Share your feelings on poetry.

[AMDJunkie]

This message shamelessly posted to see if I could trawl AT Forums for any English-minded fellows who'll share their favorite authors or poems and what not. Power of Liberal Arts degrees unite!

 

[SonnyDaze]

Roses are red
Violets are blue
This thread sux
And so do you

 

[George P Burdell]

Roses are red,
violets are blue,
In Soviet Russia,
poem writes you!

 

[Lola]

I love unique, descriptive poetry that is not to sing-songy.
One of my favorites are of course Robert Frost.
I had a few works published a while ago, i miss writing.

 

[George P Burdell]

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams.

-Yeats

 

[Lola]

Originally posted by: George P Burdell
Roses are red,
violets are blue,
In Soviet Russia,
poem writes you!

how very clever!! i laughed at that one!! :laugh:

 

[WildHorse]

I have a couple of Gary Snyder's books. Earth Household. Turtle Island. Left Out in the Rain. Make that 3 not a couple.

You can even sort of make out the titles on them through the dust.

I challenged Shakespear's sonnets but they won.

 

[krunchykrome]

I dont like poetry. It's not my bag baby.

 

[dullard]

Share your feelings on poetry.

Most poetry sucks. At least, what I've been exposed to sucks. The poetry I've seen tends to destroy the English language just to (1) force fit itself into some arbitrary rythmn or (2) force a rhyme when better words exist. The end result is a wonderful story ruined by the bastardisation of the English language.

 

[Chaotic42]

In general, I'm not a fan. I'm not a huge fan of reading fiction, no matter how short, but there are exceptions. I really didn't enjoy having to read giant books of poetry that "history" says is good, but when I ask what is so great out the poems, no one can tell me.

Literature is a nice break from the cold, mathematical rigors of life, though.

 

[pontifex]

Recompense by Robert E. Howard

I have not heard lutes beckon me, nor the brazon bugles call,
But once in the dim of a haunted lea I heard the silence fall.
I have not heard the regal drum, nor seen the flags unfurled,
But I have watched the dragons come, fire-eyed, across the world.

I have not seen the horsemen fall before the hurtling host,
But I have paced a silent hall where each step waked a ghost.
I have not kissed the tiger-feet of a strange-eyed golden god,
But I have walked a city's street where no man else has trod.

I have not raised the canopies that shelter revelling
kings,
But I have fled from crimson eyes and black unearthly wings.
I have not knelt outside the door to kiss a pallid
queen,
But I have seen a ghostly shore that no man else has seen.

I have not seen the standards sweep from keep and castle wall,
But I have seen a woman leap from a dragons's crimson stall,
And I have heard the strange surges boom that no man heard before,
And seen a strange black city loom on a mystic night-black shore.

And I have felt the sudden blow of a nameless wind's cold breath,
And watched the grisly pilgrims go that walked the roads of Death,
And I have seen black valleys gape, abysses in the
gloom,
And I have fought the deathless Ape that guards the Doors of Doom.

I have not seen the face of Pan, nor mocked the Dryad's haste,
But I have trailed a dark-eyed Man across a windy
waste.
I have not died as men may die, nor sinned as man have sinned,
But I have reached a misty sky upon a granite
wind.


Reuben's Brethren by Robert E. Howard

"Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel."

Drain the cup while the ale is bright,
Brief truce to remorse and sorrow!
I drink the health of my friend tonight-
I may cut his throat tomorrow.

Tonight I fling a curse in the cup
For the foe whose lines we sundered-
I may ride in his ranks when the sun comes up
And die for the flag I plundered.

Kisses I drank in the blaze of noon,
At eve may be bitter as scorning-
And I go in the light of a mocking moon
To the woman I cursed this morning.

For deep in my soul the old gods brood-
And I come of a restless breed-
And my heart is blown in each drifting mood
As clouds blow over the mead.


Empire
A Song For All Exiles by Robert E. Howard

Trumpets triumph in red disaster,
White skulls litter the broken sod,
And we who ride for the one Black Master
Howl at the iron gates of God.

Black shapes ride to a reddened revel,
Crimson queens with their hearts of ice-
We have plunged our hands in the wind of the Devil,
Leave the saints to their Paradise.

Becons break and the singers falter,
Lights go out in the rushing gloom-
Slay the priest on the blackened altar,
Rip the babe from the woman's womb!

The black blade drinks and the black heart gladdens;
Summon our kindred up from Hell!
Let me mingle the wine that maddens
With the burning kisses of Jezebel.

Who would trade for a bloodless Heaven,
One fierce harlot's hot caress?
Virtue is one but the Sins be seven-
And Sin is the only goodliness.

Black be the night that locks around them,
They who chant of the Good and Light,
Black be the pinions that shall confound them,
Breaking their brains with a deadly fright.

Praised be the Prince that reigns forever
Throned in the shadows dark and grim,
Where cypress moans by the midnight river-
Lift your goblets and drink to him!

