Nonrandom poetry

[larryhammer]

I'm still not up for discussing random poetry generators, aside from regretting that in response to silmaril's poetry meme ("When you see this, post a bit of poetry in your own journal") I used one. So I'll amend my response.

Donne, of course. The alternatives being Hopkins or Auden but, no, Donne. And of Donne, while "To His Mistress Going to Bed" is tempting, if only because I seem to quote allude to it in every other thing I write — no, it must be the touchstone, "The Canonization." And I really do use it as a touchstone: if an anthology ought to have it by subject or period, but doesn't, I know it's a bad anthology.

For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love,
Or chide my palsy, or my gout,
My five grey hairs, or ruin'd fortune flout,
With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve,
Take you a course, get you a place,
Observe his Honour, or his Grace,
Or the King's real, or his stamped face
Contemplate, what you will, approve,
So you will let me love.

Alas, alas, who's injur'd by my love?
What merchant's ships have my sighs drown'd?
Who says my tears have overflow'd his ground?
When did my colds a forward spring remove?
When did the heats which my veins fill
Add one more to the plaguy bill?
Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out still
Litigious men, which quarrels move,
Though she and I do love.

Call us what you will, we are made such by love;
Call her one, me another fly,
We'are tapers too, and at our own cost die,
And we in us find th' eagle and the dove.
The phoenix riddle hath more wit
By us; we two being one, are it.
So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit,
We die and rise the same, and prove
Mysterious by this love.

We can die by it, if not live by love,
And if unfit for tombs and hearse
Our legend be, it will be fit for verse;
And if no piece of chronicle we prove,
We'll build in sonnets pretty rooms;
As well a well-wrought urn becomes
The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs,
And by these hymns all shall approve
Us canoniz'd for love;

And thus invoke us: "You, whom reverend love
Made one another's hermitage;
You, to whom love was peace, that now is rage;
Who did the whole world's soul contract, and drove
Into the glasses of your eyes
(So made such mirrors, and such spies,
That they did all to you epitomize)
Countries, towns, courts: beg from above
A pattern of your love!"

I note, for the record, that this, like all Donne, is really hard to translate into words of one beat.

---L, you know who you are.

Comments

[casacorona.livejournal.com]

Good work on the one beat jobs.

[larryhammer]

Thanks. They're a fun task to warm up the hands. Not that I've worked one in a while. I should do a few.

Though now that I think of it, I should toss Words of One Beat in the meme pool. Or should I just try for a fad, do you think? Or just play it here. Hmm. Must think.

---L.

[terrymcgarry.livejournal.com]

This is neat.

Tough call, to give it to the meme pool or not. Keep it here, but have friends spread the word and link back to you?

[larryhammer]

I think I'll post a new thread for it, one with all the rules to get those new to the game up to speed. But in a day or two — life is, well, full of life, just right now.

---L.