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editor
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 Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2008 6:10 pm Post subject: |
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Sounds, Feelings, Thoughts:
Seventy Poems by Wislawa Szymborska
Paperback
Translated and Introduced by Magnus J. Krynski and
Robert A. Maguire
| Quote: | A Happy Love
A happy love. Is it normal,
is it serious, is it profitable -
what use to the world are two people
who have no eyes for the world?
Elevated each for each, for no apparent merit,
by sheer chance singled out of a million, yet convinced
it had to be so - as reward for what? for nothing;
the light shines from nowhere -
why just on them, and not on others?
Is this an offense to justice? Yes.
Does it violate time-honored principles, does it cast
any moral down from the heights? It violates and casts down.
Look at the happy couple:
if they'd at least dissemble a bit,
feign depression and thereby cheer their friends!
Hear how they laugh - offensively.
And the language they speak - it only seems to make sense.
And all those ceremonials, ceremonies,
those elaborate obligations toward each other -
it all looks like a plot behind mankind's back!
It's even hard to foresee how far things might go
if their example could be followed.
What could religions and poetries rely on,
what would be remembered, what abandoned,
who would want to keep within the bounds.
A happy love. Is it necessary?
Tact and common sense advise us to say no more of it
than of a scandal in Life's upper ranks.
Little cherubs get born without its help.
Never, ever could it populate the earth,
for it happens so seldom.
Let people who know naught of happy love
assert that nowhere is there a happy love.
With such faith, they would find it easier to live and to die. |
| Quote: | Milosc szczesliwa
Milosc szczesliwa. Czy to jest normalne,
czy to powazne, czy to pozyteczne -
co swiat ma z dwojga ludzi,
ktorzy nie widza swiata?
Wysyzszeni ku sobie bez zadnej zaslugi,
pierwsi lepsi z miliona, ale przekonani,
ze tak stac sie musialo - w nagrode za co? z nic;
swiatlo pada znikad -
dlaczego wlasnie na tych, a nie innych?
Czy to obraza sprawiedliwosc? Tak.
Czy narusza troskliwie pietrzone zasady,
straca ze szczytu moral? Narusza i straca.
Sporjrzcie na tych szczesliwych:
gdyby sie chociaz maskowali troche,
udawali zgnebienie krzepiac tym przyjaciol!
Sluchajcie, jak sie smieja - obrazliewie.
Jakim jezykiem mowia -zrozumialym na pozor.
A te ich ceremonie, ceregiele,
wymyslne obowiazki wzgledem siebie -
wyglada to na zmowe za plecami ludzkosci!
Trudno nawet przewidziec, do czego by doszlo,
gdby ich przyklad dal sie nasladowac.
Na co liczyc by mogly religie, poezje,
o czym by pamietano, czego zaniechano,
kto by chciat zostac w kregu.
Milosc szczesliwa. Czy to jest konieczne?
Takt i rozxadek kaza milczec o niej
jak o skandalu z wysokich sfer Zycia.
Wspaniale dziatki rodza sie bez jej pomocy.
Przenigdy nie zdotalaby zaludnic ziemi,
zdarza sie przeciez rzadko.
Niech ludzie nie znajacy mitosci szczesliwej
twierdza, ze nigdzie nie ma mitosci szczesliwej.
Z ta wiara lzej im bedzie i zyc, i umierac.
(From Wselki wypadek (There But for the Grace), 1972, at pgs. 144-145) |
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Last edited by editor on Thu Jan 03, 2008 6:12 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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editor
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| Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2008 6:12 pm Post subject: |
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Sounds, Feelings, Thoughts:
Seventy Poems by Wislawa Szymborska
Paperback
Translated and Introduced by Magnus J. Krynski and
Robert A. Maguire
| Quote: | Report from the Hospital
We drew lots, who would go and see him.
It was me. I got up from our table.
It was almost time for visiting hours.
He said nothing in reply to my greeting.
I tried to take his hand - he pulled it back
like a hungry dog who wouldn't give up a bone.
He seemed ashamed of dying.
I don't know what you say to someone like him.
As in a photomontage, our eyes would not meet.
He didn't ask me to stay or go.
He didn't ask about anyone at our table.
Not about you, Bolek. Not about you, Tolek. Not about you, Lolek.
My head began to ache. Who was dying for whom?
I praised medicine and the three violets in the glass.
I talked about the sun and thought dark thoughts.
How good there's a staircase to run down.
How good there's a gate to be opened.
How good you're all waiting for me at our table.
The smell of a hospital makes me sick. |
| Quote: | Relacja ze szpitala
Ciagnelismy zapatki, kto ma pojsc do niego.
Wypadto na mnie. Wstatem od stolika.
Zblizata sie juz pora odwiedzin w szpitalu.
Nie odpowiedziat nic na powitanie.
Chciatem go wziac za reke - cofnat ja
jak gtodny pies, co nie da kosci.
Wygladat, jakby sie wstydzit umierac.
Nie wiem, o czym sie mowi takiemu jak on.
Mijalismy sie wzrokiem jak w fotomontazu.
Nie prosit ani zostan, ani odejdz.
Nie pytat o nikogo z naszego stolika.
Ani o ciebie, Bolku. Ani o ciebie, Tolku. ani ociebie, Lolku.
Rozbolata mnie gtowa. Kto komu umiera?
