Weekly/Fortnightly Poetry Suggestions

Short Poetry Collections, Short Story Collections, and our Weekly Poetry Project
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pschempf
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Post by pschempf »

Fritz

"A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labors of a spasmodic Hercules."

Trollope
aradlaw
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Post by aradlaw »

Thanks Phil, but I get a
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on both those links, maybe a Canada PD thing. :roll:
David Lawrence

* Weekly & Fortnightly Poetry - Check out the Short Works forum for the latest projects!
pschempf
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Post by pschempf »

Hmmm - I see a note on them - "Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized." Phoo! :? Seems funny that you can't access it for just being east of the border.
Fritz

"A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labors of a spasmodic Hercules."

Trollope
adonis
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Post by adonis »

The Complaint of Chaucer to his Purse
[editor's note: The king addressed in the 'Lenvoy' is probably Henry IV]

TO you, my purse, and to none other wight
Complain I, for you be my lady dear!
I am so sorry, now that you be light;
For certain, but you make me heavy cheer,
Me were as lief be laid upon my bier;
For which unto your mercy thus I cry:
Be heavy again, or else might I die!

Now voucheth safe this day, or be it night,
That I of you the blissful sound may hear,
Or see your colour like the sun bright,
That of yellowness had never peer.
You be my life, you be mine heart's steer*,     *helmsman
Queen of comfort and of good company:
Be heavy again, or else might I die!

Now, purse, that be to me my life's light
And saviour, as done in this world here,
Out of this town help me through your might,
Since that you will not be my treasurer;
For I am shaved as nigh as any friar.
But yet I pray unto your courtesy:
Be heavy again, or else might I die!


     Lenvoy de Chaucer

O conqueror of Brute's Albion*,     *England
Which that by line and free election
Be very king, this song to you I send;
And you, that may all our harms amend,
Have mind upon my supplication!

Geoffrey Chaucer

http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/chaucer1.html#2

Sincerely.
Tony Addison.
pschempf
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Post by pschempf »

David-

I just spent a very enjoyable afternoon at the symphony. The highlight was a work by Ralph Vaughn Williams called The Lark Ascending with the violin solo played by a remarkable young woman named Fabiola Kim. It was achingly beautiful; she had half the audience in tears. It turns out Williams based his work on a poem by George Meredith by the same title I'd like to suggest as a fortnightly poem.

The Lark Ascending by George Meredith
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc2.ark:/13960/t7np22g9q;view=1up;seq=80

A bit of sweetness before winter has us in its firm grip. One recording of this is already in the catalog for a short poetry collection about 4 years ago.
Fritz

"A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labors of a spasmodic Hercules."

Trollope
Newgatenovelist
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Post by Newgatenovelist »

I'm coming in with an early suggestion for poems to mark 11 November. There are two by Sara Teasdale, 'There Will Come Soft Rains' and 'Winter Stars', both from http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/591. They have been done as weekly poems before, but in 2010 and 2014 respectively.

"There Will Come Soft Rains"
(War Time)

  There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
  And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
  And frogs in the pools singing at night,
  And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;
  Robins will wear their feathery fire
  Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
  And not one will know of the war, not one
  Will care at last when it is done.
  Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
  If mankind perished utterly;
  And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
  Would scarcely know that we were gone.


Winter Stars

  I went out at night alone;
   The young blood flowing beyond the sea
  Seemed to have drenched my spirit's wings—
   I bore my sorrow heavily.
  But when I lifted up my head
   From shadows shaken on the snow,
  I saw Orion in the east
   Burn steadily as long ago.
  From windows in my father's house,
   Dreaming my dreams on winter nights,
  I watched Orion as a girl
   Above another city's lights.
  Years go, dreams go, and youth goes too,
   The world's heart breaks beneath its wars,
  All things are changed, save in the east
   The faithful beauty of the stars.


Erin
Off LV 25-28 March.
lurcherlover
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Post by lurcherlover »

I was wondering about this poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge? Either weekly or fortnightly poems. Not sure if its been done before or how recently.

A very great poem. (In my opinion).

Frost at Midnight

THE Frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by an wind. The owlet's cry
Came loud--and hark, again! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings: save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.
'Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,
This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,
With all the numberless goings-on of life,
Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame
Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;
Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,
Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.
Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature
Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,
Making it a companionable form,
Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit
By its own moods interprets, every where
Echo or mirror seeking of itself,
And makes a toy of Thought.
But O! how oft,
How oft, at school, with most believing mind,
Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,
To watch that fluttering stranger! and as oft
With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt
Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower,
Whose bells, the poor man's only music, rang
From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,
So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me
With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear
Most like articulate sounds of things to come!
So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,
Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!
And so I brooded all the following morn,
Awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine eye
Fixed with mick study on my swimming book:
Save if the door half opened, and I snatched
A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,
For still I hoped to see the stranger's face,
Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,
My play-mate when we both were clothed alike!
Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,
Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,
Fill up the interspersed vacancies
And momentary pauses of the thought!
My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart
With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,
And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,
And in far other scenes! For I was reared
In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.
But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the clouds,
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language, which thy God
Utters, who from eternity, doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself.
Great universal Teacher! he shall mould
Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.
Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether summer clothe the general earth
With greeness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge
commonsparrow3
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Post by commonsparrow3 »

I just came across this poem which struck me as both lovely and unusual, and suitable for this harvest time of year.

http://www.bartleby.com/122/14.html

Hurrahing in Harvest
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks arise
Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviour
Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier
Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?

