"Poetry" by Marianne Moore

"Poetry"

I, too, dislike it.
__Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in
__it, after all, a place for the genuine.

---
About "Poetry" by Marianne Moore

In 1927, modernist poet Marianne Moore (1887-1972) laid bare her thoughts on poetry---the ability of "literalists of the imagination" to create “imaginary gardens with real toads in them", while "half poets" create something that is not poetry at all. Her lines, almost a manifesto, were widely read and admired. When she revisited the poem in 1967 for its publication in an anthology, she presented her views much more succinctly: "I, too, dislike it."

"Poetry" (original 1927 version)

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond
      all this fiddle.
   Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one
      discovers in
   it after all, a place for the genuine.
      Hands that can grasp, eyes
      that can dilate, hair that can rise
         if it must, these things are important not because a

high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because
      they are
   useful. When they become so derivative as to become
      unintelligible,
   the same thing may be said for all of us, that we
      do not admire what
      we cannot understand: the bat
         holding on upside down or in quest of something to 

eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless
      wolf under
   a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse
      that feels a flea, the base-
   ball fan, the statistician--
      nor is it valid
         to discriminate against “business documents and

school-books”; all these phenomena are important. One must make
      a distinction
   however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the
      result is not poetry,
   nor till the poets among us can be
     “literalists of
      the imagination”--above
         insolence and triviality and can present

for inspection, “imaginary gardens with real toads in them,"
      shall we have
   it. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,
   the raw material of poetry in
      all its rawness and
      that which is on the other hand 

genuine, you are interested in poetry.

“Things I Didn’t Know I Loved" by Nâzım Hikmet

it’s 1962 March 28th
I'm sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train
night is falling
I never knew I liked
night descending like a tired bird on a smoky wet plain
I don't like
comparing nightfall to a tired bird

I didn't know I loved the earth
can someone who hasn't worked the earth love it
I've never worked the earth
it must be my only Platonic love

and here I've loved rivers all this time
whether motionless like this they curl skirting the hills
European hills crowned with chateaus
or whether stretched out flat as far as the eye can see
I know you can't wash in the same river even once
I know the river will bring new lights you'll never see
I know we live slightly longer than a horse but not nearly as long as a crow
I know this has troubled people before
              and will trouble those after me
I know all this has been said a thousand times before
              and will be said after me

I didn't know I loved the sky
cloudy or clear
the blue vault Andrei studied on his back at Borodino
in prison I translated both volumes of War and Peace
I hear voices
not from the blue vault but from the yard
the guards are beating someone again
I didn't know I loved trees
bare beeches near Moscow in Peredelkino
they come upon me in winter noble and modest
beeches are Russian the way poplars are Turkish
"the poplars of Izmir
losing their leaves. . .
they call me The Knife. . .
                     lover like a young tree. . .
I blow stately mansions sky-high"
in the Ilgaz woods in 1920 I tied an embroidered linen handkerchief
                                    to a pine bough for luck

I never knew I loved roads
even the asphalt kind
Vera's behind the wheel we're driving from Moscow to the Crimea
                                                    Koktebele
                               formerly "Goktepé ili" in Turkish
the two of us inside a closed box
the world flows past on both sides distant and mute
I was never so close to anyone in my life
bandits stopped me on the red road between Bolu and Geredé
                                when I was eighteen
apart from my life I didn't have anything in the wagon they could take
and at eighteen our lives are what we value least
I've written this somewhere before
wading through a dark muddy street I'm going to the shadow play
Ramazan night
a paper lantern leading the way
maybe nothing like this ever happened
maybe I read it somewhere an eight-year-old boy
                                  going to the shadow play
Ramazan night in Istanbul holding his grandfather's hand
  his grandfather has on a fez and is wearing the fur coat
    with a sable collar over his robe
  and there's a lantern in the servant's hand
  and I can't contain myself for joy
flowers come to mind for some reason
poppies cactuses jonquils
in the jonquil garden in Kadikoy Istanbul I kissed Marika
fresh almonds on her breath
I was seventeen
my heart on a swing touched the sky
I didn't know I loved flowers
friends sent me three red carnations in prison

I just remembered the stars
I love them too
whether I'm floored watching them from below
or whether I'm flying at their side

I have some questions for the cosmonauts
were the stars much bigger
did they look like huge jewels on black velvet
                           or apricots on orange
did you feel proud to get closer to the stars
I saw color photos of the cosmos in Ogonek magazine now don't
  be upset comrades but nonfigurative shall we say or abstract
  well some of them looked just like such paintings which is to
  say they were terribly figurative and concrete
my heart was in my mouth looking at them
they are our endless desire to grasp things
seeing them I could even think of death and not feel at all sad
I never knew I loved the cosmos

snow flashes in front of my eyes
both heavy wet steady snow and the dry whirling kind
I didn't know I liked snow

I never knew I loved the sun
even when setting cherry-red as now
in Istanbul too it sometimes sets in postcard colors
but you aren't about to paint it that way
I didn't know I loved the sea
                        except the Sea of Azov
or how much

I didn't know I loved clouds
whether I'm under or up above them
whether they look like giants or shaggy white beasts

moonlight the falsest the most languid the most petit-bourgeois
strikes me
I like it

