Some Thoughts on Centering Poems

[mehinda.livejournal.com]

Recently, there was a little dust-up over the centering of a poem by Keats. Sadly, the person who originally posted the poem felt obligated to delete the post. I don't know if this was because of the replies or because the poster felt that centering poems is disallowed here. Either way, I'd like to apologize for any lack of clarity.

greatpoets disallows font-queering; centering of poems is allowed if the poem was centered when it was originally published.

Prior to the advent of computerized word processing and publishing, centering text on a page was virtually unheard of, if for no other reason than traditional typesetting processes made it too difficult to accomplish. You might think that is a ridiculous reason not to center those poems now. I (and I suspect others) would argue that when you re-post a poem (which was originally published left-justified) in centered format, you are disrespecting the way the poet intended to be read:

In center-justified text, the left margin is not fixed and so the eye must strain to shift from the end of one line to the beginning of the next. This causes the natural pauses between lines to be extended and can interrupt the flow of the lines (causing them to become more distinct and choppy and disrupting enjambment).

If the poet employs end-rhymes, their effect may be undone by the floating right margin. This is particularly true for slant and eye rhymes.

For these reasons, we recommend left-justification for poems reposted here. There are obvious exceptions, E. E. Cummings experimented with the way lines appeared on the page; Michael McClure (most notably in his Ghost Poems) center-justifies much of his work. Nine times out of ten, however, when you encounter a centered poem on the web, it has been the website owner (not the poet) who chose to format the poem this way.

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If you encounter issues with formatting when you are posting poems to greatpoets, feel free to drop me an e-mail (mehinda[@]livejournal[.]com) and if I am unavailable, the other moderators are willing to help. Some general formatting notes: if you paste a center-justified poem into the rich text editor, you may highlight all the text and click the "Left Justify" button to reformat it. If you need to represent a poem which employs visual caesura (shown as spaces or tabs between words), and you are using the HTML editor, you may use the <pre> </pre> tags (there are other ways to achieve these effects if you're familiar with HTML and style properties).

billy "potty mouth" collins

[flightviolation.livejournal.com]

The News Today

A landslide in Bolivia,
the marriage of two chimps in a zoo in California,
snow predicted for late in the afternoon,
and on the book review page, a new translation of Catullus.

Aulelius, you cheap bastard...
Maximus, your ass stinks from sitting all day...
Pontibus, who was that plump whore you brought to
the banquet...?

Is there anyone who does not admire the forthright way
in which his poems begin
and, of course, the lively gossip that follows,
the acrid smoke of contumely
rising from the blown-out candles of the past?

No room for the daffodil here,
or the afternoon shadow of a column,
nor when everyone at last night's party must be demeaned.

Who has time for sunlight falling on the city
when Capellus needs to be told he is a shitty host
and Ameana reminded that she is one horrid bitch?

Nobody does it quite like you do, Catullus,
you insulting, foulmouthed cocksucker,
and I am thrilled to hear that once again
your words have been ferried to the shores of English,
you mean-spirited pain in everyone's ass.

Without you, Catullus,
a pedestal in the drafty hall of the greats
would be missing its white marble bust.

And so I hail you, Catullus,
across the wide, open waters of literature,
you nasty motherfucker, you flaming Roman prick.

"the chill disc of the stethoscope"

[grammarfight.livejournal.com]

The Sciences Sing a Lullabye

Physics says: go to sleep. Of course
you're tired. Every atom in you
has been dancing the shimmy in silver shoes
nonstop from mitosis to now.
Quit tapping your feet. They'll dance
inside themselves without you. Go to sleep.

Geology says: it will be all right. Slow inch
by inch America is giving itself
to the ocean. Go to sleep. Let darkness
lap at your sides. Give darkness an inch.
You aren't alone. All of the continents used to be
one body. You aren't alone. Go to sleep.

Astronomy says: the sun will rise tomorrow,
Zoology says: on rainbow-fish and lithe gazelle,
Psychology says: but first it has to be night, so
Biology says: the body-clocks are stopped all over town
and
History says: here are the blankets, layer on layer, down and down.

-Albert Goldbarth



Cross-posted at grammarfight.

James L. White; An Ordinary Composure

[acreofbones.livejournal.com]

An Ordinary Composure
 
I question what poetry will tremble the wall into hearing or tilt the stone angel's slight wings at words of the past like a memory caught in elms. We see nothing ahead. My people and I lean against great medical buildings with news of our predicted death, and give up mostly between one and three in the morning, never finding space large enough for a true departure, so our eyes gaze earthward, wanting to say something simple as THE MEAL'S TOO SMALL: I WANT MORE. Then we empty from a room on Intensive Care into the sea, releasing our being into the slap of waves.

Poems break down here at the thought of arms never coupling into full moons by holding those we love again, and so we resort to the romantic: a white horse set quivering like a slab of marble into dancing flesh.

Why remember being around a picnic table over at Brookside Park? We played softball that afternoon. My mother wore her sweater even in the summer because of the diabetes. Night blackened the lake like a caught breath. We packed things up. I think I was going to school that fall or a job somewhere. Michael'd go to Korea. Before we left I hit the torn softball into the lake and Michael said, 'You can't do that for shit James Lee.'

Going back I realized the picnic was for us. It started raining in a totally different way, knowing we'd grow right on up into wars and trains and deaths and loving people and leaving them and being left and being alone.

That's the way of my life, the ordinary composure of loving, loneliness and death, and too these prayers at the waves, the white horse shimmering, bringing it toward us out of coldest marble.

James L. White.

(no subject)

[seamusd.livejournal.com]

James L. White

Taken to a Room

Taken to a room with you asleep,
I want to touch you there
beneath the galaxy of star quilt.
You unfold letting me into the warmth
and everything rises from my dick to my breath
saying we are here.

In my mind I kiss you away, your beard
and earring, the tattooed heart of Christ
on your chest, and remember
a prison boy named Rubio,
then I kiss down on all of you.

Now I'm taken to a room fully awake
and warned my imagination is out of hand.
They show me a solo screaming bed
and quilt of fallen stars.
I pant hard over this poem
wanting to write your body again.

In this totally conscious poem
you're gone and they unplug my systems,
my heart, my lungs, my brains.
In front of the crowd they flash blinding lights
on my crotch and neuter me down to a smile.

I try to think about your eyes
and remember nothing.
Now they drag me off to the next room
where the real work begins.

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( 2 more poems )