Virgins wail and a babe is whining
Nailed like a fly on a gory lance;
White on the skulls the stars are shining,
Over them sweeps our demon's dance.

Heritage of the world is ours,
Gods of all evil grant us rule-
See where they hang from flaming towers,
Woman and prelate, priest and fool.

Trumpets bray and the stars are riven!
Shatter the altar, blot the light!
Of all the world from the hells to heaven
We are the kings of the world tonight!


Cimmeria by Robert E. Howard

I remember
The dark woods, masking slopes of somber hills;
The grey clouds' leaden everlasting arch;
The dusky streams that flowed without a sound.
And the lone winds that whispered down the passes.

Vista on vista marching, hills on hills,
Slope beyond slope, each dark with sullen trees,
Our gaunt land lay. So when a man climbed up
A rugged peak and gazed, his shaded eye
Saw but the endless vista-hill on hill,
Slope beyond slope, each hooded like its brothers.

It was a gloomy land that seemed to hold
All the winds and clouds and dreams that shun the sun,
With bare boughs rattling in the lonesome winds,
And the dark woodlands brooding over all,
Not even lightened by the rare dim sun
Which made squat shadows out of men; they called it
Cimmeria, land of Darkness and deep Night.

It was so long ago and far away
I have forgot the very name men called me.
The axe and flint-tipped spear are like a dream,
And hunts and wars are shadows. I recall
Only the stillness of that sombre land;
The clouds that piled forever on the hills,
The dimness of the everlasting woods.
Cimmeria, land of Darkness and the Night.


The Bar By The Side Of The Road by Robert E. Howard (one a little less dark)

There are liquorless souls that follow paths
Where whiskey never ran-
Let me live in a bar by the side of the road
And drink form the old beer can.

Let me live in the bar by the side of the road,
When the race of man goes dry,
The men who are "drys" and the men who are "wets,"
(But none who are so "wet" as I.)

I see from my bar by the side of the road,
A land with a drouth accurst;
And men who press on with the ardour of beer,
And men who are faint with thrist.

I know there are bars in Old Mexico,
And schooners of glorious height,
That the booze splashes on through the
long afternoon,
And floods through the gutters of night.

But still I take gin when the travellers take gin
And Scotch with the whiskey man
Nor ever refuse a thirsty soul
A swig from my old beer can.

For why should I praise Prohibiition's restraints,
Or love the revenue man?
Let me live in a bar by the side of the road
And drink from the old beer can!


Surrender by Robert E. Howard
I will rise some day when the day is done
And the stars begin to quiver;
I will follow the road of the setting sun
Till I come to a dreaming river.

I am weary now of the world and vow
Of the winds and the winter weather;
I'll reel through a few more years somehow,
Then I'll quite them altogether.

I'll go to a girl that once I knew
And I will not swerve or err,
And I care not if she be false or true
For I am not true to her.

Her eyes are fierce and her skin is brown
And her wild blood hotly races,
But it's little I care if she does not frown
At any man's embraces.

Should I ask for a love none may invade?
Is she more or less than human?
Do I ask for more, who have betrayed
Man, devil, god and woman?

Enough for me if she has of me
A bamboo hut she'll share,
And enough tequilla to set me free
From the ghosts that leer and stare.

I'll lie all day in a sodden sleep
Through days without name or number,
With only the wind in the sky's blue deep
To haunt my unshaken slumber.

And I'll lie by night in the star-roofed hut
Forgetful and quiet hearted,
Till she comes with her burning eyes half shut
And her red lips hot and parted.

The past is flown when the cup is full,
And there is no chain for linking
And any woman is beautiful
When a man is blind with drinking.

Life is a lie that cuts like a knife
With its sorrow and fading blisses;
I'll go to a girl who asks naught of life
Save wine and a drunkard's kisses.

No man shall know my race or name,
Or my past sun-ripe or rotten,
Till I travel the road by which I came,
Forgetting and soon forgotten.


Robert E. Howard wrote a ton of great poetry. There tons more out there if anyone is interested.

 

[MisterJackson]

I used to write a lot myself. I never learned how to formally write it nor did I ever fit a particular style. I mostly wrote it to calm myself down. It was an outlet for me.

I haven't written in at least ten years, but I have had the urge recently to start again. I just never seem to have the time.

 

[stars]

I like to write and analyze song lyrics more than poetry really. I write poems sometimes too. Here is one that I wrote.

A slave's prayer

Despite, the tears that fall,
alongside the candle,
shadow casting.
I sit,
beating my worn chisel,
against this cold-tattered stone,
like a drum.

In chorus,
I hear the storm,
taunting the darkness,
procrastinating.
Oh how I mourn,
my masters lost soul,
that fears,
the wind and rain that may come.

And no, I'm not trying to turn this into a bad poetry thread.