(no subject)

[nny]

It's been a while since I've posted, I just noticed. Not a while in anyone else's terms, perhaps, but in mine? Yep. I'm still alive, and I'm feeling better about life- I've organised a loan from my parents, to be paid back as and when I can afford it, so it looks like I can survive this. That's a good thing.

I'm going back to Cardiff tomorrow, which I'm really looking forward to- there's only so much of my family I can take- but I'm gonna have to scour the charity shops in the local area to see if I can find a cheap (veryveryverycheap) bookshelf of some description because I'm positively laden and already I have no room. I also got a cute journal from my mum with books all over it. Now, see, I have a feeling that like the makeup and the hair stuff, this is a hint. She wants me to spend less time online and keep a PHYSICAL journal.

This is never going to happen.

So instead I'm gonna keep a book diary of the year, noting what I've read, whether it was any good, and any quotes I wanted to keep hold of. So far it only has one book in there, which is pretty pathetic for the sixth day of the new year, but in my defense I've read three books-worth out of four in a condensed Sherlock Holmes book thing, a lot of short stories in another Sherlock book, and I'm part way through the Mauritius Command by Patrick O'Brian. For some reason, although it has flashes of brilliance, it doesn't seem to have captured my attention like the previous books.

Anyway.

Anyone recommend me any good poets? I know I have to investigate Neruda further, I love Eliot and Hughes, and just bought a book of Frost. The kind of thing I'm looking for is modernism, non-flowery. I dislike lengthy odes to flowers, sappy romance, that kind of thing. Um. It's difficult to describe. Just... show me what you like? Please?

Comments

[strange-selkie.livejournal.com]

'Helen in Egypt' by HD, and The Wild Iris by Louise Gluck.

[gaiamyles.livejournal.com]

My two favorites are Edna St. Vincent Millay (http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/ednamillay/) and Edwin Arlington Robinson (http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/robinson/). "Renascence" and "Luke Havergal" are my favorites of the two, respectively.

Sorry, had to comment. :D

[(Anonymous)]

Stevie Smith is good- her poems are a little bit flip, and sound wonderful in ones head, though they're very rarely terribly long.

[genarti]

Rumi! Jalaluddin Rumi! Not modern, but his stuff is gorgeous.

[ashen_key]

"The Mirror", by Sylvia Plath. And those these two are long, I adore the Loreen McKennit versions of The Lady of Shalott and The Highwayman. Don't know why I like those two, possibly because I've always heard them only sung, I don't find them that sappy, even though people die in both of them. Eh.

[friede.livejournal.com]

Hopkins's sprung rhythm anticipates some modern innovations.

Karl Kirchwey, if you can find him over there:

Variations on a Postcard by T. S. Eliot
(Lausanne, December, 1921)

This is a very quiet town,
except when the children come downhill
on scooters over the cobbles.
Mostly banks and chocolate shops.
Good orchestra plays "The Love Nest."
A horse fell down yesterday;
one cannot see the mountains, too foggy.

Not particularly fond of children or mountains,
one feels rather foggy.
The town orchestra played "The Love Nest"
with a splash like horse's blood over cobbles.
Then past the chocolate shops
came banked scooters through the quiet.

The horse's feet were planted in fog,
and the banks, of course, were quiet.
There were scooters outside the chocolate shops.
It is all downhill from the orchestra to the love nest,
I suppose, over cobbles quarried from the mountains.
The children—I forget where they play.

The mountains have the shoulders of a horse.
One can never see the love nest,
but the children have all ended in banks.
The town shines like an orchestra
in tones of chocolate and fog,
or like the quiet cobbles.

Also, Roman Park, Noon (http://slate.msn.com/id/23610/)

[schiarire.livejournal.com]

He's written better, speaking overall. But my God as far as lines that stick in my head go this poem has GOT me. More upon asking? yes.


"Silver Nails"


A MAN was crucified. He came to the city a stranger, was accused, and nailed to a cross. He lingered hanging. Laughed at the crowd. “The nails are iron,” he said, “You are cheap. In my country when we crucify we use silver nails…” So he went jeering. They did not understand him at first. Later they talked about him in changed voices in the saloons, bowling alleys, and churches. It came over them every man is crucified only once in his life and the law of humanity dictates silver nails be used for the job. A statue was erected to him in a public square. Not having gathered his name when he was among them, they wrote him as John Silvernail on the statue.


-- Carl Sandburg

[ajodasso.livejournal.com]

Louise Glück.

[la-moulinette.livejournal.com]

Charles Simic, Stephen Dobyns, Stephane Mallarme, Guillaume Apollinaire, a bunch of other French people but if I named them someone would thwap me over the head with France! and Yehuda Amichai, and also Sherman Alexie.

Hi you!

[chasehunts.livejournal.com]

Don Marquis, archy and mehitabel - still under copyright but there are excerpts online, and I posted my all time favourite on my lj once last year.

Chase

[celtic_maenad]

W. H. Auden - if you've seen 4 Weddings & a Funeral then you know one of his: "Stop all the clocks".

[chains-of-irony.livejournal.com]

Heh, looks like you've got enough recs to last you a while, but have you ever read Milton's Paradise Lost? What with GO-ness, you'll love it for the first two books - the angel's fall from heaven. It is poetry, just epic poetry, like the Iliad.

[randomblade.livejournal.com]

anything by Dorothy Parker

[museofswearing.livejournal.com]

Litany (http://www.plagiarist.com/poetry/?wid=4431), by Billy Collins. LOVE it. He was my highschool graduation speaker.

[tropes.livejournal.com]

I like Sharon Olds and Mark Doty.

[schiarire.livejournal.com]

Hilda Conkling

FOR YOU, MOTHER

I have a dream for you, Mother,
Like a soft thick fringe to hide your eyes.
I have a surprise for you, Mother,
Shaped like a strange butterfly.
I have found a way of thinking
To make you happy;
I have made a song and a poem
All twisted into one.
If I sing, you listen;
If I think, you know.
I have a secret from everybody in the world full of people
But I cannot always remember how it goes;
It is a song
For you, Mother,
With a curl of cloud and a feather of blue
And a mist
Blowing along the sky.
If I sing it some day, under my voice,
Will it make you happy?