dublinka

Picasso titled this work The poet, but not many people are aware that he also wrote quite a bit of poetry. Here is a passage from The Dream and Lie of Franco, which was written the same year he did Guernica.

cries of children cries of women cries of birds cries of flowers cries of wood and stone cries of bricks cries of furniture of beds of chairs of curtains of casseroles of cats and papers cries of smells that claw themselves of smoke that gnaws the neck of cries that boil in cauldron and the rain of birds that floods the sea that eats into the bone and breaks the teeth biting the cotton that the sun wipes on its plate that bourse and bank hide in the footprint left imbedded in the rock.

You'll find some ponderously dark poetry, from Joe Cabdriver, lurking over at The Institute for the Advancement of Violence. I love this one:

Why I Hated
Lost In Translation

This movie drove me fucking insane!!

Who cares about these yuppie narcissists
And their softly depressing lives

The soft irony, soft humor
The downcast eyes and mouths
The passionless romance

Oh such elegant suffering
Such emptiness
In posh high rise apartments

The Bill Murray character
Wasn’t even half as annoying
As the young yuppie woman
Played by……oh…..what the fuck is her name

Here’s the spoiled little bitch
In the middle of one of the world’s
Greatest cities, Tokyo

With its amazing yet unfathomable
Culture

A whole world to explore

And all this bitch could do
Was whine to somebody
On her cell phone
How she went to a Buddhist temple
And felt nothing

Boo Fucking Hoo!!

Maybe if she got off the vicadone
She’d feel something

The Bill Murray character
Liked him better in Scrooged
Rich actor on a career downswing
Kind of had a hard time feeling his pain
can’t speak the language
can’t get laid
oh my god let’s make
a whole boring movie
out of the ordeal

But the thing that really bothers me
Is that every fucking critic
And everyone I know
Slathered praise
Over this pretentious piece of tripe

Why all the bother
over this existentialist bullshit?

All I could have hoped for was for
Godzilla to flatten Tokyo
Sometime during the movie

But I had to turn it off
So I wouldn’t vomit
On my Jason Vs. Freddy DVD

Which was shit
But much more entertaining

No time for fake poignancy
When Freddy and Jason are coming
To disembowel you
For smokin’ pot and havin’ sex.

Much more meaningful.

Maybe I’m just too white trash
to appreciate the subtleties
but give me the original
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Over this garbage.

Fuck you, Sofia Coppola
For wasting my time.

Go back to skeezing
Off your Daddy’s trust fund

Get the fuck out of movies

Some poets in Lyon will be having an all nighter at the Café Lecture on the 11th of March. Anyone in London can easily pop down via Eurostar. Details below:


Samedi 11 mars "Poésie ininterrompue 9/9" au Café lecture
Il s'agit de convier dans un lieu éclairé par un flambeau marathonien de la
poésie, tous ceux qui, dans la ville, souhaitent donner un corps et une voix
à la parole poétique. Au café-lecture sur les Pentes de la Croix-Rousse, de
21h à 9h du matin sans arrêt, se succèdent lecteurs amateurs, poètes,
comédiens professionnels ou amateurs, danseurs, musiciens pour lire des
poèmes de leur choix. Tous les amoureux de la poésie sont conviés à venir
lire de la poésie, jouer ou danser dans cette chaîne humaine temporelle et
se passer entre eux la flamme de la poésie. Contactez-nous pour participer
et contactez votre formateur pour les adhérents.
Retransmission des meilleurs moments de "Passe le poème à ton voisin".
Café lecture - 2 rue Camille Jordan, Lyon 1er.


Contact : Arts en Scène 04 78 39 18 06 ou
printempsdespoetes05@artsenscene.com

Gwyneth Lewis has had two, quite literally, monumental poems built into the new millennium building in Cardiff. Each letter is six-foot tall and formed of stained glass, set in glass-reinforced gypsum. The first poem, in Welsh, reads: Creu Gwir fel Gwydr o Ffwrnais Awen and can be translated as: 'Creating truth like glass from inspiration's furnace'. The second, in English, reads: In these stones horizons sing. It's an interesting piece of work, marking a change from the usual street and corporate graffiti, that is found on most contemporary buildings. The second poem in particular, is a remarkable feat of poetic concision. Love it.

