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and by that I mean, one that everyone knows by heart. It would have to be a nursery rhyme, I'm thinking...
and by the same token, provide us with one you think is so obscure, probably none of us have read it. -
A) Twinkle twinkle little star
The Sadness of Surrender - Barbara Ras
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good, never heard of that, for sure. Can you provide a link or add it?
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Don't have a link
I'll take the time to copy and paste - but have to type first - don't hold your breath! -
The Sadness of Surrender – Barbara Ras
So it is fight to the finish or give up gracefully, lay down your weapons,
maybe even your body in a dramatic swoon of succumbing,
modest under the St. Louis Arch, glamorous, maybe
under the Arc de Triomphe, but imagine surrendering
under Saddam’s arms, casts of Hussein’s very own limbs,
enlarged into monumental proportions and holding crossed swords
in the Iraqi air. You’re there, thinking not this, let me go back
to the deck, deal out another hand, anything, even Albania,
even a bride, papa handing my husband a silver bullet
guaranteeing obedience or death, all the while the silver shining
coldly, even in the sun.
At my own wedding, I was halfway down the aisle with my dad
when the fanfare stopped and we walked the rest of the way in silence –
no one hummed or drummed their fingers. I would have pranced
if anyone had whistled “whistle while you work,” a grin
and bear it moment, but sometimes you want to weep,
the way the headless mannequin in Merida in an ill-fitting bra, a tangle
of other bras lying hapless there in the windows for everyone to see,
made me weep, or perhaps I was crying over the fight
I’d been having with my husband, the one that started wordlessly,
silence suddenly filling everything, the hollow of the cathedral, the zocolo,
anger turning his heart to obsidian, mine to many flint knives,
and thinking it might be days before we soften made me think
of Josephine, my aunt married off at eighteen to an old-timer with money.
He used to hold a sugar cube in his mouth while he drank milky coffee
from a tall glass, letting the bitterness melt away the sweet shape
till finally the grains went down like tiny pills.
And Josephine, what sweetened her life, sleeping alone, hardheaded,
always alone, defiantly in a twin bed?
I knew so little of this as a child, sometimes sent to the cellar
for potatoes and hating to reach into the burlap sack
for the delicious flesh covered in dirt, sometimes
grabbing a rotten one, my fingers sinking into it further
than I wanted to go. I scare myself
thinking that after surrender, there’s a prison
waiting, and suddenly you’re surrounded by the worst thugs,
maybe Noriega across the way, padding pantherlike in his cell, stopping
occasionally to scream, “El presidente, el presidente,” the bars
bringing me back to the water buffalo at the Franklin Park Zoo
banging its head over and over against the iron of its cage and bellowing
as if rage had caverned out its whole body, building up clouds
in the farthest cavity and then proceeding cavity by cavity until the roaring
came out like thunder that for night after night became my five-year-old
nightmare,
the beast banging and thundering its wild rutting refusal
against the bars.
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wow, thank you for that!
The ones I had in mind were: Humpty Dumpty
and "Please Fire Me" by Deborah Garrison:
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/1344.html -
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Excellent poem! Thank you for the link. It's strengthening to know that others feel the same.
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Please Fire Me
Here comes another alpha male,
and all the other alphas
are snorting and pawing,
kicking up puffs of acrid dust
while the silly little hens
clatter back and forth
on quivering claws and raise
a titter about the fuss.
Here comes another alpha male--
a man's man, a dealmaker,
holds tanks of liquor,
charms them pantsless at lunch:
I've never been sicker.
Do I have to stare into his eyes
and sympathize? If I want my job
I do. Well I think I'm through
with the working world,
through with warming eggs
and being Zenlike in my detachment
from all things Ego.
I'd like to go
somewhere else entirely,
and I don't mean
Europe.
-- Deborah Garrison
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Fleas
How about 'Fleas' supposedly a contender for the shortest poem in the English language: Adam 'ad 'em.
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Ogden Nash
yes, that's a good one and would have been my third choice - heard that as a joke from my grandfather when I was small and was surprised to find it in my English text book in eleventh grade - I think there's a chance everyone knows that one. Kudos to you, Mr. Nash - you always wrote with haberdash. -
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Oh yeah, In have just written some limericks, you should find them in 'humour', see what you think.
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Live & learn
I didn't know that was written by Nash. I thought it was one of those ancient eternal jokes. -
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Here's a more obscure one of his:
"Reflection On A Wicked World"
Purity
Is obscurity.
