Introduction To Poetry

[theBruiser500]

Saw In Her Shoes, surprisngly good movie. It had the poem "I carry your heart with me" in it by ee cummings, http://judithpordon.tripod.com/poetry/id304.html That's a really good poem. I just got The Wasteland by TS. Eliot which has to be very good. Where should I go from here for poetry?

[CrazyEyez]

"In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite."
Paul Dirac (1902 - 1984)

[Los Feliz Slim]

Walt Whitman
TS Eliot
Robert Bly
Robert Frost

Just a few ideas.

[Michael Davis]

Hi Bruiser,

If you enjoy The Wasteland, you should also check out Hart Crane's The Bridge. It's somewhat inferior, IMO, but you will like it.

Also, I think Pound's Cantos are right up your alley, because there is an insane amount of stuff there to figure out (or stuff that can't be figured out). Unfortunately, they are mindbogglingly cryptic and pretty much inaccesible. Some stuff is written in Chinese, Italian, French, Provencal, and probably ten other languages. So have fun.

Other poets I enjoy but who are not necessarily related to those I mentioned above are Paul Celan (German) and Vergil (Roman).

-Michael

[theBruiser500]

feel free to post text or links to your favorite poems, or say what they are.

[partygirluk]

First World War poem

Dulce Et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

[IronDragon1]

Percy Shelley

[diebitter]

[ QUOTE ]
"In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite."
Paul Dirac (1902 - 1984)

[/ QUOTE ]

so you tell people something, but in a way no-one understands, about something everyone knows already?

Sounds like management consultancy to me.

[Los Feliz Slim]

[ QUOTE ]
Percy Shelley

[/ QUOTE ]

In high school a friend of mine and I made a comedy video for our English class. One segment was "Bass Fishing with Percy Bysshe Shelley". Not sure if any other Shelley fans will find that funny, but we sure did.

[Georgia Avenue]

Look at
what passes for the new.
You will not find it there but in
despised poems.
It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.

william carlos williams