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Thread: Today's poet

  1. #12261
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    Re: Today's poet

    Written shortly before her death and about as autobiographical as you can get I suppose ?

    "So Daddy, I'm finally through."

    Daddy

    You do not do, you do not do
    Any more, black shoe
    In which I have lived like a foot
    For thirty years, poor and white,
    Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

    Daddy, I have had to kill you.
    You died before I had time---
    Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
    Ghastly statue with one grey toe
    Big as a Frisco seal

    And a head in the freakish Atlantic
    Where it pours bean green over blue
    In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
    I used to pray to recover you.
    Ach, du.

    In the German tongue, in the Polish town
    Scraped flat by the roller
    Of wars, wars, wars.
    But the name of the town is common.
    My Polack friend

    Says there are a dozen or two.
    So I never could tell where you
    Put your foot, your root,
    I never could talk to you.
    The tongue stuck in my jaw.

    It stuck in a barb wire snare.
    Ich, ich, ich, ich,
    I could hardly speak.
    I thought every German was you.
    And the language obscene

    An engine, an engine
    Chuffing me off like a Jew.
    A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
    I began to talk like a Jew.
    I think I may well be a Jew.

    The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
    Are not very pure or true.
    With my gypsy ancestress and my weird luck
    And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
    I may be a bit of a Jew.

    I have always been scared of *you*,
    With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
    And your neat mustache
    And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
    Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You---

    Not God but a swastika
    So black no sky could squeak through.
    Every woman adores a Fascist,
    The boot in the face, the brute
    Brute heart of a brute like you.

    You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
    In the picture I have of you,
    A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
    But no less a devil for that, no not
    Any less the black man who

    Bit my pretty red heart in two.
    I was ten when they buried you.
    At twenty I tried to die
    And get back, back, back to you.
    I thought even the bones would do.

    But they pulled me out of the sack,
    And they stuck me together with glue.
    And then I knew what to do.
    I made a model of you,
    A man in black with a Meinkampf look

    And a love of the rack and the screw.
    And I said I do, I do.
    So daddy, I'm finally through.
    The black telephone's off at the root,
    The voices just can't worm through.

    If I've killed one man, I've killed two---
    The vampire who said he was you
    and drank my blood for a year,
    Seven years, if you want to know.
    Daddy, you can lie back now.

    There's a stake in your fat, black heart
    And the villagers never liked you.
    They are dancing and stamping on you.
    They always *knew* it was you.
    Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.

    Sylvia Plath

  2. #12262
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    Re: Today's poet

    Excellent choice, Alf. I do like "Daddy".

    I have been trying to find a certain Tim Turnbull poem on the web and failing, I will have to type it out some time. In the meantime I have in my drawer at work this morning a book by Paul Farley (The Boy From the Chemist is Here to See You). Here is "My Italics"

    On waking disappointed from a deep sleep,
    he'll boot up his machine, sit down and type

    Even though I know that I will never
    live the rural life, God knows I've tried
    to imagine rising at five in bad weather
    carrying a paraffin lamp, peering inside
    a fecund dark, up to my elbows in lather
    helping pull a shiny calf from its mother.
    But five o'clock comes round just once most days.
    Deep in quilt, I'm stuck for raw material.
    The lamp slips from my hands. After each blaze
    I'll stumble from its ashes to my cereal.

    His inkjet ploughs the page for all it's worth:
    it drops head-first, the easiest of births.

    And on lamps, here is one from the same book. The poem is based on a simple idea, but it somehow works
    "A Thousand Hours"

    There were false starts, but life, for me, really
    began the night he unplugged the telly
    and snuffed out the pilot light. As last-man-out
    he worked right through to dawn, between the street
    and this bedroom, until he's stripped it bare,
    but he left me in his rush to check the meter,
    to turn the stopcock on a copper tank,
    count stairs and memorize that manhole's clunk,
    the first hawked phlegm, the way a window pane
    was answering the early Line Street train;
    and posted back his keys to nobody.

    I've hung here naked since, by day barely
    able to force a shadow to be thrown.
    It's nights I come into my own:
    a halo for the ceiling, corners for mice,
    and through the glass a phantom of all this,
    a twin star that is shedding kilowatts
    in translation. Beyond these dark outskirts
    my creator sleeps. I recall how his eyes
    woudl whirr just like this night-time visitor
    that might outlive me. Of all his ideas
    I burn on, having been conceived in error.

    Paul Farley
    Last edited by Stevie; 14-10-2011 at 12:58 PM. Reason: Typo

  3. #12263
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    Re: Today's poet

    Quote Originally Posted by Stevie View Post
    Excellent choice, Alf. I do like "Daddy".

