Poem about literature
Sep. 4th, 2011 06:11 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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greatpoetryI remember there being a poem posted on here a long time ago- a slam poem by a woman talking about what it's like to go out with a book worm. I want to use because I'm looking for poems with literature as their main focus. Here's some I have so far. Please share any other poems you know of that are about literature too!
Thanks, guys!
James Richardson - In Shakespeare
In Shakespeare a lover turns into an ass
as you would expect. People confuse
their consciences with ghosts and witches.
Old men throw everything away
because they panic and can't feel their lives.
They pinch themselves, pierce themselves with twigs,
cliffs, lightning, and die—yes, finally—in glad pain.
You marry a woman you've never talked to,
a woman you thought was a boy.
Sixteen years go by as a curtain billows
once, twice. Your children are lost,
they come back, you don't remember how.
A love turns to a statue in a dress, the statue
comes back to life. Oh God, it's all so realistic
I can't stand it. Whereat I weep and sing.
Such a relief, to burst from the theatre
into our cool, imaginary streets
where we know who's who and what's what,
and command with Metrocards our destinations.
Where no one with a story struggling in him
convulses as it eats its way out,
and no one in an antiseptic corridor,
or in deserts or in downtown darkling plains,
staggers through an Act that just will not end,
eyes burning with the burning of the dead.
The Wordsworth Effect"
by Joyce Sutphen
Is when you return to a place
and it's not nearly as amazing
as you once thought it was,
or when you remember how you felt
about something (or someone) but you know
you'll never feel that way again.
It's when you notice someone has turned
down the volume, and you realize
it was you; when you have the
suspicion that you've met the enemy
and you are it, or when you get
your best ideas from your sister's journal.
Is also-to be fair-the thing that enables
you to walk for miles and miles chanting to
yourself in iambic pentameter
and to travel through Europe with
only a clean shirt, a change of
underwear, a notebook and a pen.
And yes: is when you stretch out
on your couch and summon up ten thousand
daffodils, all dancing in the breeze.
A Poet Recalls Fiction
- Norm Sacuta
I have trouble with friends who want to know what happened.
And no, I'm not missing the forest for the trees -
the genus, size and shape,
even when the author cares enough,
will escape me later, become a forgotten shadow
at the edge of the moors.
I am the worst witness of another witness,
read pages and pages without memory
of a character's features.
My rhythmic eyes remember little,
move away from that tape by the door
where I should measure the criminal's height.
What difference does that make?
He robbed me, I might tell the officer.
Isn't that enough?
What's a character? It's every fear of every name
ever introduced to at parties,
crammed into The Tenant of Windfell Hall.
Thank god for Anna Karenina and Jane Eyre.
The title and name the same.
Let me tell you about Jane Eyre:
there's lightning that cleaves a tree directly in two
on the night she decides to marry. That man. The dark one
who talks roughly and has dark eyes so dark his first born
reflects back out of them. That's Jane Eyre.
That's all.
Don't ask me for more. I don't know
once the book is down. But open it again:
I know that point in the forest -
breadcrumbs lead home in all directions. There is no place
lost quite like it. I read pages and pages, enthralled,
then forget my way as the moon sets.
And isn't it glorious to know every word will rush at me,
like that mad woman from the attic,
when I read again tomorrow night.
Thanks, guys!
James Richardson - In Shakespeare
In Shakespeare a lover turns into an ass
as you would expect. People confuse
their consciences with ghosts and witches.
Old men throw everything away
because they panic and can't feel their lives.
They pinch themselves, pierce themselves with twigs,
cliffs, lightning, and die—yes, finally—in glad pain.
You marry a woman you've never talked to,
a woman you thought was a boy.
Sixteen years go by as a curtain billows
once, twice. Your children are lost,
they come back, you don't remember how.
A love turns to a statue in a dress, the statue
comes back to life. Oh God, it's all so realistic
I can't stand it. Whereat I weep and sing.
Such a relief, to burst from the theatre
into our cool, imaginary streets
where we know who's who and what's what,
and command with Metrocards our destinations.
Where no one with a story struggling in him
convulses as it eats its way out,
and no one in an antiseptic corridor,
or in deserts or in downtown darkling plains,
staggers through an Act that just will not end,
eyes burning with the burning of the dead.
