My all time and forever favorite poet will be Maya Angelou. She has the god given talent to write any poem she can think of. My favorite one that she wrote is still I rise. Because that poems symbolizes that no matter how much you have been called names, or stabbed in the back or betrayed, you know how to rise and overcome that and move on to better things in the end. Friends last a lifetime, but life lives for an eternity. You should think about that!!!!!!

I haven't read nearly enough to pick, but today I would have to say Sylvia Plath. I love her style, her unique qulities. Her ability to descibe with an echoing voice and elegance.

My favorite poet changes all the time and I hope it goes on changing. I am a poet-of-the-season club! So I'll use this post to mention some of my past (and future?) favorites who aren't widely known.

BELLE RANDALL - Living, American. Not a huge volume of work, but her anthology "101 Ways to Play Solitaire" is special to me. She captures people, especially odd ducks, very engagingly.

JOHN UPDIKE - The novelist. Occasionally publishes a poem in The New Yorker and amazes me.

HAROLD NORSE -
[www.beatmuseum.org]
I still enjoy his poems (eat them like candy) even though when my mother was introduced to him he asked her what her sign was, and when she told him what it was, he refused to speak to her any more.

Yeesh ! Unless her sign was "QUARANTINE" he should not have done that !

Does make an amusing anecdote...perhaps he was trying to enhance his own persona by doing something poetically wacky?

I'm torn between "biohazard" and "eau non potable" as my sign. What was your mother's?

My mother is a Capricorn.

I like to tell people I was born under Eisenhower.

I've always liked 'Proceed with Caution' myself.

pam

My sign is "Low Bridge Ahead". I always wondered if it was a limbo contest, or a card tournament.

Les

Marian - thankyouthankyouthankyou for Harold Norse: onceagain, you've opened my tired old eye.



Stephen

Wow cool. I was also born under Ike

Do you know who DIDN'T like Ike?

Tina Turner

You folks are just joshing old Hugh, right?

[abalonemoon.com]

Josh not lest ye be joshed

Do you think back in Biblical times that Moses and Joshua were called Moe and Josh by people who knew them well?

My favorites are

Anonymous

Posthumous

and

Parentheses

Then there's "heavy plant crossing" and "dead slow children"

Hugh, I am not "joshing" you about Norse. If you don't like the stuff you've found so far, find a copy of the poem "Uncles" and then let me know what you think.

====

Linda, I get a lot of spam (because of the net-searching I have to do for my job) and the subject lines are getting weirder and weirder. I think it's a spammer tactic for getting through filters. Today I got one called "improve your mother's account combustion."

Do you feel a poem coming on?

I don't feel a poem, but I feel the term" mother's account combustion" belongs in the Certain Phrases thread.

Right you are: I'll put it there.

"improve your mother's account combustion" is good ANYWHERE !

I'll put the poem HERE ! SO THERE !


"my mother's account combustion
apparently needs improving
i didn't know that it burned at all
or if it had even been moving

I called my mom early this morning
she wasnt prepared to be nagging
So I sprung the big question upon her
if she thought her combustion was lagging

she said "what combustion?" i said "your account"
she said her accounts were in order
except for the recent prescriptions she bought
smuggled through the Canadian border

One thing about moms is they always will try
to answer your questions with care
even such ones that dont make any sense
if a child of hers asks, she'll be there"

Bravo!

Nice one, Johnny.

Speaking as a mom, I don't feel one should have to account for one's combustion.

My mom claims that I caused her combustion!

pam

Mommy Ka-Boom !

Caution - Low Flying Birds is my favorite. Followed by Recreate at Your Own Risk.

It is hard to pick just one writer, I think.

Pablo Neruda is easily the greatest writer of love poetry, ever. His writing, though wonderfully tender, is simplistic and yet so dramatic.

I would say he is amongst my favorites along with Charles Bukowski, Jack Kerouac, Mervyn Morris and Allen Ginsberg.

Unless you mean Neruda's poetry in Spanish, his translator into English deserves some of your accolade. W.S.Merwin?

Yes, I must say Maya Angelou is a wonderful, great, angel scent poet. I mean I love her work. How old are you if I may ask....cuz some of her poetry takes an true understanding of the world. I though must say just off the top of my head Robert Blair tops her. Sry! Write me back at my email lastatdracula13@aol.com

Paul Blackburn or Ed Sanders this week.

The more I read Plath and Kipling the better I like each of them.

Les



Post Edited (07-17-04 07:33)

Les.....keep reading Plath! Me too.

This week I discoverd Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1899) in "America's Favorite Poems" edited by Robert Pinskey. His poems remind me of Plath, in terms of alliteration (not necessarily in this poem) and the abnormal rhyme scheme.

"God's Grandeur"
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade, bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs--
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and whith ah! bright wings.

Try, "Spelt from Sibyl's Leaves." It's a gas.

I'm a Poe lover! Can't help it!



***Thy own reproach alone do fear.***

Ez Pound said Poe was the one Great Poet whose style you couldn't learn from. Go figure.

Double post, sorry. Talia, since Hopkins pre-dates Plath by about a century you probably should say, she reminds you of him.



Les



Post Edited (07-17-04 22:44)

>Try, "Spelt from Sibyl's Leaves." It's a gas.