    I have been trying to find a certain Tim Turnbull poem on the web and failing, I will have to type it out some time. In the meantime I have in my drawer at work this morning a book by Paul Farley (The Boy From the Chemist is Here to See You). Here is "My Italics"

    On waking disappointed from a deep sleep,
    he'll boot up his machine, sit down and type

    Even though I know that I will never
    live the rural life, God knows I've tried
    to imagine rising at five in bad weather
    carrying a paraffin lamp, peering inside
    a fecund dark, up to my elbows in lather
    helping pull a shiny calf from its mother.
    But five o'clock comes round just once most days.
    Deep in quilt, I'm stuck for raw material.
    The lamp slips from my hands. After each blaze
    I'll stumble from its ashes to my cereal.

    His inkjet ploughs the page for all it's worth:
    it drops head-first, the easieest of births.

    And on lamps, here is one from the same book. The poem is based on a simple idea, but it somehow works
    "A Thousand Hours"

    There were false starts, but life, for me, really
    began the night he unplugged the telly
    and snuffed out the pilot light. As last-man-out
    he worked right through to dawn, between the street
    and this bedroom, until he's stripped it bare,
    but he left me in his rush to check the meter,
    to turn the stopcock on a copper tank,
    count stairs and memorize that manhole's clunk,
    the first hawked phlegm, the way a window pane
    was answering the early Line Street train;
    and posted back his keys to nobody.

    I've hung here naked since, by day barely
    able to force a shadow to be thrown.
    It's nights I come into my own:
    a halo for the ceiling, corners for mice,
    and through the glass a phantom of all this,
    a twin star that is shedding kilowatts
    in translation. Beyond these dark outskirts
    my creator sleeps. I recall how his eyes
    woudl whirr just like this night-time visitor
    that might outlive me. Of all his ideas
    I burn on, having been conceived in error.

    Paul Farley
    Very good those Stevie. I particularly liked "A thousand Hours" although it took me two reads to get it

  4. #12264

    Re: Today's poet

    great choices...daddy being one of my favorites.

    here is one from donald hall who i don't recall coming across before...

    Affirmation
    by Donald Hall
    To grow old is to lose everything.
    Aging, everybody knows it.
    Even when we are young,
    we glimpse it sometimes,
    and nod our heads when a grandfather dies.
    Then we row for years on the midsummer pond,
    ignorant and content.
    But a marriage,that began without harm,
    scatters into debris on the shore,
    and a friend from school
    drops cold on a rocky strand.
    If a new love carries us past middle age,
    our wife will die at her strongest and most beautiful.
    New women come and go. All go.
    The pretty lover who announces that she is temporary
    is temporary.
    The bold woman, middle-aged against our old age,
    sinks under an anxiety she cannot withstand.
    Another friend of decades estranges himself
    in words that pollute thirty years.
    Let us stifle under mud at the pond's edge
    and affirm that it is fitting
    and delicious to lose everything.
    Last edited by freckle; 14-10-2011 at 10:39 PM.

  5. #12265
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    Re: Today's poet

    Gosh....that's a very thought provoking poem but a bit sad (however true it may be). Thanks for your nice comments re the horseshoe Freckle (and Alf). There have been some really good posts on here over the last couple days. Really good reading.

    Quote Originally Posted by freckle View Post
    great choices...daddy being one of my favorites.

    here is one from donald hall who i don't recall coming across before...

    Affirmation
    by Donald Hall
    To grow old is to lose everything.
    Aging, everybody knows it.
    Even when we are young,
    we glimpse it sometimes,
    and nod our heads when a grandfather dies.
    Then we row for years on the midsummer pond,
    ignorant and content.
    But a marriage,that began without harm,
    scatters into debris on the shore,
    and a friend from school
    drops cold on a rocky strand.
    If a new love carries us past middle age,
    our wife will die at her strongest and most beautiful.
    New women come and go. All go.
    The pretty lover who announces that she is temporary
    is temporary.
    The bold woman, middle-aged against our old age,
    sinks under an anxiety she cannot withstand.
    Another friend of decades estranges himself
    in words that pollute thirty years.
    Let us stifle under mud at the pond's edge
    and affirm that it is fitting
    and delicious to lose everything.

  6. #12266
    Moderator Mossdog's Avatar
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    Re: Today's poet

    Can't believe we've been relegated to the second page - yikes! That's a first.