Cengiz Bektas is a rare bird indeed: an architect and poet who uses the influence of both mediums to shape the world in which he lives. He's quite innovative in his approach to designing buildings, for example, all architects on the job are paid equally and have equal input into a project. But for those who've always been curious about what the offspring of a poet and architect might be, the results seem to be quite mixed. He is responsible for the rather ugly Mertim tower which has staked the city of Mersim Turkey, and yet seems capable of nicer creations too - I'm thinking of the Olbia social centre in the photo here. With over ten volumes of poetry published, he remains one to keep and eye on. You can read more about his philosophy and poetry here.

Biker Poetry ... Ride Hard .... Read Fast ...
live in the wind .... don't stop dancing ....
even if the music stops ....



This biker poetry page is fantastic. I love it. You can spot old beat influences and a real Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance vibe throbbing alive here. But beneath all that, is the pure freedom that road traveling seems to fuel all expression with. Below is one from blaze.

night run
:::::::::
blood moon hangs tangled in your triple tree
night sky black like bad burnt oil
stars fine metal shavings glinting there
intense the wind - not blowing - breathing...
barely there but lifts your neck hair
tights the skin around your eyes
and other places too...and chill so chill
a gasping sense of almost ice inside
there's something in the air...that scent...
you know the one - it drives you crazy -
makes you crank that throttle hard
too far too long...you pray no deer
from there to here - - - and then
you taste that thin eyed lost soul grin
lean on in
and laid out
let her fly
:::::::
blaze
7.31.4

In Bladerunner, you'll find allusions to William Blake's America: A prophecy, when the replicant Batty deliberately misquotes (to prove his machine transcendent properties) the first two lines of plate 11 (see below).In Chew's eyelab he states: "Fiery the angels fell / Deep thunder rolled around their shores / Burning with the fires of Orc." It's actually about America and England but like all good poetic prophecy, it contains enough ambiguity to send a chill through you, especially if read in the context of machines replacing humans. Read one interpretation of it here.

From America: A prophecy.

Fiery the Angels rose, & as they rose deep thunder roll'd
Around their shores: indignant burning with the fires of Orc
And Bostons Angel cried aloud as they flew thro' the dark night.
He cried: Why trembles honesty and like a murderer,
Why seeks he refuge from the frowns of his immortal station!
Must the generous tremble & leave his joy, to the idle: to the pestilence!
That mock him? who commanded this? what God? what Angel!
To keep the gen'rous from experience till the ungenerous
Are unrestraind performers of the energies of nature;
Till pity is become a trade, and generosity a science,
That men get rich by, & the sandy desart is giv'n to the strong
What God is he, writes laws of peace, & clothes him in a tempest
What pitying Angel lusts for tears, and fans himself with sighs
What crawling villain preaches abstinence & wraps himself
In fat of lambs? no more I follow, no more obedience pay.

I found this old Rimbaud, stuck in a book I was reading:

Au Cabaret-Vert, cinq heures du soir.

Depuis huit jours, j'avais déchiré mes bottines
Aux cailloux des chemins. J'entrais à Charleroi.
- Au Cabaret-Vert : je demandai des tartines
Du beurre et du jambon qui fût à moitié froid.

Bienheureux, j'allongeai les jambes sous la table
Verte : je contemplai les sujets très naïfs
De la tapisserie. - Et ce fut adorable,
Quand la fille aux tétons énormes, aux yeux vifs,

- Celle-là, ce n'est pas un baiser qui l'épeure ! -
Rieuse, m'apporta des tartines de beurre,
Du jambon tiède, dans un plat colorié,

Du jambon rose et blanc parfumé d'une gousse
D'ail, - et m'emplit la chope immense, avec sa mousse
Que dorait un rayon de soleil arriéré.

Writer and poet, Mamadali Makhmudov, has been imprisoned and tortured in American sponsored Uzbekistan since 1999. Smuggled letters, and sources, have told of people beaten to death with hammers, people being boiled alive, and children having their faces ripped off. The country is of strategic importance to the U.S. government, which as usual, is happy to support this and a litany of crimes against humanity included the massacre last May of up to 1000 street demonstrators. Writing to them is unlikely to help, as it is additionally thought to be one of the rendition/torture camp countries used by the U.S. - supported by the use of Irish airports. The wider European Union is also complicit. It is a major importer of Uzbekistan cotton (Uzbekistan is the second largest exporter of cotton in the world). Trade sanctions, against Uzbekistan and its psychotic leader Islam Karimov might increase pressure on him to stop his human rights abuses. Read some ideas about how this might be done here.

