| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
 Posted: Thu Jun 18, 2009 9:54 am Post subject: |
 |
|
From Omens and Lucky Charms:
District and Circle
Hardcover
By Seamus Heaney
| Quote: | Anything Can Happen
after Horace, Odes, I, 34
Anything can happen. You know how Jupiter
Will mostly wait for clouds to gather head
Before he hurls the lightning? Well, just now
He galloped his thunder cart and his horses
Across a clear blue sky. It shook the earth
And the clogged underearth, the River Styx,
The winding streams, the Atlantic shore itself.
Anything can happen, the tallest towers
Be overturned, those in high places daunted,
Those overlooked regarded. Stropped-beak Fortune
Swoops, making the air gasp, tearing the crest off one,
Setting it down bleeding on the next.
Ground gives. The heaven's weight
Lifts up off Atlas like a kettle-lid.
Capstones shift, nothing resettles right.
Telluric ash and fire-spores boil away.
(-- p. 13)
|
Recommended books on Sirius Radio's excellent Celtic Crush Playlist, May, 2009:
| Quote: | Five Points - Tyler Anbinder
Michael Collins : a biography by Tim Pat Coogan, 1990. ISBN 0-09-968580-9.
Eamonn DeValera: a biography by Tim Pat Coogan
The IRA or The Troubles by Tim Pat Coogan
(Any of these four books will give you a good background to the history of Ireland - in a fairly detailed but readable manner - over the last 100 years)
The Great Hunger by Cecil Woodham-Smith is a dispassionate but striking book on the Potato Famine of 1845-47 that caused so many Irish to emigrate to the US.
Ten Men Dead - The Story of the 1981 Hunger Strike - David Beresford. This is essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand modern Irish history.
Tarry Flynn or The Green Fool - Patrick Kavanagh He is better known as a poet and do check out his poetry. But these two small books contain a wealth of information of what it was like to grow up in rural Ireland of the last century.
Country Girls Trilogy - Edna O'Brien. Three wonderful books written by a great writer and a rebel in the soul. Ms. O'Brien is as readable as she is profound.
100 Favorite Irish Poems I love this site and perhaps it will lead you to full works of the poets represented therein.)
http://www.robotwisdom.com/jaj/100poems.html
The Commitments, The Van or pretty much any book by Roddy Doyle. Easy to read, lots of fun but will also introduce you to the complexities of modern Ireland.
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man or Dubliners - James Joyce. These are two excellent and slim books to get a feel for Sunny Jim's work before you make the life decision to tackle Ulysses. Don't despair if you find yourself bogged down in this greatest of novels; it's happened to us all. Just have a drink, pop open any page and begin to read aloud. But whatever you do, don't miss Molly Bloom's closing soliloquy. It's one of the wonders of literature - and more than that in a way that words fail to do justice.
The Secret Scripture or any novel or play by Sebastian Barry. A very modern writer who delves into the past. Barry is true poet who uses beautiful language and creates unforgettable characters that leave a mark on you.
Astrakhan Cloak - Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill or any collection of her poetry. An earthy, yet spiritual, look into the soul of a powerful Irish woman.
Collected Stories - Frank O'Connor. A very readable writer with a remarkable insight into the Irish soul. Also try his biography of Michael Collins, The Big Fellah, should Coogan's be unavailable or too bloody dauntingly long.
Station Island or any collection of poems by Seamus Heaney
Horse Latitudes or any collection of poems by Paul Muldoon
Any collection of short stories by William Trevor
Borstal Boy - Brendan Behan
Amongst Women or The Dark - John McGahern
Year of the French - Thomas Flanagan
Star of the Sea - Joseph O'Connor
At Swim Two Birds or The Poor Mouth - Flann O'Brien
Strumpet City - James Plunkett
How Many Miles to Babylon - Jennifer Johnston
Book of Evidence - John Banville
Banished Children of Eve - Peter Quinn
The Gathering - Anne Enright
The Year of the French - Thomas Flanagan
Green Suede Shoes - Larry Kirwan (I hesitate to recommend one of my own books but this will give you a sense of Wexford, a special town that you may choose to visit in the first chapters. It will also provide you with a relatively dry-eyed look at a life in the music business of the last 30 or more years)
Receive the monthly Celtic Crush playlist by writing to the PokerPulse gamblers' pal, program host Larry Kirwan of the band, Black 47, at blk47@aol.com. Listen to the show Saturday mornings 9-12 noon on Sirius Satellite Radio, Channel 18 The Spectrum.
|
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=4404#4404 |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Thu Jul 30, 2009 11:43 am Post subject: |
|
|
From Loaded Dice:
The New Yorker
Magazine Subscription
July 6 & 13/09
| Quote: | A Dream
In a deserted place in Iran there is a not very tall stone tower that
has neither door nor window. In the only room (with a dirt floor
and shaped like a circle) there is a wooden table and a bench. In that
circular cell, a man who looks like me is writing in letters I cannot
understand a long poem about a man who in another circular cell is
writing a poem about a man who in another circular cell...The process
never ends and no one will be able to read what the prioners write.
