navwin » Discussion » Poetry Challenge! » a challenge.
Poetry Challenge!
Post A Reply Post New Topic a challenge. Go to Previous / Newer Topic Back to Topic List Go to Next / Older Topic
brian madden
Member Elite
since 2000-05-06
Posts 4374
ireland

0 posted 2000-06-04 02:10 PM


Ok I don't know if only moderators can post challenges or if it is open to anyone. I did not see it in my guide book so I guess it is ok. I was inspired by Janet's challenge. I know the open forum is for orginal work so maybe all responses can be posted as a thread to this comment.

SO here is the challenge,
"What is your favourite poem ever that was written by someone else, and maybe a small piece about why that poem is so special to you?"
==============================================
I have chosen "Mirror in February" by Thomas Kinsella. Firstly he is an Irish poet. Secondly the theme is easy to relate to, the poem was part of my final exams at school when I was 17. It was the first poem I ever connected with and could relate to. The images are powerful, bold yet subtle.
I personally think it is an amazing piece of poetry.  


Mirror in February

The day dawns, with scent of must and rain,
Of opened soil, dark trees, dry bedroom air.
Under the fading lamp, half dressed -- my brain
Idling on some compulsive fantasy --
I towel my shaven jaw and stop, and stare,
Riveted by a dark exhausted eye,
A dry downturning mouth.

It seems again that it is time to learn,
In this untiring, crumbling place of growth
To which, for the time being, I return.
Now plainly in the mirror of my soul
I read that I have looked my last on youth
And little more; for they are not made whole
That reach the age of Christ.

Below my window the wakening trees,
Hacked clean for better bearing, stand defaced
Suffering their brute necessities;
And how should the flesh not quail, that span for span
Is mutilated more? In slow distaste
I fold my towel with what grace I can,
Not young, and not renewable, but man.

Thomas Kinsella

    

< !signature-->

 ------------------------
"I've been too honest with myself I should have lied like everybody else"-Richey Edwards

"Take nothing but pictures. Leave nothing but footprints. Kill nothing but time".

Baltimore Grotto

"Libraries gave us power
Then work came and made us free
What price now for a shallow piece of dignity"
Nicky Wire, A design for Life.

manic street preachers
"Rock 'n' roll is our epiphany
Culture, alienation, boredom and despair"




[This message has been edited by brian madden (edited 06-04-2000).]

© Copyright 2000 brian madden - All Rights Reserved
Tennessee Angel
Senior Member
since 2000-06-03
Posts 661
Tennessee
1 posted 2000-06-04 06:13 PM


One of my favorite poets has always been Edwin Arlington Robinson.  I think his poetry is timeless.  One of his that is my favorite is "Richard Cory".  So many times we envy others not knowing that they have nothing.

"Richard Cory"

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said
"Good Morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich -- yes, richer than a king--
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat and cursed the bread.
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
           ---Edwin Arlington Robinson




 "That man has shown himself great who has never grieved in evil days and never bewailed his destiny." --Seneca

Severn
Member Rara Avis
since 1999-07-17
Posts 7704

2 posted 2000-06-04 08:43 PM


(Anyone can post a challenge Brian... )

Wow, and this one is actually hard, because I can never confine myself to one favourite of anything! LOL.

But I have chosen, after much deliberation, a poem by Wilfred Owen - the English poet who wrote about the Great War, and who was himself killed there.

