Poetry Corner

The Necessity for Irony

by Eavan Boland

On Sundays,
when the rain held off,
after lunch or later,
I would go with my twelve year old
daughter into town,
and put down the time
at junk sales, antique fairs.

There I would
lean over tables,
absorbed by
lace, wooden frames,
glass. My daughter stood
at the other end of the room,
her flame-coloured hair
obvious whenever—
which was not often—

I turned around.
I turned around.
She was gone.
Grown. No longer ready
to come with me, whenever
a dry Sunday
held out its promises
of small histories. Endings.

When I was young
I studied styles: their use
and origin. Which age
was known for which
ornament: and was always drawn
to a lyric speech, a civil tone.
But never thought
I would have the need,
as I do now, for a darker one:

Spirit of irony,
my caustic author
of the past, of memory,—

and of its pain, which returns
hurts, stings—reproach me now,
remind me
that I was in those rooms,
with my child,
with my back turned to her,
searching—oh irony!—
for beautiful things.

"The Necessity for Irony" by Eavan Boland,
from The Lost Land. © W.W. Norton.

How It Is with Us, and How It Is with Them

by Mary Oliver

We become religious,
then we turn from it,
then we are in need and maybe we turn back.
We turn to making money,
then we turn to the moral life,
then we think about money again.
We meet wonderful people, but lose them
in our busyness.
We're, as the saying goes, all over the place.
Steadfastness, it seems,
is more about dogs than about us.
One of the reasons we love them so much.

"How It Is with Us, and How It Is with Them" by Mary Oliver,
from Dog Songs. © Penguin, 2013

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
Sometimes it's not so great to hear poets read their own stuff ... What do you think?

W.B. Yeats
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2FT4_UUa4I

Yeats reads his poems as if they were incantations. But a lot of modern poets read their poems as if they were prose, sometimes perversely putting as little stress on individual words as possible. The result, in opposite but equal ways, is a failure to draw out the full potential of the language used. I wish poets would learn to read their poems with an ear to the different values and textures of each word! I'm not sure why it seems so hard for them to do so.

Originally posted by Teinosuke
Yeats reads his poems as if they were incantations. But a lot of modern poets read their poems as if they were prose, sometimes perversely putting as little stress on individual words as possible. The result, in opposite but equal ways, is a failure to draw out the full potential of the language used. I wish poets would learn to read their poems with an ea ...[text shortened]... different values and textures of each word! I'm not sure why it seems so hard for them to do so.

Yeats was tone-deaf, if I'm not mistaken.

Pound reading his own's also quite a wince. Eliot is dreadful.

I'm having trouble thinking of any poets who do their own stuff well. Dylan Thomas. Paul Celan. Ed Dorn. Heard one or two good ones by Auden. Maybe it's not poetry but Alan Moore has a great reading voice. Can you recommend some?

Somehow I seem to listen to more poets in languages other than English. I can recommend www.lyrikline.org

Fern Hill

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and
cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was
air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the
nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking
warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace.

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would
take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

Dylan Thomas

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
[b]Fern Hill

Dylan Thomas[/b]

Richard Burton's reading:
YouTube

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
Richard Burton's reading:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z-ZuguSrQQ

Have listened to him read this poem many years ago; thanks for bringing it back home. Here's another you may enjoy:

The Force That through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman’s lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather’s wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover’s tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.

(1914–1953 Dylan Thomas… a mere 39 years)

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
Yeats was tone-deaf, if I'm not mistaken.

Pound reading his own's also quite a wince. Eliot is dreadful.

I'm having trouble thinking of any poets who do their own stuff well. Dylan Thomas. Paul Celan. Ed Dorn. Heard one or two good ones by Auden. Maybe it's not poetry but Alan Moore has a great reading voice. Can you recommend some?

Somehow I seem to listen to more poets in languages other than English. I can recommend www.lyrikline.org

"I'm having trouble thinking of any poets who do their own stuff well."

Wonder if passive reading styles suggest a poet's refusal to get in the way of the poem, itself; unlike an actor charged with the responsibility of breathing life into a play on stage (indicative of a desire to let it stand on its own merits or fall).