-- Jorge Luis Borges
(Translated from the Spanish by Jill Levine)
(-- p. 82) |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=4441#4441 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Mon Aug 03, 2009 1:00 pm Post subject: |
|
|
From the Fighting Irish:
Voices & Poetry of Ireland
Hardcover
A Collection of Ireland's Best-Loved Poetry with Readings by Maeve Binchy, Bono, Pierce Brosnan, Gabriel Byrne, Colin Farrell, Bob Geldof and Many More
With Audio CD
| Quote: | Death of an Irishwoman
By Michael Hartnett Mícheál Ó hAirtneada
Read by Theo Dorgan
Ignorant, in the sense
she ate monotonous food
and thought the world was flat,
and pagan, in the sense
she knew the things that moved
at night were niether dogs nor cats
but púcas and darkfaced men,
she nevertheless had fierce pride.
But sentenced in the end
to eat thin diminishing porridge
in a stone-cold kitchen
she clenched her brittle hands around a world
she could not understand.
I loved her from the day she died.
She was a summer dance at the crossroads.
She was a card game where a nose was broken.
She was a song that nobody sings.
She was a house ransacked by soldiers.
She was a language seldom spoken.
She was a child's purse, full of useless things.
(-- p. 81) |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=4453#4453 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Mon Aug 03, 2009 3:10 pm Post subject: |
|
|
From Losing Streak:
Some Irish Loving
A Selection
By Edna O'Brien
Paperback
| Quote: | Donal Oge: Grief of a Girl's Heart
By Augusta Gregory
O Donal Oge, if you go across the sea,
Bring myself with you and do not forget it;
And you will have a sweetheart for fair days and market days,
And the daughter of the King of Greece beside you at night.
It is late last night the dog was speaking of you;
The snipe was speaking of you in her deep marsh.
It is you are the lonely bird through the woods;
And that you may be without a mate until you find me.
You promised me, and you said a lie to me,
That you would be before me where the sheep are flocked;
I gave a whistle and three hundred cries to you,
And I found nothing there but a bleating lamb.
You promised me a thing that was hard for you,
A ship of gold under a silver mast;
Twelve towns with a market in all of them,
And a fine white court by the side of the sea.
You promised me a thing that is not possible,
That you would give me gloves of the skin of a fish;
That you would give me shoes of the skin of a bird;
And a suit of the dearest in Ireland.
O Donal Oge, it is I would be better to you
Than a high, proud, spendthrift lady:
I would milk the cow; I would bring help to you;
And if you were hard pressed, I would strike a blow for you.
O, ochone, and it's not with hunger
Or with wanting food, or drink, or sleep,
That I am growing thin, and my life is shortened;
But it is the love of a young man has withered me away.
It is early in the morning that I saw him coming,
Going along the road on the back of a horse;
He did not come to me; he made nothing of me;
And it is on my way home that I cried my fill.
When i go by myself to the Well of Loneliness,
I sit down and I go through my trouble;
When I see the world and do not see my boyt,
He that has an amber shade in his hair.
It was on that Sunday I gave my love to you;
The Sunday that is last before Easter Sunday.
And myself on my knees reading the Passion;
And my two eyes giving love to you fore ever.
O, aya! my mother, give myself to him;
And give him all that have in the world;
Get out yourself to ask for alms,
And do not come back and forward looking for me.
My mother said to me not to be talking with you, to-day,
Or to-morrow, or on Sunday;
It was a bad time she took for telling me that;
It was shutting the door after the house was robbed.
My heart is as black as the blackness of the sloe,
Or as the black coal that is on the smith's forge;
Or as the sole of a shoe left in white halls;
It was you put that darkness over my life.
You have taken the east from me; you have taken the west from me,
You have taken what is before me and what is behind me;
You have taken the moon, you have taken the sun from me,
And my fear is great that you have taken God from me!
(From the section entitled, The Female, pgs. 187-189) |
Listen:
Ramble Away
Al O'Donnell
2 Audio CDs
Featuring Donal Og
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=4457#4457 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Sat Sep 05, 2009 2:43 pm Post subject: |
|
|
From Loaded Dice:
Essential Pleasures
A New Anthology of Poems to Read Aloud
Hardcover
Edited by Robert Pinsky
CD included
| Quote: | Dickhead
By Michael Ryan
A man who’s trying to be a good man
but isn’t, because he can’t not take
whatever’s said to him as judgement.
