So, it’s National Poetry Month, and as such, I thought I’d pick out a few of my favorite poems to write about this week. It was ridiculously hard to limit myself to five, but it was necessary, too. If I hadn’t, I’d probably go on all night. I’ve written before about how my top two all-time favorite poems are “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and “Howl” respectively, but I’ve chosen to leave those off the list in favor of others that I haven’t given as much airtime. So, in no particular order, here they are:
1. A Supermarket in California – Allen Ginsberg
This is one of the other poems that appears in the book Howl and Other Poems, and it has long been one of my favorites. Yes, I love “Howl” for its unbridled power, but for my money it’s this poem, about following a vision of Walt Whitman through the grocery store, that I love to return to most. It’s probably as lighthearted as Ginsberg gets, and it truly is a pleasure to read. What peaches and what penumbras! (Text)
2. The Burning of Paper Instead of Children – Adrienne Rich
Adrienne Rich has been one of my favorite poets since I first encountered her work in a college English class. I’ve written about her numerous times (most recently in this post), and I almost feel that if I get into the reasons why I love her work I’ll be repeating myself. But it is her poetry about language — what it means, how it fails us — that has been most influential for me, as a writer, as a person. I have a collection of her poems and it is probably one of the most battered, well-loved, often-read books in my library. I probably turn to it for one reason or another at least once a week. I had a hard time limiting myself to one of her poems, but I ended up picking this one. “A language is a map of our failures,” she writes, and this idea continues to resonate with me, not only as someone who reads and appreciates poetry, but as a woman negotiating the world. (Text)
3. The Pennycandystore Beyond the El – Lawrence Ferlinghetti
This is another one of those poems that is a pure delight to read. Outside, there is gloom and summer is blown away with the autumn wind that ushers in winter, but inside the candy store with the jelly beans is a nice place to be. (Text)
4. Poem About My Rights – June Jordan
Sometimes we need poems that make us pound our fists on the table and say “Fuck yeah!” This is one such poem for me. I remember the first time I read it, in a tiny study carrel in a stuffy library, and how Jordan’s words made me feel like holding my head up a little higher. It’s a wonderful, powerful piece of writing that is political and angry and forceful. It plants its feet and says its piece and it’s not taking any crap from anybody. I love it. (Text)
5. somewhere i have never travelled – e.e. cummings
Maybe underneath it all I’m a sentimental sap, but don’t tell anyone because I have a reputation to uphold. I don’t even know how long I’ve loved this poem because it’s one of those pieces that seemed to sink into me and at this point, it feels like it’s always been there. It’s a comfortable poem, and one I can always return to and know that I’ll enjoy. Even so, it is still deliciously fragile, so painfully beautiful that I have to hold my breath when I read it. (Text)
24 Responses
Nice AssortmentI like these
Nice Assortment
I like these selections and how some seem to play off of each other. I’m too lazy to write out a great synopsis for each one, but here are my top 5… at this moment anyway:
1) The City in which I Love You by Li-Young Lee
2) Insomnia by Elizabeth Bishop
3) Para Que Tu Me Oigas by Pablo Neruda
4) The Secret by Denise Levertov
5) anyone lived in a pretty how town by ee cummings
Honorable mention: “Cormac McCarthy is a Smelly Poser” by Longfellow
Man! I can’t believe I
Man! I can’t believe I forgot about that Cormac McCarthy poem. It’s one of my favorites.
All-around good list.
Followed by the store
Followed by the store detective…
The Ginsberg poem is top notch! Lifted me out of the mundane box.
I think I read it years ago with less appreciation.
oh, I also meant to say,
oh, I also meant to say, Jamelah, that the imagery in the e.e. cummings poem reminds me of your photography.
lyric wordsGenerally I prefer
lyric words
Generally I prefer the lyric poetry of Sara Teasdale and Edna St. Vincent Millay, Percy Shelley and John Keats. But there is something catching about the thoughtful reflective poem, the serious introspective of Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Denise Levertov; or the brooding political statement. I also like Richard Eberhart ’cause I met him once, and he seemed like a nice guy.
