Thread: Poem o' the Day

Post a poem for each day, and discuss (one poem per day, posted by whoever gets here first, with some variety of course):

Nov. 22nd

(214) by Emily Dickinson
I taste a liquor never brewed –
From Tankards scooped in Pearl –
Not all the Frankfort Berries
Yield such an Alcohol!

Inebriate of air – am I –
And Debauchee of Dew –
Reeling – thro' endless summer days –
From inns of molten Blue –

When "Landlords" turn the drunken Bee
Out of the Foxglove's door –
When Butterflies – renounce their "drams" –
I shall but drink the more!

Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats –
And Saints – to windows run –
To see the Tippler
Leaning against the – Sun -

Umm, everyone posts a poem everday? Just you? What's goin' on here man? Madness I suppose!

EDIT: Now that makes sense, and to be frank- I love the poem. Never knew Emily Dickensen drank though.

She's a truly inspiring poet.

Personally, I think this poem is more about getting drunk on life/Nature. Hence the first line/stanza. Not that I have any problem with alcohol (well, maybe a slight one), I just don't think that's what she is intoxicated with.

Yah, I see it now- A taste of liquor 'never' brewed-should have really hinted off that she wasn't refering to alcohol as the source of her drunkness. Guess I read too fast. Makes me dizzy as if I'm really drunk though. That's something I wish I could put into my poetry.-Eh, maybe one day.

Nov. 23rd


Pilgrim Fish Heads
by Robert Bly

It is a Pilgrim village; heavy rain is falling.
Fish heads lie smiling at the corners of houses.
Inside, words like "Samson" hang from the rafters.
Outdoors, the chickens squawk in woody hovels,
yet the chickens are walking on Calvinist ground.
The women move through the dark kitchen; their heavy
skirts bear them down like drowning men.
Upstairs, beds are like thunderstorms on the bare floor,
leaving the covers always moist by the rough woods.
And the eggs! Strange, white, perfect eggs!
Eggs that even the rain could not move,
white, painless, with tails even in nightmares.
And the Indian, damp, musky, asking for a bed.
The Mattapoiset is in league with rotting wood;
he has make a conspiracy with the salamander;
he has made treaties with the cold heads of fishes.
In the grave he does not rot, but vanishes into water.
The Indian goes on living in the rain-soaked stumps.
This is our enemy; this is the outcast;
the one from whom we must protect our nation,
the one whose dark hair hides us from the sun.

ehh..can't stand emily dickinson.


but the last one posted was good.

What do you get from the egg segment? I think the subject progression is interesting; chickens to ladies to beds to eggs. White eggs.

Edit: Dickinson has some good stuff, I'll post another on a different day.

well...personally, her stuff to me just seemed un-refined. It makes you feel like there should be more but the other half of it was burned in a fire

Well, for most of her career she wasn't writing for anyone but herself, so I don't think she had any reason to rid her poems of their personal touch. Sort of what I like.

Anyhow, anyone else care to participate by posting today's poem? Eh?

I absolutely love and am inspired by nearly all of Emily's works. I like that she followed basically noone's rules but that of her heart in writing and in doing that she connected with ancient ancient feelings and thoughts that are eternal in a way and she brought them forth to the surface from their sleep to be viewed and meditated upon.

Isn't anyone else going to post a poem, ever?

Nov. 25th

Piano
by DH Lawrence

Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.


In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song
Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong
To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside
And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.


So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour
With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour
Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.

Dec. 13, 2006

Out of Ireland have we come.
Great hatred, little room,
maimed us at the start.
I carry from my mother's womb
a fanatic heart.

W.B. Yeats "Remorse for Intemperate Speech"