Untitled -- Michael Leunig

Guest poem sent in by Prachi Gupta

(Poem #1936) Untitled When the heart Is cut or cracked or broken Do not clutch it Let the wound lie open Let the wind From the good old sea blow in To bathe the wound with salt Let a stray dog lick it Let a bird lean in the hole and sing A simple song like a tiny bell And let it ring Let it go. Let it out. Let it all unravel. Let it free and it can be A path on which to travel. -- Michael Leunig

This is a poem without a title, by the Australian writer, poet, cartoonist,
philosopher, Michael Leunig. I first discovered Leunig about 10 years ago
when a cousin gifted me one of his books, I have followed his work ever
since and have always found it endearing and enchanting. Like this poem
here, he talks of simple things around us, within us and talks of them in an
amazingly simple and human way; and reading his work mostly opens a tiny
window somewhere in the heart.

I hope everyone enjoys this!

Prachi

[Links]

Wikipedia entry:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Leunig

Leunig's official site:
  http://www.leunig.com.au/

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Untitled -- Dorothy Parker

Guest poem sent in by "Sandeep Bhadra"

(Poem #1744) Untitled I wish I could drink like a lady I can take one or two at the most Three and I'm under the table Four and I'm under the host -- Dorothy Parker

If we were going to have a theme about drinks in general, this one certainly
deserves mention. This poem is typical of Dorothy Parker's aesthetic --
crisp lines, to be meant for the dead-pan delivery of the truly blasé with
very little room for emotion or the pretence thereof. She makes no apology
for the love of her drink or for the consequences of binging on it. She
merely states the outcomes with the cold preciseness of a scientist, or, at
the very least, of an urban realist.

Decadent, self-aware and witty, Dorothy Parker's elite Manhattan social
circle included playwright George Kaufman and New Yorker founder Harold
Ross. They held many of their meetings at the Algonquin Hotel in New York,
which now offers a $10,000 martini, presumably in her honor. The Algonquin
also has this ode on all their napkins, in fond memory of their
distinguished patron.

Sandeep

[Martin adds]

Wikiquotes at least lists this as "attributed" to Dorothy Parker - does
anyone know for sure? It definitely sounds like authentic Parker to me.

martin

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Untitled -- Piet Hein

(Poem #1722) Untitled (for Expo 67) We travel where ever mankind reigns and find good men in all the worlds domains and recognize them as a kind of Danes. -- Piet Hein

Today's grook is not as polished or clever as most of Hein's work, but I
think it is all the funnier for that. This is the humour of the utterly
simple, a thoroughly timeworn idea whose sole claim to funniness is that it
rhymes and scans. On the surface, not the world's greatest grook, yet Hein
has nailed the sentiment and tone so precisely, and with such perfect timing,
that it made me laugh out loud where many of his cleverer poems merely raised
a smile of appreciation.

martin

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Untitled -- Dag Hammarskjöld

Guest poem submitted by Dave Fortin:

(Poem #1716) Untitled The mine-detector Weaves its old patter Without end. Words without import Are lobbed to and fro Between us. Forgotten intrigues With their spider's web Snare our hands. Choked by its clown's mask And quite dry, my mind Is crumbling. -- Dag Hammarskjöld

        (translated by Leif Sjöberg and W. H. Auden)

I saw this referenced by Arthur Schlessinger in his Kennedy biography, A
Thousand Days.  Hammarskjöld was the UN Secretary General at the height of
the Cold War, seeing first hand the back and forth of a period where Time
itself almost came to an end.  After his tragic death trying to negotiate a
peace in The Congo, his journal of poetry and thoughts, entitled Markings,
was discovered in his home.  It was translated into English by Leif Sjöberg
and W. H. Auden.  THis poem struck me as an insight into the mind of the
negotiator, who has to put up with old intrigues and has to act as a mine
sweeper when attempting to work his way through argument and counter
argument, all the while putting on a "clown's face".

For more on this remarkable and largely forgotten man, see his biography on
the Nobel Prize website at
http://nobelprize.org/peace/laureates/1961/hammarskjold-bio.html

Best,
Dave Fortin.

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Untitled -- Samuel Beckett

Guest poem sent in by Barbara Kay Bosserman

(Poem #1702) Untitled My way is in the sand flowing between the shingle and the dune the summer rain rains on my life, on me my life harrying fleeing to its beginning to its end My peace is there in the receding mist when I may cease from treading these long shifting thresholds and live the space of a door that opens and shuts je suis ce cour de sable qui glisse entre le galet et le dune le pluie d'etre pleur sur ma vie sur moi ma vie qui me fuit me poursuit et finira le jour de son commencement cher instant je te vois dan ce rideau de brume qui recule ou je n'aurai plus a fouler ces long seuils mouvants et vivrai le temps d'une porte qui s'ouvre et se referme -- Samuel Beckett

       (1948, from "Collected Poems in English and French")

My first encounter with this poem was as an undergraduate back in the
mid-eighties. Although I almost never studied in the library, the effect of
upcoming finals on the temper of my normally pleasant roommate induced me to
study there one semester. I ended up near the poetry section more by
accident than design. Bored by whatever I was supposed to be studying, I
happened to see an old, thin volume of poems which I started flipping
through. Twenty years later, I can't remember much from any of my classes,
but I can still recite several of those poems (the English versions anyway)
from memory.

