Don Blanding and his Memories in Red poem hooked me on him. That long poem, as many of his poetry is.... is in his Memory Room book...but must be too long for anyone to have it written out on the internet for me to put it here....They do have his Vagabond's House famous poem by him on the internet.....so i will copy and paste that. I collected all of his poetry books.....I love all of his poems and he wrote about many things, and he illustrated the books, as well. Vagabond's House When I have a house . . . as I sometime may . . . I'll suit my fancy in every way. I'll fill it with things that have caught my eye In drifting from Iceland to Molokai. It won't be correct or in period style, But . . . oh, I've thought for a long, long while Of all the corners and all the nooks, Of all the bookshelves and all the books, The great big table, the deep soft chairs, And the Chinese rug at the foot of the stairs (It's an old, old rug from far Chow Wan That a Chinese princess once walked on). My house will stand on the side of a hill By a slow, broad river, deep and still, With a tall lone pine on guard nearby Where the birds can sing and the storm winds cry. A flagstone walk, with lazy curves, Will lead to the door where a Pan's head serves As a knocker there, like a vibrant drum, To let me know that a friend has come, And the door will squeak as I swing it wide To welcome you to the cheer inside. For I'll have good friends who can sit and chat Or simply sit, when it comes to that, By the fireplace where the fir logs blaze And the smoke rolls up in a weaving haze. I'll want a wood box, scarred and rough For leaves and bark and odorous stuff, Like resinous knots and cones and gums, To toss on the flames when winter comes. And I hope a cricket will stay around, For I love it's creaky lonesome sound. There'll be driftwood powder to burn on logs And a shaggy rug for a couple of dogs, Boreas, winner of prize and cup, And Mickey, a lovable gutter-pup. Thoroughbreds, both of them, right from the start, One by breeding, the other by heart. There are times when only a dog will do For a friend . . . when you're beaten, sick and blue And the world's all wrong, for he won't care If you break and cry, or grouch and swear, For he'll let you know as he licks your hands That he's downright sorry . . . and understands. I'll have on a bench a box inlaid With dragon-plaques of milk white jade To hold my own particular brand Of cigarettes brought from the Pharaohs land, With a cloisonne bowl on a lizards skin To flick my cigarette ashes in. And a squat blue jar for a certain blend Of pipe tobacco, I'll have to send To a quaint old chap I chanced to meet In his fusty shop on a London street. A long low shelf of teak will hold My best-loved books in leather and gold, While magazines lie on a bowlegged stand, In a polyglot mixture close at hand. I'll have on a table a rich brocade That I think the pixies must have made, For the dull gold thread on blues and grays Weaves a pattern of Puck . . . the Magic Maze. On the mantlepiece I'll have a place For a little mud god with a painted face That was given to me . . . oh, long ago, By a Philippine maid in Olangapo. Then just in range of a lazy reach . . . A bulging bowl of Indian beech Will brim with things that are good to munch, Hickory nuts to crack and crunch; Big fat raisins and sun-dried dates, And curious fruits from the Malay Straits; Maple sugar and cookies brown With good hard cider to wash them down; Wine-sap apples, pick of the crop, And ears of corn to shell and pop With plenty of butter and lots of salt . . . If you don't get filled it's not my fault. And there where the shadows fall I've planned To have a magnificent concert-grand With polished wood and ivory keys, For wild discordant rhapsodies, For wailing minor Hindu songs, For Chinese chants and clanging gongs, For flippant jazz, and for lullabies, And moody things that I'll improvise To play the long gray dusk away And bid goodbye to another day. Pictures . . . I think I'll have but three: One, in oil, of a windswept sea With the flying scud and the waves whipped white . . . (I know the chap who can paint it right) In lapis blue and deep jade green . . . A great big smashing fine marine That'll make you feel the spray in your face. I'll hang it over my fireplace. The second picture . . . a freakish thing . . . Is gaudy and bright as a macaw's wing, An impressionist smear called "Sin", A nude on a striped zebra skin By a Danish girl I knew in France. My respectable friends will look askance At the purple eyes and the scarlet hair, At the pallid face and the evil stare Of the sinister, beautiful vampire face. I shouldn't have it about the place, But I like . . . while I loathe . . . the beastly thing, And that's