Poetry Off the Shelf: Ben Okri

Join the Poetry Foundation on September 28 for a special US appearance by acclaimed Nigerian-born British novelist and poet, Ben Okri.

For those who are interested: https://bit.ly/45DI6su

Ben Okri is a playwright, poet, novelist, essayist, short-story writer, anthologist, and aphorist who has also written film scripts. His works have won numerous national and international prizes, including the Booker Prize for Fiction. His books include the eco-fable Every Leaf a Hallelujah, the genre-bending climate fiction Tiger Work, the poetry collection A Fire in My Head, and the novels Astonishing the Gods, The Last Gift of the Master Artists, and Dangerous Love.

"...silently" —Meg Day

Downtown San Jose, Ca.

The neighbors are watching teevee again

 & the pale blue of Montana morning 

licks the long wall of the bedroom 

silently

 —Meg Day 

How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43) - E.B.Browning

 

How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)

Elizabeth Barrett Browning - 1806-1861

• 
• 
• 
• 

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 every day'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.

With her dusty laces' pattern Trailing, as she straggles by. -Dorothy Parker

Emel -Holm

 

DOROTHY PARKER

22 August 1893 - 7 June 1967 / Long Branch / New Jersey

---

August

When my eyes are weeds,
And my lips are petals, spinning
Down the wind that has beginning
Where the crumpled beeches start
In a fringe of salty reeds;
When my arms are elder-bushes,
And the rangy lilac pushes
Upward, upward through my heart;

Summer, do your worst!
Light your tinsel moon, and call on
Your performing stars to fall on
Headlong through your paper sky;
Nevermore shall I be cursed
By a flushed and amorous slattern,
With her dusty laces' pattern
Trailing, as she straggles by.

the high dunes-Ser Hibardiyan

 the high dunes

-Ser Hibardiyan

through the blazing sands

and of vicious storms I have wandered

out under the sun till my eyes dried out

only to realize I was in which I wondered

although this hourglass may cease

my will to love will not

and be revealed what lies under

these endless dunes we still wander

" a lesson to myself- a message to myself" Ser Hibardiyan

a lesson to myself

a challenge is not being retrospective

good or bad things may seem

solely based on one's perspective

a message to myself

simply a challenge is purely accepting

cemented memories becoming obstacles

molded old family mold is not objective

          by Ser Hibardiyan 

 

"In the best conversations, you don't even remember what you talked about, only how it felt" John Green

Alex Hyner

Famous Edgar Allan Poe Stories Read by Iggy Pop, Jeff Buckley, Christopher Walken, Marianne Faithful & More

In 1849, a little over 167 years ago, Edgar Allan Poe was found dead in a Baltimore gutter under mysterious circumstances very likely related to violent election fraud. It was an ignominious end to a life marked by hardship, alcoholism, and loss. After struggling for years as the first American writer to try and make a living from his art, and failing in several publishing ventures and positions, Poe achieved few of his aims, barely getting by financially and only managing to attract a little—often negative—notice for now-famous poems like “The Raven.” Contemporaries like Ralph Waldo Emerson disparaged the poem and a later generation of writers, including William Butler Yeats, pronounced him “vulgar.”

But of course, as we know, a countercurrent of Poe appreciation took hold among writers, artists, and filmmakers interested in mystery, horror, and the supernatural—to such a degree that in the previous century, nearly every artist even passingly associated with darker themes has interpreted Poe as a rite of passage. 

Ulalume is a poem written by Edgar Allan Poe in 1847.

https://www.openculture.com/2016/10/famous-edgar-allan-poe-stories-read-by-iggy-pop-jeff-buckley-christopher-walken-marianne-faithful-more.html