Clik here to view.
PROPAGANDA is meant very broadly here—from political poetry which one doesn’t like to poetry which is not political enough, and therefore guilty to a certain politically minded reader for that reason alone.
Along the same lines, poetry might be labeled propaganda not due to any political content, and not necessarily because it is frivolous, but because it belongs to a camp or school perceived to be intellectually fake without apology or irony.
In the truly broadest sense, propaganda is understood to be whatever is popularized by the few to encourage, on some level, for whatever end, the many.
Here are the four brackets in the 2025 Propaganda Poetry March Madness:
Poetry March Madness Bracket Number One: The Avant-Garde (Modernism)
Originated in France under Napoleon III, it was quickly taken up in Great Britain. After helping America get on its feet in the 18th Century, France did a far right turn and became Britain’s imperial partner as the 19th century advanced. India was Britain’s, Mexico belonged to France, and both these western empires pursued “Opium Wars” in the East.
The propaganda object of the AVANT-GARDE, again broadly, is nothing more than addiction.
But the propaganda found in this poetry is actually the most insidious of its kind.
The weapon of its propaganda lies not in its rhetoric, but in the undermining of artistic love and effort itself. On a wide scale, it converts upright readers to addicts of decadence.
Example: “The Red Wheelbarrow” by William Carlos Williams.
Oh dangerous poem! Before you laugh: the soul which builds a cathedral vs the soul which builds a shack—multiply this by millions in a nation’s population. Where does this lead?
The propaganda of modernist art works this way: first, it is intellectually packaged, second, it dumbs down.
Example: the art of history painting which gave way to the avant-garde art soup-can illustration.
Here’s the irony: The best propaganda isn’t propaganda at all. It isn’t Adolf Hitler shouting. It is Andy Warhol gazing blankly at you with a silly smile on his face.
Poetry March Madness Bracket Number Two: Marxism.
This needs no explanation. This ‘victims, rise up!’ philosophy came into being around the same time as the Neo-Liberal Avant-Garde, and the two are often found together, not because they are similar, but because they both trade in intellectual pride which teases the gullible reader: one with a powerful simple message, the other with none.
Poetry March Madness Bracket Number Three: The Divine Eros School.
The propaganda of love and sex seeks to inspire religious devotion through chivalrous romance (!)(Dante, Petrarch, Provencal poetry), the Christian virtue of breeding (Shakespeare’s Sonnets), (!) and secondarily, thrilling heroism, patriotism and military strength. One of the oldest poetry schools, it sprang from Plato, the cunning and pragmatic author of “The Republic,” who embraced love, bravery, and madness for its usefulness to society.
Poetry March Madness Bracket Number Four: The Beautiful Sublime School.
Propaganda of Desire, Ascendance, Hierarchy, desiring the highest beauty, striving for every kind of excellence which applies to the (mathematical, beautiful, elevating, poignant, sorrowful, sensitive, reflective, sweet) poem itself, guided by a vision of materialist perfection. Edgar Poe, lynx-eyed citizen of the early American Republic (born 1809) Platonist poet and poetry critic of beauty and good taste, chief founder. The ‘Beauty’ School is an offshoot of the Divine Eros School—which became vulnerable to vulgar excess as society grew more graphically and technically sophisticated. Simply put, quixotic, chaste and rigorous “beauty” replaces the more practical “eros.”
Here are 24 contestants (poems)—6 in each of the four brackets. Note the interesting placements of some of these poems in Marxism, Eros, and Beauty.
The Marxist poet, Bertolt Brecht, has a poem in the Beauty Bracket, rather than the Marxist Bracket. Perhaps the reason will be clear; perhaps not.
Poe, the Chaste, has a poem in the Eros Bracket rather than the Beauty Bracket. The principles articulated above ought to explain why.
And what in the world is Sylvia Plath doing in the Marxist Bracket? Read her poem carefully and think about the context of the four brackets as a whole.
Some will be puzzled by the categories themselves as they relate to propaganda. Each poem’s placement may add further puzzlement. A poem alone is often a puzzle enough. Reflecting on a poem’s placement, as well as the brackets themselves, will hopefully add to the reading pleasure of these March Madness poems.