Chwalitem medycyne i trzy fiotki w szklance.
Opowiadatem o stoncu i gastem.
Jak dobrze ze sa schody, ktorymi sie zbiega.
Jak dobrze, ze jest brama, ktora, sie otwiera.
Jak dobrze, ze czekacie na mnie przy stoliku.
Szpitalna won przyprawia mnie o mdtosci.
(From Sto pociech (A Million Laughs, A Bright Hope), 1967, at pgs. 94-95) |
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editor
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| Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2008 6:15 pm Post subject: |
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View With a Grain of Sand
Paperback
By 1996 Nobel Prize Winner Wislawa Szymborska
Translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and
Clare Cavanagh
| Quote: | SEANCE
Happenstance reveals its tricks.
It produces, by sleight of hand, a glass of brandy
and sits Henry down beside it.
I enter the bistro and stop dead in my tracks.
Henry - he's none other than
Agnes's husband's brother,
and Agnes is related
to Aunt Sophie's brother-in-law.
It turns out
we've got the same great-grandfather.
In happenstance's hands
space furls and unfurls,
spreads and shrinks.
The tablecloth
becomes a handkerchief.
Just guess who I ran into
in Canada, of all places,
after all these years.
I thought he was dead,
and there he was, in a Mercedes.
On the plane to Athens.
At a stadium in Tokyo.
Happenstance twirls a kaleidoscope in its hands.
A billion bits of colored glass glitter.
And suddenly Jacks's glass
bumps into Jill's.
Just imagine in this very same hotel.
I turn around and see -
it's really her!
Face to face in an elevator.
In a toy store.
At the corner of Maple and Pine.
Happenstance is shrouded in a cloak.
Things get lost in it and then are found again.
I stumbled on it accidentally.
I bent down and picked it up.
One look and I knew it,
a spoon from that stolen service.
If it hadn't been for that bracelet,
I would never have known Alexandra.
The clock? It turned up in Potterville.
Happenstance looks deep into our eyes.
Our head grows heavy.
Our eyelids drop.
We want to laugh and cry,
it's so incredible.
From fourth-grade home room to that ocean liner.
It has to mean something.
To hell and back,
and here we meet halfway home.
(From The End and the Beginning, 1993, at pgs. 194-195) |
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| Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2008 6:19 pm Post subject: |
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Staying Alive
Real Poems for Unreal Times
Paperback
Edited by Bloodaxe founder Neil Astley
| Quote: | The One Twenty Pub
The bomb is primed to go off at one twenty.
A time-check: one sixteen.
There's still a chance for some to join
the pub's ranks, for others to drop out.
The terrorist watches from across the street.
Distance will shield him
from the impact of what he sees:
A woman, turquoise jacket on her shoulder,
enters; a man with sunglasses departs.
Youths in tee-shirts loiter without intent.
One seventeen and four seconds.
The scrawny motorcyclist, revving up
to leave, won't believe his luck;
but the tall man steps straight in.
One seventeen and forty seconds.
That girl, over there with the walkman
- now the bus has cut her off.
One eighteen exactly.
Was she stupid enough to head inside?
Or wasn't she? We'll know before long,
when the dead are carried out.
It's one nineteen.
Nothing much to report
until a muddled barfly hesitates,
fumbles with his pockets, and, like
a blasted fool, stumbles back
at one nineteen and fifty seconds
to retrieve his goddamn cap.
One twenty
How time drags when...
Any moment now.
Not yet.
Yes.
Yes,
there
it
goes.
Wislawa Szymborska
version from the Polish by Dennis O'Driscoll
(-- pgs. 134-135) |
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editor
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| Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2008 6:22 pm Post subject: |
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Wislawa Szymborska
Poems New and Collected
1957-1997
Paperback
Translated from the Polish
by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh
| Quote: | THE SUICIDE'S ROOM
I'll bet you think the room was empty.
Wrong. There were three chairs with sturdy backs.
A lamp, good for fighting the dark.
A desk, and on the desk a wallet, some newspapers.
A carefree Buddha and a worried Christ.
Seven lucky elephants, a notebook in a drawer.
You think our addresses weren't in it?
No books, no pictures, no records, you guess?
Wrong. A comforting trumpet poised in black hands.
Saskia and her cordial little flower.
Joy the spark of gods.
Odysseus stretched on the shelf in life-giving sleep
after the labors of Book Five.
The moralists
with the golden syllables of their names
inscribed on finely tanned spines.
Next to them, the politicians braced their backs.
No way out? But what about the door?
No prospects? The window had other views.
His glasses
lay on the windowsill.
And one fly buzzed -- that is, was still alive.
You think at least the note must tell us something.
But what if I say there was no note --
and he had so many friends, but all of us fit neatly
inside the empty envelope propped up against a cup.
(-- p. 167) |
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| Posted: Sat Jan 26, 2008 12:26 pm Post subject: |
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From Poolrooms:
Now the Dead Will Dance the Mambo
By Brooklyn PR wildman Martin Espada
Read nicely by the author
CD Audio
| Quote: | Now the Dead Will Dance the Mambo
Achill Island, Ireland, June 200
Last night the shadow of a cloud rolled off the bare mountain
like a shawl slipping from the shoulder of a giant.
Shirts on the clothesline sagged in rain.