To Althea From Prison – Richard Lovelace
Easter 1916 – Yeats
She Walks in Beauty – Poe
Fern Hill – Dylan Thomas
Directive – Robert Frost
My Favorite Fehrlinghetti
My Favorite Fehrlinghetti & Olds
I don’t know this poem’s name but it’s my favorite by Fehrlinghetti and I know it by heart:
“Cast up the heart flops over
gasping love
foolish fish which tries to draw its breath from flesh of air
and no one there to hear its death among the sad bushes
where the world rushes by in a blather of asphalt and delay.
I don’t know Sharon Olds’ Sex Without Love by heart but it is my second favorite:
How do they do it, the ones who make love
without love? Beautiful as dancers,
gliding over each other like ice-skaters
over the ice, fingers hooked
inside each other’s bodies, faces
red as steak, wine, wet as the
children at birth whose mothers are going to
give them away. How do they come to the
come to the come to the God come to the
still waters, and not love
the one who came there with them, light
rising slowly as steam off their joined
skin? These are the true religious,
the purists, the pros, the ones who will not
accept a false Messiah, love the
priest instead of the God. They do not
mistake the lover for their own pleasure,
they are like great runners: they know they are alone
with the road surface, the cold, the wind,
the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio-
vascular health–just factors, like the partner
in the bed, and not the truth, which is the
single body alone in the universe
against its own best time.”
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/sex-without-love/
Okay …Hazardous assignment
Okay …
Hazardous assignment but …
1. Prufrock by T. S. Eliot (it just really is the most amazing poem I’ve ever read).
2. Kaddish by Ginsberg (no disrespect to Howl, but this one deserves credit too).
3. Point Lobos: Animism by Michael McClure (just a personal favorite of mine)
4. Something whose title I can’t remember from Donald Hall
5. Something whose title I can’t remember from Jorie Graham
What about Levon by Elton
What about Levon by Elton John?
for something completely
for something completely different
Salutation the Third by Ezra Pound.
Perhaps I’m wrong, but I’ve never found another poem whose primary themes are resentment, revenge and hatred. It’s so utterly, unrepentantly vile that you can’t take your eyes off of it. It contains one line that, for most people, makes it impossible to ever read another Pound poem without squirming a little (and I count myself among them). The typeface changes from word to word, lest you miss the particular terms Pound considered key (like hate, die, tomb, guffaw), and which also gives you the uncomfortable feeling that Pound is leaning over you with clenched teeth while you read, swaying drunkenly and occasionally spraying you with spittle.
But there’s something so honest about it, so present. There are no pleasant thoughts recollected in tranquility, it’s just unrestrained rage, exploding in clipped syllables, threats and unreasonable demands. And it might be the most immediate poem in the English language — everything is going on NOW, and it seems to follow its own eruptive logic, with little paranoid digressions that can only begin to branch out before the central fury guiding the poem snaps them back in line. I really can’t think of anything else like it.
(I should mention that I’m also big on Elizabeth Bishop and Auden. I like the nice stuff too.)
Oh Christ, here goes…A few
Oh Christ, here goes…
A few others have attempted this, so I might as well give it a shot as well. Reducing such a list to a Top Five is rather punishing, so I’ve tried concentrating on those which were probably my biggest and earliest influences…
1. Lawrence Ferlinghetti, ‘The World Is A Beautiful Place’
2. Sylvia Plath, ‘Daddy’ or ‘Lady Lazarus’
3. Jim Morrison, Untitled poem beginning “The beautiful monster…”
4. Artie Gold, ‘private eye’
5. Raymond Roseliep, Haiku: ‘campfire extinguished, / woman washing dishes / in a pan of stars’
I love Ferlinghetti for his hipness of language and those dark little Hitchcockian twists and puns toward the ends of his better pieces (“…we were the only ones there”, “…his Victorious answer to everything”, “…comes the smiling mortician”, etc.)…Sylvia Plath doesn’t seem to fit in anywhere in the American (or North American) context of her era; call me a nutjob, but I think she’s as close as one can get to a female Jim Morrison–not bad for a lady who has never been formally viewed as part of the Beat poetry scene…Speaking of The Lizard King, Jim Morrison is still the best of the ‘musical’ or ‘folk/rock’ poets, as far as I’m concerned–both on vinyl and on the page; I love his surreal visions within (make that ‘w/in’) those apocalyptical parallel universes he created…Artie Gold may be a contender for ‘most comically disturbed and paranoid of all Canadian poets’; this is the man from whom I got my twisted dark humour (well, along with Harvey Kurtzman’s takes on classic poems in 1950s MAD); Artie died just a few weeks ago at age 60…Father Raymond Roseliep may be the greatest and most innovative of all the English-language haijins; ‘campfire extinguished’ is probably his best and most famous work….