AVANT-GARDE
“Toward Some Bright Moment” Stephen Dobyns
Was she drunk? She didn’t seem drunk, had only
staggered a little, stumbling over the curb—
a blind woman on the corner of Broadway and Fourth,
kicking her dog, a mutt German shepherd, missing
half the time, and then hitting with a hollow thud,
and shouting, You fuck, and You dumb shit, over
and over. A grad day in March, slush in the streets,
a slight drizzle, a Saturday and the sidewalks packed.
You fuck, yanking the dog and kicking, a woman
in her thirties, her face too twisted with anger
to tell if she was pretty or not; the dog abject
and cringing. No one stopped her, no one said,
You shouldn’t do that, and I didn’t either, people
giving her a wide berth, perhaps thinking, as I did,
that they couldn’t know her pain, that being blind
gave her permission, that her stoicism had at last
collapsed, and wouldn’t it collapse for us, too,
those of us who could see? But there was the dog
crouched down, attempting to make itself smaller,
with an almost human expression of misery,
but not whining, just waiting for it to be over.
I wanted to cross the street and hit the woman,
knock her down, and I was shocked by this, as if
I’d done something equally wrong; but as she kept
kicking the dog so I wanted to kick her, so angry
did I become, because she didn’t stop. In the time
it took me to draw near, slow down, and then pass on,
she kept up her assault, and even with my back turned
I still heard her shouts, while I kept telling myself
how all these other men and women on the street
also saw and hear her. They did as I did. I wasn’t alone.
We were all righteous or culpable or comfortable
together. We all passed on, or at least until I had gone,
because I don’t know what happened, if she stopped
on her own or if a cop stopped her or someone else
just couldn’t bear it anymore. How often this image
comes back to me when I’m depressed or hate myself
or want to be better. I think what I might have done—
rescued the dog, led the woman away—though now
twelve years have passed. Even a certain kind of day
will bring it back, a wet city street, crowds of people
pushing toward some bright moment, the one to make
their lives complete—the wail of a car alarm, a tangle
of yellow cabs, a pigeon in the gutter crushed by a bus.
“The Selfishness of the Poetry Reader” Dick Allen
Sometimes I think I’m the only man in America
who reads poems
and who walks at night in the suburbs,
calling the moon names.
And I’m certain I’m the single man who owns
a house with bookshelves,
who drives to work without a CD player,
taking the long way, by the ocean breakers.
No one else, in all America,
quotes William Meredith verbatim,
cites Lowell over ham and eggs, and Levertov;
keeps Antiworlds and Ariel beside his bed.
Sometimes I think no other man alive
is charged by poetry, has fought
as utterly as I have, over “Sunday Morning”
and vowed to love those difficult as Pound.
No one else has seen a luna moth
flutter over Iowa, or watched
a woman’s hand lift rainbow trout from water,
and snow fall onto Minnesota farms.
This country wide, I’m the only man
who spends his money recklessly on thin
volumes unreviewed, enjoys
the long appraising look of check-out girls.
How could another in America know why
the laundry from a window laughs,
and how plums taste, and what an auto wreck
feels like—and craft?
I think that I’m the only man who speaks
of fur and limestone in one clotted breath;
for whom Anne Sexton plunged in Grimm; who can’t
stop quoting haikus at some weekend guest.
The only man, in all America, who feeds
on something darker than his politics,
who writes in margins and who earmarks pages—
in all America, I am the only man.
“The Leg in the Subway” Oscar Williams
When I saw the woman’s leg on the floor of the subway train,
Protrude beyond the panel (while her body overflowed my mind’s eye),
When I saw the pink stocking, black shoe, curve bulging, with warmth,
The delicate etching of the hair behind the flesh-colored gauze,
When I saw the ankle of Mrs. Nobody going nowhere for a nickel,
When I saw this foot motionless on the moving motionless floor,
My mind caught on a nail of a distant star, I was wrenched out
Of the reality of the subway ride, I hung in a socket of distance:
And this is what I saw:
The long tongue of the earth’s speed was licking the leg,
Upward and under and around went the long tongue of speed:
It was made of a flesh invisible, it dripped the saliva of miles:
It drank moment, lit shivers of insecurity to look at the passengers:
It was as alive as a worm, and busier than anybody in the train:
It spoke saying: To whom does this leg belong? Is it a bonus leg
For the rush hour? Is it a forgotten leg? Among the many
Myriads of legs did an extra leg fall in from the Out There?