the way that one feels about sin. The picture I love the best of all Will hang alone on my study wall Where the sunset's glow and the moon's cold gleam Will fall on the face, and make it seem That the eyes in the picture are meeting mine, That the lips are curved in the fine sweet line Of that wistful, tender, provocative smile That has stirred my heart for a wondrous while. It's a sketch of the girl who loved too well To tie me down to that bit of Hell That a drifter knows when he know's he's held By the soft, strong chains that passions weld. It was best for her and for me, I know, That she measured my love and bade me go For we both have our great illusion yet Unsoiled, unspoiled by vain regret. I won't deny that it makes me sad To know that I've missed what I might have had. It's a clean sweet memory, quite apart, And I've been faithful . . . in my heart. All these things I will have about, Not a one could I do without; Cedar and sandalwood chips to burn In the tarnished bowl of a copper urn; A paperweight of meteorite That seared and scorched the sky one night, A moro kris . . . my paper knife . . . Once slit the throat of a Rajah's wife. The beams of my house will be fragrant wood That once in a teeming jungle stood As a proud tall tree where the leopards couched And the parrots screamed and the black men crouched. The roof must have a rakish dip To shadowy eaves where the rain can drip In a damp persistent tuneful way; It's a cheerful sound on a gloomy day. And I want a shingle loose somewhere To wail like a banshee in despair When the wind is high and the storm-gods race And I am snug by my fireplace. I hope a couple of birds will nest Around the house. I'll do my best To make them happy, so every year They'll raise their brood of fledglings here. When I have my house I'll suit myself And have what I call my "Condiment Shelf", Filled with all manner of herbs and spice, Curry and chutney for meats and rice, Pots and bottles of extracts rare . . . Onions and garlic will both be there . . . And soya and saffron and savoury goo And stuff that I'll buy from an old Hindu; Ginger with syrup in quaint stone jars; Almonds and figs in tinseled bars; Astrakhan caviar, highly prized, And citron and orange peel crystallized; Anchovy paste and poha jam; Basil and chili and marjoram; Pickles and cheeses from every land And flavours that come from Samarkand; And, hung with a string from a handy hook, Will be a dog-eared, well-thumbed book That is pasted full of recipes From France and Spain and the Caribbees; Roots and leaves and herbs to use For curious soups and odd ragouts. I'll have a cook that I'll name "Oh Joy", A sleek, fat, yellow-faced China boy Who can roast a pig or mix a drink, (You can't improve on a slant-eyed Chink). On the gray-stone hearth there'll be a mat For a scrappy, swaggering yellow cat With a war-scarred face from a hundred fights With neighbours' cats on moonlight nights. A wise old Tom who can hold his own And make my dogs let him alone. I'll have a window-seat broad and deep Where I can sprawl to read or sleep, With windows placed so I can turn And watch the sunsets blaze and burn Beyond high peaks that scar the sky Like bare white wolf-fangs that defy The very gods. I'll have a nook For a savage idol that I took From a ruined temple in Peru, A demon-chaser named Mang-Chu To guard my house by night and day And keep all evil things away. Pewter and bronze and hammered brass; Old carved wood and gleaming glass; Candles and polychrome candlesticks, And peasant lamps with floating wicks; Dragons in silk on a Mandarin suit In a chest that is filled with vagabond-loot. All of the beautiful, useless things That a vagabond's aimless drifting brings. Then, when my house is all complete I'll stretch me out on the window seat With a favourite book and a cigarette, And a long cool drink that Oh Joy will get; And I'll look about at my bachelor-nest While the sun goes zooming down the west, And the hot gold light will fall on my face And make me think of some heathen place That I've failed to see . . . that I've missed some way . . . A place that I'd planned to find some day, And I'll feel the lure of it driving me. Oh damn! I know what the end will be I'll go. And my house will fall away While the mice by night and the moths by day Will nibble the covers off all my books, And the spiders weave in the shadowed nooks. And my dogs . . . I'll see that they have a home While I follow the sun, while I drift and roam To the ends of the earth like a chip on the stream, Like a straw on the wind, like a vagrant dream; And the thought will strike with a swift sharp pain That I probably never will build again This house that I'll have in some far day Well . . . it's just a dream house, anyway.
