Poem of the moment

[Saffron]

This poem has puzzled me. It seems simple but obviously isn't. I read some of John Hollander's analysis that you gave the link to, but didn't catch on to it. This is no Drumlin Woodchuck, a Frost animal that I think I do understand.

I'm still thinking over the poem and what Hollander had to say about it. I did find a more helpful essay on the Oven Bird -- here's the link:

www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/frost/ovenbrid.htm

[Thomas Hood]

Eat Healthy

Avoid
Condiments
On the food...
Condiments is
Making tasty of food...
But...
Healthy is
Dustely waste...
Waste is not
Food...
Food is not
Waste...
Make a food
With out condiments
Eat healthy...!

otteri selvakumar

This is poor dietary advice. Condiments (mustard and spices) are often the most healthful part of a meal, as they are a rich source of vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals. I avoid condiments with hydrogenated oils and corn syrup sweeteners but use pepper, herbs, and mustard generously.

Tom

[Saffron]

I meant to post this on my actual birthday (2/12), but since we had my cake today I guess it still works.

A Birthday Poem
Ted Kooser

Just past dawn, the sun stands
with its heavy red head
in a black stanchion of trees,
waiting for someone to come
with his bucket
for the foamy white light,
and then a long day in the pasture.
I too spend my days grazing,
feasting on every green moment
till darkness calls,
and with the others
I walk away into the night,
swinging the little tin bell
of my name.

[richards1000]

Thanks, folks, for discussing The Oven Bird, which I haven't read for ages. What a marvelous poem. Wonderful use of the sonnet form, such skillful assonance and use of line breaks. He was so technically fine. And that unutterable sadness. I cherish Frost's way of conjuring up Keats and the end of the world from the most casual stroll through the backyard. All the great New England writers for some reason seem to be able to take you instantly from the most pedestrian image, to the foundation of existence.

Robert

[richards1000]

Follks, I'm just reading through Frost's book Mountain Interval (1916) (there is a free copy on GoogleBook, full text), and I see that it contains many wonderful, wonderful poems, including The Oven Bird. Does anyone want to read this book together over a week and talk about it? It appears to be one of the very great books of U.S. poetry.

Robert

[Saffron]

Does anyone want to read this book together over a week and talk about it? It appears to be one of the very great books of U.S. poetry.

Robert

Count me in.

[richards1000]

Terrific. Why don't we start on Sunday Feb. 15 reading Frost's Mountain Interval. There are 27 poems in the book; I'll try to read about 4 per day, and we'll start to talk. Anyone who wants to join in please do. There's a free full text copy on GoogleBook, http://books.google.com/books?id=j6auAA ... ES#PPA8,M1 . Lots of treasures there.

Robert

[Saffron]

Terrific. Why don't we start on Sunday Feb. 15 reading Frost's Mountain Interval.

Robert

4 a day should like the right RDA for poetry. I work a Sunday - Wednesay work week, so I'll do my best to get in the 4 poems.

[Grim]

Enigmas

You've asked me what the lobster is weaving there with
his golden feet?
I reply, the ocean knows this.
You say, what is the ascidia waiting for in its transparent
bell? What is it waiting for?
I tell you it is waiting for time, like you.
You ask me whom the Macrocystis alga hugs in its arms?
Study, study it, at a certain hour, in a certain sea I know.
You question me about the wicked tusk of the narwhal,
and I reply by describing
how the sea unicorn with the harpoon in it dies.
You enquire about the kingfisher's feathers,
which tremble in the pure springs of the southern tides?
Or you've found in the cards a new question touching on
the crystal architecture
of the sea anemone, and you'll deal that to me now?
You want to understand the electric nature of the ocean
spines?
The armored stalactite that breaks as it walks?
The hook of the angler fish, the music stretched out
in the deep places like a thread in the water?

I want to tell you the ocean knows this, that life in its
jewel boxes
is endless as the sand, impossible to count, pure,
and among the blood-colored grapes time has made the
petal
hard and shiny, made the jellyfish full of light
and untied its knot, letting its musical threads fall
from a horn of plenty made of infinite mother-of-pearl.

I am nothing but the empty net which has gone on ahead
of human eyes, dead in those darknesses,
of fingers accustomed to the triangle, longitudes
on the timid globe of an orange.

I walked around as you do, investigating
the endless star,
and in my net, during the night, I woke up naked,
the only thing caught, a fish trapped inside the wind.

Translated by Robert Bly

Pablo Neruda

[Unkempnobody]

I'm fairly new to book talk so and defiantly new to the poetry forum so Hello. Here is a poem I have been pondering because it has a simplicity uncharacteristic of this poet. Anyways I am strongly attached because i love the way the nativity of the narrator and also it's a novel idea of just leaving that appeals to my everyday feeling of repetitiveness. Anyway without further ado...

Why Brownlee Left
by Paul Muldoon

Why Brownlee left, and where he went,
Is a mystery even now.
For if a man should have been content
It was him; two acres of barley,
One of potatoes, four bullocks,
A milker, a slated farmhouse.
He was last seen going out to plough
On a March morning, bright and early.

By noon Brownlee was famous;
They had found all abandoned, with
The last rig unbroken, his pair of black
Horses, like man and wife,
Shifting their weight from foot to
Foot, and gazing into the future.