a state of mind where I'm thinking closely about the language and the rhythm.

two side notes:
- I tend to hit a stopping point with poetry where the next poem simply won't take, at least not the way I want. Then I know it's time to quit.

- but, at this point sometimes I'll simply skim ahead several poems without consciously taking them in. From this I get sense of rhythm and key words, without even trying. Then, the next sitting I can read these poems, and they seem to crystallize in my head much clearer.

#4 - Reading Faerie Queene was an experience in itself for me last year. I had to learn how to read it. The problem was getting myself into the right kind of mindset. For what it's worth, I'm applying what I learned in reading FQ to how I read the bible this year.

Dan, I know what you mean by hitting a stopping point when reading a bunch of poems.

The Poetry of Petrarch translated by David Young.

Young writes a superb introduction to his translation of Petrarchs poems. The first paragraph of the introduction says some wonderful things about lyric poetry and it is so good that it is worth copying here for the poetry thread:

Time is our delight and our prison. It binds all human beings together, since we all share the pleasures and burdens of memory, and we all know the anticipation of cherished goals and the dark prospect of personal mortality. While the problem of living in time is a long standing preoccupation among philosophers, theologians and storytellers, in some respects the exploration of temporality might be seen as the special province of lyric poetry, which records moments of heightened awareness in the temporal process and can accumulate a rich and moving record of an individual's lifelong engagement with time. Lyric poetry both submits to temporality and resists it. Individual poems draw themselves away from the temporal flow, and collections of lyric poems, while they may reflect experience and composition over time, also tend to resist the demands of story, history, and biography.

>11 baswood: That _is_ a great paragraph. Thanks for sharing. I think I'll add this one to the wishlist, just because the introduction is so inspirational!

#11 beautiful idea, beautifully stated. Something to think about. Thanks for transcribing for us here, Bas.

I usually read poetry collections consecutively - but I have to be really enjoying a collection to read it in a sitting. Five to ten poems at a time is more usual.

The main exception relates to collections with a mixture of short and long poems - in these, I'll usually read the short poems first, as I find that reading longer poems requires a bit of a run-up.

(My approach to short story collections is completely different - I almost always read these out of sequence, unless I know that it's a linked collection in which the sequence is important.)

What a lovely introduction to Petrarch, Barry. I haven't read much poetry in many years, but attended a seminar series at a local college last year that has rekindled my interest.

I am working my way through Human Chain by Seamus Heaney, given to me as a present by my step-son. I started by browsing randomly through the book, but quickly sensed that the poems together constitute a larger whole and were meant to be read in order. I am now back to start at the beginning, reading slowly and savoring the images.

Villon's Epitaph

Ballade of the Hanged

Brother men who come after us live on,
harden not your hearts against us,
for if you have some pity on us poor men,
the sooner God will show you mercy.
You see us, five, six, strung up here:
as for our flesh, which we have fed too well,
already it has been devoured and is rotten,
and we the bones, now turn to dust and ashes.

If we dare call you brothers, you should not
be scornful, even though we have been killed
by Justice. All the same, you know
that not all men are wise and strong;
commend us, now that we are dead,
to Jesus, Son of Virgin Mary,
that His grace’s source shall not dry up for us,
and that He keeps us from thunderbolts of Hell.
We now are dead-let no one harry us,
but pray to God that He absolve us all.

The rain has washed and cleansed us,
and the sun dried and blackened us;
magpies and crows have hollowed out our eyes
and torn away our beards and eyebrows.
Never, never are we at rest,
but driven back and forth
by the wind, changing at its pleasure, we,
more pecked by birds than a tailor’s thimble.
Be not of such a brotherhood as ours,
but pray to God that He absolves us all.

Prince Jesus, master of us all,
let Hell not hold us in its sway;
we would have no debts or business there.
Men, here there is no joking,
but pray to God that He absolves us all. (tr.Anthony BonnerBantam classic,1969

Francois Villon Written in 1462 while Villon was in prison under a death sentence. He was to be strangled and hanged.

A sombre, yet thought-provoking poem, Barry. I like the fact that he specifically calls on Jesus, who suffered a similar fate. Maybe he imagined himself as one of the two thieves crucified with Jesus. Speculation, of course, but from what I remember about Villon, he was a notorious criminal, as well as a poet.

Bas, powerful last thoughts, even if they weren't. Thanks for posting here.