Thank you for sharing this......as they are my sentiments exactly. I am going to look into reading The Outermost House...Sounds like that is right up my alley.
Good ol' Sylvia Plath and her daddy issues You do not do, you do not do Any more, black shoe In which I have lived like a foot For thirty years, poor and white, Barely daring to breathe or Achoo. Daddy, I have had to kill you. You died before I had time—— Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, Ghastly statue with one gray toe Big as a Frisco seal And a head in the freakish Atlantic Where it pours bean green over blue In the waters off beautiful Nauset. I used to pray to recover you. Ach, du. In the German tongue, in the Polish town Scraped flat by the roller Of wars, wars, wars. But the name of the town is common. My Polack friend Says there are a dozen or two. So I never could tell where you Put your foot, your root, I never could talk to you. The tongue stuck in my jaw. It stuck in a barb wire snare. Ich, ich, ich, ich, I could hardly speak. I thought every German was you. And the language obscene An engine, an engine Chuffing me off like a Jew. A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen. I began to talk like a Jew. I think I may well be a Jew. The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna Are not very pure or true. With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack I may be a bit of a Jew. I have always been scared of you, With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo. And your neat mustache And your Aryan eye, bright blue. Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You—— Not God but a swastika So black no sky could squeak through. Every woman adores a Fascist, The boot in the face, the brute Brute heart of a brute like you. You stand at the blackboard, daddy, In the picture I have of you, A cleft in your chin instead of your foot But no less a devil for that, no not Any less the black man who Bit my pretty red heart in two. I was ten when they buried you. At twenty I tried to die And get back, back, back to you. I thought even the bones would do. But they pulled me out of the sack, And they stuck me together with glue. And then I knew what to do. I made a model of you, A man in black with a Meinkampf look And a love of the rack and the screw. And I said I do, I do. So daddy, I’m finally through. The black telephone’s off at the root, The voices just can’t worm through. If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two—— The vampire who said he was you And drank my blood for a year, Seven years, if you want to know. Daddy, you can lie back now. There’s a stake in your fat black heart And the villagers never liked you. They are dancing and stamping on you. They always knew it was you. Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.
I would be interested in your view of one of my favorite poems. Even today, it is very thought provoking. A cold coming we had of it, Just the worst time of the year For a journey, and such a journey: The ways deep and the weather sharp, The very dead of winter And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory, Lying down in the melting snow. There were times we regretted The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces, And the silken girls bringing sherbet. Then the camel men cursing and grumbling And running away, and wanting their liquor and women, And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters, And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly And the villages dirty and charging high prices: A hard time we had of it. At the end we preferred to travel all night, Sleeping in snatches, With the voices singing in our ears, saying That this was all folly. Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley, Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation; With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness, And three trees on the low sky, And an old white horse galloped in away in the meadow. Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel, Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver, And feet kicking the empty wine-skins. But there was no information, and so we continued And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory. All this was a long time ago, I remember, And I would do it again, but set down This set down This: were we led all that way for Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly, We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death, But had thought they were different; this Birth was Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death. We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, With an alien people clutching their gods. I should be glad of another death.
How are you dong, Deidre? Your avatar is beautiful... Yes.....he is great......I love the melody in all of his poems...Some poetry is hard for me to read sometimes.....I tend to do better with poetry that flows like all of Don's things do....I did not like the Asian and pig slaughter reference in his poem I posted here, and I really wanted to post Memories in Red........ i do think the good far out weighs the bad in everything he wrote. Don was another era, too.