I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes,
Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour;
And, éyes, heárt, what looks, what lips yet gave you a
Rapturous love’s greeting of realer, of rounder replies?

And the azurous hung hills are his world-wielding shoulder
Majestic—as a stallion stalwart, very-violet-sweet!—
These things, these things were here and but the beholder
Wanting; which two when they once meet,
The heart rears wings bold and bolder
And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off under his feet.
Newgatenovelist
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Post by Newgatenovelist »

I'd like to suggest 'The End of the Play' by Thackeray as a seasonal offering - perhaps it's a more suitable length for a fortnightly than a weekly, but it doesn't look as if it's been a weekly/fortnightly December offering before:

http://www.bartleby.com/42/652.html

Erin
Off LV 25-28 March.
nighthawks
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Post by nighthawks »

cannot see weekly or fortnightly poems on short works poetry and pro, have they been taken off?
aradlaw
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Post by aradlaw »

nighthawks wrote:cannot see weekly or fortnightly poems on short works poetry and pro, have they been taken off?
Thanks for asking nighthawks, there was a slight delay over Christmas, but there is a new extended Weekly Poem posted. (Regular service should resume next week) :D
David Lawrence

* Weekly & Fortnightly Poetry - Check out the Short Works forum for the latest projects!
satyrosjay
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Post by satyrosjay »

"There Will Come Soft Rains" | Winter Stars
Jay Lenhert
Newgatenovelist
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Post by Newgatenovelist »

As Valentine's Day approaches, I'll suggest 'Rain on the Down' by Arthur Symons, taken from: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29531.

RAIN ON THE DOWN

NIGHT, and the down by the sea,
And the veil of rain on the down;
And she came through the mist and the rain to me
From the safe warm lights of the town.

The rain shone in her hair,
And her face gleamed in the rain;
And only the night and the rain were there
As she came to me out of the rain.


Erin
Off LV 25-28 March.
brianna
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Post by brianna »

Hello everybody, I'd like to suggest:

I Have a Rendezvous with Death .( by Alan Seeger 1888-1916)


I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath;
It may be I shall pass him still.
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow-flowers appear.

God knows 'twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where Love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear . . .
But I've a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.

Alan Seeger ( In Poet's Corner )

Brianna
Men work together,whether they work together or apart. (R.Frost)
SonOfTheExiles
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Post by SonOfTheExiles »

Despite the bittersweet outcome of the romance in this work, the poem still manages to conclude in an uplifting fashion.

The Shakedown on the Floor,
by Henry Lawson

Set me back for twenty summers—
For I’m tired of cities now—
Set my feet in red-soil furrows
And my hands upon the plough,
With the two ‘Black Brothers’ trudging
On the home stretch through the loam—
While, along the grassy siding,
Come the cattle grazing home.

And I finish ploughing early,
And I hurry home to tea—
There’s my black suit on the stretcher,
And a clean white shirt for me.
There’s a dance at Rocky Rises,
And, when all the fun is o’er,
For a certain favoured party
There’s a shake-down on the floor.

You remember Mary Carey,
Bushmen’s favourite at the Rise?
With her sweet small freckled features,
Red-gold hair, and kind grey eyes;
Sister, daughter, to her mother,
Mother, sister, to the rest—
And of all my friends and kindred,
Mary Carey loved me best.

Far too shy, because she loved me,
To be dancing oft with me;
What cared I, because she loved me,
If the world were there to see?
But we lingered by the slip rails
While the rest were riding home,
Ere the hour before the dawning,
Dimmed the great star-clustered dome.

Small brown hands that spread the mattress
While the old folk winked to see
How she’d find an extra pillow
And an extra sheet for me.
For a moment shyly smiling,
She would grant me one kiss more—
Slip away and leave me happy
By the shake-down on the floor.

Rock me hard in steerage cabins,
Rock me soft in wide saloons,
Lay me on the sand-hill lonely
Under waning western moons;
But wherever night may find me
Till I rest for evermore
I will dream that I am happy
On the shake-down on the floor.

Ah! she often watched at sunset—
For her people told me so—
Where I left her at the slip-rails
More than fifteen years ago.
And she faded like a flower,
And she died, as such girls do,
While, away in Northern Queensland,
Working hard, I never knew.

And we suffer for our sorrows,
And we suffer for our joys,
From the old bush days when mother
Spread the shake-down for the boys.
But to cool the living fever,
Comes a cold breath to my brow,
And I feel that Mary’s spirit
Is beside me, even now.

https://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/lawson-henry/the-shakedown-on-the-floor-0022008
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/52066
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