In 1922 Jorge Luis Borges, and some fellow writers came up with this idea to spread their poetry and ideas in Buenos Aires: A poster broadsheet called Prisma. They pasted 1000 copies all over the city in one night. Cool lateral thinking before the phrase was even coined.

While Noam Chomsky was busy signing books in Dublin today (photo from elsewhere), I managed to have half a word with Carol Chomsky. She mentioned her favourite poem was Wisdom by Sara Teasdale. It really is a magnificent poem and comes from a beautiful collection called Love Songs written in 1917. Obviously it's only idle speculation if we ask; did Noam Chomsky give Carol the book as a gift or vice versa? But I think it's probably fair to say that reading this collection will give you a little more insight into what gives them such strength. One to memorise.

Wisdom

WHEN I have ceased to break my wings
Against the faultiness of things,
And learned that compromises wait
Behind each hardly opened gate,
When I can look Life in the eyes,
Grown calm and very coldly wise,
Life will have given me the Truth,
And taken in exchange -- my youth.

These Poetry playing cards are available from INPOPA. The trick is, to think of a game involving poetry, because the backs are all different and really easy to recognise.The King of Diamonds is a fine poem by Robert Twigger: Always Watson, Never Holmes.

Arch Anarachist Emma Goldman once declared Voltairine de Cleyre

“The most gifted and brilliant anarchist woman America ever produced …The American soil sometimes
does bring forth exquisite plants.”

Quite a complement. Voltairine's little known poem The Gods and the people, sings vengence and retribution against a corrupt elite cloaked in religion. I'm publishing here the final verse and you can read more about her here. It's a useful reminder that poetry can be an angry physical force, just when you think its gone all limp and botanical.

from THE GODS AND THE PEOPLE.
by Voltairine de Cleyre

The Sword that Damocles saw
By a hair swings over your head!
What ye have sown ye shall reap :
Teardrops, and Blood, and Hate,
Gaunt gather before your Seat
And knock at your palace gate!
"There are murderers on your thrones,
There are thieves in your Justice halls!
White Leprosy cancers their stones,
And gnaws at their worm-eaten walls!
"And the Hand of Belshazzar's Feast
Writes over, in flaming light,
'Thought's kingdom no more to the Priest;
Nor the law of Right to the Might.'

Shelly Boxer shorts, camisoles, thongs etc. All available here. Need I comment?

KAZMIER MASLANKA has been doing mathematical poetry for a while now. The general idea is to outline your variables, then write your equation and somehow combine the aesthetics of math with those of poetry. Nice.

Some interesting poets are podcasting here on podcastalley.com. But it's a bit hit or miss. Choose wisely young Luke.

I found R.G. Gregory's but then in a bookshop a few years ago just before it shut down. Since then, I've discovered he's been up to a lot more. Including his masterpiece, The cathedral of ohs...

Go to his site here and click anywhere on the above cathedral map to find poetry lurking in the shadows.

Some cool work from a guerrilla poet (a.k.a. Dave) from London. Lots of works to print and use as sticker art. There's a nice audio called The Circle Line Train available too.

Here's another God for the pantheon. Bragi, the Norse God of Poetry, as depicted in this 19th century painting by Nils Blommér.

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's 1960 classic the Leopard is rightly, in my opinion, regarded as one of the classics of the last century. It's a slow psychological character study of Fabrizio, a Sicilian Prince, as he and his domain fade. It's the kind of novel you can read too fast or in the wrong mood, and not be able to empathise with at all, because of it's wilting decay and pessimism. For those who haven't read it, Fabrizio more or resembles Brando's Godfather (and indeed references can be found to the prince, in the film). Anyhow, in the book "there occurred to him a verse read by chance in a Paris bookshop...".

donnez-moi la force et la courage
de contempler mon coeur et mon corps sans dégoût

Turns out the verse is from Baudelaire, who is busy describing some birds pecking out the eyeballs of a hanged man. You can read the translation here or the original below. Either way, I think it adds futher depth to both The Leopard and the Godfather, or if you like, even more detatched pessimism.

Un Voyage à Cythère

Mon cœur, comme un oiseau, voltigeait tout joyeux
Et planait librement à l'entour des cordages ;
Le navire roulait sous un ciel sans nuages,
Comme un ange enivré d'un soleil radieux.

