Thursday, December 1, 2011

Ding, Dong, Bell (Anonymous)

Ding, dong, bell,
Pussy’s in the well.
Who put her in?--
Little Johnny Lin.
Who pulled her out?
Dog with long snout.
What a naughty boy was that,
To drown poor pussy-cat,
Who never did any harm,
But killed the mice in his farmer's barn.
Modern version:
Ding, dong, bell,
Pussy’s in the well.
Who put her in?
Little Johnny Green.
Who pulled her out?
Little Tommy Stout.
What a naughty boy was that,
To try to drown poor pussy cat,
Who ne’er did him any harm,
But killed all the mice in the farmer's barn.
Ding, Dong, Bell is a popular English language nursery rhyme.

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Thanatopsis (William Cullen Bryant, 1794-1878)


Image adapted from a painting by Hans Baldung-Grie, circa 1484-1545
______________________________________
To him who, in the love of Nature, holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language: for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty; and she glides
Into his darker musings with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart--
Go forth under the open sky, and list
To Nature's teachings, while from all around--
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air--
Comes a still voice:--Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again;
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix forever with the elements;
To be a brother to the insensible rock,
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mold.
Yet not to thy eternal resting place
Shalt thou retire alone--nor couldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world--with kings,
The powerful of the earth--the wise, the good,
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulcher. The hills,
Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun; the vales
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The venerable woods; rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks,
That make the meadows green, and, poured round all,
Old ocean's grey and melancholy waste--
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man! The golden sun,
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
Are shining on the sad abodes of death,
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom.--Take the wings
Of morning--pierce the Barcan wilerness,
Or lost thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound,
Save his own dashings--yet the dead are there!
And millions in those solitudes, since first
The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep--the dead reign there alone!
So shalt thou rest; and what if thou withdraw
In silence from the living, and no friend
Take note of thy departure? All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
Plod on, and each one, as before, will chase
His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come
And make their bed with thee. As the long train
Of ages glides away, the sons of men--
The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years, matron, and maid,
The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man--
Shall, one by one, be gathered to thy side,
By those who in their turn shall follow them.
So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
________________________________
1814

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

There Was a Crooked Man (Anonymous)


There was a crooked man,
and he went a crooked mile,
He found a crooked sixpence
against a crooked stile:
He bought a crooked cat,
which caught a crooked mouse,
And they all lived together
in a little crooked house.

Forum Thread: In 2111, What 2011 Poets Will Our Academic Descendants be Reading and Assigning?



Bump.

This post originally appeared on this site on April 9, 2008, when Poets.net was still very young. I believe this question is worthy of another look.

As Bugzita on Foetry (Reply #34, November 28, 2006), I posted the following:

Quite frankly, most poetry published today would not pass "The Uncle Lyle Test." My Uncle Lyle is an ordinary Joe who likes to read, which I did not know until he read my first book (which sort of passed the test, but not entirely--oh, well).

Say what you will about bestsellers, but they are bestsellers because they pass the test imposed by the Uncle Lyles of the reading world. Now if your work is so rarified that it leaves most readers scratching their heads, that's fine, and there's something to be said for creating work that excludes all but a few insiders--academia does it all the time. That's a choice, and I respect that.

But I have a problem when these rarified poets start whining and moaning because no one wants read or buy their books. So some of them resort to dishonest methods to drum up bogus awards, which, from what I can see, are based less on quality of work and more on how well-connected they are. So everyone sets up a "press," and poets publish each other's poetry, no matter the quality: "Wink, Wink." To those not in the know, it all looks very respectable.

The problem is: the published work itself becomes insular and not all that interesting to the average reader. And because most readers are average in terms of intellect and tastes, the rarified poets' books sell, perhaps, one or two hundred copies, sold to other poets. Of course there are always exceptions, but, unfortunately, this insularity seems to be the norm.

And you wonder why poetry no longer matters? :?:

Bugz

So, then, in 2008 (2011), as Jennifer, I pose the following questions for your consideration and opinion:

In 2111, what 2011 poets will be considered as literary representatives of our era, their works published in The Norton Anthology (2111 edition) and assigned by our academic descendants to school children and college students? If you wish, support your supposition with details.

Conversely, what 2011 poets will slide into obscurity? If you wish, support your supposition with details.

Related thread: "Is Poetry Dead?"

Forum Thread: Is Poetry Dead? (Discussion)

From time to time, I will move up threads that seem to be relevant in the moment. New users jump onto Poets.net every day, and, perhaps, have missed some of the earlier threads.

