POEM OF THE DAY -- "Nikki-Rosa" by Nikki Giovanni

The poetry of Nikki Giovanni has always interested me.  A prominent and respected african-american poet, Giovanni's poetry evokes very strong racial pride and delivers a sense of family that only her poetry can convey. 

Although a white person like myself can never pretend to understand what it is like to be black, Nikki's poetry is written in such a way that I feel different while I'm reading it.

A beautiful experience, really.

Most of her most famous works of poetry were published during the late 1960's and early 1970's -- a time in which admittedly she must have shown great bravery and relied on her inner strength and resolve to write and publish her poems.

Here is one of my favorites, and it clearly shows her beautiful respect for family.  

Enjoy.

Nikki-Rosa

By Nikki Giovanni

 

childhood remembrances are always a drag   

if you’re Black

you always remember things like living in Woodlawn   

with no inside toilet

and if you become famous or something

they never talk about how happy you were to have   

your mother

all to yourself and

how good the water felt when you got your bath   

from one of those

big tubs that folk in chicago barbecue in   

and somehow when you talk about home   

it never gets across how much you

understood their feelings

as the whole family attended meetings about Hollydale

and even though you remember

your biographers never understand

your father’s pain as he sells his stock   

and another dream goes

And though you’re poor it isn’t poverty that

concerns you

and though they fought a lot

it isn’t your father’s drinking that makes any difference   

but only that everybody is together and you

and your sister have happy birthdays and very good   

Christmases

and I really hope no white person ever has cause   

to write about me

because they never understand

Black love is Black wealth and they’ll

probably talk about my hard childhood

and never understand that

all the while I was quite happy 

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POEM OF THE DAY -- "Braggart" by Dorothy Parker

A sad woman, a sad childhood, brilliant friends and talented writer, with a caustic wit and cynical stare.  Dorothy Parker and her work lies just under the radar for the most part.  I don't think it should be that way.

Dorothy formed the infamous literary group -- the Algonquin Round Table with Robert Benchley, Robert E. Sherwood, James Thurber, George S. Kaufman, Edna Ferber, Harpo Marx, Franklin P. Adams, and many others.

She lived a full life, that's for sure, with several marriages, much publicity, and several suicide attempts.

Here is one of her most famous poetry works,  Braggart...


Braggart

by Dorothy Parker 

The days will rally, wreathing
Their crazy tarantelle;
And you must go on breathing,
But I'll be safe in hell.

Like January weather,
The years will bite and smart,
And pull your bones together
To wrap your chattering heart.

The pretty stuff you're made of
Will crack and crease and dry.
The thing you are afraid of
Will look from every eye.

You will go faltering after
The bright, imperious line,
And split your throat on laughter,
And burn your eyes with brine.

You will be frail and musty
With peering, furtive head,
Whilst I am young and lusty
Among the roaring dead.

POEM "The Betrayer" by Thomas Herr

The Betrayer

By Thomas Herr

On Safari

It is dark, it is strange

Approached by the princess of the tribe

Subdued by her regal beauty

The set of her firm breasts

The secrets of her ancestry revealed

The promise of pleasure

Magical berries and smoke to share we steal off into the night.

We set out for the green trees to set up camp, intoxicated.

Out on the trail she summons her prince warrior big and stout and full of smell

I hooked up with the princess of the tribe and

End up a prisoner under the green trees

Waiting for the prince to sleep

His warrior knife concealed beneath his cloth

At dawn I steal away, betrayed,

-- The betrayer --

Leaving promises of nothing

Taking her ceremonial garb with me on the long flight home

Alone

POEM OF THE DAY -- "picasso" by e.e. cummings

eNothing followers (the blog here or on twitter) know that we love e.e. cummings work (or any art/photography/music that is unconventional).  Cummings was an innovator, and avante garde painter of words, experimenting with words or parts of words, scattering them across the page like a canvas, spraying punctuation marks around, and basically bucking convention for the sake of creativity.