I didn't know I liked rain
whether it falls like a fine net or splatters against the glass my
  heart leaves me tangled up in a net or trapped inside a drop
  and takes off for uncharted countries I didn't know I loved
  rain but why did I suddenly discover all these passions sitting
  by the window on the Prague-Berlin train
is it because I lit my sixth cigarette
one alone could kill me
is it because I'm half dead from thinking about someone back in Moscow
her hair straw-blond eyelashes blue

the train plunges on through the pitch-black night
I never knew I liked the night pitch-black
sparks fly from the engine
I didn't know I loved sparks
I didn't know I loved so many things and I had to wait until sixty
  to find it out sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train
  watching the world disappear as if on a journey of no return

19 April 1962
Moscow

---
Nâzım Hikmet Ran (1902-1963) was a Turkish poet known for his expressive lyrical verse. Persecuted for decades by the Republic of Turkey during the Cold War for his communist views, spent much of his adult life in prison or in exile. "Things I Didn't Know I Loved" describes a leg of his journey from Turkey to exile in Russia. He died of a heart attack a year after it was written, on 3 June 1963, while picking up a morning newspaper at the door of his summer house near Moscow.

“Acquainted with the Night" by Robert Frost

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.


----
About "Acquainted with the Night"
Perhaps the foremost American poet, Robert Frost was born in San Francisco in 1874 but spent much of his life in New England. His "Acquainted with the Night" first appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review and was published in 1928 in his collection West-Running Brook. Written in iambic pentameter, the sonnet-length poem uses a "terza rima" rhyme scheme (aba bcb cdc dad aa). Popularized by Dante, the scheme is popular in Italian but rarely used in English.

On its face, the poem depicts a narrator strolling the streets of a city, alone. Although evocative in its realistic details (I have passed by the watchman on his beat/ And dropped my eyes), "Acquainted with the Night" can also be read allegorically, as a poet confessing to his familiarity with the "night" of melancholy.

“A Supermarket in California” by Allen Ginsberg

  What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.
  In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
  What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands!   Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!--and you, García Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?

  I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.
  I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
  I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and followed in my imagination by the store detective.
  We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier.

"Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?


Robert Hayden, 1913-1980
© 1966 by Robert Hayden, from Collected Poems of Robert Hayden

"The Flowerburgers" by Richard Brautigan

Baudelaire opened
up a hamburger stand
in San Francisco,
but he put flowers
between the buns.
People would come in
and say, “Give me a
hamburger with plenty
of onions on it.”
Baudelaire would give
them a flowerburger
instead and the people
would say, “What kind
of a hamburger stand
is this?”
About "The Flowerburgers"
"The Flowerburgers is part 4 of Richard Brautigan's series The Galilee Hitch-Hiker. The Galilee Hitch-Hiker is a single poem in nine numbered and differently titled parts. Each features a fictional story about Charles Baudelaire, the 19th-century French poet maudit. In part 1, Baudelaire picks up Jesus hitch-hiking on his way to Golgotha. In later section he drinks with a San Francisco wino, buys a jeweled cat, and smokes opium at a baseball game. In part 8 "Baudelaire went/ to the insane asylum/ disguised as a/ psychiatrist./ He stayed there/ for two months/ and when he left,/ the insane asylum/ loved him so much/ that it followed/ him all over/ California,/ and Baudelaire/ laughed when the/ insane asylum/ rubbed itself/ up against his/ leg like a/ strange cat." A notation at end of poem series states "San Francisco February 1958."

The Galilee Hitch-Hiker was first published in May 1958 by White Rabbit Press in a limited run of 200 copies. It was Brautigan's second poetry book publication. All nine parts of The Galilee Hitch-Hiker were collected and reprinted in The Pill versus The Springhill Mine Disaster (1968).

“LXII. Terence, this is stupid stuff" by A. E. Housman

‘TERENCE, this is stupid stuff:
You eat your victuals fast enough;
There can’t be much amiss, ’tis clear,
To see the rate you drink your beer.
But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,        5
It gives a chap the belly-ache.
The cow, the old cow, she is dead;
It sleeps well, the horned head:
We poor lads, ’tis our turn now
To hear such tunes as killed the cow.        10
Pretty friendship ’tis to rhyme
Your friends to death before their time
Moping melancholy mad:
Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad.’

  Why, if ’tis dancing you would be,        15
There’s brisker pipes than poetry.
Say, for what were hop-yards meant,
Or why was Burton built on Trent?
Oh many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse,        20
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God’s ways to man.
Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think:
Look into the pewter pot        25
To see the world as the world’s not.
And faith, ’tis pleasant till ’tis past:
The mischief is that ’twill not last.
Oh I have been to Ludlow fair
And left my necktie God knows where,        30
And carried half way home, or near,
Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:
Then the world seemed none so bad,
And I myself a sterling lad;
And down in lovely muck I’ve lain,        35
Happy till I woke again.
Then I saw the morning sky:
Heigho, the tale was all a lie;
The world, it was the old world yet,
I was I, my things were wet,        40
And nothing now remained to do
But begin the game anew.

  Therefore, since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure        45
Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure,
I’d face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good.
’Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale
Is not so brisk a brew as ale:        50
Out of a stem that scored the hand
I wrung it in a weary land.
But take it: if the smack is sour,
The better for the embittered hour;
It should do good to heart and head        55
When your soul is in my soul’s stead;
And I will friend you, if I may,
In the dark and cloudy day.

  There was a king reigned in the East:
There, when kings will sit to feast,        60
They get their fill before they think
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
He gathered all the springs to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more,        65
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
They put arsenic in his meat
And stared aghast to watch him eat;        70
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up:
They shook, they stared as white’s their shirt:
Them it was their poison hurt.
—I tell the tale that I heard told.        75
Mithridates, he died old.