We burned turf, fists of earth blackening in the fireplace,
room full of poets' books leaning rumpled, half-asleep.
All night a radio sang in Irish, tongues sod-hard with lament
or celebration. The the BBC news, and the announcer's lips
pinching the name: Tito Puente, The Mambo King, dead in New York.
I would listen to Tito's records and see my father years ago:
black hair shiny as the spinning disk, combed slick
before the dance. I learned to spy on his mambo step,
drummed the pots and kitchen tables of Brooklyn.
I saw Tito Puento too, hammering timbales on the Jazzboat
in Boston Harbor, brandishing drumsticks over head
to scatter the malevolent spirits that grabbed at his hair.
Guadalupe pushed backstage to return with Tito's drumstick,
splintered from repeating, always repeating the beat of slaves.
Here, on this island, I rehearse the Irish word for drum:
bodhran, gripped by hand like the pandereta,
circle of skin and wood for the grandchildren of slaves
to thump as they sang the news in Ponce, Puerto Rico.
Again today the rain grays the graying stones.
We shake away drizzle in the pub dwarfed by mountains.
In brown Guiness light we squint to see
the posters of their Easter dead: James Connolly
bellowing insurrection the Citizen Army,
the year 1916 ablaze above his head, numbers torched
like the pillars of an empire's monuments to itself.
The bartender says Connolly eyed the firing squad
strapped to a chair in the stonebreaker's yard,
gangrene feasting on his wound so he could not stand.
I tell the bartender that Puerto Rico has its Easter dead:
a march on Palm Sunday, colonial police intoxicated
by the incense of gunsmoke, Cadets of the Republic
painting slogans on the street in their belly-blood.
That was Ponce in 1937, and Rafael still says:
My mother left in a white dress and came home in a red dress.
Tito Puente is dead, and we are in a pub on Achill Island
plundering the jukebox, flipping between the Wolfe Tones
and the Dubliners til we discover Tito's Oye Como Va.
The beat is a hand slapping the bar, heads nodding
as if their ears funneled a chant of yes-yes, yes-yes,
and when we shoot a game of pool in his memory
the table becomes a dance floor at the Palladium,
cue ball spinning through a crowd of red and green.
Now James Connolly could dance the mambo,
gangrene forever banished from his leg.
(Also published in the author's collection, Alabanza,
at pgs. 205-206) |
| Quote: | Alabanza
Paperback
By Martin Espada
|
PokerPulse favorite Tito Puente recording:
Calle 54
DVD
Ay, caramba!
Link to this entry
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Last edited by editor on Wed Aug 26, 2009 7:55 am; edited 1 time in total |
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| Posted: Sun Jan 27, 2008 3:16 pm Post subject: |
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From Omens and Lucky Charms:
The Lady of Shalott
Hardcover
By British Poet Laureate Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Illustrated by Montréal artist Geneviève Côté
| Quote: | Part I
On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
And through the field the road run by
To many-tower'd Camelot;
And up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow
Round an island there below,
The island of Shalott.
Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
Little breezes dusk and shiver
Through the wave that runs for ever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot.
Four grey walls, and four grey towers,
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle imbowers
The Lady of Shalott.
By the margin, willow veil'd,
Slide the heavy barges trail'd
By slow horses; and unhail'd
The shallop flitteth silken-sail'd
Skimming down to Camelot:
But who hath seen her wave her hand?
Or at the casement seen her stand?
Or is she known in all the land,
The Lady of Shalott?
Only reapers, reaping early,
In among the bearded barley
Hear a song that echoes cheerly
From the river winding clearly;
Down to tower'd Camelot;
And by the moon the reaper weary,
Piling sheaves in uplands airy,
Listening, whispers, " 'Tis the fairy
The Lady of Shalott."
Part II
There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colours gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
The Lady of Shalott.
And moving through a mirror clear
That hangs before her all the year,
Shadows of the world appear.
There she sees the highway near
Winding down to Camelot;
There the river eddy whirls,
And there the surly village churls,
And the red cloaks of market girls
Pass onward from Shalott.
Sometimes a troop of damsels glad,
An abbot on an ambling pad,
Sometimes a curly shepherd lad,
Or long-hair'd page in crimson clad
Goes by to tower'd Camelot;
And sometimes through the mirror blue
The knights come riding two and two.
She hath no loyal Knight and true,
The Lady of Shalott.
But in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror's magic sights,
For often through the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes and lights
And music, went to Camelot;
Or when the Moon was overhead,
Came two young lovers lately wed.
"I am half sick of shadows," said
The Lady of Shalott.
Part III
A bow-shot from her bower-eaves,
He rode between the barley sheaves,
The sun came dazzling thro' the leaves,
And flamed upon the brazen greaves
Of bold Sir Lancelot.
A red-cross knight for ever kneel'd
To a lady in his shield,
That sparkled on the yellow field,
Beside remote Shalott.
The gemmy bridle glitter'd free,
Like to some branch of stars we see
Hung in the golden Galaxy.
The bridle bells rang merrily
As he rode down to Camelot:
And from his blazon'd baldric slung
A mighty silver bugle hung,
And as he rode his armor rung
Beside remote Shalott.
All in the blue unclouded weather
Thick-jewell'd shone the saddle-leather,
The helmet and the helmet-feather
Burn'd like one burning flame together,
As he rode down to Camelot.
