Young Writers Society

Oh, and W.B. Yeats and Bob Dylan (who is most certainly a poet. His lyrics hold up as poetry, not just as lyrics. Just look at this:


Far between sundown's finish an' midnight's broken toll
We ducked inside the doorway, thunder crashing
As majestic bells of bolts struck shadows in the sounds
Seeming to be the chimes of freedom flashing
Flashing for the warriors whose strength is not to fight
Flashing for the refugees on the unarmed road of flight
An' for each an' ev'ry underdog soldier in the night
An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

In the city's melted furnace, unexpectedly we watched
With faces hidden while the walls were tightening
As the echo of the wedding bells before the blowin' rain
Dissolved into the bells of the lightning
Tolling for the rebel, tolling for the rake
Tolling for the luckless, the abandoned an' forsaked
Tolling for the outcast, burnin' constantly at stake
An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

Through the mad mystic hammering of the wild ripping hail
The sky cracked its poems in naked wonder
That the clinging of the church bells blew far into the breeze
Leaving only bells of lightning and its thunder
Striking for the gentle, striking for the kind
Striking for the guardians and protectors of the mind
An' the unpawned painter behind beyond his rightful time
An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

Through the wild cathedral evening the rain unraveled tales
For the disrobed faceless forms of no position
Tolling for the tongues with no place to bring their thoughts
All down in taken-for-granted situations
Tolling for the deaf an' blind, tolling for the mute
Tolling for the mistreated, mateless mother, the mistitled prostitute
For the misdemeanor outlaw, chased an' cheated by pursuit
An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

Even though a cloud's white curtain in a far-off corner flashed
An' the hypnotic splattered mist was slowly lifting
Electric light still struck like arrows, fired but for the ones
Condemned to drift or else be kept from drifting
Tolling for the searching ones, on their speechless, seeking trail
For the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale
An' for each unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail
An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

Starry-eyed an' laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time an' we watched with one last look
Spellbound an' swallowed 'til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an' worse
An' for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.


Sorry that was so long! But it's soooo good! And Desolation Row and Changing of the Guards are good ones, too. It's All Over Now Baby Blue is my personal favorite. Anyway, Bob Dylan is too a poet, and a damn good one.

I use to think I didn't like poetry. Then for the second semester of English class this year I had to collect a bunch of poems I liked, one for each day. So, I started actually reading poetry, and found out I like some of it, the stuff that actually has a point.
This is one of my all time favorite poems, it's by Robert Bly.

Words Rising

I open my journal, write a few
sounds with green ink, and suddenly
fierceness enters me, stars begin
to revolve, and pick up
alligator dust from under the ocean
the music comes, I feel the bushy
tail of the Great Bear
reach down and brush the seafloor

All those lives we lived in the sunlit
shelves of the Dordogne, the thousand
tunes we sang to the skeletons
of Papua, the many times
we died – wounded – under the cloak
of an animals sniffing, all of these
return, and the grassy nights
we ran for hours in the moonlight.

Watery syllables come welling up
Anger that barked and howled in the cave,
the luminous head of barley
the priest holds up, growls
from under fur, none of that is lost.
The old earth fragrance remains
in the word “and” we experience
“the” in its lonely suffering.

We are bees, then; our honey is language
Now the honey lies stored in caves
beneath us, and the sound of words
carries what we do not
when a man or woman feeds a few words
with private grief, the shames we knew
before we could invent the wheel,
then words grow. We slip out

into farmyards, where rabbits lie
stretched out on the ground for buyers.
Wicker baskets and hanged men
come to us as stanzas and vowels.
We see a crowd with dusty
palms turned up inside each
verb. There are eternal vows
held inside the word "Jericho.”

Blessings then on the man who labors
in his tiny room, writing stanzas on the lamb;
blessings on the woman who picks the brown
seeds of solitude in afternoon light
out of the black seeds of loneliness.
And blessings on the dictionary maker,
huddled among
his bearded words, and on the setter of songs
who sleeps at night inside his violin case.

W.H. Auden, Wilfred Owen, Oscar Wilde - in particular the poem written after getting out of prison and Tennyson.

Fallgriefs Girlfriends - Ted Hughes and mmmmmm... Daddy by Sylvia Plath. I also love Adonais by Percy B. Shelley....

Lewis Carrol! 'The Walrus and the Carpenter', and 'Jabberwocky'.

Narrative (my favourite type)

The Listeners ………Walter de la Mare

Tithonus…………….Lord Alfred Tennyson

The Warlus and the Carpenter…..Lewis Carroll

The Pied Piper of Hamelin…….Robert Browning

The Inchape Rock ….Robert Southley

My Last Duchess….Robert Browning

The Rum Tum Tugger…. T.S.Eliot

The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufork…. T.S.Eliot

The Queen’s Rival….Sarojini Naidu

Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf….Roald Dahl

The Highwayman…Alfred Noyes


Nature Poems

The Cloud….Percy Bysshe Shelley

The Daffodils…William Wordsworth

The Tyger…William Blake