Lost

Lost in a world of dust and spray,
We turn, we learn, we twist, we pray
For word or tune or touch or ray:

Some tune of hope, some word of grace,
Some ray of joy to guide our race,
Some touch of love to deuce our ace.

In vain the ace seeks out its twin.
The race is long, too short to win.
The tune is out, the word not in.

Our limbs, our hearts turn all to stone.
Our spring, our step lose aim and tone.
We are no more - and less than one.

There is no soul in which to blend,
No life to leave, no light to lend,
No shape, no chance, no drift, no end.

Vikram Seth, from The rivered earth

Review

What you are you do not see, what you see is your shadow.

Stray Birds -18

Rabindranath Tagore, from Stray Birds

Review

I picked up a couple of volumes of poetry last week - this is a good time to look for poetry on the shelves in the US bookstores as the publishers put collections out in advance of poetry month (April). Tried to read a bit last night, but not in the mood apparently.

>Ooh, a Vikram Seth I don't have!

Story: I

In the black forest a girl, of course, and a boy are kneeling at a crossroads.
They are making matchbooks speak.

In the village at a table hew from oak a man, sitting alone,
sips a glass of Silvovice. What's he doing

with his head in his hands? Is it the witch of description
visiting him, describing the failures
one by one, pulling them out until his head pounds? He hears

something, a whispering

which is the sound of flames far away catching
though he mistakes it, that sound
for rodents, several blind mice

scurrying behind the closed pantry door. It sounds
like a secret, it sounds like something

locked in the heart. Meanwhile, at the edge of the woods
the boy and the girl are holding hands. A gnarled
and knotty pine goes up in smoke, it goes up

in a sleeve of smoke that sweeps its way out across the sky.
Down here, it catches. It's going to catch

the boy and the girl, their faces
growing hot, trees gleaming in their eyes.

by Kate Northrop from The Black Warrior Review, fall/winter 1996.

also available here: http://books.google.com/books?id=4x9TpoqwLUQC&pg=PA5&lpg=PA5&dq=%22I...

I've been dipping in and out of a couple of new collections (one US, two translated: Russian and Iranian) and will share some when I get some time. Sometimes, I don't get a thing out of my reading when I pick them up; at other times, it's quite rewarding. I have to be in the right frame of mind.

>23 dchaikin: "sleeve of smoke" I like that, Dan.

> glass of Slivovice

I'd like that, Dan.

I don't know anything about it. wikipedia tells me that Slivovice is the Czech version of plum brandy. (The poem is located in The Black Forest in SW Germany.)

I assume slivovice is the same as slivovitz. I had a friend back in the 70s who liked slivovitz -- it was some kind of eastern European Jewish tradition.

Dan, enjoyed the poem.

I have been drunk on slivovice and it is not a pleasant experience. pulling them out until his head pounds this is from the third stanza of the poem and is just what it feels like after drinking too much slivovice.

#27 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slivovice

Apologies for cross-posting, I don't have the time to write another:



Selections from Sin: Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad (2007, Trans. by Sholeh Wolpé)

Forugh Farrokhzad was an Iranian poet of the 1950s and 60s, who died tragically when she was 32. Her poems caused quite a stir because they were sensuous and modern rather than traditional, and, while women were often the subjects of much Iranian poetry (written by men, of course) she was a woman now writing about men. She stretched the boundaries of what Iranian women could say. She quickly became a literary celebrity.

On first reading I thought these poems somewhat unsophisticated and plain-spoken, albeit passionately so. But I did not bring my full, thoughtful attention to that first read (for clearly the collection intrigued me enough when I browsed through it in the bookstore to inspire me to purchase it) As a Western women (or men) reading these poems a half century later, we take for granted being able to express ourselves passionately, so understanding the cultural context these poems were written enhances one reading. And Farrokhzad is a young poet and that youth is apparent in her work. Even now, 50+ years after her first collection was published (1955), her poetry is still rich with emotional and sensual/sexual intensity. Here are some excerpts of the many I like:

Those days are gone
the days of staring at the secrets of flesh,
of cautious intimacies and the blue-veined beauty
of a hand holding a flower, calling
from behind a wall
to another hand—
a small ink-stained hand,
anxious, trembling, and afraid...
And love unveiling in a shy salaam.

---excerpt from "Those Days" in the collection Reborn, 1964

Like the disheveled locks of a woman
the Karun river spreads itself
on the naked shoulders of the shore.
The sun is gone, and the night's hot breath
wafts over the water's beating heart.