This thread was originally posted on March 31, at 9:50 PM, when Poets.net was just a week old.

Dana Gioia, in the May 1991 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, wrote the still-controversial essay "Can Poetry Matter?"

Some relevant excerpts from Gioia's essay:


____________________________

American poetry now belongs to a subculture. No longer part of the mainstream of artistic and intellectual life, it has become the specialized occupation of a relatively small and isolated group. Little of the frenetic activity it generates ever reaches outside that closed group. As a class poets are not without cultural status. Like priests in a town of agnostics, they still command a certain residual prestige. But as individual artists they are almost invisible.

...

Why, for example, does poetry mix so seldom with music, dance, or theater? At most readings the program consists of verse only—and usually only verse by that night's author. Forty years ago, when Dylan Thomas read, he spent half the program reciting other poets' work. Hardly a self-effacing man, he was nevertheless humble before his art. Today most readings are celebrations less of poetry than of the author's ego. No wonder the audience for such events usually consists entirely of poets, would-be poets, and friends of the author.

...

A clubby feeling also typifies most recent anthologies of contemporary poetry. Although these collections represent themselves as trustworthy guides to the best new poetry, they are not compiled for readers outside the academy.

...

Once poets began moving into universities, they abandoned the working-class heterogeneity of Greenwich Village and North Beach for the professional homogeneity of academia.

...

In 1940, with the notable exception of Robert Frost, few poets were working in colleges unless, like Mark Van Doren and Yvor Winters, they taught traditional academic subjects. The only creative-writing program was an experiment begun a few years earlier at the University of Iowa.

...

Reviewers fifty years ago were by today's standards extraordinarily tough. They said exactly what they thought, even about their most influential contemporaries. Listen, for example, to Randall Jarrell's description of a book by the famous anthologist Oscar Williams: it "gave the impression of having been written on a typewriter by a typewriter."...[Reviewers'] praise mattered, because readers knew it did not come lightly.

...

...no art faces more towering obstacles than poetry. Given the decline of literacy, the proliferation of other media, the crisis in humanities education, the collapse of critical standards, and the sheer weight of past failures, how can poets possibly succeed in being heard?

...

[Closing paragraph:]

It is time to experiment, time to leave the well-ordered but stuffy classroom, time to restore a vulgar vitality to poetry and unleash the energy now trapped in the subculture. There is nothing to lose. Society has already told us that poetry is dead. Let's build a funeral pyre out of the desiccated conventions piled around us and watch the ancient, spangle-feathered, unkillable phoenix rise from the ashes.

____________________________

I have posted some highly relevant passages from Gioia's article, but this essay is well worth reading in its entirety.

Gioia also offers "six modest proposals" for how "poetry could again become a part of American public culture," good advice for 2011, but you can read that for yourself (link below).


From Can Poetry Matter?

Saturday, November 26, 2011

Announcement--Reviving Some Forum Threads

Readers may have noticed the General Forum Threads and Book Review Threads at the top of this page; for the time being, I have decided to revive some old Poets.net blogger threads.

I'll be the first to admit that a Blogger forum does not offer an ideal platform for spontaneity; it has its technical limitations--for example, if you want to edit or delete your comments, you cannot, and you cannot start threads or post articles, unless you have been invited and been accepted as a member of this blog.

However, after my experience on the last version of the Poets.net forum, I have become somewhat skittish about reviving it on a standard forum platform. As some readers may know, it was a nightmare, one that I do not wish to repeat (trolls, creeps, spammers, porners, etc.), so I thought I would try using Blogger again, which now offers a lot of cool widgets and templates. And as I have become much more adept with the Blogger format, the threads should be be fairly easy to navigate.

Admin is still very much dedicated to freedom of expression in the literary arts, believing that opposing views ought to be heard; however, in the end, as admin/owner, I decide what is appropriate for posting.

Having said this, I tend not to have a twitchy finger when it comes to the delete button. I don't mind controversy and disagreement among commentators, but I do expect two things: basically staying on topic and being respectful of others.

What will be deleted from this site:
--Comments with outside links.
Sorry, but I have no way of knowing where that link will take readers.
--Off topic comments

--Advertising and general spam

--Hate speech

--Name calling

--Bad language

--Accusations (false and/or unproven)

--Pornography
One final item:
You must be signed into your blogger/gmail account in order to post a comment on this blog.
Happy commenting!

We are Indies




If you are an Indie writer,

please consider joining



on Facebook.