Read Serious Poetry with me & Corpsey

version

Well-known member
Juniper, moss agate, jurassic boredom glows in the empty waiting room.

"jurassic boredom" struck me as an interesting pairing and "glows in the empty waiting room" had me picturing a waiting room flickering and glowing like an old TV with some sort of ancient boredom independent of people acting as a force on the room.

searching the band for another station reveals new liassic beds near the previous shelf.

"reveals new liassic beds" just rolls off the tongue, almost to the point where "new" and "liassic" sound like one word, and the full quote put me in mind of an old Actress interview where he talked about scanning for pirates in the car and only being able to get a scrambled broadcast of Lightning FM. That + "liassic beds" had me picturing being able to move backward in time via the dial, finding the ghosts of previous broadcasts and stations still operating in the gaps.

They are zealots in the park all over.

This one I'm not entirely sure about, something about the turn of phrase just grabbed me.

He now drops the heavenly coin in the doorway.

That the coin is "heavenly" and dropped in a doorway intrigued me. You've got money/currency combined with religious imagery and someone dropping/allowing it to fall whilst on the threshold of something, stood between two spaces. It's evocative and raises interesting questions.
 

version

Well-known member
They're out of context and I haven't read the poem, but that's what they said to me taken on their own.
 

pattycakes_

Can turn naughty
Too much of that sort of Beckett thing makes you feel dank, musty, slightly anti-social, possibly a public nuisance, certainly low in spirits. It can actually have a physically depleting effect on you. Probably a lot more fun to write than read. I tend to think with Beckett, the shorter the better.

Was close to ordering the trilogy, but not so sure now

@version how did you get on with it in the end?
 

version

Well-known member
I still need to read the other two, but I loved Molloy. It definitely does have that effect though. That's probably why I didn't read all three back to back. Luka had the same experience after reading that and Malone Dies. Said he started to feel a bit ill.
 

luka

Well-known member
I literally got ill. It drained my life force! It happened at the halfway point of the trilogy. I can never remember the titles.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I have a Freudian fantasy somewhere up there of reading this Prynne guy's poems and absolutely tearing them apart in front of my father Luka's brimming eyes

Is that wrong?

😂

Hate to laugh at my own jokes but this is funny because it's true.
 

sus

Well-known member
I once knew a guy in college who couldn't imagine pictures. He said he got a flicker of an image while reading the part of Paradise Lost where Lucifer raises a flaming sword to storm the gates of heaven, and that was the only image he ever saw in his mind
 

luka

Well-known member
this language which can be whipped to martial shape is
soft as blossom.
cowslip. dewlap. woven grass and kisses
goad the dogs of war. for fame, the bugle blast, for fame,
bright banner, struck down. unhappy boy, ruined boy,
gored, sleek death-wound.

angels hid their eyes, dark cloud-crags,
lurching opaque air. cloud-carrion.
for fame, hidden from heaven. bleed
to botched oblivion.

swan-dive, glitter, scattered light
dew-tossed, shaken raindrops chiming, what
little time is left.

solace in glazed stone, smoothed stone, share a silence.
replenish cup, peace in plenitude. bone made limber, sinew
supple, breath in nimble curve.
run for freedom. calumny, curses, coward cursed.

lulled tropic, narcotic limbo, lungs mild with mellow air.

gleam. from earth-hold, treasure-brood, for glory, the gold-hoarde
cunting cold, frozen frost-silver, ice-stone, avarice,
ours to keep or killed for. fame, pomp, pavilion.

spoiled meadow. blood-petal. hearth-cloven.
singing strings, feathered air, fine flock of arrows.
whistle innocent wild tumult, war.
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Don't think I've seen this thread before. Doesn't look like you and corpsey actually got round to reading anything in the end
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
I'm sat here in the bar trying to read Celan, which is very serious indeed. Not getting very far with it though.
 
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