Poetry readings

Perhaps seasonality would be an idea. That is, poems about the summertime, or about the beginning of fall (I'm not sure when you're doing this, so you can of course suggest something more appropriate). Do you like following a particular written theme, such as depression or love?

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Poetry readings
Thanks, jespah- but I think I beat you to it. I've done the seasons, types of poetry, travel, weather, and 3 or 4 others. I think I've settled on the nine Muses, but it's slow going at the moment. This always happens, then suddenly I find I have too many selections and have to weed - feast or famine, I guess.

BUT - if you or anyone else can think of another topic, there is always a next time...

What I try for is a mix of familiar and unfamiliar. For some reason I find translations of Japanese poetry particularly attractive - perhaps because the poems are usually short and very compressed. I prefer short selections because it's very easy to lull people to sleep with a nice steady rhythm; it's best to make frequent changes from one style to another.

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Poetry readings
My apologies for the quadruple redundancy. I have been having a lot of trouble first accessing a2k and then posting; the indicator on my computer has been showing not sent.

Just wondering - if redundancy is a repetition, then I suppose the redundancy here was only triple? (though I don't think it makes the situation any better.)

Embarrassed

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I'll delete the duplicate posts.

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Poetry readings
Thanks!

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TomKitten -- I KNEW I liked you! How great that you do poetry readings... Do you keep your lists? Would you be willing to share them? Have you ever done a reading with two or more voices? That would sure fit with the Muses them.

Millay's Invocation to the Muses* is a natural though it's long. It was written to be read and is quite dramatic. (Linked below)

You could take each of the Muses & read about her individually or what she represents. There are several poets who believed to a greater or lesser extent that they were touched by the Muse or needed to get in contact with the Muse of Poetry. Have you been looking on the poetry topics we have? There was one in the last month or so that mentioned a poet & his need to contact his muse. I'll try to look it up for you.

OK, on the Hail Poetry! topic, Jun 28th, this poem by W.S. Merwin was posted. There are links to both Berryman and Merwin there...

Berryman
I will tell you what he told me
in the years just after the war
as we then called
the second world war

don't lose your arrogance yet he said
you can do that when you're older
lose it too soon and you may
merely replace it with vanity

just one time he suggested
changing the usual order
of the same words in a line of verse
why point out a thing twice

he suggested I pray to the Muse
get down on my knees and pray
right there in the corner and he
said he meant it literally

it was the days before the beard
and the drink but he was deep
in tides of his own through which he sailed
chin sideways and head tilted like a tacking sloop

he was far older than the dates allowed for
much older than I was he was in his thirties
he snapped down his nose with an accent
I think he had affected in England

as for publishing he advised me
to paper my wall with rejection slips
his lips and the bones of his long fingers trembled
with the vehemence of his views on poetry

he said the great presence
that permitted everything and transmuted it
in poetry was passion and he praised movement
and invention