I feel he has captured, through beautiful language and imagery, the cruel reality and senselessness of war. This poem just moves me.

~~~~~~~~~~~

'Anthem For Doomed youth', Copyright Wilfred Owen, 1917

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
    Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
    Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries for them from prayers or bells,
    Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, -
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
    And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
    Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmer of goodbyes.
     The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of silent minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.



Janet Marie
Member Laureate
since 2000-01-22
Posts 18554

3 posted 2000-06-05 09:59 AM


this was a much harder challenge than I thought it would be...so many poets and poems that i have cherished thru the years, it was impossible for me to pick...
how can one choose between a fav sonnet
by "Shakes" or a short sweet verse by
Percy Bysshe Shelley...
I couldnt, so I picked this one because I once gave it to a friend and he was so
taken with it that he went and read nearly ever other piece the Kip-man had wrote...
and he then wrote some of the most amazing poetry I've ever read, and he had never written before...the true gift of poetry
is the inspiration we get from its words.
here is my pic--


L'Envoi
by: Rudyard Kipling

When Earth's last picture is painted and the tubes are twisted and dried,
When the oldest colours have faded, and the youngest critic has died,
We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it -- lie down for an aeon or two,
Till the Master of All Good Workmen shall put us to work anew!

And those that were good shall be happy: they shall sit in a golden chair;
They shall splash at a ten-league canvas with brushes of comets' hair;
They shall find real saints to draw from -- Magdalene, Peter, and Paul;
They shall work for an age at a sitting and never be tired at all!

And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame;
And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame,
But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star,
Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the Good of Things as They Are!

********************


brian madden
Member Elite
since 2000-05-06
Posts 4374
ireland
4 posted 2000-06-06 01:14 PM


Ok I know I asked for one poem, and thanks to everyone who responsed. I loved each poem and the explanations given. Here is another poem I would like to share, it is by a welsh poet R.S Thomas and is about the trials of writing poetry.
=========================================
From a young poet.

For the first twenty years you are still growing,
Bodily that is: as a poet, of course,      
You still are not born yet. It's the next ten
You cut your teeth on to emerge smirking
For your brash courtship of the muse.
You will take seriously those first affairs
With young poems, but no attachments
Formed then but come to shame you,
When love has changed to a grave service
Of a cold queen.
                            From forty on
You learn from the sharp cuts and jags
Of poems that have come to pieces
In your crude hands how to assemble
With more skill the arbitrary parts
of ode and sonnet, which time fosters
A new impulse to conceal your wounds
From her and her bold public;
given to pry.
                    You are old now
As years reckon, but in that slower
World of the poet you are just coming
To sad manhood, knowing the smile
On her proud face is not for you.




 ------------------------
"I've been too honest with myself I should have lied like everybody else"-Richey Edwards

"Take nothing but pictures. Leave nothing but footprints. Kill nothing but time".

Baltimore Grotto

"Libraries gave us power
Then work came and made us free
What price now for a shallow piece of dignity"
Nicky Wire, A design for Life.

manic street preachers
"Rock 'n' roll is our epiphany
Culture, alienation, boredom and despair"

"To be nobody-but-yourself-in a world which is doing its best night and day, to make you everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting."

E.E Cummings.



Janet Marie
Member Laureate
since 2000-01-22
Posts 18554

5 posted 2000-06-07 12:05 PM


Oh goodie we get to pick more LOL
Gotta pick some sweet sonnets
Old Bill does em best>>>>>>>>


"Those lips that love's own hand did make"
William Shakespeare



Those lips that love's own hand did make
Breathed forth the sound that said "I hate,"
To me that languished for her sake.
But when she saw my woeful state,
Straight in her heart did mercy come,
Chiding that tongue that ever sweet
Was used in giving gentle doom,
And taught it thus anew to greet.
"I hate" she altered with an end
That followed it as gentle day
Doth follow night, who, like a fiend,
From heaven to hell is flown away.
"I hate" from hate away she threw.
And saved my life, saying "not you."
--------------------------------------
--------------------------------------

"Two loves I have of comfort and despair"
William Shakespeare



Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
Which like two spirits do suggest me still:
The better angel is a man right fair,
The worser spirit a woman colour'd ill.
To win me soon to hell, my female evil
Tempteth my better angel from my side,
And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,
Wooing his purity with her foul pride.
And whether that my angel be turn'd fiend,
Suspect I may, yet not directly tell;
But being both from me, both to each friend,
I guess one angel in another's hell:
Yet this shall I ne'er know, but live in doubt,
Till my bad angel fire my good one out.

JP
Senior Member
since 1999-05-25
Posts 1343
Loomis, CA
6 posted 2000-06-14 12:22 PM


Let's see.... favorite poem?  Hmmmm....

There once was a man from Nantucket...

Nope, not that one...

Actually I have no favorite poem, but I do have favorite parts...  I know, I am being difficult (as usual).

"do not go quietly into the night... rage against the dying of the light..."

Yep, that's it... that is my all time favorite line ever written, ever read...  Yep, that's is all right....

 Yesterday is ash, tomorrow is smoke; only today does the fire burn.
JP

"Everything is your own damn fault, if you are any good." E. Hemmingway


brian madden
Member Elite
since 2000-05-06
Posts 4374
ireland
7 posted 2000-06-14 02:40 PM


JP, that poem would be "do not go gentle into that good night" by Dlyan THomas.
A wonderful poem and a wonderful poet.

and on the subject of great poems,

Sylvia Plath-Tulips