O Woman, sliced off bodily by the line of the panel, shall I roll
Your leg into the abdominal nothing, among the digestive teeth?
Or shall I fit it in with the pillars that hold up the headlines?
But nobody spoke, though all the faces were talking silently,
As the train zoomed, a zipper closing up swiftly the seam of time.
Alas, said the long tongue of the speed of the earth quite faintly,
What is one to do with an incorrigible leg that will not melt—
But everybody stopped to listen to the train vomiting cauldrons
Of silence, while somebody’s jolted-out afterthought trickled down
The blazing shirt-front solid with light bulbs, and just then
The planetary approach of the next station exploded atoms of light,
And when the train stopped, the leg had grown a surprising mate,
And the long tongue had slipped hurriedly out through a window:
I perceived through the hole left by the nail of the star in my mind
How civilization was as dark as a wood and dimensional with things
And how birds dipped in chromium sang in the crevices of our deeds.
“Salutations to Fernando Pessoa” Allen Ginsberg
Everytime I read Pessoa I think
I’m better than he is I do the same thing
more extravagantly—he’s only from Portugal,
I’m American greatest Country in the world
right now End of XX Century tho Portugal
had a big empire in the 15th century never mind
now shrunk to a Corner of Iberian peninsula
whereas New York take New York for instance
tho Mexico City’s bigger N.Y.’s richer think of Empire State
Building not long ago world empire’s biggest skyscraper—
be that as’t may I’ve experienced 61 years’ XX Century
Pessoa walked down Rua do Ouro only till 1936
He entered Whitman so I enter Pessoa no
matter what they say besides dead he wouldn’t object.
What way’m I better than Pessoa?
Known on 4 Continents I have 25 English books he only 3
but mostly Portuguese, but that’s not his fault—
U.S.A.’s a bigger Country
merely 2 Trillion in debt a passing freakout,
Reagan’s dirty work an American Century aberration
unrepresenting our Nation Whitman sang in Epic manner
tho worried about in Democratic Vistas
As a Buddhist not proud my superiority to Pessoa
I’m humble Pessoa was nuts big difference,
tho apparently gay—same as Socrates,
consider Michelangelo DaVinci Shakespeare
inestimable comrado Walt
true I was tainted Pinko at an early age a mere trifle
Science itself destroys ozone layers this era antiStalinists
poison entire earth with radioactive anticommunism
Maybe I lied somewhat
rarely in verse, only protecting others’ reputations
Frankly too Candid about my mother tho meant well
Did Pessoa mention his mother? she’s interesting,
powerful to birth sextuplets
Alberto Cairo Alvaro de Campos Ricardo Reis Bernardo Soares
& Alexander Search simultaneously
with Fernando Pessoa himself a classic sexophrenic
Confusing personae not so popular
outside Portugal’s tiny kingdom (till recently a secondrate police state)
Let me get to the point er I forget what it was
but certainly enjoy making comparisons between this Ginsberg
& Pessoa
people talk about in Iberia hardly any books in English
presently the world’s major diplomatic language extended throughout China.
Besides he was a shrimp, himself admits in interminable “Salutations to Walt Whitman”
Whereas 5′ 7″ height
somewhat above world average, no immodesty,
I’m speaking seriously about me & Pessoa.
Anyway he never influenced me, never read Pessoa
before I wrote my celebrated “Howl” already translated into 24 languages,
not to this day’s Pessoa influence an anxiety
Midnight April 12 88 merely glancing his book
certainly influences me in passing, only reasonable
but reading a page in translation hardly proves “Influence.”