I had hardly begun to read
I asked how can you ever be sure
you die without knowing
whether anything you wrote was any good
if you have to be sure don't write

~~~~

Hail Poetry!

*A2K Favorite Poem Project

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Poetry reading
Well, Piffka, I have to admit that the nine Muses thing is proving a bit of a challenge. But of course, that's what makes it more fun for me.

What I do is a two-minute -or approx - introduction, and then devise some bit of patter to link one poem to the next. So far, I've got a lot of poems on historical events - too many; I'll have to weed - and a bunch on love. The muse of love poetry inspires me to include love poems, obviously. But dance is a bit more difficult. Tragedy I'll finesse by admitting that if I read anythng too sad I'll break up (or should that be "down"?), and then giving my audience a comic/tragic bit of light verse.

And so on.

And yes, I do keep my lists. There's apt to be a certain amount of overlap - sometimes I can't resist doing a selection for a second time, either because it fits more than one theme, or just because I darn well like it! And, as I always warn my audience, I'm doing the work, so I get to choose the poems. The selections I read tend not to be modern, since part of my audience's pleasure comes from hearing golden oldies, but I always try to find a few unexpected items.

Anyway, if you would like the names of some I include, I'll be glad to let you have them. But I warn you, they are pretty much tried-and-true; that's what my group wants, so that's what they get. I think the subtitle of all my poetry reading programs should be "Nostalgia".

And thanks for the Berryman and Merwin suggestions. I'll be sure to look into them!

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Re: Poetry reading

Tomkitten wrote:

Anyway, if you would like the names of some I include, I'll be glad to let you have them. But I warn you, they are pretty much tried-and-true; that's what my group wants, so that's what they get. I think the subtitle of all my poetry reading programs should be "Nostalgia".

Great! I'd like to see them. Remember, the mother of the Nine Muses was Mnemosyne... memory, so a little nostalgia and the tried & true is good and just fine with me.

For fun I found and then started to post (before a2k hiccupped) links to some dance poetry. This poem in Bartleby might suit your needs... it is fairly short and stays close to the subject. I love the way it ends.

fromAn American Anthology, 1787-1900. 1900.
Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833-1908).

274. A Dancing Girl
By Frances Sargent Osgood

SHE comes?-the spirit of the dance!
And but for those large, eloquent eyes,
Where passion speaks in every glance,
She 'd seem a wanderer from the skies.

So light that, gazing breathless there, 5
Lest the celestial dream should go,
You 'd think the music in the air
Waved the fair vision to and fro!

Or that the melody's sweet flow
Within the radiant creature played, 10
And those soft wreathing arms of snow
And white sylph feet the music made.

Now gliding slow with dreamy grace,
Her eyes beneath their lashes lost,
Now motionless, with lifted face, 15
And small hands on her bosom crossed.

And now with flashing eyes she springs,?-
Her whole bright figure raised in air,
As if her soul had spread its wings
And poised her one wild instant there! 20

She spoke not; but, so richly fraught
With language are her glance and smile,
That, when the curtain fell, I thought
She had been talking all the while.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Here's another, also short... written about ballet, a little too abrupt for my tastes.

Arabesque

motion distilled
in pure
symmetry of lines

a breath between
two dreams

a precise pause
listening
step to step

Arabesque by Gustav BenJava
(c) 1999 Gustav BenJava

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Finally, here's a link to a BELLY Dancing website. The webmistress asks for people to link not copy and I've complied. There are some poems there that might suit you.

Poetry Inspired by Belly Dancing

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Poetry reading
Terrific, Piffka! I specially like the Dancing Girl one, and I'm eager to check out the belly dancing site. That should provide something new and different for my group!

The people I read for are retired librarians, college professors, doctors, lawyers - well-read professional people, generally - and it isn't always easy to find a really unfamiliar selection. Last time, the Halloween one, I came across a really good one about a goblin, and thought aha! no one will recognize this, I'll just sneak it in with the older stuff - one woman grabbed me with both hands, afterward, and said it had always been one of her favorites!

A large part of the readings is the patter in between. Sometimes it's quite a challenge to make connections.

I'll rustle up a list of the ones I did last October and send it along, but it may take a while, as I'm really concentrating on the new program which is less than a month away.