Note: Billy Collins, USA Poet Laureate a decade ago comes to mind.

When You are Old (by W.B. Yeats)

YouTube

Excellent reading; poem appears on the screen.

I shared this here a couple of times, I wrote it after a very bad day.
Kelly

Ramie's day
Conceived in covenant.
Formed by mighty hands in the darkness.
A hope for a life of giggles and smiles, of laughter and joy, story telling, and wonder.
What joy and wonder as she arrives, little hands and feet, a smile so sweet.
With pain and sorrow a troubled heart, a year, a week, a day or two.
Now she is on streets of gold. In the nail pierced hands.
No pain or sorrow can touch her now.
She waits with him for others coming.
A hope for a life of giggles and smiles, of laughter and joy, story telling, and wonder.

Genius

It was nice being a genius
worth nearly half-a-million dollars
for the two or three minutes it took me
to walk back to my house from the mailbox
with the letter from the Foundation
trembling in my hand. Frankly,

for the first minute
I was somewhat surprised at being a genius.
I'd only published a few small things at that point.
I didn't even have a book.
I was just a part-time lecturer
at a small mid-western college.

But early into the second minute
I had fully embraced the fact of my genius.

I mean, these people know what they're doing, right?
Who am I to tell the Foundation its business?
And I was already practicing the kind of modest,
Hey, it's no big deal tone of voice I'd be using
on the phone for the rest of the day
as I called all my friends, and especially
my enemies, to treat them to the good news.

But when I opened the letter
and saw it was merely a request
for me to recommend someone else to be a genius,
I lost interest and made myself a ham sandwich.

by George Bilgere

Lee Remick reads Emily Dickinson

"Here, actress Lee Remick reads two of Emily Dickinson's poems,
"This is my letter to the world" and "Dying." (from "Six Centuries of Verse)

YouTube

Effective, lovely reading which follows an insightful introduction......

Anthony Hopkins reads Dylan Thomas

YouTube

and

Dylan Thomas reads "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night"

YouTube

First introduction to Thomas in my early twenties by a friend.
The poem's hauntingly powerful totality is unforgettable. (imo)
Still think of it now and then in the spent midnight hours.

When You See Millions of the Mouthless Dead

When you see millions of the mouthless dead
Across your dreams in pale battalions go,
Say not soft things as other men have said,
That you'll remember. For you need not so.
Give them not praise. For, deaf, how should they know
It is not curses heaped on each gashed head?
Nor tears. Their blind eyes see not tears flow.
Nor honour. It is easy to be dead.
Say only this, "They are dead." Then add thereto,
"Yet many a better one has died before."
Then, scanning all the o'ercrowded mass, should you
Perceive one face that you loved heretofore,
It is a spook. None wears the face you knew.
Great death has made all his for evermore.

Charles Hamilton Sorley died in Belgian trenches Oct. 3rd 1915 aged 19

Originally posted by Pianoman1
[b]When You See Millions of the Mouthless Dead

When you see millions of the mouthless dead
Across your dreams in pale battalions go,
Say not soft things as other men have said,
That you'll remember. For you need not so.
Give them not praise. For, deaf, how should they know
It is not curses heaped on each gashed head?
Nor tears. Their blind eye ...[text shortened]... s for evermore.

Charles Hamilton Sorley died in Belgian trenches Oct. 3rd 1915 aged 19[/b]

Charles Hamilton Sorely: a given name which speaks proverbial volumes about his parents’ expectations for their son's life fulfillment. Who Knows? None will ever glimpse, much less know, the greatness a 19 year old soldier may have achieved in the arts or letters or leadership in some other demanding arena or realm. Yet, 98 years later we're momentarily focused on a poem written in his forever green youth. The chaos of bloody trenches and explosions overhead become vicariously real in reading this sonnet (which seems as if it’s a moment's thought). The sententious line, “"Yet many a better one has died before." will remain in memory alongside another War Poet, Wilfred Owens and the concluding line of his “Anthem for Doomed Youth”: “And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.” It’s posted on page one of this thread. Thanks.