As often thro' the purple night,
Below the starry clusters bright,
Some bearded meteor, burning bright,
Moves over still Shalott.
His broad clear brow in sunlight glow'd;
On burnish'd hooves his war-horse trode;
From underneath his helmet flow'd
His coal-black curls as on he rode,
As he rode down to Camelot.
From the bank and from the river
He flashed into the crystal mirror,
"Tirra lirra," by the river
Sang Sir Lancelot.
She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces through the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She look'd down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack'd from side to side;
"The curse is come upon me," cried
The Lady of Shalott.
Part IV
In the stormy east-wind straining,
The pale yellow woods were waning,
The broad stream in his banks complaining.
Heavily the low sky raining
Over tower'd Camelot;
Down she came and found a boat
Beneath a willow left afloat,
And around about the prow she wrote
The Lady of Shalott.
And down the river's dim expanse
Like some bold seer in a trance,
Seeing all his own mischance --
With a glassy countenance
Did she look to Camelot.
And at the closing of the day
She loosed the chain, and down she lay;
The broad stream bore her far away,
The Lady of Shalott.
Lying, robed in snowy white
That loosely flew to left and right --
The leaves upon her falling light --
Thro' the noises of the night,
She floated down to Camelot:
And as the boat-head wound along
The willowy hills and fields among,
They heard her singing her last song,
The Lady of Shalott.
Heard a carol, mournful, holy,
Chanted loudly, chanted lowly,
Till her blood was frozen slowly,
And her eyes were darkened wholly,
Turn'd to tower'd Camelot.
For ere she reach'd upon the tide
The first house by the water-side,
Singing in her song she died,
The Lady of Shalott.
Under tower and balcony,
By garden-wall and gallery,
A gleaming shape she floated by,
Dead-pale between the houses high,
Silent into Camelot.
Out upon the wharfs they came,
Knight and Burgher, Lord and Dame,
And around the prow they read her name,
The Lady of Shalott.
Who is this? And what is here?
And in the lighted palace near
Died the sound of royal cheer;
And they crossed themselves for fear,
All the Knights at Camelot;
But Lancelot mused a little space
He said, "She has a lovely face;
God in his mercy lend her grace,
The Lady of Shalott."
(Book pages are unnumbered) |
About Tennyson and the poem:
| Quote: | The most famous poet of the Victorian age, Alfred Tennyson (1809-92) is also regarded as one of the preeminent English poets of all time. Tennyson possessed a marvelous ability to craft evocative imagery and to use landscapes to convey emotion. Even his harshest critics have recognized his gift for lyric poetry, which is arguably unequalled in the history of English verse. Queen Victoria appointed Tennyson, a greatly esteemed spokesman for the ideas and values of the era, Poet Laureate in 1850.
... The rich symbolism of "The Lady of Shalott" has invited diverse interpretations: It has been understood as a commentary on the role of women in the Victorian period, who, much like the poem's imprisoned maiden, were relegated to the private sphere of the home and separated from the public sphere of men; and as an exploration of the relationship of the artist to society - the Lady, isolated from the world with her endless weaving, being a metaphor for the artist. Others have perceived it as a reflection on nature versus industry or as a meditation on the passage toward death. (From the first of the book's last three pages) |
A musical interpretation:
Cups up, to the visionary publisher, who understands as PokerPulse does the crying, screaming need to serve up Literature's Best to the world's hungriest ears and eyes - children! Poetry is, after all, is like many pleasant libations an acquired taste that should begin sometime before mid-life if it is to be pushed along properly.
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| Posted: Mon Jan 28, 2008 1:09 pm Post subject: |
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From Gambling on God:
| Quote: | Only one fragment of our conversation drifts back to me through the medium of a letter written to Edward during the War:
"But what is God, then?"
"Well, of course, if we're going to discuss the nature of the Deity..."
But that he had not resented anything I said nor the way in which I said it, I discovered long afterwards from a poem - one of the very few that he did not consign to the wastepaper basket - which he had called "Nachklang," and dated April 19th, 1914:
Down the long white road we walked together,
Down between the grey hills and the heather,
Where the tawny-crested
Plover cries.
You seemed all brown and soft, just like a linnet,
Your errant hair had shadowed sunbeams in it,
And there shone all April
In your eyes.
With your golden voice of tears and laughter
Softened into song: "Does naught come after
Life," you asked, "When life is
Laboured through?
What is God, and all for which we're striving?"
"Sweetest sceptic, we were born for living.
Life is Love, and Love is -
You, dear, you."