It causes him, as he puts it, to react.
His face and neck redden and bloat,
a thick blue vein bulges up his forehead
and bisects his bald pate, scaring his children
but provoking hilarity at work
where one guy likes to get his goat
by pasting pro-choice bumper stickers
on his computer screen while he’s in the john,
then gathers a group into the next cubicle
to watch when he comes back.
He has talked to his minister and to his wife
about learning how not to react,
to make a joke, and he has tried to make jokes,
but his voice gets tense, they come out flat,
so even his joke becomes a joke at his expense,
another thing to laugh at him about.
He has thought to turn to them and ask,
Why don’t you like me? What have I done to you?
But he has been told already all his life:
self-righteous goody two-shoes, a stick up your ass.
They are right. He has never never never gotten along.
He says nothing this time, just peels off the bumper sticker,
crumples it gently, places it gently
by his mousepad to dispose of later properly,
comparing his suffering to Christ’s in Gethsemane
spat upon and mocked (his minister’s advice),
and tries a smile that twists into a grimace,
which starts the hot blood rising into his face.
This is what they came for, to see Dickhead,
the bulging vein, the skull stoplight red,
and indeed it is remarkable how gorged it gets
as if his torso had become a helium pump,
so, except for him whose eyes are shut tight,
they burst into laughter together exactly at the moment
cruelty turns into astonishment.
(-- pgs. 296-297) |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=4550#4550 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Tue Sep 22, 2009 10:39 am Post subject: |
|
|
From the Will to Win:
Tadeusz Borowski
Selected Poems
Hardcover
Translated by Tadeusz Pióro with Larry Rafferty & Meryl Natchez
Introduction by Stanislaw Barańczak
| Quote: | The Interrogation
for Wiket Piatkowski
They beat him all day, and the next. Nothing doing.
They beat him 'round the D, banged his head on the table.
"Say just one sentence! Just one word!"
They showed him his passport, foreign visas,
books and secret documents from the lining of his suitcase,
but then when they showed him his English tommy gun
he said, "take away the tablecloth, I'm going to throw up."
That's all he said. He was black and blue.
They took him to Majdanek, locked him behind the wire.
At night he cut the wire, escaped right under the sentries' eyes.
What use is glory if this memory dies?
Badanie
Witkowi Piatkowskienu
Bili dzien, bili drugi, nie idzie,
bili przez cala dobe. Tak wi kolko - przez tydzien.
,,Mow, mow - krzyczeli - przeciez wiemy wszytko!
Snamy twoj pseudonim! I twoje nazwisko!"
Pokazywali dowod, tlukli o stol glowaj:
,,Powiedz choc jedno zdanie! Chociaz jedno slowo!"
Pokazywali paszport, zagraniczne wizy,
ksizki, tajne instrukcje wyprute z walizy,
ksiazki, tajne instrukcje wyprute z walizy,
az gdy mu pokazali angielski Tumigan,
rzekl: "Wezcie obrus ze stolu. Zaraz bede rzygal."
I wiecej nie rzekl nic, cialo mial sine.
Zawiezli na Majdanek i zamkneli w drucie.
Przecial druty, na oczach warty noca uciekl.
Coz jest slawa, jezeli taka slawa ginie?
(-- pgs. 36-37) |
| Quote: | Friends
All my friends,
damn it,
knew how to live in the damp cells
of Pawiak.
All my friends,
the fools,
refused blindfolds
at the post.
All my friends,
the asses,
already have grass
on their graves.
All my friends,
all mad ...
Write the poem, hold the tears.
Nothing more.
Przyjaciele
Wszyscy moi przyjaciele,
mac taka,
syc umieli w mokrej celi
Pawiaka.
Wszyscy moi przyjaciele,
ze glupi,
ocz nie dali sobie wiazac
pod slupem.
Wszyscy moi przyjaciele,
ze osly,
juz na grobach im zielen
wyrosla.
Wsyscy moi prozyjaaciele
szalency.
Wiersz napisac, lzy powstrzymac.
Nic wiecej.
