Poetry

What has he to say?
In hell it is not easy
to know the traceries, the markings
(the canals, the pits, the mountings by which space
declares herself, arched, as she is, the sister,
awkward stars drawn for teats to pleasure him, the brother
who lies in stasis under her, at ease as any monarch or
a happy man

How shall he who is not happy, who has been so made unclear,
who is no longer privileged to be at ease, who, in this brush, stands
reluctant, imageless, unpleasured, caught in a sort of hell, how
shall he convert this underbrush, how turn this unbidden place
how trace and arch again
the necessary goddess?

2

The branches made against the sky are not of use, are
already done, like snow-flakes, do not, cannot service
him who has to raise (Who puts this on, ths damning of his flesh?)
he can, but how far, how sufficiently far can he raise the thickets of
this wilderness?

How can he change, his question is
these black and silvered knivings, these
awkwardnesses?

How can he make these blood-points into panels, into sides
for a king’s for his own
for a wagon, for a sleigh, for the beak of, the running sides of
a vessel fit for
moving?

How can he make out, he asks,
of this low eye-view,
size?

And archings traced and picked enough to hold
to stay, as she does, as he, the brother, when,
here where the mud is, he is frozen, not daring
where the grass grows, to move his feet from fear
he’ll trespass on his own dissolving bones, here
where there is altogether too much remembrance?

Rimbaud reminds me of thirdform actually - use of words like 'vile' 'abominable' etc.

Corpsey said:

The Mother Of God by William Butler Yeats
The threefold terror of love; a fallen flare
Through the hollow of an ear;
Wings beating about the room;
The terror of all terrors that I bore
The Heavens in my womb.

Had I not found content among the shows
Every common woman knows,
Chimney corner, garden walk,
Or rocky cistern where we tread the clothes
And gather all the talk?

What is this flesh I purchased with my pains,
This fallen star my milk sustains,
This love that makes my heart's blood stop
Or strikes a Sudden chill into my bones
And bids my hair stand up?

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there we go. that's good that one.

for all luke's "it's not about conveying information" his poetry and the poetry he likes is very much doing so.

The Mother Of God- already off to a better start. that's far more striking and rich than 'some old cunts looking at their wrinkles'.


The threefold terror of love- rich concept, what could he mean?; a fallen flare- alliteration, nice imagery
Through the hollow of an ear;- bit odd, you don't hear that much. the opening of blue velvet and that's about it
Wings beating about the room; -they've visceral. you'd don't associate wings creatures being contained to rooms
The terror of all terrors that I bore- alliteration
The Heavens in my womb. -wow, heaven in a womb. that's great.

Had I not found content among the shows
Every common woman knows,
Chimney corner, garden walk,
Or rocky cistern where we tread the clothes
And gather all the talk? - meh, not so good this bit

What is this flesh I purchased with my pains, - visceral again. what a strange concept
This fallen star my milk sustains, perfect. absolutely brilliant
This love that makes my heart's blood stop
Or strikes a Sudden chill into my bones
And bids my hair stand up?- meh



if i was his teacher i'd say "you see will, you can do good when you try"

the more poems you post, the more certain i am of that knobbly knees trees one being absolutely irredeemably shite.

"ash on an old man's sleeve". fucking great that is. nothing like that in the other one.

Yeats and Skeets: The Life & Times of Jack Law

sadmanbarty said:

the more poems you post, the more certain i am of that knobbly knees trees one being absolutely irredeemably shite.

"ash on an old man's sleeve". fucking great that is. nothing like that in the other one.

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FYI that's Eliot 'Four Quartets'

Can't believe I almost put Barty off poetry for life

Could mortal lip divine
The undeveloped Freight
Of a delivered syllable
'Twould crumble with the weight.

I love the middle stanza of that mother of god poem because it so economically sketches out a life of routine, earthly, material pleasures. Also "gathered in the laughter" is elegant.

sadmanbarty said:

for all luke's "it's not about conveying information" his poetry and the poetry he likes is very much doing so.

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Yeah it does lol

Information is only part of the puzzle innit

A good way of recognising this is reading some shakespeare next to a paraphrase of it.

Fairly random selection:

CAPTAIN

For brave Macbeth—well he deserves that name—
Disdaining fortune, with his brandished steel,
Which smoked with bloody execution,
Like valor’s minion carved out his passage
20Till he faced the slave;
Which ne'er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him,
Till he unseamed him from the nave to th' chops,
And fixed his head upon our battlements.

CAPTAIN

Brave Macbeth, laughing at Luck, chopped his way through to Macdonwald, who didn’t even have time to say good-bye or shake hands before Macbeth split him open from his navel to his jawbone and stuck his head on our castle walls.

https://www.sparknotes.com/nofear/shakespeare/macbeth/page_4/

I've never thought of this ever, reading it. Perhaps the key is (as Luka said) "admiring themselves".

Interesting to learn Yeat used that phrase 'broken images' in 1902, twenty year before The Waste Land:

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water.​

Luka, have you read Thom Gunn and if so what do you think of him?

I came across this poem in an anthology last night:

Considering the Snail
BY THOM GUNN
The snail pushes through a green
night, for the grass is heavy
with water and meets over
the bright path he makes, where rain
has darkened the earth’s dark. He
moves in a wood of desire,

pale antlers barely stirring
as he hunts. I cannot tell
what power is at work, drenched there
with purpose, knowing nothing.
What is a snail’s fury? All
I think is that if later

I parted the blades above
the tunnel and saw the thin
trail of broken white across
litter, I would never have
imagined the slow passion
to that deliberate progress.

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And reading about him today it turns out he moved to California and wrote poems about/under the influence of LSD:

What is this steady pouring that
Oh, wonder.
The blue line bleeds and on the gold one draws.
Currents of image widen, braid, and blend
–Pouring in cascade over me and under—
To one all-river. Fleet it does not pause,
The sinewy flux pours without start or end.

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I don't think it's poetry. I think it's prose. I read a bit as he's in an anthology called the new poetry I had as a teenager. I could tell it was fake straight away.

This ain't prose M8, it rhymes and everything

'To keep the children out.
In her red dressing-gown
She wrote notes, all night busy
Pushing the things about,
Thinking till she was dizzy,'

In other news...

I bought 'Look, Stranger!' by Auden recently and couldn't make head/tail of it, so I exchanged it for a later collection of Auden, which I can understand enough of to intrigue me, so I'm glad I did that, cos there's a lot of good shit in there.

The Composer

All the others translate: the painter sketches
A visible world to love or reject;
Rummaging into his living, the poet fetches
The images out that hurt and connect.
From Life to Art by painstaking adaption
Relying on us to cover the rift;
Only your notes are pure contraption,
Only your song is an absolute gift.
Pour out your presence, O delight, cascading
The falls of the knee and the weirs of the spine,
Our climate of silence and doubt invading;
You, alone, alone, O imaginary song,
Are unable to say an existence is wrong,
And pour out your forgiveness like a wine.'