No problem, suze...frustration is something I'm familiar with...at my place of work I teach 'newhires' all the time. Since it's a dangerous place to be careless in, you can understand why. 

You know I love Dewdney's poems...I've posted some here before. He tends to get a bit...er...romantic at times, but I love the way his work is so relevant to my experience.

His writing is about the people I know and the places I've lived.

Knowing him personally is also a boost...lol.

Mac  

i liked the poem.

 

i'll add it when i have the energy to continue thru this thread.

 

:-(

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

added Maya for ScorpianaX.

this here is a very loose & casual thang.  The Poet's Poet, i.e.

 

you can keep adding to the thread.  post a poem with the poet, please. (long pause.)

i probably won't get to it, but hey i got the thread linked up on the new page!

 

i also want to start another Intuitions thread soon on the Collaborations Board.

 

& while yer waitin' --- write a poem.

susan

 

here is one for ya, suse.  This being baseball season and all, I thought this might be appropriate... bear

 

Baseball Canto

Watching baseball, sitting in the sun, eating popcorn, reading Ezra Pound, and wishing that Juan Marichal would hit a hole right through the Anglo-Saxon tradition in the first Canto and demolish the barbarian invaders. When the San Francisco Giants take the field and everybody stands up for the National Anthem, with some Irish tenor's voice piped over the loudspeakers, with all the players struck dead in their places and the white umpires like Irish cops in their black suits and little black caps pressed over their hearts, Standing straight and still like at some funeral of a blarney bartender, and all facing east, as if expecting some Great White Hope or the Founding Fathers to appear on the horizon like 1066 or 1776. But Willie Mays appears instead, in the bottom of the first, and a roar goes up as he clouts the first one into the sun and takes off, like a footrunner from Thebes. The ball is lost in the sun and maidens wail after him as he keeps running through the Anglo-Saxon epic. And Tito Fuentes comes up looking like a bullfighter in his tight pants and small pointy shoes. And the right field bleechers go made with Chicanos and blacks and Brooklyn beer-drinkers, "Tito! Sock it to him, sweet Tito!" And sweet Tito puts his foot in the bucket and smacks one that don't come back at all, and flees around the bases like he's escaping from the United Fruit Company. As the gringo dollar beats out the pound. And sweet Tito beats it out like he's beating out usury, not to mention fascism and anti-semitism. And Juan Marichal comes up, and the Chicano bleechers go loco again, as Juan belts the first ball out of sight, and rounds first and keeps going and rounds second and rounds third, and keeps going and hits paydirt to the roars of the grungy populace. As some nut presses the backstage panic button for the tape-recorded National Anthem again, to save the situation. But it don't stop nobody this time, in their revolution round the loaded white bases, in this last of the great Anglo-Saxon epics, in the territorio libre of Baseball. Lawrence Ferlinghetti

thanks bear -

afraid my time is limited tonight. so if i

bump

it up, i'll be sure to return.

 

s.

ha  it might be a little dated,

but Ezra would be a proud papa of this parody.

 

thanks, bear.

susan

This thread has been around a very long time. it made for fun reading, and i want to add a poet: Billy Collins. I saw him speak, and now can't read his work without hearing that voice. You might say i should have heard it in the words alone, and i did, but that was a voice somehow tinged with my own.

 

 

 

Litany    
by Billy Collins 

 
You are the bread and the knife,
The crystal goblet and the wine...
—Jacques Crickillon

 

You are the bread and the knife,
the crystal goblet and the wine.
You are the dew on the morning grass
and the burning wheel of the sun.
You are the white apron of the baker,
and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.

 

However, you are not the wind in the orchard,
the plums on the counter,
or the house of cards.
And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.
There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air.

 

It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,
maybe even the pigeon on the general's head,
but you are not even close
to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.

 

And a quick look in the mirror will show
that you are neither the boots in the corner
nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.

 

It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am the sound of rain on the roof.

 

I also happen to be the shooting star,
the evening paper blowing down an alley
and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.

 

I am also the moon in the trees
and the blind woman's tea cup.
But don't worry, I'm not the bread and the knife.

 

You are still the bread and the knife.
You will always be the bread and the knife,
not to mention the crystal goblet and—somehow—the wine
 

"Litany", copyright 2002 by Billy Collins, from Nine Horses by Billy Collins

i heard him read a couple of times too.

walked along with him across the brooklyn bridge a little ways,

when i still went on those Poetry Walks.

he is very funny too.

 

somehow this one is awfully familiar.

it may be one i heard him read.  not sure.  may be a similiar one.

 

by way of introduction (after the Walk) --

he said, 'i wonder what it would be like to go to an Open Mic during Dante's time.

i can see Dante getting up to the mic and saying, i have 3 poems i'd like to read.'

 

it cracked me up.  unfortunately i was one of maybe 2 people who did laugh.

as a reminder, it was a poetry walk.

it was his wry humor that came across so clearly in his reading, and which i can now more easily access in his poems.

 

he also seemed so tired; it must be exhausting to always be looking for the right words to express what you see.

it must be exhausting going on a book tour to promote your book most likely.

Grayling, I was fortunate to attend one of his readings as well. I agree. His delivery was perfect. While I had appreciated the wit previously, what he brought to the reading was a whole 'nother dimension to the humor. Humor in four dimensions.

 

It is only difficult to find the words when you know that what you see is not what everyone else is seeing. We can only know what we have words for. But sometimes the words we know are not of the same language.

 

m

great poem.

i can see why you picked this writer.

the translator ain't too shabby either.

 

thanks for this, pds.

i've heard of this poet, but can't recall if i've read anything by him.

i'll come across it if i have.

but the translator is new to me, and a welcome introduction it is.

 

s.