(-- pgs. 52-53) |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=4585#4585 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Tue Sep 22, 2009 12:47 pm Post subject: |
|
|
From Gambling Polska:
Monologue of A Dog
Hardcover
By Wislawa Szymborska
Translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanagh and
Stanislaw Baranczak
| Quote: | A Contribution to Statistics
Out of a hundred people
those who always know better
- fifty-two,
doubting every step
- nearly all the rest,
glad to lend a hand
if it doesn't take too long
- as high as forty-nine,
always good
because they can't be otherwise
- four, well, maybe five,
able to admire without envy
- eighteen,
living in constant fear
of someone or something
- seventy-seven,
capable of happiness
- twenty-something tops,
harmless singly,
savage in crowds
- half at least,
cruel
when forced by circumstances
- better not to know
even ballpark figures,
wise after the fact
- just a couple more
than wise before it,
taking only things from life
- forty
(I wish I were wrong)
hunched in pain,
no flashlight in the dark
- eighty-three
sooner or later,
worthy of compassion
- ninety-nine,
mortal
- a hundred out of a hundred.
Thus far this figure remains unchanged.
(-- pgs. 61-63) |
Yes, and get this:
| Quote: | | Most impressive is how Szymborska's poetry manages to be plainspoken and mysterious at the same time. There is no trace of gratuitous obscurity here, where the poet uses language to hide from the reader. Szymborska knows when to be clear and when to be mysterious. She knows which cards to turn over and which ones to leave facedown. Her simple, relaxed language dares to let us know exactly what she is thinking, and because her imagination is so lively and far-reaching - acrobatic, really - we are led, almost unaware, into the intriguing and untranslatable realms that lie just beyond the boundaries of speech. Her poem Stage Fright announces that "Prose can hold anything including poetry, / but in poetry there's only room for poetry." And that is all there is in this volume - the real thing, nothing but. (From the Foreward by Billy Collins, p. xiv) |
| Quote: | A Note
Life is the only way
to get covered in leaves,
catch your breath on the sand,
rise on wings;
to be a dog,
or stroke its warm fur;
to tell pain
from everything it's not;
to squeeze inside events,
dawdle in views,
to seek the least of all possible mistakes.
An extraordinary chance
to remember for a moment
a conversation held
with the lamp switched off;
and if only once
to stumble on a stone,
end up drenched in one downpour or another,
mislay your keys in the grass;
and to follow a spark on the wind with your eyes;
and to keep on not knowing
something important.
(-- pgs. 79-81) |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=4594#4594 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Tue Sep 22, 2009 1:31 pm Post subject: |
|
|
From Omens and Lucky Charms:
Zbigniew Herbert
Elegy for the Departure
and other poems
Hardcover
Translated from the Polish by John and Bogdana Carpenter
| Quote: | What Our Dead Do
Jan came this morning
- I dreamt of my father
he says
he was riding in an oak coffin
I walked next to the hearse
and father turned to me:
you dressed me nicely
and the funeral is very beautiful
at this time of year so many flowers
it must have cost a lot
don't worry about it father
- I say - let people see
we loved you
that we spared nothing
six men in black livery
walk nicely at our sides
father thought for a while
and said - the key to the desk
is in the silver inkwell
there is still some money
in the second drawer on the left
with this money - I say -
we will buy you a gravestone
a large one of black marble
it isn't necessary - says father -
better give it to the poor
six men in black livery
walk nicely at our sides
they carry burning lanterns
again he seemed to be thinking
- take care of the flowers in the garden
cover them for the winter
I don't want them to be wasted
you are the oldest - he says -
from a little felt bag behind the painting
take out the cuff links with real pearls
let them bring you luck
my mother gave them to me
when I finished high school
then he didn't say anything
he must have entered a deeper sleep
this is how our dead
look after us
they warn us through dreams
bring back lost money
hunt for jobs
whisper the numbers of lottery tickets
or when they can't do this
knock with their fingers on the windows
and out of gratitude
we imagine immortality for them
snug as the burrow of a mouse
(-- pgs. 29-31) |
| Quote: | Song of the Drum
The shepherds' flutes have gone
the gold of Sunday trumpets
green echoes French horns
and violins have departed as well -
only the drum remained
and the drum continues to play for us
festive marches funeral marches
simple feelings walk
to a beat on stiff legs
the drummer plays
and thought is one and one is the word
when the drum summons the steep abyss
we carry wheat sheaves or a tombstone
whatever the wise drum foretells
when the step strikes the pavement's skin
our step so proud that shall transform the world
to a single march a single shout
at last all men are walking
at last each one has fallen into step
a calfskin and two sticks
have broken towers and solitude
and silence is tranpled
and death does not frighten when we are a crowd
above the parade a column of dust
the obedient sea will part
we'll descend to tis depths
to empty hells and also higher up
we'll check the fairness of heaven
and free from fear
the whole parade will change to sand
carried by a jeering wind
so the last echo will pass
over the rebellious mildew of the earth
leaving just the drum the drum
dictator of defeated music
(-- pgs. 36-37) |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=4596#4596 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Tue Sep 29, 2009 7:59 am Post subject: |
|
|
From Hosers, eh?