Quelle est cette île triste et noire ? - C'est Cythère,
Nous dit-on, un pays fameux dans les chansons,
Eldorado banal de tous les vieux garçons.
Regardez, après tout, c'est une pauvre terre.

- Île des doux secrets et des fêtes du cœur !
De l'antique Vénus le superbe fantôme
Au-dessus de tes mers plane comme un arôme,
Et charge les esprits d'amour et de langueur.

Belle île aux myrtes verts, pleine de fleurs écloses,
Vénérée à jamais par toute nation,
Où les soupirs des cœurs en adoration
Roulent comme l'encens sur un jardin de roses

Ou le roucoulement éternel d'un ramier !
- Cythère n'était plus qu'un terrain des plus maigres,
Un désert rocailleux troublé par des cris aigres.
J'entrevoyais pourtant un objet singulier !

Ce n'était pas un temple aux ombres bocagères,
Où la jeune prêtresse, amoureuse des fleurs,
Allait, le corps brûlé de secrètes chaleurs,
Entre-bâillant sa robe aux brises passagères ;

Mais voilà qu'en rasant la côte d'assez près
Pour troubler les oiseaux avec nos voiles blanches,
Nous vîmes que c'était un gibet à trois branches,
Du ciel se détachant en noir, comme un cyprès.

De féroces oiseaux perchés sur leur pâture
Détruisaient avec rage un pendu déjà mûr,
Chacun plantant, comme un outil, son bec impur
Dans tous les coins saignants de cette pourriture ;

Les yeux étaient deux trous, et du ventre effondré
Les intestins pesants lui coulaient sur les cuisses,
Et ses bourreaux, gorgés de hideuses délices,
L'avaient à coups de bec absolument châtré.

Sous les pieds, un troupeau de jaloux quadrupèdes,
Le museau relevé, tournoyait et rôdait ;
Une plus grande bête au milieu s'agitait
Comme un exécuteur entouré de ses aides.

Habitant de Cythère, enfant d'un ciel si beau,
Silencieusement tu souffrais ces insultes
En expiation de tes infâmes cultes
Et des péchés qui t'ont interdit le tombeau.

Ridicule pendu, tes douleurs sont les miennes !
Je sentis, à l'aspect de tes membres flottants,
Comme un vomissement, remonter vers mes dents
Le long fleuve de fiel des douleurs anciennes ;

Devant toi, pauvre diable au souvenir si cher,
J'ai senti tous les becs et toutes les mâchoires
Des corbeaux lancinants et des panthères noires
Qui jadis aimaient tant à triturer ma chair.

- Le ciel était charmant, la mer était unie ;
Pour moi tout était noir et sanglant désormais,
Hélas ! Et j'avais, comme en un suaire épais,
Le cœur enseveli dans cette allégorie.

Dans ton île, ô Vénus ! Je n'ai trouvé debout
Qu'un gibet symbolique où pendait mon image...
- Ah ! Seigneur ! Donnez-moi la force et le courage
De contempler mon cœur et mon corps sans dégoût !

Some poetry set to music works, some doesn't. You need an ear for both to be really successful. But that's pretty much a truism. John Adams set Whitman's The Wound Dresser to a score, with Nathan Gunn as baritone in 1988 and for reasons I can't decipher (because it irks me at times), it works. It really gets in under your skin just when you think you're sick of both singing and music, and want to scream. This strange sensation reminds me of the way in my past, during an infinitely boring mass, that a kind of tired resigned spiritual awareness was capable of taking hold of me, and reminding me, that at least I was alive. (Thanks for the loops D.)

Here's a pic of the worlds most disapointing robot poet E.L.I., which looks suspiciously, to me, like a tv and laptop on wheels. You'll find it touring the states at the moment. Give me a japanese robot any day. Here's the poetry: random gibberish bien sur.


The landscape subjugates through compassionate flowers
carding janky
embed color profile
insightfully alerting monstrous

Sometimes you don't need to wait for an anniversary to remember. This poem was smuggled from his prison cell. (Perhaps in the future we'll be able to prosecute the shell executives. Stranger things have happened.)

Ken Saro-Wiwa
(1941 - 1995)

Ogoni! Ogoni!
Ogoni is the land
The people, Ogoni
The agony of trees dying
In ancestral farmlands
Streams polluted weeping
Filth into murky rivers
It is the poisoned air
Coursing the luckless lungs
Of dying children
Ogoni is the dream
Breaking the looping chain
Around the drooping neck
of a shell-shocked land.

