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Ask HN: Who are your favorite poets?

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Re: Ask HN: Who are your favorite poets?

#111

Post by arkokoley »

This is one of my favourite poems.

  Where are you now? Who lies beneath your spell tonight?  
  Whom else from rapture’s road will you expel tonight?

  Those “Fabrics of Cashmere—” “to make Me beautiful—”  
  “Trinket”—to gem—“Me to adorn—How tell”—tonight?

  I beg for haven: Prisons, let open your gates—  
  A refugee from Belief seeks a cell tonight.

  God’s vintage loneliness has turned to vinegar—  
  All the archangels—their wings frozen—fell tonight.

  Lord, cried out the idols, Don’t let us be broken;  
  Only we can convert the infidel tonight.

  Mughal ceilings, let your mirrored convexities  
  multiply me at once under your spell tonight.

  He’s freed some fire from ice in pity for Heaven.  
  He’s left open—for God—the doors of Hell tonight.

  In the heart’s veined temple, all statues have been smashed.  
  No priest in saffron’s left to toll its knell tonight.

  God, limit these punishments, there’s still Judgment Day—  
  I’m a mere sinner, I’m no infidel tonight.

  Executioners near the woman at the window.  
  Damn you, Elijah, I’ll bless Jezebel tonight.

  The hunt is over, and I hear the Call to Prayer  
  fade into that of the wounded gazelle tonight.

  My rivals for your love—you’ve invited them all?  
  This is mere insult, this is no farewell tonight.

  And I, Shahid, only am escaped to tell thee—  
  God sobs in my arms. Call me Ishmael tonight.
- Agha Shahid Ali Khan

Re: Ask HN: Who are your favorite poets?

#114

Post by endriju »

Felix Dennis (†2014)

What’s It Like Then, Being Rich?

What’s it like then, being rich,

Knitting gold to warm an itch?

        Very much like being poor;

        Wealth is just a key — no more.
Why not share this magic key

To luxury — and start with me!

        Surely better that you earn it;

        Could I trust you to return it?
How does one become your ilk?

Is it bred in mothers’ milk?

        Many paths can lead to riches,

        Few in sunlight, most in ditches.
Wherein lies the difference

From us — this odd ambivalence?

        Envy, malice, obligations;

        Toadying from poor relations.
Grown far richer than his neighbour,

Why would any rich man labour?

        Wealth is salt in wine immersed,

        Quaffing but excites the thirst.
Salt my arse! It’s filthy greed —

How many homes does one man need?

        For some the trick’s in trading it;

        For others, in parading it.
I’ve seen. But surely, comfort pales

Perched on padded Chippendales?

        When affluence holds no surprise,

        Wonders come in other guise.
Aye, the eyes of tart and whore!

What might you miss, if you were poor?

        Time.  The luxury of choices.

        First editions.  Old Rolls-Royces.
Except his poems, I also recommend his great book on becoming rich http://www.felixdennis.com/books/how-to-get-rich/

Re: Ask HN: Who are your favorite poets?

#116

Post by pkfrank »

Seamus Heaney - Digging

  Between my finger and my thumb
  The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.
  
  Under my window a clean rasping sound
  When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
  My father, digging. I look down
  
  Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
  Bends low, comes up twenty years away
  Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
  Where he was digging.
  
  The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
  Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
  He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
  To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
  Loving their cool hardness in our hands.
  
  By God, the old man could handle a spade.
  Just like his old man.
  
  My grandfather could cut more turf in a day
  Than any other man on Toner's bog.
  Once I carried him milk in a bottle
  Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
  To drink it, then fell to right away
  Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
  Over his shoulder, digging down and down
  For the good turf. Digging.
  
  The cold smell of potato mold, the squelch and slap
  Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
  Through living roots awaken in my head.
  But I've no spade to follow men like them.
  
  Between my finger and my thumb
  The squat pen rests.
  I'll dig with it.

Re: Ask HN: Who are your favorite poets?

#117

Post by mwadams »

peri wrote: post #48
xekul wrote: post #32

T.S. Eliot. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" perfectly captures the essence of a middle-aged man's insecurities, and Eliot wrote it when he was 23.

Eliot is amazing; folks who love his work do themselves a disservice, however, if they aren't also reading Ezra Pound ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezra_Pound ) for a very different perspective on most of the same inspirations that made Eliot's early work so powerful.

Alec Guinness reading the Wasteland is amazing.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xbunup_t-s-eliot-the-waste-...

"Hurry up please, it's time."

Re: Ask HN: Who are your favorite poets?

#119

Post by Amorymeltzer »

I love Edgar Allen Poe, but one particular reason is because of his essay "The Philosophy of Composition".[1] It's a long piece basically describing the methodical and mathematical way he developed The Raven. It's a really cool look at his process for creation.

Plus it pisses off your run-of-the-mill literary types.

1: http://www.eapoe.org/works/essays/philcomp.htm

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