Gakked from [personal profile] wintercreek though I'm sure I saw it elsewhere.

2/5/09 01:11 am
kate: Kate Winslet is wryly amused (james bashful smiley)
[personal profile] kate
When you see this, post your favorite poem.

My favorite poem (and I only have six or seven that I even like - not a poetry person, me):

Love Sonnet LXXIX
by Pablo Neruda

By night, Love, tie your heart to mine, and the two
together in their sleep will defeat the darkness
like a double drum in the forest, pounding
against the thick wall of wet leaves.

Night travel: black flame of sleep
that snips the threads of the earth's grapes,
punctual as a headlong train that would haul
shadows and cold rocks, endlessly.

Because of this, Love, tie me to a purer motion,
to the constancy that beats in your chest
with the wings of a swan underwater,

so that our sleep might answer all the sky's
starry questions with a single key,
with a single door the shadows had closed.

Translated by Stephen Tapscott


Work has eased up. AHA has set their deadline back again, that's how f*cked up their new site is. But all my NIH apps are in a day early, so I don't have to go in early tomorrow, or stay late. I might even have a chance to really write, instead of the piddling couple hundred words a day I've been scribbling for the last week.

How are you all? Well, I hope. I have things to say, but not enough time or energy to say them. Except this: GO READ [livejournal.com profile] meansgirl's FANTASTIC LORNE/ZELENKA FIC RIGHT NOW. Past and Pending. A lovely AU, great description, hot sex, and wonderful characterization to boot. Go!

on 2/5/09 06:51 am (UTC)
ext_35084: (Default)
Posted by [identity profile] cleverkat.livejournal.com
I'm not a poetry person at all, but a good song with thought-provoking lyrics can knock me on my ass every time. This is the lyrics to one of my current favorites, a track featured on my mix cd (which is now waiting on me getting myself to Target for a new color printer cartridge so I can print out my cover art I got ridiculously obsessed with perfecting).

The Rosebuds, "Black Hole"
When scientists made it and all was destroyed
My little diary was all that survived
Carries seeds of corruption, of beauty and lies
An ugly little fruit, all alone
Scrapes across unknown dust along the way
Becoming striated to announce where it's been
Carries seeds of corruption, of beauty and lies
Out of context, all alone
Maybe it never finds another to tell
Infinite misses with meaning instead

It's such a melancholy song and yet it has this dreamy ethereal quality to it that I really dig. I'm nearly 33 and a pretty reasonably happy person and yet I go for the sad songs every time, much the way I did when I was 15 and wore too much eyeliner. The more they wrench at my heart, the more I like them. Guess you can't ever fully take the goth girl out of yourself once you let her in. Heh. Not to mention I sort of like the idea of this diary being found with absolutely no context, no way to know what the person who wrote it was talking about or who that person was.

on 2/12/09 02:28 am (UTC)
kisahawklin: Sharpened pencil writing 'kisa' (Default)
Posted by [personal profile] kisahawklin
The more they wrench at my heart, the more I like them.

I was never goth or anything, but I like my songs and my stories and my art sad. It's somehow more touching than the happy stuff.

Also, yes, I like those lyrics a lot.

on 2/5/09 11:23 am (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] justbluemyself.livejournal.com
My favorite poem is too long to post, so I'll just post a link. It's The Lady of Shalott - by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (http://charon.sfsu.edu/tennyson/TENNLADY.HTML). I love it sooooo much. It's the most beautiful poem I've ever read.

on 2/12/09 02:29 am (UTC)
kisahawklin: Sharpened pencil writing 'kisa' (Default)
Posted by [personal profile] kisahawklin
Oh, I've read that! I've read a little poetry, so I know a lot of what I would consider 'basic' poetry - and that was one of them. It is beautiful, isn't it? Mmm. Thanks. I forget there's more poetry out there that I like than I think.

on 2/5/09 08:58 pm (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] lisabellex.livejournal.com
That's a beautiful poem. Absolutely gorgeous.

I'm fine, thank you very much. I hope you're keeping well, too. Do you have snow? We do.

:D

on 2/12/09 02:30 am (UTC)
kisahawklin: Sharpened pencil writing 'kisa' (Default)
Posted by [personal profile] kisahawklin
I think we did have a bit of snow when you posted this, but now we're in the middle of a heat wave - all our windows are open! Crazy weather!

on 2/6/09 05:54 am (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] dromomanic.livejournal.com
'What do you make so fair and bright?'

'I make the cloak of Sorrow:
O lovely to see in all men's sight
Shall be the cloak of Sorrow,
In all men's sight.'

'What do you build with sails for flight?'

'I build a boat for Sorrow:
O swift on the seas all day and night
Saileth the rover Sorrow,
All day and night.'

What do you weave with wool so white?'

'I weave the shoes of Sorrow:
Soundless shall be the footfall light
In all men's ears of Sorrow,
Sudden and light.'


Do you happen to have the original for the Neruda poem? Putting my restaurant Spanish into google hasn't yielded much :-(

on 2/12/09 02:34 am (UTC)
kisahawklin: Sharpened pencil writing 'kisa' (Default)
Posted by [personal profile] kisahawklin
Oh, that's nice! Thank you, that's a lovely poem.

I only have the translation, unfortunately. But the book it's from has the 100 sonnets in Spanish AND English. Worth a purchase at $11.53.

on 2/12/09 02:45 am (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] dromomanic.livejournal.com
Oh my, that does look like a good idea. Thanks.

And just for the sake of some more copy-paste, I have a soft spot for Williams Carlos Williams. I used to hate him—I remember that the awful literature textbook in high school had “The Red Wheelbarrow” as a kind of strange, isolated thing, as if to say, “Look! This is modernism; they are crazy,” and that hour spent torturing and analyzing those three little lines was an awful thing, an act driven in no way by an appreciation for the art of language—but like most everything I first read in high school, he's grown on me since. I still think the wheelbarrow thing is a little silly though.

“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

on 2/12/09 02:51 am (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] dromomanic.livejournal.com
Oops eight lines. The shitty purple book rendered it as four, and I am bad at remembering things.

on 2/6/09 05:28 pm (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] madrain.livejournal.com
I love too many to really choose a favorite, but this is my goto poem since it's the only one I can memorize.

IN A STATION OF THE METRO

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

- Ezra Pound

on 2/12/09 02:39 am (UTC)
kisahawklin: Sharpened pencil writing 'kisa' (Default)
Posted by [personal profile] kisahawklin
Ahhaha, one of my favorites is like that. It's by Viggo Mortensen (don't judge me!):

Matinee

After years of merging and allowing
yourself to be assimilated
Your hair and clothes
have turned brown
Then, one afternoon you leave a theatre
After seeing the restored
Version of ‘The Hero Returns’
And find yourself wanting
to be treated special.

I've never been one for memorizing poems, but I like this one. It's not too hard and makes me happy.

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