Yi Won's wonderful lonely
I CLICK THEREFORE I AM is available on video, along with a bunch of other video poetry via camera poetica, from Rotterdam poetry international.

The Pulitzer poetry winner's list. For some, a useful menu to keep handy, for others evil incarnate...

1922 Collected Poems by Edwin Arlington Robinson (Macmillan)
1923 The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver: A Few Figs from Thistles: Eight Sonnets in American Poetry, 1922. A Miscellany by Edna St. Vincent Millay (Harper)
1924 New Hampshire: A Poem with Notes and Grace Notes by Robert Frost (Holt)
1925 The Man Who Died Twice by Edwin Arlington Robinson (Macmillan)
1926 What's O'Clock by the late Amy Lowell (Houghton)
1927 Fiddler's Farewell by Leonora Speyer (Knopf)
1928 Tristram by Edwin Arlington Robinson (Macmillan)
1929 John Browns Body by Stephen Vincent Benet (Farrar)
1930 Selected Poems by Conrad Aiken (Scribner)
1931 Collected Poems by Robert Frost (Holt)
1932 The Flowering Stone by George Dillon (Viking)
1933 Conquistador by Archibald Macleish (Houghton)
1934 Collected Verse by Robert Hillyer (Knopf)
1935 Bright Ambush by Audrey Wurdemann (John Day)
1936 Strange Holiness by Robert P. Tristram Coffin (Macmillan)
1937 A Further Range by Robert Frost (Holt)
1938 Cold Morning Sky by Marya Zaturenska (Macmillan)
1939 Selected Poems by John Gould Fletcher (Farrar)
1940 Collected Poems by Mark Van Doren (Holt)
1941 Sunderland Capture by Leonard Bacon (Harper)
1942 The Dust Which Is God by William Rose Benet (Dodd)
1943 A Witness Tree by Robert Frost (Holt)
1944 Western Star by the late Stephen Vincent Benet (Farrar)
1945 V-Letter and Other Poems by Karl Shapiro (Reynal)
1946 (No Award)
1947 Lord Weary's Castle by Robert Lowell (Harcourt)
1948 The Age of Anxiety by W. H. Auden (Random)
1949 Terror and Decorum by Peter Viereck (Scribner)
1950 Annie Allen by Gwendolyn Brooks (Harper)
1951 Complete Poems by Carl Sandburg (Harcourt)
1952 Collected Poems by Marianne Moore (Macmillan)
1953 Collected Poems 1917-1952 by Archibald MacLeish (Houghton)
1954 The Waking by Theodore Roethke (Doubleday)
1955 Collected Poems by Wallace Stevens (Knopf)
1956 Poems - North & South by Elizabeth Bishop (Houghton)
1957 Things of This World by Richard Wilbur (Harcourt)
1958 Promises: Poems 1954-1956 by Robert Penn Warren (Random)
1959 Selected Poems 1928-1958 by Stanley Kunitz (Little)
1960 Heart's Needle by W. D. Snodgrass (Knopf)
1961 Times Three: Selected Verse From Three Decades by Phyllis McGinley (Viking)
1962 Poems by Alan Dugan (Yale Univ. Press)
1963 Pictures from Brueghel by the late William Carlos Williams (New Directions)
1964 At The End Of The Open Road by Louis Simpson (Wesleyan Univ. Press)
1965 77 Dream Songs by John Berryman (Farrar)
1966 Selected Poems by Richard Eberhart (New Directions)
1967 Live or Die by Anne Sexton (Houghton)
1968 The Hard Hours by Anthony Hecht (Atheneum)
1969 Of Being Numerous by George Oppen (New Directions)
1970 Untitled Subjects by Richard Howard (Atheneum)
1971 The Carrier of Ladders by William S. Merwin (Atheneum)
1972 Collected Poems by James Wright (Wesleyan Univ. Press)
1973 Up Country by Maxine Kumin (Harper)
1974 The Dolphin by Robert Lowell (Farrar)
1975 Turtle Island by Gary Snyder (New Directions)
1976 Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror by John Ashbery (Viking)
1977 Divine Comedies by James Merrill (Atheneum)
1978 Collected Poems by Howard Nemerov (Univ. of Chicago)
1979 Now and Then by Robert Penn Warren (Random)
1980 Selected Poems by Donald Justice (Atheneum)
1981 The Morning of the Poem by James Schuyler (Farrar, Straus)
1982 The Collected Poems by the late Sylvia Plath (a posthumous publication) (Harper & Row)
1983 Selected Poems by Galway Kinnell (Houghton Mifflin)
1984 American Primitive by Mary Oliver (Atlantic-Little, Brown)
1985 Yin by Carolyn Kizer (BOA Editions)
1986 The Flying Change by Henry Taylor (Louisiana State University Press)
1987 Thomas and Beulah by Rita Dove (Carnegie-Mellon University Press)
1988 Partial Accounts: New and Selected Poems by William Meredith (Alfred A. Knopf)
1989 New and Collected Poems by Richard Wilbur (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich)
1990 The World Doesn't End by Charles Simic (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich)
1991 Near Changes by Mona Van Duyn (Alfred A. Knopf)
1992 Selected Poems by James Tate (Wesleyan University Press)
1993 The Wild Iris by Louise Gluck (The Ecco Press)
1994 Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems by Yusef Komunyakaa (Wesleyan University Press/University Press of New England)
1995 The Simple Truth by Philip Levine (Alfred A. Knopf)
1996 The Dream of the Unified Field by Jorie Graham (The Ecco Press)
1997 Alive Together: New and Selected Poems by Lisel Mueller (Louisiana State University Press)
1998 Black Zodiac by Charles Wright (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
1999 Blizzard of One by Mark Strand (Alfred A. Knopf)
2000 Repair by C.K. Williams (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
2001 Different Hours by Stephen Dunn (W.W. Norton & Company)
2002 Practical Gods by Carl Dennis (Penguin Books)
2003 Moy Sand and Gravel by Paul Muldoon (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
2004 Walking to Martha's Vineyard by Franz Wright (Alfred A. Knopf)
2005 Delights & Shadows by Ted Kooser (Copper Canyon Press)