The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here.
Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in
I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly
As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands.
I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.
I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses
And my history to the anaesthetist and my body to surgeons.

They have propped my head between the pillow and the sheet-cuff
Like an eye between two white lids that will not shut.
Stupid pupil, it has to take everything in.
The nurses pass and pass, they are no trouble,
They pass the way gulls pass inland in their white caps,
Doing things with their hands, one just the same as another,
So it is impossible to tell how many there are.

My body is a pebble to them, they tend it as water
Tends to the pebbles it must run over, smoothing them gently.
They bring me numbness in their bright needles, they bring me sleep.
Now I have lost myself I am sick of baggage -
My patent leather overnight case like a black pillbox,
My husband and child smiling out of the family photo;
Their smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks.

I have let things slip, a thirty-year-old cargo boat
Stubbornly hanging on to my name and address.
They have swabbed me clear of my loving associations.
Scared and bare on the green plastic-pillowed trolley
I watched my teaset, my bureaus of linen, my books
Sink out of sight, and the water went over my head.
I am a nun now, I have never been so pure.

I didn't want any flowers, I only wanted
To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty.
How free it is, you have no idea how free -
The peacefulness is so big it dazes you,
And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets.
It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them
Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet.

The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me.
Even through the gift paper I could hear them breathe
Lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby.
Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds.
They are subtle: they seem to float, though they weigh me down,
Upsetting me with their sudden tongues and their colour,
A dozen red lead sinkers round my neck.

Nobody watched me before, now I am watched.
The tulips turn to me, and the window behind me
Where once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins,
And I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow
Between the eye of the sun and the eyes of the tulips,
And I hve no face, I have wanted to efface myself.
The vivid tulips eat my oxygen.

Before they came the air was calm enough,
Coming and going, breath by breath, without any fuss.
Then the tulips filled it up like a loud noise.
Now the air snags and eddies round them the way a river
Snags and eddies round a sunken rust-red engine.
They concentrate my attention, that was happy
Playing and resting without committing itself.

The walls, also, seem to be warming themselves.
The tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals;
They are opening like the mouth of some great African cat,
And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes
Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me.
The water I taste is warm and salt, like the sea,
And comes from a country far away as health.
  

 ------------------------
"Take nothing but pictures. Leave nothing but footprints. Kill nothing but time".

Baltimore Grotto

"To be nobody-but-yourself-in a world which is doing its best night and day, to make you everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting."

E.E Cummings.

"Art is a lie which makes us realise the truth." Pablo Picasso

"You do not destroy an idea by killing people; you replace it with a better one". Edward Keating



-----





Master
Senior Member
since 1999-08-18
Posts 1867
Boston, MA
8 posted 2000-06-14 06:02 PM


Favorite poem... Hmmm... Well this one is one of my favorites. It was written by Boris Pasternak (a russian poet) and this here is my translation...

Easter


There’s still a twilight of the night.
The world’s so young in its proceeding,
That countless stars in sky abide,
And each one, like the day, is bright,
And if the Earth contained that might,
She’d sleep through Easter in delight,
Under the Psalter reading.

There’s still a twilight of the night.
It’s far too early, it appears,
That fields eternally subside,
Right from crossroad to the side,
And ‘til the sunrise and the light,
There is a thousand years.

And Mother Earth, of clothes deprived,
Has nothing else to wear,
To strikes the church bell through night
Or echo choirs in the air.

And from the Maundy Thursday night
Right ‘til the Easter Eve,
The water bores the coastal side
And whirlpools heave.

The forest, in exposed expanse,
To celebrate Christ’s Holy times,
As though in prayer, calmly stands,
In gathered stems and trunks of pines.

And in the city, in one place,
As if a mob commenced,  
The naked trees sincerely gaze
Straight at the Church’s fence.

Their eyes are fully filled with rage,
And their concern is heard.
The gardens slowly leave their cage,
The Earth shakes wildly in its range,
They’re burying the Lord.

A light is seen that dimly glows,
Black kerchiefs and the candle rows,
By weeping eyes--
And suddenly, there’s a procession,
With holy shroud of the Christ
And every birch, with a concession,
Along the entrance subsides.

They walk around the royal square,
Along the sidewalk’s edge.
Into the vestibule with care,
They bring the spring and springtime flair,
A scent of Eucharist in the air
And vernal rage.

And March is tossing snow around
To beggars gathered on Church ground,
As though a person just walked out,
Opened the shrine, took what he found  
And gave it all away.

The singing lasts throughout the night,
Those who have wept enough, they lastly,
Calmly and gently stroll outside,
Onto the land under the light,
To read the Psalter or Apostles.

But after midnight, all will quiet,
Hearing the vernal lecture,  
That if we wait just for a while,
We’ll cast His death into exile
With holy resurrection.


 Check out my poetry here:


http://cafepoetry.com/stage1/andrey_kneller.htm#My%20Hamlet


Post A Reply Post New Topic ⇧ top of page ⇧ Go to Previous / Newer Topic Back to Topic List Go to Next / Older Topic
All times are ET (US). All dates are in Year-Month-Day format.
navwin » Discussion » Poetry Challenge! » a challenge.

Passions in Poetry | pipTalk Home Page | Main Poetry Forums | 100 Best Poems

How to Join | Member's Area / Help | Private Library | Search | Contact Us | Login
Discussion | Tech Talk | Archives | Sanctuary