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Thread: Reading Poetry

  1. #21
    The sign says "Jesus at the Beach"
    Now I know salvation is in reach
    Jesus got no time for no vacation
    He saves all the souls that could be saved and now I can save my soul at my convenience

  2. I didn't even notice Sats posted that Ginsberg poem! I dig the choppiness. But every time I try to read a beat poem, I can't shake the feeling that I'm not doing it right. Pretty sure that means I'm a square.


    This is long but is as good a Trump inaugural poem as I can think of.

    Content advisory: Probably for masochists seeking abject bummerdom only right now. Spahr is Whitman for the era of the sixth mass extinction.

    "Gentle Now, Don't Add to Heartache," Juliana Spahr, 2005.
    Last edited by A Robot Bit Me; 10 Nov 2016 at 12:16 AM.

  3. wow. that was powerful, and so tactile, and so....lonely, by the end. good choice.

    haha, i love beat poetry, one of the genres i identify *really* strongly with, but maybe because at its root it's an SF based thing? it's just sort of how people talk here.
    Quote Originally Posted by dechecho View Post
    Where am I anyway? - I only registered on here to post on this thread

  4. Emily Elizabeth Dickinson's a.k.a. DJ E.Z. Dick's birthday today.

    747.

    It's so easy to invent a Life -
    God does it - every Day -
    Creation - But the Gambol
    Of His Authority -

    It's easy to efface it -
    The thrifty Diety
    Could scare afford Eternity
    To Spontaneity -

    The Perished Patterns murmur -
    But His Perturbless Plan
    Proceed - inserting Here - a Sun -
    There - leaving out a Man -

    -------

    God is a haphazard artist whose constant invention means just-as-constant erasure. Does that mean enduring art is the province of the human?

    ------

    319.

    Of Bronze - and Blaze -
    The North - tonight -
    So adequate - it forms -
    So preconcerted with itself -
    So distant - to alarms -
    An Unconcern so sovreign
    To Universe, or me -
    Infects my simple spirit
    With Taints of Majesty -
    Till I take vaster attitudes -
    And strut upon my stem -
    Disdaining Men, and Oxygen,
    For Arrogance of them -

    My Splendors are Menagerie -
    But their Competeless Show
    Will entertain the Centuries
    When I, am long ago,
    An Island in dishonored Grass -
    Whom none but beetles, know -

    ---

    Nope! Not hers, anyway. Not if we read that last "their" as referring to the aurora borealis as it seems the logic and tone of the poem suggest we do. Some people instead read the "their" as referring to Dickinson's "Splendors" i.e. her art, making it a human-affirming, art-affirming poem, but then the vanity of strutting upon a stem, the desolation of the Island, and being known only to beetles* make no sense. Look elsewhere for your "yay, art" poems, Tumblr.



    *= "Whom none but Daisies, know" in another version. I prefer the beetles one.
    Last edited by A Robot Bit Me; 10 Dec 2016 at 02:50 PM.

  5. it's just sort of how people talk here.

  6. Yeah, true.

  7. haha, i love beat poetry

  8. That time the author of Gulliver's Travels wrote a poem about a guy who creeped into a favored girl's room and smelled her poop and the poop smelled so bad that he smelled the poop forever.

