The poetry thread
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Okay so yeah, this is pretty dark, which makes sense considering who wrote it. But he's got some very interesting stuff going on here. Lots of layers of repetition, in a metre, with a formal rhyme scheme, and his metaphors stay consistent and don't contradict. And the fact that he kept all that up for that many lines is just amazing.
The Valley of the Shadow
— Edwin Arlington RobinsonThere were faces to remember in the Valley of the Shadow,
There were faces unregarded, there were faces to forget;
There were fires of grief and fear that are a few forgotten ashes,
There were sparks of recognition that are not forgotten yet.
For at first, with an amazed and overwhelming indignation
At a measureless malfeasance that obscurely willed it thus,
They were lost and unacquainted—till they found themselves in others,
Who had groped as they were groping where dim ways were perilous.There were lives that were as dark as are the fears and intuitions
Of a child who knows himself and is alone with what he knows;
There were pensioners of dreams and there were debtors of illusions,
All to fail before the triumph of a weed that only grows.
There were thirsting heirs of golden sieves that held not wine or water,
And had no names in traffic or more value there than toys:
There were blighted sons of wonder in the Valley of the Shadow,
Where they suffered and still wondered why their wonder made no noise.There were slaves who dragged the shackles of a precedent unbroken,
Demonstrating the fulfilment of unalterable schemes,
Which had been, before the cradle, Time’s inexorable tenants
Of what were now the dusty ruins of their father’s dreams.
There were these, and there were many who had stumbled up to manhood,
Where they saw too late the road they should have taken long ago:
There were thwarted clerks and fiddlers in the Valley of the Shadow,
The commemorative wreckage of what others did not know.And there were daughters older than the mothers who had borne them,
Being older in their wisdom, which is older than the earth;
And they were going forward only farther into darkness,
Unrelieved as were the blasting obligations of their birth;
And among them, giving always what was not for their possession,
There were maidens, very quiet, with no quiet in their eyes;
There were daughters of the silence in the Valley of the Shadow,
Each an isolated item in the family sacrifice.There were creepers among catacombs where dull regrets were torches,
Giving light enough to show them what was there upon the shelves—
Where there was more for them to see than pleasure would remember
Of something that had been alive and once had been themselves.
There were some who stirred the ruins with a solid imprecation,
While as many fled repentance for the promise of despair:
There were drinkers of wrong waters in the Valley of the Shadow,
And all the sparkling ways were dust that once had led them there.There were some who knew the steps of Age incredibly beside them,
And his fingers upon shoulders that had never felt the wheel;
And their last of empty trophies was a gilded cup of nothing,
Which a contemplating vagabond would not have come to steal.
Long and often had they figured for a larger valuation,
But the size of their addition was the balance of a doubt:
There were gentlemen of leisure in the Valley of the Shadow,
Not allured by retrospection, disenchanted, and played out.And among the dark endurances of unavowed reprisals
There were silent eyes of envy that saw little but saw well;
And over beauty’s aftermath of hazardous ambitions
There were tears for what had vanished as they vanished where they fell.
Not assured of what was theirs, and always hungry for the nameless,
There were some whose only passion was for Time who made them cold:
There were numerous fair women in the Valley of the Shadow,
Dreaming rather less of heaven than of hell when they were old.Now and then, as if to scorn the common touch of common sorrow,
There were some who gave a few the distant pity of a smile;
And another cloaked a soul as with an ash of human embers,
Having covered thus a treasure that would last him for a while.
There were many by the presence of the many disaffected,
Whose exemption was included in the weight that others bore:
There were seekers after darkness in the Valley of the Shadow,
And they alone were there to find what they were looking for.So they were, and so they are; and as they came are coming others,
And among them are the fearless and the meek and the unborn;
And a question that has held us heretofore without an answer
May abide without an answer until all have ceased to mourn.
For the children of the dark are more to name than are the wretched,
Or the broken, or the weary, or the baffled, or the shamed:
There are builders of new mansions in the Valley of the Shadow,
And among them are the dying and the blinded and the maimed. -
I always liked yabu’s death poem
What are clouds,
But an excuse for the sky?