Far in the distance the river's southern shore
is love-drunk in moonlight's embrace.
The night with its million brilliant bloodshot eyes
spies on beds of innocent lovers

The cane field is fast asleep. A bird
shrieks from amid its darkness,
and the moonbeams rush to see
what fear has driven it to such despair.

---excerpt from "Grief" in the collection Asir (1955, her first collection)

Our garden is forlorn.
It yawns waiting
for rain from a stray cloud,
and our pond sits empty.
Callow stars bite the dust
from atop tall trees
and from the pale home of the fish
comes the hack of coughing every night.

Our garden is forlorn.

---excerpt from "I Pity the Garden" in the collection Let Us Believe in the Dawn of the Cold Season (1967, published posthumously)

Wonderful selections from Sin: Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad. You indicate she died tragically. I'm wondering if you know the specifics or whether there was any connection to her poetry being inconsistent with cultural mores.

#29 Thanks!

Liked the excerpt from Grief, avaland

>31 Linda92007: Car accident. She was thrown from the car and hit her head. No seatbelts at that time, of course.

I posted this on my thread alongside review -

From The Others - Natasha Hadjidaki

Portrait of a Woman Waiting for Her Guests

Something happens to me.
People are coming for dinner.
For two days I've gauged the
proportions with black lace.
Tenaciously I wash the platters with soap.
The blue bowls from Staffordshire
Their tiny flowers are immortal
for they still have their blue leaves
their blue roots
their blue earth.
I wash my cheeks in the photographs with soap
and I plant different eyes on them.
I go to the shops
and do some window shopping.
I try on hundreds of bras
and long skirts.
They will come on the Saturday already passed.
I must remember exactly what I intend to cook.
N will come with her triangular red beg.
she will bring her body,
she will wear her tracksuit with all its zips
or a Chinese dress with openings everywhere
especially on the sides.
She pockets all the bottles of red wine
then she pulls all the zips.
E will come with in Robin Hood boots
her blue eyes, her stifling blouses.
I will come
I will wear a dress with padded shoulders
and a desperately tight skirt.
I will serve them with sharp clips on my ears
and I will throw back my hair
with a lively flick of my shoulders.
H will come from a great distance
with her bald baby on her back, a captive
of her curved body
her grey coat
her earrings from Thibet
and her triplets never to be born.
K will not be coming
because she is always here
with her pink tights
and her high heels which impale
whole city block
when she passes.
Why is it she's never cold in her pre-Spring outfits,
Why is it she never secretly grows, never fades
on her cold Australian legs?
I wash the tea with soap
I wash the butter with soap
I wash the slaughtered lamb with soap
I wash the sugar and the coffee with soap
so they will be pure.
I will come for dinner.
I wash my Croton plant
with very hot water
my plant named Leopard Lily
and my tough Ficus Robusta.
as well as the half-dead Lapithia
without her western pediment, without the other E.
I wash the Eiffel Tower, the view of Palais de Chaillot
I wash the harbour of Spetses black and white.

Something happens to her.
They will come for dinner.

The following is a fragment from the poem The Gardens of Warsaw.

(...)
It rains on the Saxon Gardens, lilacs and apple trees
on the grassy slopes, and on the Ujazdowski Gardens
with their chain of ponds where black-billed swans
paddle calmly under the archways of miniature bridges
and a Zionist boy is reading a book on a wooden bench.
It rains on the Botanical Gardens where the magnolias,
blooming, toss off grails of pure white idly.
It rains also on the Lazieniki Gardens lightly
and the small palace with its cream-colored walls
and columned porticoes shimmering in the bull's-eye
circles-within-circles the rain makes lightly
on the face of the lagoon and on the feathers of the nightingales
furtive in the elms and on the bronze statue of Stanislaus
in the sweet scent of the orangery where water laps
against the mottled marble stairs of the amphitheater
where Paderewski once conducted Brahms, and even the children,
chasing each other on the grass across the way,
or turning in fast circles, arms out, till they fall down
into their dizziness, stopped at a sudden yearning lift
of the violins, and listened. It is summer as I write,
Northern California. Clear air, a blazing sky in August,
bright shy Audubon's warblers in the pines.
(...)

Robert Hass, Sun under wood.