... "I think it is harder now the spring days are beginning to come," I wrote in reply to Roland's letter, " to keep the thought of war before one's mind - especially here, where there is always a kind of dreamy spell which makes one feel that nothing poignant and terrible can ever come near. Winter departs so early here" (I was comparing Oxford with Buxton, where it lasts until May) "and during the calm and beautiful days we have had lately it seems so much more appropriate to imagine that you and Edward are actually here enjoying the spring than to think that before long you may be in the trenches fighting men you do not really hate. In the churches in Oxford, where so many of the congregation are soldiers, we are always having it impressed upon us that 'the call of our country is the call God.' Is it? I wish I could feel sure that it was. At this time of the year it seems that everything ought to be creative, not destructive, and that we should encourage things to live and not die." (-- pgs. 83-127) |
A few words about Roland A. Leighton:
| Quote: | Late one night the previous holidays, my mother, noticing the light still burning in Edward's room, had gone up to see if anything was the matter. She found Edward, flushed and absorbed, sitting on the bed in his pyjamas surrounded by loose sheets of ruled manuscript. He was setting to music, he told her, a poem called "L'Envoi," which the captain of his House had written for last summer's school magazine in honour of the boys who were leaving Uppingham. (music and text included)
... In April 1914, Edward invited the author of the poem to Buxton to say with us for part of the Easter holidays. He looked forward to his friend's coming with definite pleasure but also with a little trepidation, for Roland, besides being captain of their House, was considerably Edward's senior, and had an enormous school reputation for brilliance and unapproachableness; he was head of Uppingham in work, and editor of the school magazine. Like Edward, he was destined for Oxford in the autumn, and had recently won the Senior Open Classical Postmastership at Merton College.
... Armed with my Somerville exhibition and my few months' seniority, I refused to be prospectively impressed by this person, but such equanimity was difficult to achieve, for to Roland's family attached the glamour which Bohemia always possesses for aspiring provincials. His father, a popular writer of stories for boys, who had been on the literary staff of a great daily newspaper, and his mother, the celebrated author of many romantic novels and feuilletons, had once lived amid a famous circle of writers and artists in St. John's Wood, but now they moved to a pleasant house on the coast at Lowestoft. In those days neither Roland nor his parents as realised the full potentialities of his gifted schoolgirl sister Clare, who was to be known seventeed years later as one of the best of young woodcut artists.
... As the Headmaster strode, berobed and majestic, on to the platform of the School Hall, I was in the midst of examining with appreciation my Speech Day programme, and especially the page headed "Prizemen July, 1914," of which the first seven items ran as follows:
Nettleship Prize for English Essay R.A. Leighton
Holden Prize for Latin Prose 1st R.A. Leighton
Greek Prose Composition R.A. Leighton
Latin Hexameters R.A. Leighton
Greek Epigram R.A. Leighton
Captain in Classics R.A. Leighton
(From Provincial Young-Ladyhood, pgs. 77-88) |
The book as a survey course of World War I poetry:
| Quote: | One chilly May evening the English tutor invited Marjorie and myself into her room at Micklem to see hier Milton manuscripts. When we had looked at them we moved closer to the fire and she showed us her latest acquisition from Blackwell's - the newly published first edition of Rupert Brooke's 1914. Those famous sonnets, brought into prominence by the poet's death on the eve of the Dardanelles campaign, were then only just beginning to take the world's breath away, and I asked our tutor if she would read us one or two.
For the young to whom Rupert Brooke's poems are now familiar as classics, it must be impossible to imagine how it felt to hear them for the first time just after they were written. With my grief and anxiety then so new, I found the experience so moving that I should not have sought it had I struggled for it as I listened to the English tutor's grave, deliberate voice reading the sonnets, unhackneyed, courageous and almost shattering in their passionate, relevant idealism:
Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary,
Leave the sick hearts that honour could not move,
And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary -
But not, oh, surely not,
all the little emptiness of love?
Was that really what Rupert Brooke had felt? Was it what Roland would come to feel? Almost more bearable was the sonnet on the "The Dead," with what might become its terribly personal application:
These laid the world away; poured out the red
Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be
Off work and joy ...
How would Rupert Brooke have written, I wonder, had he lived until 1933? ... (From Learning Versus Life, pgs. 154-155) |
| Quote: | 1914 and Other Poems
Paperback
By Rupert Brooke
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The BBC miniseries:
| Quote: | Testament of Youth
BBC Miniseries
Four Cassettes
VHS only!
| Quote: | | Not for the faint of heart, this excellent series based on Vera Brittain's eloquent autobiography provides a rich historical monument to the tragedy of that war, including the devastating effects of mustard gas. |
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PokerPulse recommended listening for foreign affairs offices worldwide:
| Quote: | Lest We Forget
A collection of poetry & music dedicated
to the memory of those who fell in two
world wars
Audio CD
Featuring Derek Jacobi, John Gielgud and the
BBC Symphony Orchestra
| Quote: | Pomp & circumstance: March no. 4 in G major / Elgar -- Lines from For the fallen / Binyon -- On the idle hill of summer / Housman -- In time of the breaking nations / Hardy -- Salut d'amour / Elgar -- The autumn of the world / Read -- The planets: Mars, the bringer of war / Holst -- Attack ; The general / Sassoon -- For the fallen / Binyon -- In memoriam / Thomas -- The dead (IV) / Brooker -- Returning, we hear the larks / Rosenberg -- Everyone sing / Sassoon -- Chanson de matin / Elgar -- On the dead in Gallipoli / Maserfield -- Elegy / Elgar -- Before action / Hodgson -- The soldier / Brooke -- Futility / Owen -- In Flanders Fields / McCree -- Chanson de nuit / Elgar -- The hand that signed the paper / Thomas -- Summer night on the river / Delius -- To a conscript of 1940 / Read -- Watching post / Lewis -- Naming of parts / Reed -- All day it has rained / Lewis -- Peter Grimes: Dawn / Britten -- Song of the dying gunner / Causley -- For Johnny / Pudney -- Planets: Venus, the bringer of peace / Holst -- Midnight, May 7th, 1945 / Dickinson -- Will it be so again? / Lewis -- At the British war cemetery, Bayeux / Causley -- Enigma Variations: Nimrod / Elgar -- And death shall have no dominion / Thomas -- Pomp & circumstance: March no 1 in D major / Elgar -- Lines from For the fallen / Binyon.