Back then, I would have been certain I knew the poem's meaning. Now, I'll
just say that I like how it sounds when recited aloud, its sea imagery, and
the fact that -- while it seems to acknowledge life's futility (those long
shifting thresholds), when I read it I feel some ultimate sense of
rightness about everything.

Beckett is, of course, better known as a playwright than a poet. His most
famous work is Waiting for Godot.

Barbara Kay Bosserman

[Links]

Biography:
  http://www.samuel-beckett.net/speople.html

The parent site is a good collection of Beckett links:
  http://www.samuel-beckett.net/

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Untitled -- Stephen King

(Poem #1642) Untitled Your hair is winter fire, January embers My heart burns there, too. -- Stephen King

       (from "IT")

   I first read this poem when I was 16, and was smitten by it. I like it
because, like Ben's english teacher explained to him in the book, "a haiku
... could be just seventeen syllables long - no more, no less. It usually
concentrated on one clear image which was linked to one specific emotion:
sadness, joy, nostalgia, happiness ...  love". I hope that you'll read IT
if you like this poem; IT is a mighty fine book.

I'd like to type in a few sentences that precede this poems in the book:

       "During the last week of school before exams, they had been reading and
  writing haiku in English class. Haiku was a Japanese form of poetry, brief,
  disciplined. A haiku, Mrs Douglas said, could be just seventeen syllables
  long - no more, no less. It usually concentrated on one clear image which
  was linked to one specific emotion: sadness, joy, nostalgia, happiness ...
  love.

       Ben had been utterly charmed by the concept. He enjoyed his
  English classes, although mild enjoyment was generally as far as it went. He
  could do the work, but as a rule there was nothing in it which gripped him.
  Yet there was something in the concept of haiku that fired his imagination.
  The idea made him feel happy, the way Mrs Starrett's explanation of the
  greenhouse effect had made him happy. Haiku was good poetry, Ben felt,
  because it was structured poetry. There were no secret rules.  Seventeen
  syllables, one image linked to one emotion, and you were out. Bingo. It was
  clean, it was utilitarian, it was entirely contained within and dependent
  upon its own rules. He even liked the word itself, a slide of air broken as
  if along a dotted line by the 'k'-sound at the very back of your mouth:
  haiku.

        Her hair, he thought, and saw her going down the school steps again
  with it bouncing on her shoulders. The sun did not so much glint on it as
  seem to burn within it."

Subramanyam Chitti

[Martin adds]

Actually, haiku are subject to a long and complex set of rules. Here's a
pointer to some places where you can learn more about them:

Jane Reichhold notes that "Haiku, which seem so light, free and spontaneous,
are built on discipline."
   http://www.ahapoetry.com/haiku.htm

Keiko Imaoka on the distinct set of traditions that have grown up around
English haiku...

Note in particular the bit about syllable counting:
        Today, many bilingual poets and translators in the mainstream North
  American haiku scene agree that something in the vicinity of 11 English
  syllables is a suitable approximation of 17 Japanese syllables, in order to
  convey about the same amount of information as well as the brevity and the
  fragmented quality found in Japanese haiku. As to the form, some American
  poets advocate writing in 3-5-3 syllables or 2-3-2 accented beats. While
  rigid structuring can be accomplished in 5-7-5 haiku with relative ease due
  to a greater degree of freedom provided by the extra syllables, such
  structuring in shorter haiku will have the effect of imposing much more
  stringent rules on English haiku than on Japanese haiku, thereby severely
  limiting its potential.

  [broken link] http://www.ahapoetry.com/keirule.htm

George Swede has another excellent essay on the form, including the
startling fact about "Criterion 2: The Haiku Should Be Arranged in Three
Lines":

  This rules has one corollary:

  a. The three lines should be arranged according to a 5-7-5 syllable count.

  Neither this rule nor its corollary are essential. In fact, Japanese haiku
  almost always have been and continue to be written in one line or rather,
  column, as the language is usually written vertically. Because Japanese onji
  are so short, seventeen onji always fit easily into one line or column. On
  the other hand, a seventeen-syllable haiku in English usually has to be more
  than one line otherwise it would run off the page, at least in the normal
  horizontal way the language is written.