Earnest, earthless, equal, attuneable, ' vaulty, voluminous, … stupendous
Evening strains to be tíme’s vást, ' womb-of-all, home-of-all, hearse-of-all night.
Her fond yellow hornlight wound to the west, ' her wild hollow hoarlight hung to the height
Waste; her earliest stars, earl-stars, ' stárs principal, overbend us,
Fíre-féaturing heaven. For earth ' her being has unbound, her dapple is at an end, as-
tray or aswarm, all throughther, in throngs; ' self ín self steedèd and páshed—qúite
Disremembering, dísmémbering ' áll now. Heart, you round me right
With: Óur évening is over us; óur night ' whélms, whélms, ánd will end us.
Only the beak-leaved boughs dragonish ' damask the tool-smooth bleak light; black,
Ever so black on it. Óur tale, O óur oracle! ' Lét life, wáned, ah lét life wind
Off hér once skéined stained véined variety ' upon, áll on twó spools; párt, pen, páck
Now her áll in twó flocks, twó folds—black, white; ' right, wrong; reckon but, reck but, mind
But thése two; wáre of a wórld where bút these ' twó tell, each off the óther; of a rack
Where, selfwrung, selfstrung, sheathe- and shelterless, ' thóughts agaínst thoughts ín groans grínd.


His sprung rhythm has sprang quite a bit on that one! $5.00 to anyone who can read it out loud faultlessly on the first try.

Good luck. It took me four nights to get it right. I could not even read some of the lines out loud until I looked up almost every word and found out the meaning of each one and what semantic slot it filled in the poem. A noun and an adjective move in different ways from each other, for instance. The teacher was kind enough, after the classroom presentation, to ask me to come to her house to record it. I wouldn't have won your $5. Hugh, but the difficulty of the task was certainly a pleasure. It made it impossible to lose affection for the reverend.

I read it aloud in Sylvester the Cat voice....great fun !!

How foe meow scan?
Is it sprung?

I also flunk out of High School English (ane typing), because I couldn't recite Kubla Khan outloud, in from the class.

As a groany-up you no longer need to be protected from all us dubious people, so can be yourself. My youngest is 17 and a young leader with the Rainbows (aged 5-7) so at 16 she had to have the police check done to ensure that she had no convictions to prevent her working with children, but as an under 18 still has to be protected from the adult leaders. Strange isn't it, one day she's the equal of the tinies, the next she becomes a potential menace.

You are right about that, but I discovered Plath before Hopkins.

Plath before hopkins
grace before meals
pride before falling
and eye before eels

Before Sappho begets
&nspn; &nspn; &nspn; &nspn; &nspn; Rich,
We may start with a
&nspn; &nspn; &nspn; &nspn; &nspn; fall.

Emmy, I say, before
&nspn; &nspn; &nspn; &nspn; &nspn; all,
or we all may
&nspn; &nspn; &nspn; &nspn; &nspn; switch

to Joni Mitch-
&nspn; &nspn; &nspn; &nspn; &nspn; ell.

scheming

ab
cd
ed
fb
b
d

scheming

Peter

looks like someone's in HTM-Hell

sorry for the mess, duh.
 '&' 'n' 'b' 's' 'p' mars less than '&nspn;',
for spacing out before a line, huh.

Peter

Amen to that, brother.

Most of us, MarianNYC the notable exception, gave up on such formatting long ago, precisely because of the difficulties in making html work on this software.

Even the /pre code doesn't work for some reason, reducing the font to miniscule proportions.

Peter, you left out the semicolon at the end of your  -; that's why it didn't post correctly.

Les



Post Edited (07-19-04 12:51)

Here's what Peter was attempting above, I think:

Before Sappho begets
      Rich,
We may start with a
      fall.

Emmy, I say, before
      all,
or we all may
      switch

to Joni Mitch-
      ell.

scheming

ab
cd
ed
fb
b
d

scheming

Peter



Post Edited (07-19-04 12:57)

It can happen!



***Thy own reproach alone do fear.***

So when do we learn what the initials mean? When you're 21?

pam

What a kind gesture, Les. Thanks fror the help.

Peter

Ah ! thanks Les ! so much better without the mfsb

I'm sending my children "my mother's account combustion today!"
I wonder how long it take them to figure it out!

Love it.
Pisa

Thanks Pisa !

Glad you enjoyed it !

My favorite poet is Langston Hughes, but he didnt seem to make the cut on this website. That's just not cool.

Langston Hughes is still in copyright, Matt.

You might like Dylan Thomas if you like Hopkins. He read Hopkins, he sayss somewhere, to learn to write poetry himself. There a fine recording of Thomas reading his poetry. You might be able to find it on eMule.

I can't find the album, but they do have five or six poems.

be well

Peter

I've said my name a thousand time!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's Angelia Ann Allen



***Thy own reproach alone do fear.***

Beautiful, alliterated, scans well and full of meaning.

Wallace Stevens

Try these:

There were supposed to be two recording sent to you of Thomas reading Sorry.

Peter

Philip Lamantia.

Peter

with a surrealisticly nightmare twist

John Keats, definately, John Keats.

Peter

What on earth are you talking about Peter?



***Thy own reproach alone do fear.***

What thou lovest well remains,
                                   the; rest is dross
What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee
What thou lov’st well is thy true heritage
Whose world, or mine or theirs
                             or; is it of none?
First came the seen, then thus the [palpable
        Elysium;, though it were in the halls of hell,
What thou lovest well is thy true heritage
What thou lov'st well shall no be reft from thee

Ez, Canto LXXXI

and,

The eye's plain version is a thing apart,
The vulgate of experience. Of this,
A few words, an and yet, and yet, and yet--

Wallace Stevens, An Ordinary Evening in New Haven I

For the beginning is assuredly
the end--since we know nothing, pure
and simple, beyond
our own complexities.

Dr. Williams, Paterson I, Preface.

Adrienne Rich.