I’m doing really well. Off of work this week(!), very much needed. And thank you! Decided to put me in my avatar for a change. Lol How are you? I hope things are going well for you. I really like his work! Sometimes with rhyme, it gets annoying but I kept wanting to read on and on and on with this. There’s a simplicity and complexity in his words, all working together. Thank you for sharing, I’m going to see his other works. Edit, I didn’t meant for all of that to italicize. On my phone now >.<
Thank you, Deidre...yes, I am doing much better these days with the help of a metabolic doctor....who is hollistic..has me on powders of amino acids and things...and a strict diet of what to eat and not eat...and since no one can find anything really wrong with me.....my digestive problems must be autoimmune or something.....he, is at least helping me...and i am getting better. thank you for asking... Anyway.....Here is another poem to not make this thread a chat thread.....lol.... My mom always loved this poem. The Road Not Taken By Robert Frost Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost is wonderful. Oh, I love that poem! ^^ I love that ''as else she would.'' lol Idk why, I keep saying it out loud.
I like several old poets, like Robert Frost, Walt Whitman, and others. My current favorite is John Greenleaf Whittier's "Maud Muller." My favorite line is: For of all sad words of tongue or pen The saddest are these: "It might have been!"
I like that line, too. I read a quote recently, ''it's not the things we did that we will live to regret, but the things we didn't do.'' Something like that. lol
How could i forget - Hamatreya BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON Bulkeley, Hunt, Willard, Hosmer, Meriam, Flint, Possessed the land which rendered to their toil Hay, corn, roots, hemp, flax, apples, wool, and wood. Each of these landlords walked amidst his farm, Saying, “’Tis mine, my children’s and my name’s. How sweet the west wind sounds in my own trees! How graceful climb those shadows on my hill! I fancy these pure waters and the flags Know me, as does my dog: we sympathize; And, I affirm, my actions smack of the soil.” Where are these men? Asleep beneath their grounds: And strangers, fond as they, their furrows plough. Earth laughs in flowers, to see her boastful boys Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs; Who steer the plough, but cannot steer their feet Clear of the grave. They added ridge to valley, brook to pond, And sighed for all that bounded their domain; “This suits me for a pasture; that’s my park; We must have clay, lime, gravel, granite-ledge, And misty lowland, where to go for peat. The land is well,—lies fairly to the south. ’Tis good, when you have crossed the sea and back, To find the sitfast acres where you left them.” Ah! the hot owner sees not Death, who adds Him to his land, a lump of mould the more. Hear what the Earth say:— EARTH-SONG “Mine and yours; Mine, not yours. Earth endures; Stars abide— Shine down in the old sea; Old are the shores; But where are old men? I who have seen much, Such have I never seen. “The lawyer’s deed Ran sure, In tail, To them and to their heirs Who shall succeed, Without fail, Forevermore. “Here is the land, Shaggy with wood, With its old valley, Mound and flood. But the heritors?— Fled like the flood's foam. The lawyer and the laws, And the kingdom, Clean swept herefrom. “They called me theirs, Who so controlled me; Yet every one Wished to stay, and is gone, How am I theirs, If they cannot hold me, But I hold them?” When I heard the Earth-song I was no longer brave; My avarice cooled Like lust in the chill of the grave.
Adrienne Rich: She who has the power To call her own man From that estranged intensity Where his mind forages alone Yet keeps her peace And leaves him be And when his thoughts to her return Knows this the hardest thing to learn
I've always liked poetry, even the works that don't entirely resonate with me. It's cool to see how people express themselves, and I enjoy writing it. It makes me smile when I stumble upon a great new poem, well, new to me. Like this one. Je crois a toi by Riley R My lips clash against a bottle mouth and my mouth strangles a cigarette and my teeth clamp down on a paint soaked brush and my tongue taps my teeth in taunts against your lover, The Cause and I wonder if ever you will tilt your angel face down from your pedestal and command me tell you why, my body is your mannequin to pose though I'm not malleable enough for you, my skin is yours to wear for a cloak though it's too large and rough, oh Apollo, my heart is yours to fill with bullet holes and that at least might be to your liking, and I'll bare my teeth in wolfish joy as the guns blaze and molten metal makes a home in my chest and all I will feel is your hand in mine your hand your hand your hand