If I were required to expand this list to a Top 10, I guess I would also have to cite poems by Emily Dickinson, Dylan Thomas, Leonard Cohen, Tom Dawe and Agha Shahid Ali….
Death of the ball turret
Death of the ball turret gunner
1) Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my
wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.
–Randall Jarrell
———————————
2) Fern Hill
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.
And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.
All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.
And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.
And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace.
Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.
–Dylan Thomas
———————————–
3) To a Louse
…
O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us
An foolish notion:
What airs in dress an gait wad lea’es us,
An ev’n devotion!
–Robert Burns
————————————
4) Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town
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 rain
children guessed(but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more
when 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 her
someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream
stars 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 was
all 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
–e.e. cummings
———————————–
5) The Red Wheel Barrow
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
–William Carlos Williams
and…some other fool
I Sold My Summer
Short as the wind
in the end the sheets
of businessmen caked
and taped above my grave
time, a fortune given away
hours into minutes
three months to a day
where went June? it ticked off
waving away like July
summer burning earth and rain
that never came but was
halfway gone already
and me, again
grim in the duties
of my office
the tick of the clock
the walls, cloaked and grey
the hall lights off
no light comes in there now
I was the last to leave
I sold my summer
short as it were
traded away all the
kid things, bikes and
baseball gloves
easy daylong games
monopoly and risk
every summer day
is Saturday
I sold my summer
short, blowing out
July a candle
burning bliss
blessed like
August just as
brief and gone again
like cartoon cats
chased by cartoon dogs
I sold my summer days
running the other way
I remember yesterday
a dutiful daddy coming home
it’s Friday night
the neighborhood kids
running in their shouting
one bumped into me
standing by my car
my suitcoat heavy trenched
the briefcase in my hand
my old man July face
drenched and drooping like
the bottle brush trees
shrugging in the heat-filled wind
some kid bumped into me
he screaming and laughing
lets out a “zipppppeeee”
and tears away in freckled shrieks
doo dah disappearing
like the bending light
turning summer into night
i watched him run away
that kid was me
no, he was not me, no
i am someone else now
summer, you shorted me
–some idiot fool
Thanks Bill. That’s really
Thanks Bill. That’s really nice of you to say.
Seeing as how you have two
Seeing as how you have two pieces by two different poets called “Something whose title I can’t remember” I have to ask if it’s because of the title that you perhaps like these poems so much?
Hehahem.
It contains one line that,
It contains one line that, for most people, makes it impossible to ever read another Pound poem without squirming a little (and I count myself among them).
What’s the line?
I like that last poem a lot.
I like that last poem a lot. Always have.
Hi, J.
The Ferlinghetti poem is
The Ferlinghetti poem is number 25 in A Coney Island of the Mind. I think this poem, along with most poems that do not have definite names, are ususally referred to by the first line of the poem.
Poetry BooksI didn’t realize
Poetry Books
I didn’t realize until I started writing this that no one put Song of Myself. man oh man. I couldn’t think of just one poem so i put down some of my favorite books.
1. Leaves of Grass – Walt Whitman: What can I say about a guy who has a service plaza named after him along the new jersey turnpike?