Review

>35 Jargoneer: interesting...not sure I like it, but it's interesting.... Off to see what else you have to say.

Satan Speaks

I am Nature, the Mighty Mother,
I am the law: ye have none other.

I am the flower and the dewdrop fresh,
I am the lust in your itching flesh.

I am the battle's filth and strain,
I am the widow's empty pain.

I am the sea to smother your breath,
I am the bomb, the falling death.

I am the fact and the crushing reason
To thwart your fantasy's new-born treason.

I am the spider making her net,
I am the beast with jaws blood-wet.

I am a wolf that follows the sun
And I will catch him ere day be done.

C. S. Lewis, from Spirits in bondage. A cycle of lyrics

Review

Edwin, I am not too sure what to make of the C S Lewis poem, perhaps a little naive, juvenile maybe.

I've never figured out what to make of any poetry, but I did like that one.

> 39

Barry, do not make judgement on the basis on the single poem I copied in message 38. Spirits in bondage. A cycle of lyrics is not a collection of "stand-alone" poems, but a cycle. To present a poem out of that context, I chose the first poem of the cycle, which has a very strong rhythm, and immediately sets the tone with its hard, unrelentness anger, and introduces gloom and despair, derived from the horrors of war. Other poems from the cycle would have been difficult to understand out of the context of the cycle.

As I mentioned in my review, "the poems could be seen as an adolescent's verbal Symphonie fantastique" by modern readers. To modern readers, it looks a bit like the gloomy scribblings of a 17-year-old troubled high school student. However, it should be remembered that:

1) the modernity of the form of the poem is remarkable, as it was published in 1919, three years before the publication of The Waste Land, and,

2) what looks cliché to modern readers, was probably very "modern" to readers 90 years ago.

As Spirits in bondage. A cycle of lyrics is C.S. Lewis' first publication, it belongs by definition to his juvenalia. It has been suggested that if Lewis would not have published anything else after Spirits in bondage, that he would be remembered for just that, which implies that the cycle is a valuable contribution to English poetry.

I think Spirits in bondage requires careful reading and re-reading, and contemplation of, for example, the genre of Great War poetry, such as Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, and Lewis' pre-conversion ideas. The poem contains a lot more than I could describe in my review.

Spirits in bondage was Lewis first publication in 1919. However, some of the poems were written in 1917, and were part of a collection of "Early Poems" which were long thought lost. Some of the other poems written in 1917, are thematically related to the cycle, but much more lyrical, and dreamy, leaving out the despair and pessimism of the cycle.

For example, related to what I call the home-sickness theme in Spirits in bondage, the longing "for a Paradise in the West, the Garden of the Hesperides, Lewis's longing for the Tin Isles is a longing for home," echoing the Prologue to the cycle is the following poem.

My Western Garden

I know a garden where the West-Winds blow;
Far hence it lies, and few there be that know,
And few that tread the road that leads thereto.

Its gladsome glades are girt about with mists,
And o'er its sward a slumberous streamlet twists,
Flowing like Lethe, soundless; thence who lists

May drink his full, and naught remember more.
Methinks my garden must be by the shore
Of some vast nameless Ocean; for the roar

Of waters alway murmurs through its bow'rs;
Faint flakes of foam lie crisp on all the flow'rs,
And salt spray mingles with the drowsy show'rs.

No chart will guide thee to that twilit land,
Nor mariner hath reached that Ocean's strand,
For space it knoweth not, nor Time's rough hand.

But to the home of those faint dreams that keep,
The shadowy country, neither Life nor Sleep,
Which parts full wakening from the voiceless deep.

Scant need hath any man to wreck of woe,
Or joy, of hate or love, so he may go,
And shelter in the garden that I know--
--But few they be that find the road thereto.

C.S. Lewis, from "Early Poems" (unpublished), ca. 1917

Interesting thoughts Edwin and I hear what you are saying about C S Lewis's poetry. However the second poem you have copied looks backwards more than it looks forward. The Garden of the Hesperides was by this time pure poetic convention. 1917 was of course in the middle of The Great War and so one can understand a yearning for a magical garden.

You have piqued my interest edwin and so I will look out for a copy of the poems.

Oh lets have some Petrarch - David Young's translations from the Canzoniere

Sonnet no. 39
I fear their fierce attack, those lovely eyes
where love and my own death reside together
and I flee the the way a boy flees whipping:
it's years now since I first leaped up and ran.