Men in the Off Hours
Paperback
By Griffin Poetry Prize Winner 2001 Anne Carson
| Quote: | IV. GUERRE
Take notes with your eyes, he advises. War is clear and intricate.
Lev watched a shell fall
near a boy and girl
playing horse in the street.
Boy and girl hold their arms about one another and fall down together.
Gambling wildly that night at the officers' club, Lev loses
his ancestral home
whose central section,
with balconies and staircases,
has to be rebuilt on the property of its new owner
a few towns away.
Back from the war, Lev announces Emancipation to his serfs
who craftily
reject the plan.
The two remaining sections of his house,
now connected by empty space and a string of bushes,
have a raw feel.
Riding back at evening to his very quiet house, he smells spring in the lime trees, he is alone.
(-- p. 78) |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=4622#4622
Last edited by editor on Tue Sep 29, 2009 9:17 am; edited 1 time in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Tue Sep 29, 2009 9:17 am Post subject: |
|
|
From Hosers, eh?
Inventing the Hawk
Paperback
By Saskatchewan songbird Lorna Crozier
| Quote: | Gardens
Moving away from winter, he retires
to the coast, westering, mile zero,
land's end. And what of a garden
I ask? Is there room for that?
Yes, but of a different kind
from the ones he remembers,
the sweet peas his mother planted,
her hands pale spiders in the earth,
the cabbage and potatoes, the anemone
of dill, the rows of beans and beans.
On the coast the soil is thin, a linen
napkin over stones. There, he says,
he'll grow different things, some basil, a little thyme. He plants the seeds already
in his mind, no fear of frost,
the summer's long, herbs grow
on stony constellations, air
moves in from the sea with its smells
of eternity. Back where he was born
his mother now would be soaking seeds
in a shallow bowl, snow outside the window.
He'd give anything to be there.
crossing time as if it were
a landscape he had dreamed, a garden
large enough to hold desire. She
spreads the packages of seeds
like a deck of cards on the kitchen table,
a royal flush, a winning hand.
She lets him rearrange the rows,
placing peas by broccoli,
carrots by tomatoes, marigolds
along the border. On the coast
he says the names out loud:
Early Bird. Sweet William. Everlasting.
He can see the sun breaking up
the clouds, pools of light
along the window sill, the oilcloth
his mother wipes and wipes,
setting supper plates for people
he'll never see again,
he and she in another time, waiting
for the earth to tilt.
(-- pgs. 117-118) |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=4625#4625 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Tue Oct 27, 2009 10:21 am Post subject: |
|
|
From the Horses:
I'm a Stranger Here Myself
Hardcover
By Ogden Nash
| Quote: | O, racing is a ruinous sport,
The race track is an ill resort,
My waxing poverty I owe to it,
I often wonder why I go to it;
I hate the horses I have bet on,
I hate the horses my heart is set on;
Some are outsiders, some are sure things,
But if mine own, are ever poor things.
I hate the hunches, I hate the dope,
I hate the fear, I hate the hope,
I hate the blinkers, I hate the wrappers,
I hate the trainers and handicappers,
I hate the dust, I hate the mud,
I hate the pulsation of sporting blood,
I hate the jumps, I hate the flat,
And the red-hot tips from the stable cat,
The silly saddles, the foolish stirrups,
And the hang-arounders' cheerful chirrups,
The inhuman machines and human bookies,
And the plungers with faces like man-eating cookies,
The rattle and drum of the pounding hoof,
The triumphant shout that rocks the roof.
I hate my horse to be out in front
Lest he should wilt beneath the brunt;
I hate to see my horse behind,
Let he be trapped in a pocket blind,
And when my horse is in the center,
The hooks I hang upon are tenter,
And oh, the microphones that retch
And tell you who's leading in the stretch!
Into your helpless ear they quack
Who's moving up, who's falling back,
Your fingers would find their gullets, if
From tearing up tickets they eren't so stiff.
I mean it when I feelingly state
That racing is my bitterest hate.
But of all emotions within the breast,
Hate is by far the ugli-est.
To ugly hate I will not yield,
But bet five dollars on the field.
(From stanza II of Hark! Hark! The Pari-Mutuels Bark! at pgs. 240)-241 |
Editor Biblitz on Nash:
| Quote: | A swank Yank
who drank a tank,
filled a bank then
quietly sank
from view.
|
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=4680#4680 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
FAQ 
Search 
Memberlist 
Usergroups
Profile 
Log in to check your private messages 
Log in 
