Favorite Poems

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Re: Favorite Poems

Postby Aquila89 » Fri Jun 05, 2015 5:57 pm

jbobsully11 wrote:A post that Carrie wrote in the national service thread made me think of a story that had this poem in it:


I already posted this poem in this thread. But that was over a year ago, and even I have forgotten about it, I only noticed it now because it got an upvote.
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As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.
--Carl Jung
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Re: Favorite Poems

Postby jbobsully11 » Fri Jun 05, 2015 6:17 pm

Aquila89 wrote:
jbobsully11 wrote:A post that Carrie wrote in the national service thread made me think of a story that had this poem in it:


I already posted this poem in this thread. But that was over a year ago, and even I have forgotten about it, I only noticed it now because it got an upvote.

I noticed that after I posted it, and then upvoted you.
  • 5

Crimson847 wrote:In other words, transgender-friendly privacy laws don't molest people, people molest people.

(Presumably, the only way to stop a bad guy with a transgender-friendly privacy law is a good guy with a transgender-friendly privacy law, and thus transgender-friendly privacy law rights need to be enshrined in the Constitution as well)
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Re: Favorite Poems

Postby Matthew Notch » Tue Jun 09, 2015 5:11 am

Because of this post, I felt like I should share the poem the piece is arranged around. It's by William Blake.

Little Fly


Little fly
Thy summer's play
My thoughtless hand
Has brushed away

Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
Man like me?

Little fly

For I dance
And drink, and sing
'Til some blind hand
Shall brush my wing

If thought is life
And strength and breath
And the want
Of thought is death;

Little fly

Then am I
A happy fly
If I live
Or if I die
  • 7

It's Dangerous to Go Alone


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Re: Favorite Poems

Postby Aquila89 » Tue Jun 09, 2015 9:03 am

Another one from Siegfried Sassoon:

Suicide in the Trenches

I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.

And a short one from Thomas Hardy:

Christmas, 1924

'Peace upon earth!' was said. We sing it,
And pay a million priests to bring it.
After two thousand years of mass
We've got as far as poison-gas.
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Last edited by Aquila89 on Tue Dec 15, 2015 12:12 am, edited 1 time in total.
As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.
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Re: Favorite Poems

Postby jbobsully11 » Tue Jun 09, 2015 11:00 pm

Here's one that my professor told us about that's called "Evasions" (I forget who he said wrote it):
spoiler
This text is just here because I can't seem to get a spoiler to show nothing but empty space before another spoiler tag, and also nested spoiler tags don't render properly.




If you do see this text, pretend you don't, as the whole point is... well, keep reading.
Spoiler: show
That's it. It's just a blank page. Sometimes the author reads it at his poetry readings (seriously; he says "This next poem is called 'Evasions,' " sits there for about five seconds without saying anything, and then reads the next poem). In the first post of this thread, I specified that "Fleas" "Lines on the Antiquity of Microbes" is *officially* the shortest poem ever published, because I've never seen "Evasions" mentioned anywhere else, even though it's infinitely shorter.
  • 6

Last edited by jbobsully11 on Mon Aug 29, 2016 3:47 am, edited 1 time in total.
Crimson847 wrote:In other words, transgender-friendly privacy laws don't molest people, people molest people.

(Presumably, the only way to stop a bad guy with a transgender-friendly privacy law is a good guy with a transgender-friendly privacy law, and thus transgender-friendly privacy law rights need to be enshrined in the Constitution as well)
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Re: Favorite Poems

Postby ghijkmnop » Tue Jun 09, 2015 11:05 pm

Redacted
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Last edited by ghijkmnop on Tue Mar 19, 2019 7:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Favorite Poems

Postby Blackfish » Thu Jul 30, 2015 9:30 am

Another one by Philip Larkin

Reference Back

That was a pretty one, I heard you call
From the unsatisfactory hall
To the unsatisfactory room where I
Played record after record, idly,
Wasting my time at home, that you
Looked so much forward to.

Oliver's Riverside Blues, it was. And now
I shall, I suppose, always remember how
The flock of notes those antique Negroes blew
Our of Chicago air into
A huge remembering pre-electric horn
The year after I was born
Three decades later made this sudden bridge
From your unsatisfactory age
To my unsatisfactory prime.