There is no place too high, too hard to climb,
to which desire will not take me now,
to shun the one who dissipates my senses
and leaves me, usually, as cold as stone.

Therefore, If I have been slow to visit you,
not to be near the one who makes me suffer,
it's something you can probably forgive.

Indeed, just coming back at all, my friend,
to what I flee, and mastering my fear,
is no small pledge of my fidelity

Sonnet 140
Love that lives and reigns in all my thoughts
and makes his seat of power in my heart,
sometimes appears in armor on my brow
and camps there, setting up his banner.

The she who teaches us both love and patience
and wants my great desire, kindled hope,
to be reined in by reason, shame, and reverence
grows angry at our boldness, hot within.

Which makes love flee in terror to my heart;
abandoning all enterprise, he weeps
and shakes; hides there, and will come forth no more.

What can I do, when my lord is afraid,
except stay with him to the final hour?
For he dies well who dies while loving deeply.

Sonnet 272
Life runs on by and does not pause an hour,
and Death comes following with giant strides;
and past and present things make war on me,
and future things assault me here as well;

both memory and anticipation sit
upon my heart, now one side, now the other;
unless I can take pity on myself
I'll soon be free of any thoughts at all.

The times my sad heart knew a little sweetness
all come back to me now; at the same time,
I watch the storm clouds massing for my voyage;

the squall has reached the harbour, and my helmsman
lies down exhausted, masts and rigging shattered,
the lovely stars I steered by all extinguished.

For he dies well who dies while loving deeply.

A beautiful sentiment! The other poems are great as well.

>41 edwinbcn: - I'm not sure how you can describe Lewis' poetry as 'modern' - the rhythm and metre of the poems stick as closely as possible to 'heroic' or 'classical' standards.

I've been thinking of posting this. I've decided to post in response to Petrarch, whose love "hides there, and will come forth no more."

Fishing Seahorse Reef

Our lures trail
in the prop-wash,
skipping to mimic
live bait. Minutes ago
I watched you
cut up the dead shrimp
that smell like sex.
Now we stand, long
filmy shapes jigsawed
by the waves, and wait
for the rods to arc
heavy with kingfish.
We bring the limit
of eight on board,
their teeth gnashing
against the lures.
And I think how tender
all animal urgency is--
these fish thrashing
to throw the hook,
or a man flinging himself
into the future
each time he enters
a woman. This
is what I picture
all afternoon: you
inside me, your body a stem
bent under the weight
of its flowering,
as beautiful as that;
how carefully
you would lower yourself,
like something winged,
a separate order
or fallen thing
from these angels with fins
who know only once
the difference
between water and air.

by Enid Shomer, from This Close to the Earth

Yes Dan, Poor Petrarch would be horrified.

Interesting poem by Enid Shomer. Is there a typo in line 7: small should be smell?

Shomer's a very intriguing poet. Fishing is a topic she often addresses -- I think there's one of her fishing poems in Florida in Poetry. I met her once when the book was first published.

#47 - yes, fixing...

#48 - Jane, I picked this book up following up on your book. Enid Shomer was my favorite. I also have a book by Donald Justice & one Ricardo Paul-Llosa, all because of Florida in Poetry.

I'm behind in writing about the poetry I've been reading, and I'm dithering with some Eavan Boland, at the moment. Here's the latest I posted on my thread:

The Dream of a Common Language by Adrienne Rich (1978, poetry, US)

One can read any number of excellent obituaries for Adrienne Rich, like this one in the New York Times, and for all of her accomplishments, I still think about her on a more personal level. Not that I knew her, I did not; but she spoke for a generation, for an era, for many things, but she also spoke at time for me. it seemed personal.

When I received the sad news of her death, I pulled down a favorite collection of hers and began to browse through it. I have notes and underlines scribbled in this edition, and I thought how amazing that some of the poems still had such power to move me. I will not share those, but I thought I might share the first poem of the collection - which is as much about the power of creativity as it is about Marie Curie. I have tried to duplicate the format of the poem.

POWER

Living in the earth-deposits of our history

Today a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earth
one bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-old
cure for fever or melancholy a tonic
for living on this earth in the winters of this climate

Today I was reading about Marie Curie:
she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness
her body bombarded for years by the element
she had purified
It seems she denied to the end
the source of the cataracts on her eyes
the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends
till she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil

She died a famous woman denying
her wounds
denying
her wounds came from the same source as her power

1974

I like that. I haven't read any Rich I think, but know her name.

