Not mine -- Auden's. Just responding to "you can't put 'poet' or 'poem' in
a poem."
I promise one soon. And I can pretty well guarantee it won't be this good.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Anny Ballardini" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, February 15, 2007 5:43 PM
Subject: Re: Early Snap - Famous
> Congratulations for this incredible snap, your very first one,
> exceptional,
> indeed,
>
> Anny
>
>
> On 2/15/07, TheOldMole <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> I
>> He disappeared in the dead of winter:
>> The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,
>> And snow disfigured the public statues;
>> The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.
>> What instruments we have agree
>> The day of his death was a dark cold day.
>>
>> Far from his illness
>> The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests,
>> The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays;
>> By mourning tongues
>> The death of the poet was kept from his poems.
>>
>> But for him it was his last afternoon as himself,
>> An afternoon of nurses and rumours;
>> The provinces of his body revolted,
>> The squares of his mind were empty,
>> Silence invaded the suburbs,
>> The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers.
>>
>> Now he is scattered among a hundred cities
>> And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections,
>> To find his happiness in another kind of wood
>> And be punished under a foreign code of conscience.
>> The words of a dead man
>> Are modified in the guts of the living.
>>
>> But in the importance and noise of to-morrow
>> When the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the Bourse,
>> And the poor have the sufferings to which they are fairly accustomed,
>> And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom,
>> A few thousand will think of this day
>> As one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual.
>>
>> What instruments we have agree
>> The day of his death was a dark cold day.
>>
>> II
>>
>> You were silly like us; your gift survived it all:
>> The parish of rich women, physical decay,
>> Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
>> Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still,
>> For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
>> In the valley of its making where executives
>> Would never want to tamper, flows on south
>> From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
>> Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
>> A way of happening, a mouth.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> III
>>
>> Earth, receive an honoured guest:
>> William Yeats is laid to rest.
>> Let the Irish vessel lie
>> Emptied of its poetry.
>>
>> In the nightmare of the dark
>> All the dogs of Europe bark,
>> And the living nations wait,
>> Each sequestered in its hate;
>>
>> Intellectual disgrace
>> Stares from every human face,
>> And the seas of pity lie
>> Locked and frozen in each eye.
>>
>> Follow, poet, follow right
>> To the bottom of the night,
>> With your unconstraining voice
>> Still persuade us to rejoice;
>>
>> With the farming of a verse
>> Make a vineyard of the curse,
>> Sing of human unsuccess
>> In a rapture of distress;
>>
>> In the deserts of the heart
>> Let the healing fountain start,
>> In the prison of his days
>> Teach the free man how to praise.
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "kasper salonen" <[log in to unmask]>
>> To: <[log in to unmask]>
>> Sent: Thursday, February 15, 2007 3:45 PM
>> Subject: Re: Early Snap - Famous
>>
>>
>> >a poem should never have the word 'poet' or 'poem' in them, as an
>> > undeviating rule.
>> > a poem about _the_ poet is even wronger.
>> >
>> > you've definitely posted better poems onto this list Janet. I wasn't
>> > really entertained by this at all, I'm afraid.
>> >
>> > KS
>> >
>> > On 13/02/07, Janet Jackson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> >> Nearly Wednesday.
>> >> This is not at all what I set out to write!
>> >> And the ending in particular is crap.
>> >> But the Muse has flown and I want to go to bed now. Goodnight!
>> >>
>> >> Janet
>> >>
>> >> ----------
>> >>
>> >> Famous
>> >>
>> >> When I was 17 a palm-reader told me,
>> >> "you're going to be famous", but
>> >> it hasn't happened. Yet
>> >> I can hardly go anywhere without
>> >> meeting some person who knows me
>> >>
>> >> and when I recite my poems at readings
>> >> in a dramatic black outfit
>> >> some people act
>> >> like fans, waiting for a tidbit,
>> >> a chapbook autographed, saying kind things.
>> >>
>> >> In a dream I visit the main residence
>> >> of a man famous as any president
>> >> (he is, indeed, a poet,
>> >> but he is not famous for that)
>> >> and his famous wife, sleek and gracious.
>> >>
>> >> She greets me politely. I tell her my name
>> >> and am suddenly aware of the state
>> >> of my clothes: the ragged t-shirt
>> >> and stained jeans in which I'd slept
>> >> under a tree, in the rain, earlier in the dream.
>> >>
>> >> I hope she forgets me, but people rarely do.
>> >> But no-one will ever forget
>> >> her. The poor woman can't
>> >> just sleep out on the street
>> >> in old clothes, the way poets do.
>> >>
>> >> A first draft by Janet Jackson
>> >> Tue Feb 13 22:45:19 WST 2007
>> >>
>> >> -------------------------------------------------------
>> >> Janet Jackson <[log in to unmask]>
>> >> Poems at Proximity:
>> >> http://www.proximity.webhop.net
>> >>
>> >> The choice is between nonviolence and nonexistence.
>> >> Martin Luther King Jr.
>> >> s
>> >>
>>
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