The Wordsworth Effect"
by Joyce Sutphen
Is when you return to a place
and it's not nearly as amazing
as you once thought it was,
or when you remember how you felt
about something (or someone) but you know
you'll never feel that way again.
It's when you notice someone has turned
down the volume, and you realize
it was you; when you have the
suspicion that you've met the enemy
and you are it, or when you get
your best ideas from your sister's journal.
Is also-to be fair-the thing that enables
you to walk for miles and miles chanting to
yourself in iambic pentameter
and to travel through Europe with
only a clean shirt, a change of
underwear, a notebook and a pen.
And yes: is when you stretch out
on your couch and summon up ten thousand
daffodils, all dancing in the breeze.
A Poet Recalls Fiction
- Norm Sacuta
I have trouble with friends who want to know what happened.
And no, I'm not missing the forest for the trees -
the genus, size and shape,
even when the author cares enough,
will escape me later, become a forgotten shadow
at the edge of the moors.
I am the worst witness of another witness,
read pages and pages without memory
of a character's features.
My rhythmic eyes remember little,
move away from that tape by the door
where I should measure the criminal's height.
What difference does that make?
He robbed me, I might tell the officer.
Isn't that enough?
What's a character? It's every fear of every name
ever introduced to at parties,
crammed into The Tenant of Windfell Hall.
Thank god for Anna Karenina and Jane Eyre.
The title and name the same.
Let me tell you about Jane Eyre:
there's lightning that cleaves a tree directly in two
on the night she decides to marry. That man. The dark one
who talks roughly and has dark eyes so dark his first born
reflects back out of them. That's Jane Eyre.
That's all.
Don't ask me for more. I don't know
once the book is down. But open it again:
I know that point in the forest -
breadcrumbs lead home in all directions. There is no place
lost quite like it. I read pages and pages, enthralled,
then forget my way as the moon sets.
And isn't it glorious to know every word will rush at me,
like that mad woman from the attic,
when I read again tomorrow night.
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no subject
Date: 2011-09-05 04:46 pm (UTC)Patrick Donnelly
It’s just two days since I read you
two days since your Elegies for Rog grabbed me
in the stacks at the Brooklyn branch
grief eating through the binding like dragon blood
dripping through four stone floors
into the charming restaurant in the basement
I checked you out and brought you home
so I could love you and pity him in private
and cry for him and you and myself
I never burned up grief or anger with such song
never came within two bow-lengths of the paradise
of men’s hearts open to one another
I’ll check you out again and again
I think I’ll steal you
I don’t want to release you back to circulation
I study your picture on the sleeve for signs of sickness
search the flyleaf for year of publication
could you have survived 1987
so long ago dangerous year
to be a sick fag in America
In the cafe at the gay bookstore
I’m afraid to ask Do you know Monette
Did he make it The boys are so young
thumbing through pages of naked men
putting them back dogeared The boy
behind the counter doesn’t read poetry
I’m afraid of hope as I walk
to the back of the store PLEASE BE ALIVE
PLEASE BE among the M’s I run my hand
along the spines Maupin McClatchy Melville
until it rests on yours
I tear you open the suspense killing me
please please be living with the dogs
in the canyons somewhere north of Malibu
writing every day doing well on the new drugs
sleeping like spoons with a guy named
Peter Kenneth Michael or Gustavo
Your picture is harder thinner
face lined eyelids sagging “novelist poet essayist
AIDS activist who died”
You’re gone then
I’ve made it to the future a few years further
but who knows if I’ll reach your forty-nine
why bother reading your book anymore
what difference do poems make or love
So this is your last face a fox and rabbit kissing
even dead your name earns a “face-out”
guarantees those big sales
who gets the money now
YOU JERK FUCK YOU
ridiculous to die so close to a cure
renders you me us absurd
shameful irresponsible
how quaint to die of this they’ll think in 2030
how nostalgically sepia-toned and old-timey
like dying of the flu for godssake or the clap
like talking on a windup telephone or
buying ice for the icebox
On the Net later
I cruise a guy who says he knew you
when you tried to live and love again with Winston
I’m hungry to hear anything about you
but he interrupts with a reflection of his cock
in a hand mirror in a garden of red hibiscus
so for a moment I almost easily forget my love
my love of two days
two days in which you were born loved wrote grieved died
Oh God in whom you never for one moment believed
will I still have time