Emma DeMarco
Any poetry lovers out there? Care to share some of your favourite poems or short stories?

Personally I'm a big fan of Raymond Carver ('Happiness' and 'For Tess') and Charles Bukowski ('One For The Shoeshine Man')

But let me share a short one by Ezra Pound:

And the days are not full enough

And the nights are not full enough

And life slips by like a field mouse

Not shaking the grass.

Would love to hear some of your favourite poems!

Feb 19, 2018 3:02 PM
Comments · 19
2

Panache upon panache, his tails deploy

Upward and outward, in green-vented forms,

His tip a drop of water full of storms.


But though the turbulent tinges undulate

As his pure intellect applies its laws,

He moves not on his coppery, keen claws.


He munches a dry shell while he exerts

His will, yet never ceases, perfect cock,

To flare, in the sun-pallor of his rock.

February 19, 2018
2

"One of my favourite poems is John Agard's 'Put the Kettle On'..." That reminded me of the satirical sketch in "Beyond the Fringe," about the British during World War II, in which, no matter how bad things get, the husband says "Never mind dear, you put on the kettle, we'll all have a nice cuppa tea."

https://youtu.be/KUd1OxPbKk4?t=3139

(The punchline is the news that there is going to be "rationing, and all that that implies." "Never mind dear, you put on the kettle, we'll all have a nice cuppa boiling hot water.")

February 19, 2018
2
The Purist 
 
I give you now Professor Twist,
A conscientious scientist,
Trustees exclaimed, "He never bungles!"
And sent him off to distant jungles.
Camped on a tropic riverside,
One day he missed his loving bride.
She had, the guide informed him later,
Been eaten by an alligator.
Professor Twist could not but smile.
"You mean," he said, "a crocodile."

--Ogden Nash
February 19, 2018
1

One of my favorite short poems by Emily Dickinson:

This is my letter to the world that never wrote to me.

The simple news that nature told with tender majesty.

Her message is committed to hands I cannot see.

For love of her, sweet countrymen, judge tenderly of me.


February 20, 2018
1
God bless you Emma.  I love the "Klage" "Lament" by Ranier Maria Rilke (though it's even more lovely in German)

Everything is so far
and long gone by.
I think that the star
glittering above me
has been dead for a thousand years.
I think there were tears
in the car I heard pass
and something terrible was said.
A clock has stopped striking in the house
across the road...
When did it start?...
I would like to step out of my heart
an go walking into the enormous sky.
I would like to pray.
And surely of all the stars that perished
long ago,
one still exists.
I think that I know
which one it is--
which one, at the end of its beam in the sky,
stands like a white city...                         

(The last line in German is just amazing, "welcher wie eine weiße Stadt,
am Ende des Strahls in den Himmeln steht... " , here's the link to the original German you can put it in google translate and listen to it http://rainer-maria-rilke.de/06b010klage.html)



February 19, 2018
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