Elgard, Edward, 1857-1934.
Holst, Gustav, 1874-1934.
Delius, Frederick, 1862-1934.
Calvert, Phyllis.
Gielgud, John, Sir, 1904-
Orr, Peter.
Jacobi, Derek.
Davis, Andrew, 1944-
BBC Symphony Orchestra.
Includes readings of poetry by Laurence Binyon; A.E. Housman; Thomas Hardy; Herbert Read; Edward Thomas; Rupert Brooke and others.
Should be required listening by governments everywhere contemplating the unoriginal and uncreative decision to go to war. Beautifully edited and executed, this CD must have been a labor of love for all concerned. |
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Link to this entry
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editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
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| Posted: Thu Jan 31, 2008 9:46 am Post subject: |
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An excellent guide to the use of rhyme AND an excellent source of descriptive verbs, the KEY to good writing!
A healthy mix of classics, such as Fern Hill and lesser known works.
One Hundred Years of
Poetry for Children
Hardcover
Edited by Michael Harrison and
Christopher Stuart-Clark
| Quote: | The Game of Life
Roy Fuller
Have you been in sight of heaven
Far ahead on ninety-seven,
Then swirled the dice and thrown a one,
Slid down a snake and flopped upon
Some square like sixty-three?
And then what made you even madder
Seen your sister climb a ladder
To eighty-four from twenty-eight
And felt a sudden rush of hate
As she smirked with glee?
And have you thought she counted out
(So as to miss a snake's dread snout)
A few too many squares - and stayed
Quiet because you were afraid
Or just through leniency?
If so, you will already know
How bitter life can be; and show
Upon your countenance no sign
Except perhaps a mile benign.
And shake on doggedly.
(From the section, Childhood, at p. 58) |
More selections from the book here.
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editor
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Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
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| Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2008 1:03 pm Post subject: |
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From Impossible Odds:
New York Times Magazine
Literate Corporate Media Weekly that
Makes Us Long for the East
Poetry of Protest
The consequences of reading García Lorca in Tehran.
By Zarah Ghahramani as told to Robert Hillman
Dec. 2/07
| Quote: | In my native Iran, choosing the wrong heroes can have frightening consequences. I chose my first hero (not counting my adored father) a decade ago when I was a university student in Tehran, studying Spanish. My teacher put before us a book of verse by the poet Federico García Lorca, who was killed by nationalist soldiers at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. Even reading his poems of dire prediction, I was thrilled by his bravery, facing life and its torments with no balm other than words. I remember the experience of reading one of his poems, "The Weeping." A sympathy for my fellow men and women, no more than a seed before I read it, grew shoots above the soil by the time I finished.
Tehran was enjoying a mild Prague Spring in the late '90s when I first read García Lorca. After 18 years of repressive rule by a government of puritanical priests, a liberal reformist, Mohammad Khatami, was elected president of Iran. Khatami's reforms were wishy-washy by the standards of Iran's serious radicals (a little more freedom of speech, nothing extravagant), but I welcomed them like the new dawn. When the reforms were swept aside by the puritans, who remained as powerful as ever, I raised my voice in the street along with thousands of other student protesters. I believed I was keeping faith with Garcia Lorca, and also with the great poets Saadi and Hafez of long-ago Persia, who honored love and liberty. My friends and I sat on the steps of the library chattering like happy children as we planned new protests. With so many joyful on our side, it was impossible to believe that those who despised happiness could ever prevail over us...
I didn't know it at the time, but I was only one of hundreds of student protesters detained that day. Our demonstrations had exhausted the patience of the hard-liners in the regime, and the police had been let off the leash. "Downtown" meant a tiny cell in Evin prison زندان اوین, in North Tehran, and "a few questions" meant protracted torture. I found it difficult to believe that my cheerful protests could have roused my interrogators to such violence. Bruised black by fists and boots, my shoulders and arms livid with lash welts, my scalp left bare and bleeding after my hair was shorn....
After 29 days of interrogation, friends on the outside were able to secure my freedom. The danger of rearrest compelled me to leave my country, and I now live far from Iran... If I'd have known what the interrogators of Evin could do to me, I'd have kept my mouth shut. García Lorca knew exactly what to expect from the people who hated him but kept speaking out. I understand that now. (-- p. 86) |
Federico García Lorca
Selected Verse
Revised Bilingual Edition
Edited lovingly by Christopher Maurer
| Quote: | CASIDA II
Del llanto
He cerradfo mi balcón
porque no quiero oir el llanto,
pero por detras de los girses muros
no se oye otra cosa que el llanto.
Hay muy pocos ángeles que canten,
hay muy pocos perros que ladren,
mil violines caben en la palma de mi mano.
Pero el llanto es un perro immenso,
el llanto es un ángel immenso,
el llanto es un violin immenso,
las lágrimas amordazan al viento,
y no se oye otra cosa que el llanto.
II Qasida of the Weeping
Translated by Catherine Brown)
I have closed off my balcony,
for I do not want to hear the weeping.
But out there, beyond gray walls,
nothing is heard but the weeping.