Truly, though our element is time,
We're not suited to the long perspectives
Open at each instant of our lives.
They link us to our losses: worse,
They show us what we have as it once was,
Blindingly undiminished, just as though
By acting differently we could have kept it so.
  • 5

In the night there is something wild
Can you hear it breathing?
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Re: Favorite Poems

Postby jbobsully11 » Tue Nov 03, 2015 11:55 am

Richard Cory, by Edwin Arlington Robinson, is a poem I found a while ago, but forgot about until just now.
  • 3

Crimson847 wrote:In other words, transgender-friendly privacy laws don't molest people, people molest people.

(Presumably, the only way to stop a bad guy with a transgender-friendly privacy law is a good guy with a transgender-friendly privacy law, and thus transgender-friendly privacy law rights need to be enshrined in the Constitution as well)
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Re: Favorite Poems

Postby Aquila89 » Sat Nov 07, 2015 12:28 am

Another one from Thomas Hardy:

Hap

If but some vengeful god would call to me
From up the sky, and laugh: “Thou suffering thing,
Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,
That thy love's loss is my hate's profiting!”

Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die,
Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;
Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I
Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.

But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain,
And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?
—Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,
And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan. . . .
These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown
Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.
  • 4

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.
--Carl Jung
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Re: Favorite Poems

Postby Anglerphobe » Sat Nov 07, 2015 12:35 am

Get out of my head Aquila! I was thinking of posting some more Hardy too.

The Puzzled Game-Birds

They are not those who used to feed us
When we were young—they cannot be -
These shapes that now bereave and bleed us?
They are not those who used to feed us, -
For would they not fair terms concede us?
- If hearts can house such treachery
They are not those who used to feed us
When we were young—they cannot be!
  • 5

"Tusser, they tell me, when thou wert alive,
Thou, teaching thrift, thyselfe couldst never thrive.
So, like the whetstone, many men are wont
To sharpen others, when themselves are blunt."

Anyone who has any kind of opinion fucking disgusts me.
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Re: Favorite Poems

Postby mancityfooty » Sat Nov 07, 2015 12:56 am

Aquila89 wrote:Another one from Siegfried Sassoon:

I knew a simple soldier boy



I've looked long and hard (that's what she said) for any Sassoon writings.
The little I've read...
*sighs and takes a drink*
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Re: Favorite Poems

Postby cmsellers » Wed Nov 11, 2015 4:14 am

"To a Louse"
Robert Burns wrote:Ha! whaur ye gaun, ye crowlin ferlie?
Your impudence protects you sairly;
I canna say but ye strunt rarely,
Owre gauze and lace;
Tho', faith! I fear ye dine but sparely
On sic a place.

Ye ugly, creepin, blastit wonner,
Detested, shunn'd by saunt an' sinner,
How daur ye set your fit upon her-
Sae fine a lady?
Gae somewhere else and seek your dinner
On some poor body.

Swith! in some beggar's haffet squattle;
There ye may creep, and sprawl, and sprattle,
Wi' ither kindred, jumping cattle,
In shoals and nations;
Whaur horn nor bane ne'er daur unsettle
Your thick plantations.

Now haud you there, ye're out o' sight,
Below the fatt'rels, snug and tight;
Na, faith ye yet! ye'll no be right,
Till ye've got on it-
The verra tapmost, tow'rin height
O' Miss' bonnet.

My sooth! right bauld ye set your nose out,
As plump an' grey as ony groset:
O for some rank, mercurial rozet,
Or fell, red smeddum,
I'd gie you sic a hearty dose o't,
Wad dress your droddum.

I wad na been surpris'd to spy
You on an auld wife's flainen toy;
Or aiblins some bit dubbie boy,
On's wyliecoat;
But Miss' fine Lunardi! fye!
How daur ye do't?

O Jeany, dinna toss your head,
An' set your beauties a' abread!
Ye little ken what cursed speed
The blastie's makin:
Thae winks an' finger-ends, I dread,
Are notice takin.

O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion:
What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us,
An' ev'n devotion!
  • 3

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Re: Favorite Poems

Postby jbobsully11 » Sun Dec 13, 2015 5:26 am

Here's a Shel Silverstein poem I just found called "Masks."
Image

And here's a slightly disgusting limerick I read earlier (and found a disturbing number of variations on just now):
Spoiler: show
There once was a vampire named Mabel,
Whose menstrual periods were stable.
So one week in four,
She'd slip to the floor
And drink herself under the table.

And another one that I read a while ago, but just remembered (not disgusting, though a bit of a groaner unless you like math/science puns).
Spoiler: show
A woman in liquor production
Owns a still of exquisite construction.
The alcohol boils
Through magnetic coils.
She says that it's "proof by induction."
  • 10

Last edited by jbobsully11 on Mon Jan 30, 2017 10:48 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Crimson847 wrote:In other words, transgender-friendly privacy laws don't molest people, people molest people.

