Talking of poetry

Poetry Reviews

The wind still blows over the Savanna

16-bit intel 8088 chip

"with an Apple Macintosh
you can't run Radio Shack programs
in its disc drive.
nor can a Commodore 64
drive read a file
you have created on an
IBM Personal Computer.
both Kaypro and Osborne computers use
the CP/M operating system
but can't read each other's
handwriting
for they format (write
on) discs in different
ways.
the Tandy 2000 runs MS-DOS but
can't use most programs produced for
the IBM Personal Computer
unless certain
bits and bytes are
altered
but the wind still blows over
Savannah
and in the Spring
the turkey buzzard struts and
flounces before his
hens."

 By Charles Bukowski

posted by: nisheedhi at 16:04 | link | comments |
charles bukowvski

I have known rivers,ancient ,dusky rivers

The Negro Speaks of Rivers - Poets.org - Poetry, Poems, Bios & More



    I’ve known rivers:

    I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the

    flow of human blood in human veins.



    My soul has grown deep like the rivers.



    I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.

    I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

    I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.

    I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln

    went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy

    bosom turn all golden in the sunset.



    I’ve known rivers:

    Ancient, dusky rivers.



    My soul has grown deep like the rivers.





    By Langston Hughes







    Interesting thoughts :



    I have known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of blood in human veins



    Rivers like the Ganges which had existed much before the humans came on the scene.More interesting is the juxtaposition of the impermanence of the flow of blood in human veins with the timelessness of the ancient rivers .



    I have known rivers ancient ,dusky rivers



    Rivers which had originated much before the humans came on the scene.More interesting is the “dusky” rivers much like the ancient Negro ancestors whose blood is flowing in the veins of the American blacks.

posted by: nisheedhi at 00:37 | link | comments |

With a heavy heart we come to a sentence

“On the death of a poem” -by A.K.Ramanujan

Images consult

one

another,

a conscience-

stricken

jury,

and come

slowly

to a sentence.

http://www.geocities.com/varnamala/ramanujan.html

I love the economy of words and the playful pun on the word “sentence” .The poetic process ,if one may call it that,is such that the poem dies still-born at times leaving the poet disgruntled .Some times the sentence may come out after all which will produce a semblance of a poem .At other times the verse describing the process is itself a lovely poem as this one is.

posted by: nisheedhi at 05:57 | link | comments |

two bodies ruined by a single sweetness

"Ay, Love is a journey through waters and stars

through suffocating air, sharp tempests of grain:

Love is a war of lightning,and two bodies

ruined by a single sweetness."

http://www.tonykline.co.uk/PITBR/Spanish/Neruda.htm



"Love is a war of lightning/and two bodies ruined by a single sweetness"-Lovely lines so Neruda-like. The poet refers to the carnality of the man-woman relationship which is foredoomed to failure and futility, where everything happens to hasten descent to the depths of destruction and unhappiness.

posted by: nisheedhi at 03:03 | link | comments (2) |

The bird's fleeting shadow smoothes the wounds made by the sun

"I speak

Of men's passing

So rare in this arid land

That it is cherished like a refrain

Until the return

 Of the jealous wind

And of the bird, so rare,

Whose fleeting shadow

 Soothes the wounds made by the sun"



"Landscapes" - A poem by  John Burnside

http://www.poetryconnection.net/poets/John_Burnside/7678



 The desert is a throwback to the gloom of the post-war much like the poetry of Eliot .The passing of  men is so rare that it is cherished like a refrain-I love this image.The second one in my quote is equally beautiful-"of the bird,so rare/Whose fleeting shadow/Soothes the wounds made by the sun".The bird's fleeting shadow smoothes the wounds made by the sun-a graphic image just like Eliot's imagery in The Waste Land:



"What are the roots that clutch

What branches grow in this stony rubbish?

Son of Man ,you cannot say or know

For you know only a heap of broken images

Where the sun beats or the dead tree gives no shelter..."



I have quoted the lines from memory.

posted by: nisheedhi at 01:27 | link | comments |

Shimmering gowns

posted by: nisheedhi at 09:28 | link | comments |

There are thieves who steal the world the moment I turn my back

"Some people say we should not trust our eyes,

That there is nothing, just a seeming,

These are the ones who have no hope.

They think that the moment we turn away,

The world, behind our backs, ceases to exist,

As if snatched up by the hands of thieves."

 ~ Czeslaw Milosz

Just the thing I had always felt in my childhood and till I grew up to be an adult.I have ,even now, a sneaking suspicion that the world just fizzles down the moment I turn away as though it has been stolen by some thieves. This thief thing I had not thought of but my own fear was of the Second Man who had always accompanied me and created everything of this world just to spite me or in order to teach me a lesson .Sometimes I think I exist in his dream and if he wakes up I disappear or cease to exist.

posted by: nisheedhi at 11:03 | link | comments |
, czeslaw milosz

Too hot the eye of heaven shines

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? (Sonnet 18)        
by William Shakespeare

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 dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow'st.
     So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
     So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

"Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines
And often is his gold complexion dimmed"-

The hyperbole which Shakespeare  uses everywhere including in this stanza was so typical of Elizabethan poetry but the beauty of the metaphors used remains un"dimmed" over time."The eye of heaven" and "his gold complexion" are lovely images.The comparison of the beloved to a summer's day -her moods compared with the  hot and cold ,sunny and cloudy is a favourite image in the Renaissance poetry .

posted by: nisheedhi at 01:10 | link | comments |
shakespeare sonnet18

I will be at the table when company comes

"Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then. "


I too can sing America by Langston Hughes is a simple poem -direct and no frills. A black poet talking about the misery of a  black's existence in the 1920's.I too can sing America is of course an affirmation of the place of a black American in America's scheme of things : a movement in America's homes for the nigger from the kitchen to the hall-joining the national song of freedom and independence.

posted by: nisheedhi at 01:31 | link | comments |

A dream witin dream

You are not wrong who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

A Dream Within a Dream        
by Edgar Allan Poe

The lines are truly memorable.Our days have been a dream but that does not mean that they have never existed.All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream. A dream within the grand dream.

posted by: nisheedhi at 15:25 | link | comments |
eapoe