dublinka

Purpleglitter.com are running a poetry generator here. Simply fill in the nouns, names and adjectives and it will throw you back some Plathesque concoction. Fun for a minute.

Crossing Dublin city on my way to lunch, I got caught up in today's riot outside the GPO on O'Connell street. Bricks and wire mesh were strewn across the street, and with people and police running all over the place, the going was a little tricky. Nevertheless, the essential thing to remember about any riot, is that there is almost always a reasonably jovial atmosphere: prolonged anger is always an act of theatre - as much as any genuine emotional expression. And, as long as you yourself are not being beaten, a curious sense of humorous detatchment prevails. Still, this feeling is seldom reported in poetry. Perhaps because the feeling is too transient, and the composition of poetry entails reflection. Then, over time, when weighing up the events on the scales of judgment, we are compelled like Yeats, to take it all so seriously.

Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great,
Had they but courage equal to desire?

The little known genre of Japanese doll poetry, has been traced back over one hundred years by Judy Shoaf. The poems constitute a delightful and interesting historical array, which somehow transcends the casual racial slurs, which abound, dressed in childlike innocence.

The combat poets of maya is the quirky child of Bill Johnson's sci-fi, po-go musings. I haven't got a hold of it yet, but I'll put it on my wish list.

Probably the most famous acrostic in literary history, belongs to Dubliner, Oliver St.John Gogarty, who published an anonymous poem Ode of Welcome in Irish Society in 1900. The poem was ostensibly a salute to soldiers returning from duty - but many Irish believed the soldiers should not have been fighting for the British empire anyhow, and so, hidden down the left hand side is a typical Gogartian quip. Word spread and the magazine sold out in hours.

The Gallant Irish yeoman
Home from the war has come
Each victory gained o'er foeman
Why should our bards be dumb.

How shall we sing their praises
Our glory in their deeds
Renowned their worth amazes
Empire their prowess needs.

So to Old Ireland's hearts and homes
We welcome now our own brave boys
In cot and Hall; neath lordly domes
Love's heroes share once more our joys.

Love is the Lord of all just now
Be he the husband, lover, son,
Each dauntless soul recalls the vow
By which not fame, but love was won.

United now in fond embrace
Salute with joy each well-loved face
Yeoman: in women's hearts you hold the place.

Update: I probably should have said most famous Irish acrostic. I'll cover Poe and Psalm 119 some other time. Thanks Aphidhog.

Awright geeezzaa! If yew visi' dis site you'll be able ter translate into cockney rhymin' slang. Some days it's in'eresting, uvver days just forced. I remember 'earin' a story abaaaht some poor studen' from Bejin' who learn' i' off, thinkin' dis was essential english. Gawdon Bennet! It's not talkin' in poe'ry as such, but obviously 'as a certain appeal ter poets. OK? And, useful if talkin' ter white van drivers in da local egg an' spoon. Sorted mate.

Need a badge to declare your faith? Find one here.

Elliot Richman published an interesting poem in the journal Confrontation back in 92. It's called The face in the ice and recounts a memory of reading about the siege of Leningrad. On crossing a frozen lake the war correspondent saw a line of human faces imbedded under his boots. The bodies having been swept away, all that was left was a necklace of glass masks. Elliot mourns:


All winter their bodies imprisoned
under the ice, the first spring currents
swept their carcasses to the sea,
leaving only the faces,
etched in blue-green crystals.

What is astounding about this poem is of course the intensity of the image. You could memorise the words, but there is no need. The image has been effortlessly transferred, by the ice, to the war correspondent, to the poet, to the reader etc. This transfer is made possible, not by the sheer horror of the fate of the Russian soldiers, but by the sheer beauty of that horror. And the beauty being such that, I can promise you this: you'll find yourself fixating again and again on the fate of these soldiers, and your mind will not melt such horror, even though part of it needs to.

Elliot goes on to personalise this image with a twist, but I'll leave that to the curious among you to discover by yourself.