What is life,
But an escape from death? -
Whispered the Rowan to the Oak
—Felix DennisThe woods of our youth are failing,
even the mightiest rot,
Beetle and high wind take them
and soon they will be forgot,
Yet sadder than even the fading
of suns too eager to set
Is that you should fail to remember
what I can never forget.Saplings of strangers surround us
to feather the winter sky,
Yet though you survive beside me,
you see with an empty eye,
Far better we fall and nourish
the land in a last duet
Than that you should fail to remember
what I can never forget. -
Note on the Felix Dennis poem:
"The Rowan tree has a long, sacred history. Since ancient times people have been planting a Rowan beside their home as in Celtic mythology it’s known as the Tree of Life and symbolises courage, wisdom and protection.
Look at the delicate leaves, perfectly symmetrical on either side of their stem. They freshly unfurl every Spring in bright green and resemble feathers: it’s not surprising that before the written word, the ancient world believed that these beautiful feather-leaves were created from a bird of prey."
https://thepresenttree.com/blogs/tree-meanings/rowan-tree-meaning
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He spent a shitload of money trying to repopulate the forests of England. He's kind of into trees.
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What Now?
Gary Soto - 1952-Where did the shooting stars go?
They flit across my childhood sky
And by my teens I no longer looked upward—
My face instead peered through the windshield
Of my first car, or into the rearview mirror,
All the small tragedies behind me,
The road and the road’s curve up ahead.The shooting stars?
At night, I now look upward—
Jets and single-prop planes.
No brief light, nothing to wish for,
The neighbor’s security light coming on.Big white moon on the hill,
Lantern on gravestones,
You don’t count. -
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@brenda said in The poetry thread:
Now I want a Rowan tree in my yard. I wonder if they are hardy to our climate. Not likely, but I will check.
It's a mountain ash tree, and definitely hardy to our growing zones in Minnesoooooota. The next question is whether this is the same ash tree being decimated by the Emerald Ash Borer (EAB).
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@brenda said in The poetry thread:
@brenda said in The poetry thread:
Now I want a Rowan tree in my yard. I wonder if they are hardy to our climate. Not likely, but I will check.
It's a mountain ash tree, and definitely hardy to our growing zones in Minnesoooooota. The next question is whether this is the same ash tree being decimated by the Emerald Ash Borer (EAB).
"The mountain ash, or rowan, isn't a true ash. It belongs to the genus Sorbus instead of the genus Fraxinus. So far, the rowan has been safe from emerald ash borer attacks."
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"My pronouns are FA/FO." - Mik, 2024
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Becoming a Redwood
—Dana GioiaStand in a field long enough, and the sounds
start up again. The crickets, the invisible
toad who claims that change is possible,And all the other life too small to name.
First one, then another, until innumerable
they merge into the single voice of a summer hill.Yes, it’s hard to stand still, hour after hour,
fixed as a fencepost, hearing the steers
snort in the dark pasture, smelling the manure.And paralyzed by the mystery of how a stone
can bear to be a stone, the pain
the grass endures breaking through the earth’s crust.Unimaginable the redwoods on the far hill,
rooted for centuries, the living wood grown tall
and thickened with a hundred thousand days of light.The old windmill creaks in perfect time
to the wind shaking the miles of pasture grass,
and the last farmhouse light goes off.Something moves nearby. Coyotes hunt
these hills and packs of feral dogs.
But standing here at night accepts all that.You are your own pale shadow in the quarter moon,
moving more slowly than the crippled stars,
part of the moonlight as the moonlight falls,Part of the grass that answers the wind,
part of the midnight’s watchfulness that knows
there is no silence but when danger comes. -
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I'm not much of a poetry person, and I am in awe of people who can do it and understand it.
However, one of my favorites has always been this, by ee cummings:
anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did.Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rainchildren guessed(but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by morewhen by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone's any was all to hersomeones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dreamstars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by wasall by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes.Women and men(both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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@Catseye3 said in The poetry thread:
I dunno about this one. There was a writer, now dead, Peg Bracken, who was pretty funny. She would have described this poem as being from the "Look Ma I can Write" school.
There are personal preferences regarding poetry, and there's judging work on merit. I don't like a lot of Dana Gioia's stuff, but I'm sorry, no, saying he can write would be a massive understatement.