2. A Coney Island of the Mind – Lawrence Ferlinghetti : Also check out the poems populist manifesto and bichford buddha, which are great poems.
3. A Happy Birthday to Death – Gregory Corso: Hell, Corso is just a fun rollercoaster.
4. The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams Volume I: Along with Whitman, he made American poetry American.
5. Odyssey – Homer: I read this merely to understand all the allusions in modern writing, but it turned out to be a great story.
6. Norton Anthology of English Literature Volume 2 Yeah, there is a lot of stuff old crap, but then there is such jewels as “Kubla Khan,” “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” and “Anthem for Doomed Youth.”
7. The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry: This book is a rabid dog.
8. Love is a Dog from Hell – Charles Bukowski: Buk’s estate didn’t allow his work to be put in the Outlaw Bible, but this book is all Buk. For a dead man, he puts out more work than Tupac.
9. Selected works of Allen Ginsberg: The poem “America” (and not “Howl”) got me into Ginsberg and it blew me away. From Ginsberg, I’ve turned to Blake, Whitman, Corso, Ferlinghetti, Williams, etc. Ginsberg is the only American poet that Europeans know.
I feel like some poetry PR guy now.
Ha … yes, and
Ha … yes, and Levon.
Jamelah, a few years ago I was knocked out by a Jorie Graham poem in the New Yorker. Haven’t located it since. As for Donald Hall, it’s in his new book, I’ll go look it up …
I think they’re both called
I think they’re both called “Scoring PC Brownie Points”, but that’s just my guess… ahem…
Ginsberg isn’t the ONLY
Ginsberg isn’t the ONLY American poet that the Europeans know–remember, in 1990 alone, Bukowski sold over a million copies in Germany alone! Can you imagine ANY poet here in Canada or the U.S. selling that well while they’re still alive?!! Selling 5000 copies of a solo volume of poetry was considered the standard for a bestseller in Canada in the ’80s and ’90s. In the ’00s, I would reduce this figure to about 2500 copies for a title published by a ‘professional house’ (whatever the qualifiers are for this status nowadays), and somewhere between 350 and 500 copies for a self-published volume….
“I Sold My Summer” is one of
“I Sold My Summer” is one of my favorite poems, too, jota. It was good to read it again, you did a good job on that one.
i guess i should be careful
i guess i should be careful about making such generalizations. i guess by europeans i meant the english, which would be a generalization as well. every time i talk with the english they don’t know any american poets except ginsberg.
i wonder about buk’s appeal internationally. i think that he’s so popular in germany because he’s part german. it’s almost like the t.s. eliot factor. americans and the british both claim t.s. eliot as their own writer.
a comfortable poemAaaah
a comfortable poem
Aaaah !
Nicely put.
Nat’l Poetry Month Bad for
Nat’l Poetry Month Bad for Poetry?
There is a link below for a really good (and amusing) article against National Poetry Month by Charles Bernstein. Charles is my thesis advisor for my masters, and besides being a great teacher and poet, and a very encouraging mentor for myself as a poet, he’s also one hell of a funny guy.
However, in this essay, he makes an interesting point about how National Poetry Month, in some sense, dilutes our appreciation of poetry, since, ultimately, its major corporate sponsors are large chain bookstores who use April as a time to sell poetry books, instead of actually appreciate poetry. Giving away “free” book of poetry is a form of advertisement, since only the most marketable and potentially “popular” (i.e., the safest, most palatable poets’ books are given away). As Charles notes:
“National Poetry Month is about making poetry safe for readers by promoting examples of the art form at its most bland and its most morally “positive.” The message is: Poetry is good for you. But, unfortunately, promoting poetry as if it were an “easy listening” station just reinforces the idea that poetry is culturally irrelevant and has done a disservice not only to poetry deemed too controversial or difficult to promote but also to the poetry it puts forward in this way. “Accessibility” has become a kind of Moral Imperative based on the condescending notion that readers are intellectually challenged, and mustn’t be presented with anything but Safe Poetry. As if poetry will turn people off to poetry.”
Full text here:
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/044106.html