| Ok, I've been toying with the idea for some time, and since if left unchecked I'll have poetry strewn about the site in a haphazard manner I have decided to go ahead and designate a specific place for poetry. This is gonna be so much fun! |
| Fun story: The first time I really talked to my friend Tiffany was at a scholar's bowl tournament at the beach. I informed her that Shakespeare was a fluke; the English language was ready to laude somebody as a virtuoso and he just happened to get Elizabeth's attention. There were several writers, as there always are, that were better but without the PR that he had. Now, for those of you who know Tiffany (and since Tiffany is the only person who ever comes here, I assume she knows herself fairly well), Shakespeare should be reclassified as a minor deity. He did, after all, write the Bible! This may not have been the best way to make good grades in her English comp class, but it got the dialogue started. I have learned so much about poetry since then, mainly at her instigation, and I'd just like to take this opportunity to thank her for adding so much fun to my life. Especially with the dragonfly poem. |
| Brent's Poetry Corner |
| Blake
Keats Whitman Yeats Shakespeare Dickens Shelley Byron Milton Burnes |
| My Favorite Poets |
| Ode Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy WE are the music-makers, And we are the dreamers of dreams, Wandering by lone sea-breakers, And sitting by desolate streams; World-losers and world-forsakers, On whom the pale moon gleams: Yet we are the movers and shakers Of the world for ever, it seems. With wonderful deathless ditties We build up the world's great cities, And out of a fabulous story We fashion an empire's glory: One man with a dream, at pleasure, Shall go forth and conquer a crown; And three with a new song's measure Can trample an empire down. We, in the ages lying In the buried past of the earth, Built Nineveh with our sighing, And Babel itself with our mirth; And o'erthrew them with prophesying To the old of the new world's worth; For each age is a dream that is dying, Or one that is coming to birth. |
| Caboose Thoughts
Carl Sandberg IT�S going to come out all right�do you know? The sun, the birds, the grass�they know. They get along�and we�ll get along. Some days will be rainy and you will sit waiting And the letter you wait for won�t come, And I will sit watching the sky tear off gray and gray And the letter I wait for won�t come. There will be ac-ci-dents. I know ac-ci-dents are coming. Smash-ups, signals wrong, washouts, trestles rotten, Red and yellow ac-ci-dents. But somehow and somewhere the end of the run The train gets put together again And the caboose and the green tail lights Fade down the right of way like a new white hope. I never heard a mockingbird in Kentucky Spilling its heart in the morning. I never saw the snow on Chimborazo. It�s a high white Mexican hat, I hear. I never had supper with Abe Lincoln. Nor a dish of soup with Jim Hill. But I�ve been around. I know some of the boys here who can go a little. I know girls good for a burst of speed any time. I heard Williams and Walker Before Walker died in the bughouse. I knew a mandolin player Working in a barber shop in an Indiana town, And he thought he had a million dollars. I knew a hotel girl in Des Moines. She had eyes; I saw her and said to myself The sun rises and the sun sets in her eyes. I was her steady and her heart went pit-a-pat. We took away the money for a prize waltz at a Brotherhood dance. She had eyes; she was safe as the bridge over the Mississippi at Burlington; I married her. Last summer we took the cushions going west. Pike�s Peak is a big old stone, believe me. It�s fastened down; something you can count on. It�s going to come out all right�do you know? The sun, the birds, the grass�they know. They get along�and we�ll get along. |
| Links to poems found on www.pddoc.com |
| A Supermarket in California Allen Ginsberg What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon. In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations! What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!--and you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons? I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys. I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel? I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and followed in my imagination by the store detective. We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier. Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which way does your beard point tonight? (I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.) Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely. Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage? Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe? |
| O Captain! My Captain! Walt Whitman O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won, The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring; But O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red, Where on the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead. O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells; Rise up--for you the flag is flung--for you the bugle trills, For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths--for you the shores a-crowding, For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning; Here Captain! dear father! This arm beneath your head! It is some dream that on the deck, You've fallen cold and dead. My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still, My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will, The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done, From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won; Exult O shores, and ring O bells! But I with mournful tread, Walk the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead. |
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| Invictus William Ernest Henley OUT of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds, and shall find, me unafraid. It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul. |
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| Read Tiffany's Dragonfly poem! So fun! |