There are very few angels who sing.
There are very few dogs who bark.
A thousand violins fit in the palm of my hand.
But the weeping is an enormous dog,
the weeping is an enormous angel,
the weeping is an enormous violin,
tears have muzzled the wind,
and nothing is heard but the weeping.
(-- pgs. 294-295) |
A word about Lorca:
| Quote: | | Federico García Lorca is always - no matter what he is writing about - an elegiac poet. He looks beyond the "here and now" and sees what is present as a symbol of what is absent. No matter where one opens his work, its theme is the impossible: the melancholy conviction that all of us have certain indefinable longings that cannot be satisfied by anything around. Robert Bly (101) got it exactly right: Lorca is a poet of desire. He is always saying "what he wants, what he desires, what barren women desire, what water desires, what gypsies desire, what a bull desires just before he dies, what brothers and sisters desire." Lorca's powers of metaphor push desire even further, into the world of plants, insects, and inanimate things. In his poems, all of life is driven by some sort of undefined pain or longing. To him, the essence of poetry is mystery. And "mystery" means that language can only point at, and never adequately name, what is is that we want. What Lorca's poetry tells us is that none of us can say what we want, and none of us would be happy if we attained it. (From the Introduction, p. i) |
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editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
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| Posted: Mon Mar 24, 2008 10:39 am Post subject: |
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From the Ultimate High-Stakes Gamble:
The Easter Story
The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Hardcover
Edited by someone or two at Bulfinch Press
View the cover art, Perugino's Crucifixion with the Virgin,
Saint John, Saint Jerome and Saint Mary Magdalene
| Quote: | Amoretti
Sonnet lxviii
By Edmund Spenser
Most glorious Lord of life, that on this day,
didst make thy triumph over death and sin:
and having harrowed hell, didst bring away,
captivity thence captive us to win.
This joyous day, dear Lord, with joy begin,
and grant that we for whom thou diddest dye
being with thy deareblood clean washed from sin,
may live for ever in felicity.
And that thy love we weighing worthily,
may likewise louv thee for the same again:
and for thy sake that all like deare didst buy,
with love may one another entertaine.
So let us love, deare love, like as we ought,
love is the lesson which the Lord us taught.
And when the day of
Pentacost was fully come,
they were all with one accord
in one place. And suddenly
there came a sound from
heaven as of a rushing mighty
wind, and it filled all the
house where they were sitting.
And there appeared
unto them cloven tongues like
as of fire, and it sat upon
each of them. And they were
all filled with the Holy Ghost
and began to speak with other
tongues, as the Spirit gave
them utterance.
Acts 2:1-4
Adjacent to Domenico Campagnola's The Descent of the Holy Spirit, 1518, Engraving, 7 3/8 x 6 7/8", pgs. 56-57 |
Magnificent reproductions of some of the world's greatest art treasures lovingly placed alongside western culture's greatest poetic tributes to the triumphant Easter metaphor. Strangely priced at a penny, making poetry and art the best values of contemporary life.
Link to this entry
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editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
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| Posted: Thu Apr 03, 2008 12:07 pm Post subject: |
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From Hosers, eh?
Songs for Reliquishing the Earth
Paperback
By Jan Zwicky
| Quote: | Bill Evans: Alone
Sound that makes night fall around it
like the glow from a reading lamp.
Rain on the roof, straight down.
The name of your name
spoken without another's.
Rubato is a hand
you thought indifferent
laid, briefest of moments,
on your sleeve.
It walks away, then,
that sound, without looking back.
Lights up a Lucky. Says
we hadn't the ghost of a chance, says never
let me go. |
A good one for music lovers!
| Quote: | Alone
Audio CD
Featuring jazz piano legend Bill Evans
A classic!
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Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=3697#3697
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editor
Site Admin
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Posts: 2940
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| Posted: Mon May 19, 2008 1:31 pm Post subject: |
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Discovery
Hardcover
By 1987 Nobel Prize winner
Ио́сиф Алекса́ндрович Бро́дский
Joseph Brodsky
Pictures by Vladimir Radunsky
| Quote: | In the beginning there were just waves
hammering at the obstacles.
The stars were starring to constant raves
but had no Oscars.
The clouds would go a bit further and
frequently act impertinent,
which was self-destructive, and downpours meant
obscurity to the continent.
America first was discovered by fish
But, far from being eternal
and often making a tasty dish,
fish normally keep no journal.
Then birds discovered America, too -
the screeching seagulls and petrels.
Yet they were just pilgrims, and very few
of them evolved into settlers.
So for millions of years or - as some insist -
longer, Nature played prudent:
on one hand, America would exist;
on the other, it wouldn't.
Still, this bothered America little, since
it knew no public mention.
When you are a continent, you don't mince
words and don't crave attention.
So then Nature sat down and picked up her pen
to make what fish and seagull
saw a reality: off sailed men
and made America legal.
They stepped ashore and they rode across
this land of milk and honey,
and they settled it with their many laws,
their cities, their farms, their money.
Now America has all its maps and charts:
they would fill up your barn and cupboard.
But do you believe in your heart of hearts
that America was discovered?