(Presumably, the only way to stop a bad guy with a transgender-friendly privacy law is a good guy with a transgender-friendly privacy law, and thus transgender-friendly privacy law rights need to be enshrined in the Constitution as well)
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Re: Favorite Poems

Postby Aquila89 » Tue Dec 15, 2015 12:11 am

Two poems by Andreas Gryphius (recent events made me think of them). He was a 16th century German poet and he experienced the devastation of the Thirty Years War firsthand.

Tears of the Fatherland, Anno Domini 1636

Entire, more than entire have we been devastated!
The maddened clarion, the bold invaders' horde,
The mortar thunder-voiced, the blood-anointed sword
Have all men's sweat and work and store annihilated.

The towers stand in flames, the church is violated,
The strong are massacred, a ruin our council board,
Our maidens raped, and where my eyes have scarce explored
Fire, pestilence, and death my heart have dominated.

Here through the moat and town runs always new-let blood,
And for three-times-six years our very rivers' flood
With corpses choked has pressed ahead in tedious measure;

I shall not speak of that which is still worse than death,
And crueller than the plague and torch and hunger's breath:
From many has been forced even the spirit's treasure.

Epitaph of Mariana Gryphius
Written in honor of his baby niece who was born and died one day old, as her parents fled a besieged town

I: born in flight, breathing the smoke of war,
ringed round with fire and steel, my father's care,
my mother's pain, was thrust into the light
as my land sank in angry, burning night.
I saw the world, and soon I looked away,
since all its terrors met me on one day.
Though I died young, if only days are told,
count up my fears, and I was very old.
  • 9

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.
--Carl Jung
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Re: Favorite Poems

Postby Matthew Notch » Wed Jan 06, 2016 7:48 pm

One of the year's most critically acclaimed albums, To Pimp a Butterfly by Kendrick Lamar, has interspersed in the tracks a poem that he wrote, dedicated to Tupac Shakur. He will start reading the poem, then stop at a certain point and a song will play that is connected in some way to the last thing said. Then after the song, the poem begins from the beginning again, getting a little farther, and so on in that manner almost per track until the end of the record, when he recites the entire thing, and then has a virtual conversation with Tupac by using old recordings of him. It's an interesting device and works particularly well at the very end, when he recites another poem a friend of his wrote describing Kendrick's life as it was now. Here are both.

Another Nigga
I remember you was conflicted
Misusing your influence
Sometimes I did the same
Abusing my power, full of resentment
Resentment that turned into a deep depression
Found myself screaming in the hotel room
I didn't wanna self-destruct
The evils of Lucy was all around me
So I went running for answers
Until I came home
But that didn't stop survivor's guilt
Going back and forth trying to convince myself the stripes I earned
Or maybe how A-1 my foundation was
But while my loved ones was fighting the continuous war back in the city
I was entering a new one
A war that was based on apartheid and discrimination
Made me wanna go back to the city and tell the homies what I learned
The word was respect
Just because you wore a different gang color than mines
Doesn't mean I can't respect you as a black man
Forgetting all the pain and hurt we caused each other in these streets
If I respect you, we unify and stop the enemy from killing us
But I don't know, I'm no mortal man, maybe I'm just another nigga


To Pimp a Butterfly
The caterpillar is a prisoner to the streets that conceived it
Its only job is to eat or consume everything around it
In order to protect itself from this mad city
While consuming its environment the caterpillar begins to notice ways to survive
One thing it noticed is how much the world shuns him
But praises the butterfly
The butterfly represents the talent, the thoughtfulness, and the beauty
Within the caterpillar
But having a harsh outlook on life the caterpillar sees the butterfly as weak
And figures out a way to pimp it to his own benefits
Already surrounded by this mad city
The caterpillar goes to work on the cocoon which institutionalizes him
He can no longer see past his own thoughts
He's trapped
When trapped inside these walls certain ideas take roots
Such as going home, and bringing back new concepts to this mad city
The result?
Wings begin to emerge, breaking the cycle of feeling stagnant
Finally free, the butterfly sheds light on situation
That the caterpillar never considered, ending the eternal struggle
Although the butterfly and caterpillar are completely different
They are one and the same
  • 2

It's Dangerous to Go Alone


"I desperately want Jiggery Pokery now."-- Pikajew

"I do feel that if she happens to favour attractive, successful, intelligent men I will be at a disadvantage."--Anglerphobe

"I have a beautiful sphincter and Mexico is gonna pay for it."--Kate
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