h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"Where shall we go?" by Vernon Scannell.

Not many people combine boxing with literature . Joyce Carol Oates did, but she didn't actually do the boxing, whereas Scannell did. I always wonder what effect being hit on the head has on later creativity.

If lanzababy were in this thread, she would appreciate this next poem:

The warm wind blows once again.
The trees, they sway, I'm home again.
The birds sing their melody.
The wind passes through the reeds.
The sunsets brighter, then I knew.
All my thoughts roll back to you

WFAT - Billy Collins has twice been Poet Laureate of the United States, (a post which usually lasts for a year}. I mention him in posts 114 and 117. There's lots about him on Wikipedia and elsewhere . Obscure - either in person or in poetry - he's not.


Jabs

To a blind man or a mole, even the sun is obscure.

Jabs, I realize (now) that Billy Collins is not an obscure poet, which is why I said I was ashamed not to have heard of him. Sadly, I don't have much time to read poetry, so I'm rather like Paul's blind man. In any case, I'm very out of touch with anything post WW2.

Did you know that Vernon Scannell one, Paul? or did you look it up? Boxing and poetry does seem a strange combination, although I suppose Muhammad Ali might disagree. But those blows on the head don't seem to have done him any favours.

It has been suggested that I might like to play here. I haven't as yet read the rules, (which is very remiss of me) , so I might well be speaking out of turn - but ~

Here is part of a lovely poem, by a reasonably well-known poet:

Dear is my little native vale;
The ring-dove builds and murmurs there;
Close by my cot she tells her tale
To every passing villager.
The squirrel leaps from tree to tree,
And shells his nuts at liberty....

Paul's is Tropical Paradise, by John Prockner, as far as I know an amateur internet poet, and none the worse for that. Very enjoyable.

Polly and Pixie's was An Italian Song, by Samuel Rogers. You can see the influence of Wordsworth - they knew each other well. I really enjoyed this little poem very much. P&P: - the rules are on Post 1 of this thread.

Now, a fiendishly difficult one. This has no title - it's usually referred to by its first line, or its number in a sequence. Someone on the radio recently, I forget who, said this writer was better than Milton because he had more jokes. Author please.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:

Jabs

Whole poem:


Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

I keep forgetting to share the whole poem where possible.


Jabs

That is a sonnet by William Shakespeare, the bard of Stratford on Avon, unless you believe that any of a number of other contemporaries wrote the things ascribed to him.

Here is the next poem to guess. It consists of only one word, but what a word!:

lighght

I know this one. It's notorious. It's by Araram Saroyoyan

Not only the shortest poem in the languguage, it's the shortest ‘language poem’ in the language. Unlike this:

This one’s an immensely long, but equally, if not more, notorious ‘language poem’ – a poem focussing on language. This is an excerpt which I promise you is is quite easy to find.

It's still controversial as to whether it is a poem - it stretches the conventions to breaking point - how and whether it makes sense, and whether this really matters in the context of experiencing the poem. I think it's a strong experience, but a little of it goes a long way - I could never read the whole thing, which is in book form. Enjoy:



You spill the sugar when you lift the spoon. My father had filled an old apothecary jar with what he called "sea glass," bits of old bottles rounded and textured by the sea, so abundant on beaches. There is no solitude. It buries itself in veracity. It is as if one splashed in the water lost by one's tears. My mother had climbed into the garbage can in order to stamp down the accumulated trash, but the can was knocked off balance, and when she fell she broke her arm. She could only give a little shrug. The family had little money but plenty of food. At the circus only the elephants were greater than anything I could have imagined. The egg of Columbus, landscape and grammar. She wanted one where the playground was dirt, with grass, shaded by a tree, from which would hang a rubber tire as a swing, and when she found it she sent me.


Jabs

There's a lot to be said for short poems, but I'm not sure about that lighght one. It puts me in mind of a sheep in formaldehyde. Or a well-known branch of Islam.

Jabs, it's 'My Life' by Laynie Browne. Very odd poem, if, indeed, as you say, it can in fact be called one.

This is another odd one, but more conventional.


There was a knock on the door.
It was the meat. I let it in.
Something freshly slaughtered
Dragged itself into the hall.

Into the living-room it crawled.
I followed. Though headless,
It headed for the kitchen
As if following a scent.

That one's by old Roger McGough. Not sure about the title, but I think it is "There Was a Knock on the Door. It Was the Meat."

An obvious one to follow that is this old favourite:-

A person who eats meat
wants to get his teeth into something
A person who does not eat meat
wants to get his teeth into something else
If these thoughts interest you for even a moment
you are lost

[You got the wrong name for the author, mags - it was by Lyn Hejinian]

WFAT, it's A Person Who Eats Meat by Leonard Cohen. Since you prefer poems written before 1940, try this. It's quite well known, but it's too long to quote it all. Here's the first verse:

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

The poem is by W H Audem, apparently in a world-weary frame of mind.

"We must love each other and die" is a line from further down in the poem. No sentmentality here! Loving one another won't stop us from dying, but in view of the bad stuff happening in the world, it would be a big improvement.

I can't seem to find as title for this poem. Does it have a title, Jabs?

Paul - a date is the title - September 1st 1939. That's a clue to why it's so gloomy - it's the date Germany entered Poland, and two days before Britain and France declared war on Germany.


Now your turn.

Here's the next poem:

What are you doing here?
What do you want?
Is it music?
We can play music.
But you want more.
You want something & someone new.
Am I right?
Of course I am.
You want ecstasy
Desire & dreams.
Things not exactly what they seem.
I lead you this way, he pulls that way.
I'm not singing to an imaginary girl.
I'm talking to you, my self.
Let's recreate the world.
The palace of conception is burning

[This author's poetry has attracted a cult following, and he is well-known for activities outside the field of poetry]

The Opening of the Trunk - Jim Morrison of The Doors.

Next:


Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer—

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

Is it time for the world to end *again*, Jabs?

At first I thought the multitude of animal imagery meant that Ted Hughes had something to d it, but it turned out not to be Ted. He would have appreciated the idea of a hollow land (Moore) full of broken men (Kipling)--or would that have been the other way around?

The poem is "Hollow men," by T S Eliot. It vaguely has some thing to do with Ash Wednesday by the reckoning of some critics. The rat's coat and crossed staves are not very nice ways of describing bishops. But pity poor Tom Eliot. His wife Vivienne, who was reputed to be crazy, may have been gaving an affair wuth Bertrand Russell.
Maybe this was how they *proved* she as crazy? (Sorry, kidding, they gave her a math problem that she couldn't solve and then whisked her away to an institution for the rest of her life. It was a nasty math problem. I couldn't have solved it; chances are, you couldn't have solved it either. All of us are crazy if that was a test of sanity. )