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[davidwright2000]

This thread exists for those who love poetry. Read, post, discover, and analyze poems! 

I came across this poem recently, by Robert Frost.

"The Onset"

Always the same, when on a fated night
At last the gathered snow lets down as white
As may be in dark woods, and with a song
It shall not make again all winter long
Of hissing on the yet uncovered ground,
I almost stumble looking up and round,
As one who overtaken by the end
Gives up his errand, and lets death descend
Upon him where he is, with nothing done
To evil, no important triumph won,
More than if life had never been begun.

Yet all the precedent is on my side:
I know that winter death has never tried
The earth but it has failed: the snow may heap
In long storms an undrifted four feet deep
As measured against maple, birch, and oak,
It cannot check the peeper's silver croak;
And I shall see the snow all go down hill
In water of a slender April rill
That flashes tail through last year's withered brake
And dead weeds, like a disappearing snake.
Nothing will be left white but here a birch,
And there a clump of houses with a church.


     The imagery in this poem is striking--- nature in winter and spring. Note the aural imagery: "of hissing on the yet uncovered ground." But even more interesting is the connection between imagery and one of the poem's salient themes: death. Yet, in the second stanza, Frost provides an assured, optimistic perspective and tone.
     Many comments can be made about such a beautiful poem. I welcome any thoughts you have!
     I'll post a new poem in a week or two.

David Wright

[Andrew]

David,

Your post is beautiful. It deserves more responses than we can get until we get this forum fixed. Blast it (Slam fist on table)!

[davidwright2000]

Keeping with the theme of winter, here's one by Wendell Berry:

"The Winter Rain"

The leveling of the water, its increase,
the gathering of many into much:

in the cold dusk I stop
midway of the creek, listening
as it passes downward
loud over the rocks, under
the sound of the rain striking,
nowhere any sound
but the water, the dead
weedstems soaked with it,
the ground soaked, the earth overflowing.

And having waded all the way
across, I look back and see there
on the water the still sky.


     I would argue that the line "the gathering of many into much" is highly significant. Quite possibly the thesis of this beautiful poem. The closing image of the speaker looking back and seeing "there on the water the still sky" is haunting and quite perfect.

[davidwright2000]

In Wendell Berry's poem above, the phase "the earth overflowing" contributes significantly to the poem's theme of "the gathering of many into much." We get the feeling of plenty here, as the first line suggests, "the leveling of the water, its increase." Maybe seeing the still sky reflected on the water--the closing image-- impressed such beauty upon Berry that it left him with a sense of nature's abundance.
I like it.

David

[davidwright2000]

Here's a poem I wrote some years ago, which I had forgotten about, but just stumbled across. There's something kind of fun about it. 


I walked between two flat-iron buildings on the edge of a deserted coastal city.  Everything was falling, crumbling---gaining crooked inertia in the apocalyptic afternoon. I stopped, not knowing where I was (but for the first time in a long time, my spirit was warm). I listened. It was odd that I heard it amidst the exploded, powdered asphalt: an old 80s boombox with a faded yellow-reddish breakdance sticker covering one speaker. It was still plugged in, and miraculously, playing Byzantine chant---on tape, on repeat. Strange, right?  But you have no idea how perfect it sounded. I was all alone on the after-edge of civilization, and would be for a long time. But it was all I needed. It flushed me cool as I lay on the pile of gray rubble, next to the boombox, under the nuclear sun.

David Wright

[davidwright2000]

Check this one out:

T.S. Eliot

Virginia

Red river, red river,
Slow flow heat is silence
No will is still as a river
Still. Will heat move
Only through the mocking-bird
Heard once? Still hills
Wait. Gates wait. Purple trees,
White trees, wait, wait,
Delay, decay. Living, living,
Never moving. Ever moving
Iron thoughts came with me
And go with me:
Red river, river, river.


This little guy is sick. Note the second line:  slow flow heat is silence. What a killer line!
The rhythm and repetition Eliot uses in the poem contribute to the sound of the landscape. This is indeed a poem in which sound is the prominent literary device.

I love it.  What say you?

[davidwright2000]

Check out this acrostic poem. Fresh for springtime!:

Brief Bio
by Phillis Levin

Bearer of no news
Under the sun, except
The spring, I quicken
Time, drawing you to see
Earth's lightest pamphlet,
Reeling mosaic of rainbow dust,
Filament hinging a new set of wings,
Lord of no land, subject to flowers and wind,
Yesterday born in a palace that hangs by a thread.

[davidwright2000]

On Found Poetry

Found poetry is poetry comprised of words and phrases from familiar everyday things (news articles, street signs, speeches, graffiti, etc.) rearranged into fresh new orders and patterns.

Ronald Gross points out something of the utmost importance:

"As I worked with labels, tax forms, commercials, contracts, pin-up captions, obituaries, and the like, I soon found myself rediscovering all the traditional verse forms in found materials: ode, sonnet, epigram, haiku, free verse. Such finds made me realize that these forms are not mere artifices, but shapes that language naturally takes when carrying powerful thoughts or feelings." (emphasis mine)

Consider what this says about form. Form is not only necessary for great and meaninful poetry, but inescapable. Again, we find an example of post-structuralism swaggering its way right back into structuralism. Or in other words, fragmentation ultimately revealing order and harmony.

Here's a found poem by Howard Nemerov

Found Poem      
 
after information received in The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 4 v 86

The population center of the USA
Has shifted to Potosi, in Missouri.

The calculation employed by authorities
In arriving at this dislocation assumes

That the country is a geometric plane,
Perfectly flat, and that every citizen,

Including those in Alaska and Hawaii
And the District of Columbia, weighs the same;

So that, given these simple presuppositions,
The entire bulk and spread of all the people

Should theoretically balance on the point
Of a needle under Potosi in Missouri

Where no one is residing nowadays
But the watchman over an abandoned mine

Whence the company got the lead out and left.
"It gets pretty lonely here," he says, "at night."