    A Baby Running Barefoot

    When the bare feet of the baby beat across the grass
    The little white feet nod like white flowers in the wind,
    They poise and run like ripples lapping across the water;
    And the sight of their white play among the grass
    Is like a little robin’s song, winsome,
    Or as two white butterflies settle in the cup of one flower
    For a moment, then away with a flutter of wings.

    I long for the baby to wander hither to me
    Like a wind-shadow wandering over the water,
    So that she can stand on my knee
    With her little bare feet in my hands,
    Cool like syringa buds,
    Firm and silken like pink young peony flowers.

    D H Lawrence
    Am Yisrael Chai

  7. #12267
    Moderator Mossdog's Avatar
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    Re: Today's poet

    Quote Originally Posted by freckle View Post
    great choices...daddy being one of my favorites.

    here is one from donald hall who i don't recall coming across before...

    Affirmation
    by Donald Hall
    To grow old is to lose everything.
    Aging, everybody knows it.
    Even when we are young,
    we glimpse it sometimes,
    and nod our heads when a grandfather dies.
    Then we row for years on the midsummer pond,
    ignorant and content.
    But a marriage,that began without harm,
    scatters into debris on the shore,
    and a friend from school
    drops cold on a rocky strand.
    If a new love carries us past middle age,
    our wife will die at her strongest and most beautiful.
    New women come and go. All go.
    The pretty lover who announces that she is temporary
    is temporary.
    The bold woman, middle-aged against our old age,
    sinks under an anxiety she cannot withstand.
    Another friend of decades estranges himself
    in words that pollute thirty years.
    Let us stifle under mud at the pond's edge
    and affirm that it is fitting
    and delicious to lose everything.
    'tis a bit dismay our Freckle. Are you feeling ok? I know life can't always be a Berni Inn basket of chicken and chips, but I can't help thinking Donald has been gratuitously bleak.
    Am Yisrael Chai

  8. #12268
    Moderator Mossdog's Avatar
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    Re: Today's poet

    Quote Originally Posted by Hes View Post
    The Door

    I sit in the garden
    taking the late sun
    as it sinks and slides
    between the side
    of the house
    and the hawthorn.
    Trailing the bench
    across the lawn
    to catch a final
    finger of warmth,
    a golden stretch
    comes to rest
    on a patch
    of grass at my feet
    — like a door.
    A door in which
    I wait for your
    shadow to darken;
    the door, which is
    always left open.

    Adam Wyeth
    Ooooh! Now that is lovely - thanks Hes.
    Am Yisrael Chai

  9. #12269
    Moderator Mossdog's Avatar
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    Re: Today's poet

    Quote Originally Posted by Alf View Post
    Posted before by surprise surprise freckle! But well worth another look.

    Sleeping in the Forest

    I thought the earth remembered me,
    she took me back so tenderly,
    arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
    full of lichens and seeds.
    I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
    nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
    but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
    among the branches of the perfect trees.
    All night I heard the small kingdoms
    breathing around me, the insects,
    and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
    All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
    grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
    I had vanished at least a dozen times
    into something better.

    Mary Oliver
    She really is so very talented - Nice one Alf.
    Am Yisrael Chai

  10. #12270

    Re: Today's poet

    Quote Originally Posted by Mossdog View Post
    'tis a bit dismay our Freckle. Are you feeling ok? I know life can't always be a Berni Inn basket of chicken and chips, but I can't help thinking Donald has been gratuitously bleak.
    I am good thanks Mossy...just liked the poem! and your baby running bare foot choice too! Good that we can rely on old stalwarts such as yourself to drag this thread back from the brink of the second page (she states aghast!) ....

    here is a little offering inspired by my love of autumn (amongst other things)...

    Tricking the sloes

    I was so satiated words vanished
    And all that remained was a wish for time
    to be frozen by a great imaginary shutter
    capable of snapping this golden leitmotif,
    writ large in the forest with its slight clart underfoot,
    and leaves in varying continua of life and death.

    Through the lens a discrete image would form
    our hands unknotting, working in unison
    to capture with enthusiasm
    each purple waxy drupe before the frost.
    It would remember with ease our discussion
    of how simple trickery via a blast in the freezer,
    would transform the astringent blooms
    into sweet heady fruit ripe for infusion.

    Yet try as I might, time cannot be paused
    I failed to develop the camera of my dreams
    And as the light fell in dappled blankets
    Over the hush of secret elms
    it was time to go home.
    Passing an elderly couple
    who were one step ahead of us

    with their own blend of liquid memories
    I was reminded with a small pang of reality

    It will not always be time to trick the sloes.
    Last edited by freckle; 18-10-2011 at 12:19 AM.

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