Ironically, poetry therapy drives some heads insane, and possibly with good reason: what takes a lifetime for some to master, is now constructed in five minutes in a clinic. Still, if you fancy your chances at becoming an RPT (Registered Poetry Therapist...), or checking out its merits, you'll find some leads below in this piece by Perie J. Longo, PhD., RPT

Though it was recorded there was a Roman physician named Soranus in the first century A.D. who prescribed poetry and drama for his patients, the link between poetry and medicine has not been well documented.... In the 1950'’s, Eli Greifer, a poet, pharmacist and lawyer began a "poemtherapy" group at Creedmore State Hospital in New York City and in 1959 at Cumberland Hospital in Brooklyn, facilitated by psychiatrists Dr. Jack J. Leedy and Dr. Sam Spector. Dr. Leedy published the first definitive book on poetry therapy in 1969, Poetry Therapy, which includes essays by many of the early pioneers in the field. About this time more and more people in the helping professions began to use poetry integrated with group process. Among them was Arthur Lerner, Ph.D. of Los Angeles who founded the Poetry Therapy Institute in the 1970'’s on the west coast and in 1976 authored Poetry in the Therapeutic Experience... more here

Posthuman poetry, is perhaps the best term I can think of, to encapsulate David Link's poetry machine project, which "creates a new écriture automatique, where language is no longer the exclusive domain of human thought but also that of the internal logic of computers." The concept of automatic writing is not new, and of course monkeys typing randomly will generating something resembling that most othodox of concepts "meaningfulness", but what we see here, and elsewhere on the net, is the transition of poetry from being human centered to becoming a trans species, or posthuman, art form. The problems posthuman poetry generates, of gibberish, long windedness and obscurity are not new, (although perhaps they now exist in greater quantities), and it's applications may be more interesting than we suspect -and not just aesthetic. If a history of poetry is to teach us anything, is that all great poetry, is experimental to other ages. So an open mind remains helpful. I have a feeling though, that perhaps the previously discussed work of Eric Elshtain and Gnoetry will bear more appetising fruit for joe bloggs in the short term.

It's probably worth noting in passing, that Link obtained a PhD for this work, at the the Berlin, Institute for Aesthetics. A good programmer could rustle up this particular piece of code in a day or two for you, so that should leave a lot of time for contemplation of the ethereal, the sublime, the other sex, the same sex, writing a nice thesis contradicting everything I've said etc.