The site appears to be down, but you can read it thanks to the wayback machine:

http://web.archive.org/web//http://www.haikai.info/articles/swede.definition.html

Swede also distingushes between haiku and senryu, the latter being "a
haiku-like poem involving human nature only". By extension, in English the
word 'senryu' seems to be coming to be used to mean "a poem adhering to the
form of a haiku, but not any of the other rules".

Yet another proposal for the English haiku:
  http://www.worldhaikureview.org/pages/whcessay1.shtml

And as a parting note, here's an appropriate strip from one of my favourite
webcomics:
  [broken link] http://www.ozyandmillie.org/2005/om20050124.html

martin

[Stephen King Links]

Biography:
 http://www.stephenkingshop.com/biography.htm

And Amazon's page on "It":

[broken link] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-//qid=/sr=1-15/ref=sr_1_15/

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Untitled -- Vikram Seth

Guest poem sent in by Vikas Kedia

(Poem #1566) Untitled Dark night, and silent, calm, and lovely, That stills the efforts of our lives, Rare, excellent-kind, and behovely No matter how the poet strives To weave with epithets and clauses Your soundless web, he falters, pauses, And your enchantment slips between His hands, as if it's never been. Of all times most inbued with beauty, You lend us by your spell relief From ineradicable grief (If for a spell), and pain, and duty. We sleep, and nightly are made whole In all our fretted mind and soul. -- Vikram Seth

        (from "The Golden Gate")

I had never thought I would be able to appreciate a novel written completely in
verse. But after having read a couple of poems by Seth on Minstrels, I decided
to take up the challenge. And now in last couple of days I have spent
innumerable precious hours (precious because I am in middle of end terms)
devouring it.

Unputdownable has become a cliched word in recent times due to unjudicious use
on the cover of paperback fictions, yet it seems as if the word was meant for
this book. I have found it to be a surprisingly light read, very contemporary
(even though written in the 80's) and at places even profound as this sonnet
illustrates. Being an aspiring computer scientist and student of logic,
I revel in paradoxes. Therefore the paradox in this verse, of a poet trying to
express the enchantment of the night by admitting his inadequacy to do so,
appeals to me in more than poetic sense.

Loneliness seems to be a recurring theme in the writings of Seth, if I can make
that judgement from the poems I have read on Minstrels and this book. But this
book is written in a lighter and humorous vein as compared to poems like "All
You who Sleep Tonight". Word play, alliteration, puns abound. Couple of gems
I have so far come across are "Monday's mundane", "Cultural and haughty and
hortycultural". This book has turned out to be an excellent introduction to the
art of verse for a novice like me.

regards
Vikas

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Untitled -- Anise

Guest poem sent in by Jade

(Poem #1485) Untitled What scares them most is That NOTHING HAPPENS! They are ready For DISTURBANCES. They have machine guns And soldiers, But this SMILING SILENCE Is uncanny. The business men Don't understand That sort of weapon . . . It is your SMILE That is UPSETTING Their reliance On Artillery, brother! It is the garbage wagons That go along the street Marked "EXEMPT by STRIKE COMMITTEE." It is the milk stations That are getting better daily, and the three hundred WAR Veterans of Labor Handling the crowds WITHOUT GUNS, For these things speak Of a NEW POWER and a NEW WORLD That they do not feel At HOME in. -- Anise

Note: "Printed in the Seattle Union Record (a daily newspaper put out by
labor people)" -- Howard Zinn

I found this poem in one of my AP History text books at school ("A People's
History of the United States" by Howard Zinn.)  On February 6, 1919 (shortly
after World War I) Seattle, Washington started a city-wide strike.  The only
people that stayed on the job were laundry workers who did only hospital
laudry, firemen and authorized vehicles that had signs saying "Exempted by
the General Strike Committee."  Meals were prepared in thirty-five milk
stations and transported all over the city.  Strikers payed twenty-five
cents and the general public thirty five for as much beef stew, spaghetti,
bread and coffee.

   "A Labor War Veteran's Guard was organized to keep the peace.  On the
  blackboard at one of its headquarteres was written: 'The purpose of this
  organization is to preserve law and order without the use of force.  No
  volunteer will have any police power or be allowed to carry weapons of any
  sort, but to use persuasion only.'  During the strike, crime in the city
  decreased.  The commander of the U.S. army detachment sent into the area
  told the strikers' committee that in forty years of military experience he
  hadn't seen so quiet and orderly a city" (Zinn 378)

Many people believe that, without force, peace and civilization cannot be
maintained.  But this poem and passage speak contrary to that. The strike
stopped after five days.

Jade

[Links]

An extensive set of excerpts from Zinn's text, giving the historical background

to the poem:
  [broken link] http://colfa.utsa.edu/users/jreynolds/Textbooks/WWI/ZinnIWW.html

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