Don't you think that this land still has a few
secrets? That, huge and silent,
it waits for their being discovered by you,
since Nature is out on assignment? |
Link to this entry
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editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
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| Posted: Thu May 29, 2008 10:55 am Post subject: |
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Screams from the Balcony
Selected Letters 1960-1970
Paperback
By an old friend, Charles Bukowski
Edited by Seamus Cooney
| Quote: | [To Tom McNamara]
May sicks, 1965
writers are a sick-head lot, a gathering of neon-light tasters, spitting out their words, their absurdities, their bile, their orange-juice blood. we are down in submarines; we don't know; a nervous nasty lot...
I'd rather sleep for 3 or 4 days than do anything, so what happens? I can't sleep at all. I worry about motor tuneups and the death of sparrows. and all the women walking around and me not fucking them. then, sometimes I think I am too much topsoil, I want to get under, forget the toteboard and gambol with the worms (later, I know), so the other night I am wandering around at 4 in the morning and I pick up something by a Chinaman, 300 or 200 B.C., a couple of centuries after Confucious, and here's this guy running around giving the word to Dukes and State Ministers and Kings, but it doesn't reach me, I don't have any armies or loyal subjects or disloyal subjects, only a matter of keeping myself alive another 15 or 20 years if I feel like it. more wasted time. now I've got a pain under the collarbone; I've been going a pack and a half but my pecker is hard when I awaken the few times I've slept. I am angry with white Spanish walls and sound of tires on pavement. no, I don't read much anymore - Dunleavy, anybody. it's a matter of the juices saying no, no, no. no. there's simply no intake. if I power it down against the grain I am deader than I am now and that wd. be some horrible thing, ah.
I hear Lyle Stuart is going to charge $7.50 for Crucifix in a Deathhand, my new book of poems. It has expensive paper, format, plates of artwork and so on, but I can't see anybody paing $7.50 for a book of poems, and he has 3,000 books of poems, and so I guess he's going to have to stack them wall to wall and forget it. most of the people, I think, who might go my poems, most of them don't even have $7.50 and if they did they'd prob. buy something to drink. well, I write the stuff and what they do with it is theirs. the paper is supposed to last 800 years or 1800 years I forget which and I don't know, except one bomb or bad poetry will take care of all that. ... (-- pgs. 151-152) |
Crucifix in a Deathhand
New Poems 1963-1965
By Charles Bukowski
and New Orleans artist Noel Rockmore
Link to this entry
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editor
Site Admin
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Posts: 2940
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| Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2008 1:22 pm Post subject: |
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Homage to Robert Frost
Hardcover
By Joseph Brodsky Ио́сиф Алекса́ндрович Бро́дский,
Seamus Heaney and
Derek Walcott
| Quote: | ... Tragedy, as you know, is always a fait accompli, whereas terror always has to do with anticipation, with man's recognition of his own negative potential - with his sense of what he is capable of. And it is the latter that was Frost's forte, not the former. In other words, his posture is radically different from the Continental tradition of the poet as tragic hero. And that difference alone makes him - for want of a better term - American.
On the surface, he looks very positively predisposed toward his surroundings - particularly toward nature. His fluency, indeed, his "being versed in country things" alone can produce this impression. However,k there is a difference between the way a European perceives nature and the way an American does. Addressing this difference, W.H. Auden, in his short essay on the poet), suggests something to the effect that when a European conceives of confronting nature, he walks out of his cottage or a little inn, filled with either friends or family, and goes for an evening stroll. If he encounters a tree, it's a tree made familiar by history, to which it's been a witness. This or that king sat underneath it, layhing down this or that law - something of that sort. A tree stabds there rustling, as it were, with allusions. Pleased and somewhat pensive, our man, refreshed but unchanged by that encounter, returns to his inn or cottage, finds his friends or family absolutely intact, and proceeds to have a good, merry time. Whereas when an American walks out of his house and encounters a tree it is a meeting of equals. Man and tree face each other in their respective primal power, free of references: neither has a past, and as to whose future is greater, it is a toss-up. Basically, it's epidermis meeting bark. Our man returns to his cabin in a state of bewilderment, to say the least, if not in actual shock or terror.
Now, this is obviously a romantic caricature, but it accentuates the features, and that's what I am after here. In any case, the second point could be safely billed as the gist of Robert Frost's nature poetry. Nature for this poet is neither friend nor fore, nor is it the backdrop for human drama; it is the poet's terrifying self-portrait. ... (On Grief and Reason, by Joseph Brodsky, pgs. 7-9) |
Literary heavyweights converge on one of America's best-loved poet laureates. The student's best guide to writing an essay on an individual poet or poem.
Do you agree?
| Quote: | COME IN
As I came to the edge of the woods,
Thrush music--- hark!
Now if it was dark outside,
Inside it was dark.
Too dark in the woods for a bird
By sleight of wing
To better its perch for the night,
Though it still could sing.
The last of the light of the sun
That had died in the west
Still lived for one song more
In a thrush's breast.
Far in the pillared dark
Thrush music went--
Almost like a call to come in
To the dark and lament.
But no, I was out for stars:
I would not come in.
I meant not even if asked,
And I hadn't been.
(-- p. 9) |
| Quote: | The Poetry of Robert Frost
Audio Cassette
Narrated by Various Artists, including
popular U.S. actors Elliot Gould and Alfre Woodard,
both of whom enjoy the gift of good diction.
|
| Quote: | | All questions and comments gratefully received and posted. Send them to legal@pokerpulse.com. |
Link to this entry
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