-O.N.
but as I have noted, he forgot Mary.
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The Sentence
There is that in love
which, by the syntax of,
men find women and join
their bodies to their minds
--which wants so to acquire
a continuity, a place,
a demonstration that it must
be one's own sentence.
-- Robert Creeley
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so nice to be among people who know poetry -
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Checking to see if it's 30 words exactly...
Nope, it's 38. -
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The Sentence
by the syntax of love,
men find women and join
their bodies to their minds
--which wants
a continuity, a place,
a demonstration that it must
be one's own sentence.
-- Robert Creeley -
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well, we'll have to ask Bob what he thinks of that when we get to poetdise. I think he valued the rhyme in the first two lines.
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of love is still there
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His has a classical feel as well as a more playful one; I wouldn't tinker with the first line in order to compete in one of these 30 words exactly comps is all I'm saying. Was he of the first thought, best thought school, too, do you know? I don't know much about Black Mountain. I never got to explore Mt. Olson.
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the barbarians need a land scape
the first story isn't written
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That "roses are red" poem.
Also, any of my first poems.
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SONNET #43, FROM THE PORTUGUESE
By Elizabeth Barrett Browning
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints!---I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!---and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
(Most people probably only know the first 3 lines by heart). -
REMEMBER THEE! REMEMBER THEE!
Remember thee! Remember Thee!
Till Lethe quench life's burning stream
Remorse & shame shall cling to thee,
And haunt thee like a feverish dream!
Remember thee! Ay, doubt it not.
Thy husband too shall think of thee!
By neither shalt thou be forgot,
Thou false to him, thou fiend to me!
George Gordon (Lord Byron) -
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never heard it.
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"The Raven" by Poe
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Do people know this by heart?
In my father's generation, they did because recitation was still taught in schools. They also knew a lot of poems by way of national hymns like "My Country Tis of Thee." Not sure that's true anymore. -
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That's how I learnt Blake's Jerusalem - from the hymn.
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The Little Man Who Wasn't There
by Willian Hughes Mearns:
"Last night I saw upon the stair
A little man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
Oh, how I wish he'd go away..."
~Hippie
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this is cute, hippie.
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I find it highly disturbing, mostly because I saw stumbled across it in one of my physcology textbooks, in the chapter on schizopheria...
~Hippie -
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To me it reads like good nonsence but yeah,
if you found it in that context, it would color your perception of it. I read it at Oldpoetry first, so did not suffer.
[edit: it's actually not at Oldpoetry as I thought; I don't know where I read it now, but I thought I had.] -
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good point.
~Hippe -
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I found ee cummings one about driving in The Joy of Sex... so
you can just imagine what that did. -
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I really enjoy EE cummings though.
~Hippie
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Antigonish
wow! Did you know it was a hit song??? and originally written as part of a play? -
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no way!
Is the song on youtube?
~Hippie -
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it's from 1939 - but check!
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couldn't find the song, but I found this silly renactment...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49ezW9brJoQ&watch_response
~Hippie -
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oh sorry! I meant that the Mearns quatrain you posted, "Antigonish," was a hit song... I've looked for it and can't find it. There is a play posted in two parts over at You Tube that looks vintage with those lines about the little man attached to its heading but I can't tell if it is the Mearns play it comes from or not.
Anyway, fascinating little ditty. I will ask my parents if they know it next because they seem to know all the songs from that era.
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Ooooooooooooooh.
It's ok...
~Hippie
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Mary had a little lamb has got to be right up there.
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Kipling didn't write that.
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Best known... IF by Kipling.
Least known... Any of my poems. -
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The English constantly vote that (IF) the nation's favourite poem.
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Paradise Lost
seems to be the best least known poem from the look of things. -
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I think you are right! It reminds me about what they say about Proust's 'In Search of Lost Time'.
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and what do they say?
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A lA RECHERCHE DU TEMPS PERDU
Something along the lines that it is the best known unread longest novel of the 20th century. -
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somehow
long and thin will do 'em in
but short and fat is where it's at
flitted across my brain just now.
I suppose there are a host of raunchy limericks that people know by heart.
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Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep?
but with the final verse, "When in the morning light I wake, help me the path of love to take."
not the much more widely, as it turns out, known, "If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take." I think this is a disturbing prayer to teach young children.
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Jun 28 1:44 AM
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