His unique style and departure from (poetic) tradition are traits that defined e.e. cummings; and so it was with Pablo Picasso -- who was greatly admired by cummings.- who was fortunate enough to spend time with Picasso during his sojourns to Paris in the 1920's and 1930's.

And so here is one of cummings poems honoring the surrealistic master.

Picasso


by e.e. cummings

Picasso
you give us things
which
bulge:grunting lungs pumped full of sharp thick mind

you make us shrill
presents always
shut in the sumptuous screech of
simplicity

(out of the
black unbunged
Something gushes vaguely a squeak of planes
or

between squeals of
Nothing grabbed with circular shrieking tightness
solid screams whispers.)
Lumberman of the Distinct

your brain's
axe only chops hugest inherent
Trees of Ego,from
whose living and biggest

bodies lopped
of every
prettiness

you hew form truly

-

POEM OF THE DAY -- "The Waste Land" by T.S. Eliot -- Part V.

Here is Part V of the Waste Land, arguably one of the most infuential poems of all time.  This is the final section of the poem - and hence is our final insertion as POEM OF THE DAY.

It's been a great experience, revisiting this poem after so many years, well, since my high school paper...

This time, it's been easy to embrace the poem.  After all, I've become (and so have you, it's likely) my own poet, and in fact, have lived (am living) in my own

Waste Land.

Enjoy.
THE WASTE LAND

By T.S. Eliot

V. WHAT THE THUNDER SAID

After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience
Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If there were only water amongst the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mudcracked houses
If
there were water
And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
And water
A spring
A pool among the rock
If there were the sound of water only
Not the cicada
And dry grass singing
But sound of water over a rock
Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water
Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
- But who is that on the other side of you?
What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal
A woman drew her long black hair out tight
And fiddled whisper music on those strings
And bats with baby faces in the violet light
Whistled, and beat their wings
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall
And upside down in air were towers
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.
In this decayed hole among the mountains
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home.
It has no windows, and the door swings,
Dry bones can harm no one.
Only a cock stood on the rooftree
Co co rico co co rico
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain
Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
Waited for rain, while the black clouds
Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
Then spoke the thunder
DA
Datta: what have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed
Which is not to be found in our obituaries
Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
In our empty rooms
DA
Dayadhvam: I have heard the key
Turn in the door once and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
Only at nightfall, aetherial rumours
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus
DA
Damyata: The boat responded
Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar
The sea was calm, your heart would have responded
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
To controlling hands

I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam ceu chelidon - O swallow swallow
Le Prince d'Aquitaine a la tour abolie
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih
shantih shantih


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POEM OF THE DAY -- "night train to horta" by Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso -- Poet?  That's right.  One of the founders and undeniable leaders of the famous and influential surrealist movement -- as an artist and a sculptor -- was also an accomplished and respected surrealist poet.

The surrealist movement was led by Picasso and poets Andre Breton and Paul Eluard - and formed a tight circle of nuclear genius in Paris in the early half of the twentieth century.  Picasso led the surrealistic movement as aruguably the most famous artist of the twentieth century, perhaps of all time.

What few know is that in 1935, at age 54, an emotional crisis caused Picasso to halt all painting and devote himself entirely to poetry.  André Breton praised his writings as ‘an intimate journal, both of the feelings and the senses, such as has never been kept before.’

Here for your reading pleasure is one of my favorite Picasso poems, "Night Train to Horta":

night train to horta

by Pablo Picasso

she wants head

male bonding

siamese twins

tango 69

me

i travel by images

corporal landscapes

the mouth is the tunnel

quick, now

the tongue the train

windows on the world

unmistaken

still

same refrain

we will meet

we will meet

somewhere again

end of the line

with

the power of torso

speed of the memento

lost and then

found

and

always

the blood engine

pounding

puffing

steaming its blush

on the cheek of night

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