Turning to Pessoa, what’d he write about? Whitman,
(Lisbon, the sea etc.) method peculiarly longwinded,
diarrhea mouth some people say—Pessoa Schmessoa.
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” T.S. Eliot
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair —
(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin —
(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?
And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? …
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet — and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it towards some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
If one, settling a pillow by her head
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;
That is not it, at all.”
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
“The Red Wheelbarrow” W.C. Williams
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
MARXISM
“No Child” Padraic Colum
I heard in the night the pigeons
Stirring within their nest:
The wild pigeons’ stir was tender,
Like a child’s hand at the breast.
I cried, “O stir no more!
(My breast was touched with tears).
O pigeons, make no stir—
A childless woman hears.”
“Richard Cory” Edwin Arlington Robinson
Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
“Good morning,” and he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
“London” William Blake
I wander through each chartered street,
Near where the chartered Thames does flow
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every man,
In every infant’s cry of fear,
In every voice; in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear;
How the chimney-sweeper’s cry
Every blackening church appalls,
And the hapless soldier’s sigh
Runs in blood down palace-walls.
But most, through midnight streets I hear
How the youthful harlot’s curse
Blasts the new-born infant’s tear,
And blights with plagues the marriage-hearse.
“Song to the Men of England” Percy Bysshe Shelley
Men of England, wherefore plough
For the lords who lay ye low?
Wherefore weave with toil and care
The rich robes your tyrants wear?
Wherefore feed, and clothe, and save,
From the cradle to the grave,
Those ungrateful drones who would
Drain your sweat—nay, drink your blood?
Wherefore, Bees of England, forge
Many a weapon, chain, and scourge,
That these stingless drones may spoil
The forced produce of your toil?
Have ye leisure, comfort, calm,
Shelter, food, love’s gentle balm?
Or what is it ye buy so dear
With your pain and with your fear?
The seed ye sow, another reaps;
The wealth ye find, another keeps;
The robes ye weave, another wears;
The arms ye forge, another bears.
Sow seed,—but let no tyrant reap;
Find wealth,—let no imposter heap;
Weave robes,—let not the idle wear;
Forge arms,—in your defense to bear.
Shrink to your cellars, holes, and cells;
In halls ye deck another dwells.
Why shake the chains ye wrought? Ye see
The steel ye tempered glance on ye.
With plough and spade, and hoe and loom,
Trace your grave, and build your tomb,
And weave your winding-sheet, till fair
England be your sepulchre.
“Sonnet 41” Edna St. Vincent Millay
I, being born a woman and distressed
By all the needs and notions of my kind,
Am urged by your propinquity to find
Your person fair, and feel a certain zest
To bear your body’s weight upon my breast:
So subtle is the fume of life designed,
To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,
And leave me once again undone, possessed.
Think not for this, however, the poor reason
Of my stout blood against my staggering brain,
I shall remember you with love, or season
My scorn with pity let me make it plain:
I find this frenzy insufficient reason
For conversation when we meet again.
“Spinster” Sylvia Plath
Now this particular girl
During a ceremonious april walk
With her latest suitor
Found herself, of a sudden, intolerably struck
By the bird’s irregular babel
And the leaves’ litter.
By this tumult afflicted, she
Observed her lover’s gestures unbalance the air,
His gait stray uneven
Through a rank wilderness of fern and flower;
She judged petals in disarray,
The whole season, sloven.
How she longed for winter then!—
Scrupulously austere in its order
Of white and black
Ice and rock; each sentiment within border,
And heart’s frosty discipline
Exact as a snowflake.
But here—a burgeoning
Unruly enough to pitch her five queenly wits
Into vulgar motley—
A treason not to be borne; let idiots
Reel giddy in bedlam spring;
She withdrew neatly.
And round her house she set
Such a barricade of barb and check
Against mutinous weather
As no mere insurgent man could hope to break
With curse, fist, threat
Or love, either.
DIVINE EROS
Sonnet #1 from The Sonnets William Shakespeare
From fairest creatures we desire increase
That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir by bear his memory.