BTW, there's a great site for poems, called Lit Finder (www.litfinder.com). The only trouble is that you either have to subscribe, which is multi dollars, or belong to a public library which subscribes. This is what I do - just register with my library card number, and I'm in for free. It's also good for essays and short stories I think, but it's the poems that interest me, obviously.

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You mentioned that you've done travel, so you might have done this already, but how about using different modes of transportation (trains, boats, planes, automobiles, etc.) as a theme?

Actually, there are so many good poems about trains that you might be able to make up an entire program just of them. Some poems about trains that come immediately to mind are Emily Dickinson's "I like to see it lap the Miles," Auden's "Night Mail," Robert Louis Stevenson's "From a Railway Carriage" (from A Child's Garden of Verse), and Edna St. Vincent Millay's "Travel" (the one that begins "The railroad track is miles away,/And the day is loud with voices speaking,/Yet there isn't a train goes by all day/But I hear its whistle shrieking."). And, although it was written as a song rather than as a poem, Flanders and Swann's "Slow Train" could almost stand by itself as a poem. (In case you're not familiar with it, I'll reproduce it at the end of this post.)

For boats, there's always John Masefield's "Sea-Fever" (the one that begins "I must go down to the seas again"), and possibly Millay's "Recuerdo" (with its repeated "We were very tired, we were very merry--/We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry").

The only poem about airplanes that I can think of offhand is Yeats's "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death," and the only poem about cars I can think of is John Betjeman's "Meditation on the A30," but there are probably others I'm not familiar with.

As promised, here's the text of Flanders and Swann's "Slow Train," with all the wonderful names of small English towns that travelers won't be passing through on the "slow train" any more, now that it's been done away with in the interests of efficiency:

Millers Dale for Tideswell
Kirby Muxloe
Mow Cop and Scholar Green

No more will I go to Blandford Forum and Mortehoe,
On the slow train from Midsomer Norton and Mumby Road,
No churns, no porter,
No cat on a seat,
At Chorlton-cum-Hardy or Chester-le-Street
We won't be meeting again on the slow train.

I'll travel no more from Littleton Badsey to Openshaw,
At Long Stanton I'll stand well clear of the doors no more,
No whitewashed pebbles,
No up and no down,
From Formby-Four-Crosses to Dunstable Town,
I won't be going again on the slow train.

On the main line and the goods siding,
The grass grows high,
At Dog Dyke, Tumby Woodside, and Trouble House Halt.
The sleepers sleep at Audlem and Ambergate,
No passenger waits on Chittering Platform or Cheslyn Hay,
No-one departs, no-one arrives,
From Selby to Goole,
From St. Erth to St. Ives,
They all passed out of our lives,
On the slow train,
On the slow train.
Cockermouth for Buttermere
On the slow train.
Armley Moor Arram
Pye Hill and Somercotes
On the slow train.
Windmill End.....

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Tom,

If you're interested in doing a reading of Irish poetry, you may want to check out this thread:

http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4287

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Poetry reading
Bree - I used another one on airplanes once - "Stone Airplane" by Shel Silverstein. I forget which collection it's in - "A Light in the Attic", maybe?

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Tom Kitten
TomKitten, how about the following for a theme:

The Eleventh Commandment: "Don't Get Caught" while clawing your way to success.

In fact, this theme probably would make a great thread topic for A2K.

---BumbleBeeBoogie

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How about Erotic Poetry?
I went to an Erotic Poetry reading once, and it was fantastic.
Everyone's view of what is necessarily erotic is so varied that it really brought a wide spectrum of works into view.
The audience was mature and respectful,
and there was lots of tea and cookies, which is always good.

So, that's my recommendation.
:wink:

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Poetry Reading
Thanks to everybody who responded. I got some great ideas, and am filing them away for future use.

I had to postpone the reading till October, and have changed the topic totally. It is now Eat, Drink, and Be Merry. I've just begun work on it, and thinks it's going to be a lot of fun to prepare. Somehow I just couldn't work up much enthusiasm for the Nine Muses thing after all.

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Flanders & Swann - 'Slow Train'
Dear bree,

You listed the evocative Flanders & Swann song 'Slow Train'. This piece from the album 'At the Drop of Another Hat' stirs strong emotions in me - so strong that (as an ex-pat in NEW England) I cannot play it too much. It contains the names of five stations which I knew well as a boy (the spoken introduction starts with "Miller's Dale for Tideswell..........").