Recently I read The Tree House by Kathleen Jamie and have also for some time been reading from her Mr and mrs Scotland are Dead since discovering her through her poem Skeins o' Geese, which I recommend. All of it very enjoyable, and am rereading all the time.

I've also read Of Mutability by Jo Shapcott which did not pull me in as immediately but which started to click with me about a third of the way through and I thoroughyl enjoyed and again will be rereading.

I started Nil Nil by Don Paterson as I loved Rain, but having read these two ladies I'm not after going further at the moment.

I'm working my way though Paul Celan: Selections which is edited and large parts translated by Pierre Joris whose approach I think I enjoy, I don't speak German. I also have Hamburger's translated selected, when I know them (the poems) better I may compare more. Anyway, this was more up my street after Shapcott and whilst I had been stuck in the Breath Turn poems I started them fresh and worked through, I'd found them a leap in indecipherability, maybe I was still trying to understand too much but I mostly let go of this, one, on Word Accretions, did have a sense for me, but mostly I just let them wash over me, an experience. I am daunted by him, how much pain he knew, so I am cautious of going further, a conversation online suggests the later poems are about bearing the unbearable, so maybe it is only right to be very cautious. I find his difficulty though not some willful cleverness but one that seems to have coherence, a language or languages that an appropriate heart-key as much as mind-key may open up, but which I cannot know, perhaps just as well. (I'll cross post this on my thread too...didn't set out to write that at the start.)

I have been gradually working my way through Seamus Heaney's body of work and greatly enjoying it, although feeling that I miss a great deal due to an inadequate knowledge of Irish vernacular, rural life, politics and history. But I am learning and may later visit the University's library to refer to the many available books analyzing his poetry, to assist with that type of background.

For those who may be interested, I have posted reviews on both my thread and the work pages of his most recent collection, Human Chain, and of Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney by Dennis O'Driscoll.

Linda - I loved your review. I was completely lost by the one book of Heaney that I read. The advice I got was that I should start with his earlier stuff...I never actually pursued that advice.

Thanks Daniel. From what I have read of his so far, I might actually recommend starting with Human Chain, rather than his earlier works. At least for me, it was more readily accessible.

I'm sifting through some Eavan Boland now, after dipping into some Gail Mazur.

I'll have to make a point to get over to your thread Linda to read those reviews. I read Heaney quite a while ago, but haven't kept up with his more recent stuff.

I am not familiar with Eavan Boland, avaland, but our library system does have a number of her collections, all in storage. That seems to be a common fate of their poetry books. Would you have a suggestion about which would be a good introduction to her work?

I have only started to read her recently, so I'm reluctant to offer a recommendation. Seems any "selected poems" or "collected poems" might be a good place to start. The one I'm reading now is from 2009 - New Collected Poems, which seems to have a nice selection of work from throughout her career. She also has a memoir out about writing...I've been tempted to get that.

Already I see such mastery in her work.

A relative of mine posted this on his FB page in honor of Memorial Day. It seemed apropos to re-post it here:

In Flander's Field
by John McCrae

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow,
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky,
The larks, still bravely singing, fly,
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the dead.
Short days ago,
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved and now we lie,
In Flanders Fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe
To you, from failing hands, we throw,
The torch, be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us, who die,
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow,
In Flanders Fields.

Two Griffin Prizes for poetry will be awarded on June 7th by The Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry. One will go to a Canadian poet and one to an international poet.

The Canadian shortlist is:

Methodist Hatchet by Ken Babstock
Killdeer by Phil Hall
Forge by Jan Zwicky

The international shortlist is:

Night by David Harsent
The Chameleon Couch by Yusef Komunyakaa
November by Sean O'Brien
Sobbing Superpower: Selected Poems by Tadeusz Rozewicz by Joanna Trzeciak, translated from the Polish of Tadeusz Rozewicz

Each finalist receives $10,000 for participating in readings from the shortlist on June 6th and each prizewinner receives an additional $65,000.

Thanks for the info on the Griffin Prizes and links, SassyLassy. More great poets to explore!