But thou contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feeds thy light’s flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thy self thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.
Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament,
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy contest,
And tender churl, makes waste in niggarding.
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.
“The Poet Sometimes Writes Things That Aren’t True” Thomas Graves
The poet sometimes writes things that aren’t true.
But that’s not the same when I speak untruthfully to you.
It isn’t that I actually tell you a lie.
I simply let what I should mention
silently drift by.
I don’t offend you in person, yet in the poem I do?
But when did the poem ever need to be true?
Can I disregard the truth and be madly in love with you?
Irresponsible love helps both my poem—
escaping what’s greedy and true—
and myself—who avoids the truth,
never once offending you.
I am silent. You love me for this.
A poet, I lie melodically,
and the rest of the time, we kiss.
“Those Who Love” Sara Teasdale
Those who love the most,
Do not talk of their love,
Francesca, Guinevere,
Deirdre, Iseult, Heloise,
In the fragrant gardens of heaven
Are silent, or speak if at all,
Of fragile, inconsequent things.And woman I used to know
Who loved one man from her youth,
Against the strength of the fates
Fighting in somber pride
Never spoke of this thing,
But hearing his name by chance,
A light would pass over her face.
“When I Was Fair and Young” Elizabeth I
When I was fair and young, then favour graced me;
Of many was I sought their mistress for to be,
But I did scorn them all, and answered them therefore:
‘Go! go! go! seek some other where, importune me no more!’
How many weeping eyes, I made to pine with woe!
How many sighing hearts! I have no skill to show.
Yet I the prouder grew, and still this spake therefore:
‘Go! go! go! seek some other where, importune me no more!’
Then spake fair Venus’ son that proud victorious boy,
Saying: You dainty dame for that you be so coy?
I will so pluck your plumes that you shall say no more:
‘Go! go! go! seek some other where, importune me no more!’
As soon as he had said, such change grew in my breast,
That neither night nor day, I could take any rest.
Then lo! I did repent that I had said before:
‘Go! go! go! seek some other where, importune me no more!’
“Go Now My Grieving Verse” Petrarch, trans M. Musa
Go now, my grieving verse, to the hard stone
that hides my precious treasure in the earth;
and there call her, who will respond from Heaven
although her mortal part be darkly buried,and tell her I am weary now of living,
of sailing through the horrors of this sea,
but that, by gathering up her scattered leaves,
I follow her this way, step after step,speaking of her alone, alive and dead
(rather, alive, and now immortalized),
so that the world may know and love her more.Let her watch for the day I pass away
(it is not far from now), let her meet me,
call me, draw me to what she is in Heaven.“Annabel Lee” Edgar Poe
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
I and my Annabel Lee—
With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven
Coveted her and me.
And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.
The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,
Went envying her and me—
Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we—
Of many far wiser than we—
And neither the angels in Heaven above
Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea—
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
BEAUTY
“The World Is Too Much With Us” William Wordsworth
The world is too much with us: late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.—Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.“What Did The Soldier’s Wife Receive?” Bertolt Brecht (trans H.R. Hays)
And what did the soldier’s wife receive
From the ancient capital, Prague?
From Prague she received her high-heeled shoes,
Greetings, good news, and her high-heeled shoes
She received from the capital, Prague.And what did the soldier’s wife receive
From Oslo beyond the sound?
She received from Oslo a little fur piece,
She received from beyond the sound.And what did the soldier’s wife receive
From wealthy Amsterdam?
From Amsterdam she received a hat,
She looked well in that, the pretty Dutch hat
She received from Amsterdam.And what did the soldier’s wife receive
From Brussels, the Belgian town?
She received from Brussels the rarest of lace,”
What a joy to possess the rarest of lace
She received from the Belgian town.
And what did the soldier’s wife receive
From Paris the city of light?
She received from Paris a silken gown,
Twas the talk of the town, the silken gown
She received from the city of light.
And what did the soldier’s wife receive
From the south, from Bucharest?
From Bucharest she received a smock,
A strange gay frock, the Rumanian smock
She received from Bucharest.
And what did the soldier’s wife receive
From the Russian land of snow?
