Is there any rad poetry out there?

[nlatimer]

I've long contended that poetry is a bit of a dead art, the best of the medium in the past half century tends to be humorous, unless you count music lyrics, which when judging art, its always hard to pigeonhole most anything into a genre, and sometimes even a medium.

I can't think of anyone who doesn't love Shel Silverstein and his works.

Recently I found the works of Dave Grossman and he has a poem of the week (http://phrenopolis.com/poem/index.html)

One of his recent entries got me thinking on poetry as a medium

Altered Outlook

New specs can vex
Convex, complex
Creation warped unclear
To really see
Unambiguously
Adjust as well the seer

[wideawakewesley]

I used to write a bit back in the day, seems like it was a phase though, because I can't write for sh*t anymore. Anyway, here's my favourite poem, I think I was on crack when I wrote this.

;)

Jingo

Can your dingle dangle,
When yer tingle tangles,
In her hair or her mind,
Does your Scooby Doo,
What yer wantin to,
When it's cold,
Or when it's wet,
I see melons and colli,
Dancin in the grass and weed,
But it's not for me,
Maybe in a dream,
It's those pink elephants again,
Drinking my brain,
With a glass of lemonade,
In my yellow submarine,
To nowhere's where I'm going,
A bit like this poem,
Lost in my lingo,
Do you see the jingo?

Wes

p.s. More can be found at my deviantart link below, but the others are slightly more conventional.

[serenity]

I'm not usually one for poetry (Of course I love Shel Silverstein but that's a given) but I've always adored Edna St. Vincent Millay.
Something in her poetry speaks to me in a way most poets don't.

My favourite poem by her is Renascence. Here is a little piece of it (it's rather long):



So here upon my back I'll lie
And look my fill into the sky.
And so I looked, and, after all,
The sky was not so very tall.
The sky, I said, must somewhere stop,
And -- sure enough! -- I see the top!
The sky, I thought, is not so grand;
I 'most could touch it with my hand!
And reaching up my hand to try,
I screamed to feel it touch the sky.
I screamed, and -- lo! -- Infinity
Came down and settled over me;
Forced back my scream into my chest,
Bent back my arm upon my breast,
And, pressing of the Undefined
The definition on my mind,
Held up before my eyes a glass
Through which my shrinking sight did pass
Until it seemed I must behold
Immensity made manifold;
Whispered to me a word whose sound
Deafened the air for worlds around,
And brought unmuffled to my ears
The gossiping of friendly spheres,
The creaking of the tented sky,
The ticking of Eternity.

Here is the link to the entire poem:
Renascence (http://www.everypoet.com/Archive/poetry/Edna_St_Vincent_Millay/edna_st_vincent_millay_renascence.htm)



PS. Wes, stop bogarting the drugs!

[kahunablair]

I'm a big Bradley Hathaway fan.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJGwVBvJMPM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJGwVBvJMPM

[cythraul]

Beowulf is pretty rad. (Though, the translation you'll most commonly find on the web, by Francis Grummere, is unnecessarily dense.)

(Also, "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came", by Robert Browning, especially if you're a Stephen King fan.)

[whitetigress357]

I am one for poetry. I write it as well as read it. If you like to write poetry you can go to www.fictionpresss.com and read some good poems by amateur poets (or if your of the female persuasion, like I, we prefer Poetess) but to each their own.

[puddlefish]

Beowulf is pretty rad. (Though, the translation you'll most commonly find on the web, by Francis Grummere, is unnecessarily dense.)

(Also, "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came", by Robert Browning, especially if you're a Stephen King fan.)

Seamus Heaney did a realy nice translation of Beowulf. Speaking of Beowulf, has anybody read "Grendel" by John Gardner? God I love that book...

As clichéd as it might sound... my favourite poet is Dr. Seuss. Everything you need to know as a child, every moral lesson, is in his books. "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish" is a personal favourite.

Other poets that I enjoy are Edgar Allen Poe and Allen Ginsberg.

[cythraul]

Seamus Heaney did a realy nice translation of Beowulf. Speaking of Beowulf, has anybody read "Grendel" by John Gardner? God I love that book...

I keep hearing that scholars are cranky about the liberties Heaney took (to whom I say "Have you studied Anglo-Saxon poetry at all?). But everyone I know who've actually read Heaneywulf say it's great.

I hear nifty things about Grendel, but have nae read it. (I took the Forms of Fantasy course with the other prof. The one who taught Beowulf itself instead. :P)

[brettville]

Jabberwocky FTW

If I had a Vorpal Sword I'd snicker-snack the crap out of people!

God bless Lewis Carroll.

[nlatimer]

As clichéd as it might sound... my favourite poet is Dr. Seuss. Everything you need to know as a child, every moral lesson, is in his books. "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish" is a personal favourite.

See now I didn't even think of Dr. Seuss, at least not as a poet, yet who doesn't love him. That goes back more to my point I suppose of it mixing mediums, I always though of him more as a children's storybook writer, but its all poems I suppose.

"When beetles fight these battles in a bottle with their paddles and the bottle's on a poodle and the poodle's eating noodles, they call this a muddle puddle tweedle poodle beetle noodle bottle paddle battle."

I love this quote, and yes I learned to say it with moderate speed.

[schalicto]

I read this in a zine several years ago.

"Loving you is hard
but not as hard as Dokken
Man, that shit really rocks"

These words ring true, even today.

[lrsk]

I recommend Stephen Fry's "The Ode Less Traveled". It is a guide to poetry appreciation and writing. Stephen Fry is of course a genius and one of my heroes.

[quorumcall]

I recently picked up Adult Head by Jeff Tweedy. There's just something so sobering and enigmatic about his words.

Prayer #1

a bouquet of disasters
to be grown

the orchestra
is proving the dead again

red flashes are
the bells ringing

hide with me
alive in the weeds

the flowers paused
are the fury
and dead song, waiting...

[puddlefish]

No matter what the words are, I could listen to Jeff Tweedy's voice all day. One of the best singers on my current playlists.

[gnome-chomps-key]

William Carlos Williams. Specifically, This is Just to Say

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox



and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast



Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold

[wideawakewesley]

My favourite poem/prose is Desiderata, google it. That thing set me up for life.

[j_mcdougald]

Everybody dies.
Soon I too will cease to live.
Your mom gave me AIDS.

[frankiethewaffle]

HBO used to have Def Jam Poetry or something like that. I am not too much into anything "Def", but some of them were really good. I looked forward to it every week. You might be able to find traces of it online.

J_Mc. That is rough dude. Very funny though. That is what's important.