"The poets” says Maqsood Jafri, is a full chapter in the Quran, telling us that: In it God says; “And the poets, - it is those straying in evil, who follow them; don’t you see that they wander distracted in every valley? And that they say what they do not practise. Except those who believe, work righteousness, engage much in the remembrance of Allah, and defend themselves only after they are unjustly attacked.” These verses divide poets in to two classes. The evil ones and the righteous ones. The poets who spread evil are condemned. The poets who preach nobility are praised. Read more below, about the Islamic Concept of Poetry.

I picked up this transmission on the net from 2004 but can't verify it. Did it even happen? Kind of funny if it did...

Wed Nov 17,10:45 AM ET Science - Reuters

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Swedish poets have broadcast their work into outer space by radio to give alien life forms -- if they exist -- a taste of earthling literature.

"I can't think of anything more adequate than poetry to communicate what it means to be human," said Daniel Sjolin, editor of Swedish poetry magazine Lyrikvannen and organizer of the live reading at a Stockholm observatory.

The transmission Tuesday night was aimed at Vega, the brightest star of the Lyra constellation, which is 25 light-years from Earth -- meaning the poets will have to wait 50 years for alien reviews.

If you're ever wondering where the NASA budget ends up, look no further. Here's a page from their site showing some concrete poetry.

I'm not a fan of poetry contests. Even assuming the process is not corrupt, which it often is, it's dubious to insist you can rank aesthetic objects, and the fact that the practice is widespread does not validate it. Worse still, the judging panel are forced to take your work our of context. Like ripping leaves from a tree, or the heart from the body. Before web-renaissance poetry, the reliance on the poetry contest, was one of the great hallmarks of the decline of poetry, scraps for the dogs, but in a sense justified as a method of helping the poem make contact with the wider world. Now I believe the process is redundant. If you disagree, fine, you can even pay 15 dollars for the above magazine here.

Incoming on a Paris poetry slam, and a useful French slam site here at La poésie slam de Sylvainkimouss.

Well, if you want a Robert Frost poetry tattoo, now you know where to get one:

Artist: Tattoos by Kane - Immortal Images Tattoos
Fredericksburg, Virginia
(540) 373-9711

There really is something very apt about picking this poem. But are there any poets out there using their own skin as a notebook? Would be kind of cool...

I've spent the morning devouring, The Poet's Notebook, a collection of excerpts from the notebooks of 26 American poets. It makes for fascinating reading, throwing one disconnected thought after another at you. Observations, ideas, trivia, quotations - you name it - this books is laden with a gloriously obscene melange of writing, which fires your critical and poetic faculties, so much so that you find yourself increasingly rewriting in your mind whole pages of it in original ways. If you've ever felt that the notebooks you keep are crashed cars of thoughts, then you'll find you're not alone. It is a triumph of the incidental over the structured; a dreamlike subconscious, where thoughts are in the process of being sculpted into language - and, as is often the case, broken and smashed on the page. Published in 1995, and available for next to nothing second hand, I have the feeling it is destined to become a cult classic.

Quite a few of Beckett's poems have been used by composers down through the years. A complete listing, along with prose inspired work, is available here.
(This may be of interest to you CyberScribe.)

For some people it's the poet not the poetry. And can you blame them? Some poets simply fascinate. Take the following article discussing Byron's menagerie:

During his courtship of Theresa Guccioli, Byron rented the upper floor of her husband, Count Guccioli’s villa in Ravenna and proceeded to make himself at home by installing a menagerie of "ten horses, eight enormous dogs, three monkeys, five cats, an eagle, a crow, and a falcon." When the poet Shelley visited the count a few month later, he was met on the staircase by "five peacocks, two guinea hens and an Egyptian crane". In 1819 Byron wrote happily to his friend Francis Hodgson, "I have got two monkeys and a fox - and two new mastiffs - Mutz is still in high old age. The monkeys are charming."