She received from Russia her widow’s weeds,
For her grief she had need of those widow’s weeds
She received from the land of snow.
“Love the Wild Swan” Robinson Jeffers
I hate my verses, every line, every word.
Oh pale and brittle pencils ever to try
One grass-blade’s curve, or the throat of one bird
That clings to twig, ruffled against white sky.
Oh cracked and twilight mirrors ever to catch
One color, one glinting flash, of the splendor of things.
Unlucky hunter, Oh bullets of wax,
The lion beauty, the wild-swan wings, the storm of the wings.”
—This wild swan of a world is no hunter’s game.
Better bullets than yours would miss the white breast,
Better mirrors than yours would crack in the flame.
Does it matter whether you hate your…self? At least
Love your eyes than can see, your mind that can
Hear the music, the thunder of the wings. Love the wild swan.
“Impersonation / Impression” Shruti Krishna Sareen
Imitation of one person is impersonation
Imitation of many, a professional parody,
a comedy, is impressionist acting.
I read that when Roger Kabler did an impression
of Robin Williams, Robin spoke through him, Roger’s ghost
entered him, Roger became Robin,
became obsessed with Robin. As I read further,
I started reading aloud. As I read aloud in altered voice,
I realised the voice and style that poured out of me
unconsciously, sub-consciously, was not mine.
It was yours.
“The Splendor Falls” Alfred Tennyson
The splendor falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story;
The long light shakes across the lakes,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.
O, hark, O, hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!
O, sweet and far from cliff and scar
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying,
Blow, bugles; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.
O love, they die in yon rich sky,
They faint on hill or field or river;
Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
And grow forever and forever.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.
“litany” Carolyn Creeden
Tom, will you let me love you in your restaurant?
I will let you make me a sandwich of your invention and I will eat it and call
it a carolyn sandwich. Then you will kiss my lips and taste the mayonnaise and
that is how you shall love me in my restaurant
Tom, will you come to my empty beige apartment and help me set up my daybed?
Yes, and I will put the screws in loosely so that when we move on it, later,
it will rock like a cradle and then you will know you are my baby
Tom, I am sitting on my dirt bike on the deck. Will you come out from the kitchen
and watch the people with me?
Yes, and then we will race to your bedroom. I will win and we will tangle up
on your comforter while the sweat rains from our stomachs and foreheads
Tom, the stars are sitting in tonight like gumball gems in a little girl’s
jewelry box. Later can we walk to the duck pond?
Yes, and we can even go the long way past the jungle gym. I will push you on
the swing, but promise me you’ll hold tight. If you fall I might disappear
Tom, can we make a baby together? I want to be a big pregnant woman with a
loved face and give you a squalling red daughter.
No, but I will come inside you and you will be my daughter
Tom, will you stay the night with me and sleep so close that we are one person?
No, but I will lie down on your sheets and taste you. There will be feathers
of you on my tongue and then I will never forget you
Tom, when we are in line at the convenience store can I put my hands in your
back pockets and my lips and nose in your baseball shirt and feel the crook
of your shoulder blade?
No, but later you can lie against me and almost touch me and when I go I will
leave my shirt for you to sleep in so that always at night you will be pressed
up against the thought of me
Tom, if I weep and want to wait until you need me will you promise that someday
you will need me?
No, but I will sit in silence while you rage, you can knock the chairs down
any mountain. I will always be the same and you will always wait
Tom, will you climb on top of the dumpster and steal the sun for me? It’s just
hanging there and I want it.
No, it will burn my fingers. No one can have the sun: it’s on loan from God.
But I will draw a picture of it and send it to you from Richmond and then you
can smooth out the paper and you will have a piece of me as well as the sun
Tom, it’s so hot here, and I think I’m being born. Will you come back from
Richmond and baptise me with sex and cool water?
I will come back from Richmond. I will smooth the damp spiky hairs from the
back of your neck and then I will lick the salt off it. Then I will leave
Tom, Richmond is so far away. How will I know how you love me?
I have left you. That is how you will know
~~~~~~~~~~