The world memory championship asks competitors to memorise an unpublished poem in 15 minutes and recall it in 20. Have a go. This is one of their previous poems:


A Case of knives. (Ted Hughes).

Cobblers and carpenters, in twenties and fifties,
Are spun like Tops by angry tongues a pair
That go on to insult statues till they are fatally
Politically corrected. A prophet
Rends from a Ram's heart: "See, two assassins
Beneath one cloak are slinking under the leg-arch
Of a Colossus." The Tripled roar of a city
Goes up like three smoke rings, three crowns.
An epileptic falls
Into the heart of a nation. In a dark room
Three men examine a dagger
On a bright night. Under a rain of fire
A turning man, fallen from a battle on the clouds
Rides a lion unhurt, bringing a letter
To one who reads it by lightning
Then turns back to the gang digging the grave.
But the sick man has leapt out of his bed
Leaving another man's wife with the nightmare
Where heaven falls and statues are blood-fountains
A hand is stroking a nervous lion. A hand
Is drawing on its flank a horoscope
Like a dial target. A ring of hands
Make a starry zodiac of daggers
Criss-crossing their squares and oppositions
At the earthy centre. A god of havoc
Leans back on two bunched handfuls
Of hounds' leashes, as a tight-rope walker
Delivers a speech balancing on a coffin
That bucks in an earthquake. A tricky moment.
Mobs pour up through cracks in the paving and
Two men on horseback, heads down
Beside their horses' ears, go through a gateway
Like devils casts from a body possessed.
In a little calm two laughing men
Pin down a third, like a butterfly.
A spurred horse collapses and a woman
Bursting into flames burns two soldiers.
But now a ghost, rising out of a lute,
Pours bewildering acid into their burns.
So through the cloud of pain two eagles flee
From a flock of crows, jackdaws and ravens.
Assuming the worst, by pure habit,
A soldier mingles a sunset
With his own hara kiri. The tide of woe
Burns two steady eyes and lifts away
The foundation block of integrity
That was a man stabbed by a phantom. A single
Tear of joy winks on the sea of sorrows.

The history of encoding and poetry goes way back, but is most playful in the riddle. Below are two, one by Christina Rosetti, and the other by Jonathon Swift. You can find the answers, and some more here.

There is one that has a head without an eye,
And there's one that has an eye without a head.
You may find the answer if you try;
And when all is said,
Half the answer hangs upon a thread.
--Christina Rossetti

We are little airy Creatures,
All of diff'rent Voice and Features,
One of us in Glass is set,
One of us you'll find in Jet,
T'other you may see in Tin,
And the fourth a Box within,
If the fifth you shou'd pursue,
It can never fly from you.
--Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)

In the Life of Pythagoras, Diogenes Laertius notes:

Aristoxenus asserts that Pythagoras derived the greater part of his ethical doctrines from Themistoclea, the priestess at Delphi. And Ion, of Chios, in his Victories, says that he wrote some poems and attributed them to Orpheus. They also say that the poem called the Scopeadae is by him, which begins thus:

Behave not shamelessly to any one.

He also observes:

Heraclides, the son of Sarapion, in his Abridgment of [N]otion says that he wrote a poem in epic verse upon the Universe; and besides that a sacred poem which begins thus:

"Dear youths, I warn you cherish peace divine,
And in your hearts lay deep these words of mine."

A third about the Soul; a fourth on Piety; a fifth entitled Helothales, which was the name of the father of Epicharmus of Cos; a sixth, called Crotona; and other poems too.

Read more about Pythagoras, and his "golden verses" (essentially maxims now attributed to his followers) here. Thanks for the pic Raphael.

I'm still unsure about Boris Pasternak's place in my personal pantheon/snow shaker of Russian poets, but the movie Dr. Zhivago, with the young poet Yuri Zhivago (Omar Sharif) as protagonist, and Julie Christie as Lara, remains one of my all time favourites. Here's one of the Zhivago poems:

Winds

I have died. You live alone with woe.
Now stormwinds, keening and repining,
Rock house and pine trees to and fro --
Not tree by tree, but at one blow
All groves together intertwining
With the illimitable space.
Thus sailboats sheltered at their base
Are rocked by winds along a bay.
But not in senseless agitation
The stormwind rages day by day:
Alone of grief its lamentation
And for you its lullaby of desolation.