For information, many of these closed 'ghost' stations are NOT named for small towns, some aren't even villages! For example, Mumby Road was a tiny halt, with no habitation nearby, which was popular with anglers wanting to fish the River Witham in Lincolnshire.

Kind regards

bree wrote:

You mentioned that you've done travel, so you might have done this already, but how about using different modes of transportation (trains, boats, planes, automobiles, etc.) as a theme?

Actually, there are so many good poems about trains that you might be able to make up an entire program just of them. Some poems about trains that come immediately to mind are Emily Dickinson's "I like to see it lap the Miles," Auden's "Night Mail," Robert Louis Stevenson's "From a Railway Carriage" (from A Child's Garden of Verse), and Edna St. Vincent Millay's "Travel" (the one that begins "The railroad track is miles away,/And the day is loud with voices speaking,/Yet there isn't a train goes by all day/But I hear its whistle shrieking."). And, although it was written as a song rather than as a poem, Flanders and Swann's "Slow Train" could almost stand by itself as a poem. (In case you're not familiar with it, I'll reproduce it at the end of this post.)

For boats, there's always John Masefield's "Sea-Fever" (the one that begins "I must go down to the seas again"), and possibly Millay's "Recuerdo" (with its repeated "We were very tired, we were very merry--/We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry").

The only poem about airplanes that I can think of offhand is Yeats's "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death," and the only poem about cars I can think of is John Betjeman's "Meditation on the A30," but there are probably others I'm not familiar with.

As promised, here's the text of Flanders and Swann's "Slow Train," with all the wonderful names of small English towns that travelers won't be passing through on the "slow train" any more, now that it's been done away with in the interests of efficiency:

Millers Dale for Tideswell
Kirby Muxloe
Mow Cop and Scholar Green

No more will I go to Blandford Forum and Mortehoe,
On the slow train from Midsomer Norton and Mumby Road,
No churns, no porter,
No cat on a seat,
At Chorlton-cum-Hardy or Chester-le-Street
We won't be meeting again on the slow train.

I'll travel no more from Littleton Badsey to Openshaw,
At Long Stanton I'll stand well clear of the doors no more,
No whitewashed pebbles,
No up and no down,
From Formby-Four-Crosses to Dunstable Town,
I won't be going again on the slow train.

On the main line and the goods siding,
The grass grows high,
At Dog Dyke, Tumby Woodside, and Trouble House Halt.
The sleepers sleep at Audlem and Ambergate,
No passenger waits on Chittering Platform or Cheslyn Hay,
No-one departs, no-one arrives,
From Selby to Goole,
From St. Erth to St. Ives,
They all passed out of our lives,
On the slow train,
On the slow train.
Cockermouth for Buttermere
On the slow train.
Armley Moor Arram
Pye Hill and Somercotes
On the slow train.
Windmill End.....

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peakdistrict,

Thanks for letting me know your reaction to 'Slow Train'. It touches a chord with me, too, even though I have never been to any of the places mentioned in the song. That's interesting about the names of the closed stations.

Welcome to A2K!

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Poetry reading
Hi, peakdistrict, and Happy Holidays!

Do you have any other Flanders & Swan lyrics? I tried googling them, but didn't come up with anything much except for one site which is being revised, and no help right now.

I am particularly hoping to find the lyrics to their version of This Old Man Came Rolling Home.

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Tom Kitten! Good to see you... how about this? I googled -- "This Old Man Came Rolling Home" Swann -- and found:

http://www.nyanko.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/fas/anotherhat_gall.html

Quote:

Vive de Gaulle!

This old man, he played one,
He played knick-knack at Verdun.
Cognac, Armagnac, Burgundy and Beaune,
This old man came rolling home.

This old man, World War Two,
He told Churchill what to do,
Free French general, crosses of Lorraine,
He came rolling home again.

This old man, he played trois,
Vive la France, la France c'est moi!
Gimcrack governments, call me if you please:
Colombey les deux Eglises.

This old man, he played four,
Choose de Gaulle or civil war!
Come back president, govern by decree,
Referendum, oui, oui, oui!

This old man, he played five,
France is safe: I'm still alive.
Plastique, Pompidou, sing the Marseillaise,
Algerie, n'est pas francaise!

This old man, he played six,
France and England, they don't mix.
Eytie, Benelux, Germany, and Me:
that's my market recipe.

This old man, sept et huit,
NATO give me back my fleet!
*kiss kiss* Adenauer ratified in Bonn.
One old man goes on and on.

This old man, nine and ten,
He'll play knick till God knows when,
Cognac, Armagnac, Burgundy and Beaune,
This old man thinks he's Saint Joan.

You may be pleased to know that I found Eleanor Farjeon's book Heroes and Heroines and gave it to my daughter for Christmas.

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Poetry readings

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