Lucky Day by Jeffrey Skinner

On the drive to work today my car pulled to the left. I stopped
at a Chevron and looked at the tires. No problem. I opened the
hood. My father was there, curled around the manifold, bit of
smoke rising from his oily blue suit. "Dad...what the hell?"
I said. Without speaking he began laboriously to snake around
to another position. When he stopped moving he looked
frozen in the aspect of someone who had fallen several stories
to the street. "The car's fine now," he said. "Go. Don't be late
for work." He was right: no more pull. Also, not a single pain
in my body or mind. Plus, universe not yet contracting. Lucky,
lucky Day.

From The Missouri Review, Vol 27, No 1, 2004

Wow!

nice one dan

Wonderful, Dan.

The Griffin Prizes for poetry were awarded earlier this week (see 59 above).

The winners were:
Ken Babstock for Methodist Hatchet
David Harsent for Night

In addition, Seamus Heaney was awarded a lifetime recognition award.

Thanks for the heads up, Sassy. I'm finding lots of great stuff to explore on the Griffin Prize website - www.griffinpoetryprize.com - and my poetry wishlist is growing in leaps and bounds! I am going to look for The Griffin Prize Anthology 2012, a collection from the shortlisted poets. Dionne Brand's Ossuaries, highlighted in the poem of the week, is another one I would like to read and that luckily has a Kindle version.

Bavarian Gentians by D.H. Lawrence

Not every man has gentians in his house
in soft September, at slow, sad Michaelmas.

Bavarian Gentians, big and dark, only dark
darkening the day-time, torch-like with the smoking blueness of Pluto’s gloom,
ribbed and torch-like, with their blaze of darkness spread blue
down flattening into points, flattened under the sweep of white day
torch-flower of the blue-smoking darkness, Pluto’s dark-blue daze,
black lamps from the halls of Dis, burning dark blue,
giving off darkness, blue darkness, as Demeter’s pale lamps give off light,
lead me then, lead the way.

Reach me a gentian, give me a torch!
let me guide myself with the blue, forked torch of this flower
down the darker and darker stairs, where blue is darkened on blueness
even where Persephone goes, just now, from the frosted September
to the sightless realm where darkness is awake upon the dark
and Persephone herself is but a voice
or a darkness invisible enfolded in the deeper dark
of the arms Plutonic, and pierced with the passion of dense gloom,
among the splendour of torches of darkness, shedding darkness on the lost bride and her groom.

Ah. late D H Lawrence poetry when he had developed repetition into almost an art form. It is particularly effective in this poem I think and what an opening stanza.

I have recently completed two collections by poets who have experienced horrific wars in their countries. The War Works Hard by Dunya Mikhail (Iraq) was somewhat disappointing, but Eternity on Hold by Mario Susko (Bosnia) was excellent. My review is posted on my thread and the book's work page.

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Moemoa - I don't know much about poetry, but would like to know more about this poem. Where is this from?

I wrote it :)

Moemoa - ah, sorry, didn't catch that. Thanks for sharing. Your poem has me thinking about it, but I can't possibly express any kind of useful opinion on it.

oh ok thanks for reading and commenting anyways
if you want to read another one just say the word

A poem I learnt at school:

The Siege of Belgrade

AN Austrian army, awfully arrayed,
Boldly by battery besieged Belgrade.
Cossack commanders cannonading come,
Dealing destruction's devastating doom.
Every endeavor engineers essay,
For fame, for fortune fighting - furious fray!
Generals 'gainst generals grapple - gracious God!
How honors Heaven heroic hardihood!
Infuriate, indiscrminate in ill,
Kindred kill kinsmen, kinsmen kindred kill.
Labor low levels longest, lofiest lines;
Men march 'mid mounds, 'mid moles, ' mid murderous mines;
Now noxious, noisey numbers nothing, naught
Of outward obstacles, opposing ought;
Poor patriots, partly purchased, partly pressed,
Quite quaking, quickly "Quarter! Quarter!" quest.
Reason returns, religious right redounds,
Suwarrow stops such sanguinary sounds.
Truce to thee, Turkey! Triumph to thy train,
Unwise, unjust, unmerciful Ukraine!
Vanish vain victory! vanish, victory vain!
Why wish we warfare? Wherefore welcome were
Xerxes, Ximenes, Xanthus, Xavier?
Yield, yield, ye youths! ye yeomen, yield your yell!
Zeus', Zarpater's, Zoroaster's zeal,
Attracting all, arms against acts appeal!

Alaric Alexander Watts

My poetry group for teens.
http://www.librarything.com/groups/teenpoetry