    The Lady’s Dressing Room
    By Jonathan Swift

    Five hours, (and who can do it less in?)
    By haughty Celia spent in dressing;
    The goddess from her chamber issues,
    Arrayed in lace, brocades and tissues.
    Strephon, who found the room was void,
    And Betty otherwise employed,
    Stole in, and took a strict survey,
    Of all the litter as it lay;
    Whereof, to make the matter clear,
    An inventory follows here.
    And first a dirty smock appeared,
    Beneath the armpits well besmeared.
    Strephon, the rogue, displayed it wide,
    And turned it round on every side.
    On such a point few words are best,
    And Strephon bids us guess the rest,
    But swears how damnably the men lie,
    In calling Celia sweet and cleanly.
    Now listen while he next produces
    The various combs for various uses,
    Filled up with dirt so closely fixt,
    No brush could force a way betwixt.
    A paste of composition rare,
    Sweat, dandruff, powder, lead and hair;
    A forehead cloth with oil upon’t
    To smooth the wrinkles on her front;
    Here alum flower to stop the steams,
    Exhaled from sour unsavory streams,
    There night-gloves made of Tripsy’s hide,
    Bequeathed by Tripsy when she died,
    With puppy water, beauty’s help
    Distilled from Tripsy’s darling whelp;
    Here gallypots and vials placed,
    Some filled with washes, some with paste,
    Some with pomatum, paints and slops,
    And ointments good for scabby chops.
    Hard by a filthy basin stands,
    Fouled with the scouring of her hands;
    The basin takes whatever comes
    The scrapings of her teeth and gums,
    A nasty compound of all hues,
    For here she spits, and here she spews.
    But oh! it turned poor Strephon’s bowels,
    When he beheld and smelled the towels,
    Begummed, bemattered, and beslimed
    With dirt, and sweat, and earwax grimed.
    No object Strephon’s eye escapes,
    Here petticoats in frowzy heaps;
    Nor be the handkerchiefs forgot
    All varnished o’er with snuff and snot.
    The stockings why should I expose,
    Stained with the marks of stinking toes;
    Or greasy coifs and pinners reeking,
    Which Celia slept at least a week in?
    A pair of tweezers next he found
    To pluck her brows in arches round,
    Or hairs that sink the forehead low,
    Or on her chin like bristles grow.
    The virtues we must not let pass,
    Of Celia’s magnifying glass.
    When frightened Strephon cast his eye on’t
    It showed visage of a giant.
    A glass that can to sight disclose,
    The smallest worm in Celia’s nose,
    And faithfully direct her nail
    To squeeze it out from head to tail;
    For catch it nicely by the head,
    It must come out alive or dead.
    Why Strephon will you tell the rest?
    And must you needs describe the chest?
    That careless wench! no creature warn her
    To move it out from yonder corner;
    But leave it standing full in sight
    For you to exercise your spite.
    In vain the workman showed his wit
    With rings and hinges counterfeit
    To make it seem in this disguise
    A cabinet to vulgar eyes;
    For Strephon ventured to look in,
    Resolved to go through thick and thin;
    He lifts the lid, there needs no more,
    He smelled it all the time before.
    As from within Pandora’s box,
    When Epimetheus op’d the locks,
    A sudden universal crew
    Of human evils upwards flew;
    He still was comforted to find
    That Hope at last remained behind;
    So Strephon lifting up the lid,
    To view what in the chest was hid.
    The vapors flew from out the vent,
    But Strephon cautious never meant
    The bottom of the pan to grope,
    And foul his hands in search of Hope.
    O never may such vile machine
    Be once in Celia’s chamber seen!
    O may she better learn to keep
    Those “secrets of the hoary deep!”
    As mutton cutlets, prime of meat,
    Which though with art you salt and beat
    As laws of cookery require,
    And toast them at the clearest fire;
    If from adown the hopeful chops
    The fat upon a cinder drops,
    To stinking smoke it turns the flame
    Pois’ning the flesh from whence it came,
    And up exhales a greasy stench,
    For which you curse the careless wench;
    So things, which must not be expressed,
    When plumped into the reeking chest,
    Send up an excremental smell
    To taint the parts from whence they fell.
    The petticoats and gown perfume,
    Which waft a stink round every room.
    Thus finishing his grand survey,
    Disgusted Strephon stole away
    Repeating in his amorous fits,
    Oh! Celia, Celia, Celia shits!
    But Vengeance, goddess never sleeping
    Soon punished Strephon for his peeping;
    His foul imagination links
    Each Dame he sees with all her stinks:
    And, if unsavory odors fly,
    Conceives a lady standing by:
    All women his description fits,
    And both ideas jump like wits:
    But vicious fancy coupled fast,
    And still appearing in contrast.
    I pity wretched Strephon blind
    To all the charms of female kind;
    Should I the queen of love refuse,
    Because she rose from stinking ooze?
    To him that looks behind the scene,
    Satira’s but some pocky queen.
    When Celia in her glory shows,
    If Strephon would but stop his nose
    (Who now so impiously blasphemes
    Her ointments, daubs, and paints and creams,
    Her washes, slops, and every clout,
    With which he makes so foul a rout)
    He soon would learn to think like me,
    And bless his ravished sight to see
    Such order from confusion sprung,
    Such gaudy tulips raised from dung.

    (1732)

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