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Find me a poem...



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Wed Jul 31, 2013 3:19 am
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niteowl says...



Hello YWS poets!

So...my name is Niteowl and I have a rather shameful confession to make. I write poetry, quite a bit of it actually. Some of it might even be decent. However...I don't read a whole lot of poetry, at least not as much as I should. And I suspect I'm not the only one.

So, I came up with a (hopefully!) fun idea to get us out looking for and reading poems.
Basically, I'll tell the next person to find a poem that fits whatever criteria I specify. The next poster shares what they found and issues a new challenge.

Rules/Guidelines

1. Paste the text here or link to it. If the content would be rated 16+ or 18+ as a literary work, or if there's language, make sure to spoiler with a warning.

2. Possible options for criteria include time period, country the poet's from, subject, poem style/structure, words in title or poem, etc. You can also exclude (e.g. Find me a poem by an African-American female poet that is NOT Maya Angelou)

3. Be as broad or specific as you like, but don't be impossible. (e.g. "Find me a poem written on May 14, 1775 about kangaroos"). Ideally, there should at least be a few poems in your category.

4. When you find a poem, tell us a little about it. What did you like/not like about the poem? Did you find any interesting information about the author?

One good site to find pieces on: http://www.poemhunter.com/ Feel free to share any you like!

Okay, I've babbled long enough. I shall now issue the first challenge.

Find me a poem by an author from South America...that is NOT Pablo Neruda.
"You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure, what you do not understand." Leonardo Da Vinci

<YWS><R1>
  





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Thu Aug 01, 2013 1:15 am
Aley says...



http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-lark-7/ -The Lark by Gabriela Mistral

I'd say the language was 14+ but I'm not sure we're concerned about that.

The interesting thing about this poem is that it is in more of a paragraph style than a line style, but it still works really well as a poem. It still has the same poetic elements that lines would, but it doesn't have the lines. I typically don't like this style of poetry. I find it too jumbling and confusing, but she does this very cleanly and it is in good taste. She also breaks it into paragraphs for us, which is very nice.

She's from Chile.

Oh! Right, challenge. Find me a villanelle that is not by Elizabeth Biship or by Dylan Thomas, but is still in the a1ba2, aba1... format.
  





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Thu Aug 01, 2013 9:18 am
TheDayBeforeTomorrow says...



A Villanelle by Oscar Wilde

To be honest, I've never heard of a villanelle before, though I have heard of Dylan Thomas's famous Do not go gentle into the good night. I'm not sure this is a style I appreciate so far, judging from the results my search on poemhunter turned up. The better ones were more lyrical and meaningful, but overall, the poems seemed flat and in need of complexity; if I don't have to analyze the poem, it's not worth it to me.

I liked this one because, well, Wilde is rather brilliant and never disappoints, and because this is the only one that had me puzzled for a while; perhaps because I'm not familiar with all of the mythical references. It was one of the few that had a constant meter and something resembling substance.

As for the challenge, find me a curtal sonnet that is not by Gerard Henley Hopkins.
Veni. Vidi. Vici.

People are made of places. They carry with them
hints of jungles or mountains, a tropic grace
or the cool eyes of sea-gazers. -EB

Love thy mangoes or die.
  





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Thu Aug 01, 2013 3:57 pm
Skydreamer says...



Curtal Sonnet by Leslie Alexis

I actually have never heard of such a type of poetry before, but then I have grand ignorance on such things, and thanks to Aley am starting to spread my wings. (Rhyme was unintentional. lol.) So anyways, yeah, it was the only poem that came up when I searched for it in the site. I was considering searching some more, but then I read it, and I really liked it.

I liked the meaning behind it and how it was formed. Especially because it took, for me, the view of butterflies in the stomach being something much more as in, it was love. That the childish ideas of butterflies are going away, and now are growing to something bigger, it's not just a silly feeling anymore but something deeper.

Hopefully you will as well. It has a really nice tone and flow, and it has meaning. It's a beautiful poem, and I think my next poem will be a curtal sonnet, once figure out how to do it. XD

My challenge is find me a Triquain from anyone.
I believe in that, which is not seen.
I call it truth, faith, hope, life.


~~~~Sometimes life beckons us to be different~~~~

I used to be known as thewritersdream, but now my dreams have taken flight
  





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Thu Feb 27, 2014 9:53 pm
Audy says...



Nightwatch by Cephas.

I've not really read triquains before? From the name I was assuming it'd be like some kind of spin on quatrains, and that's essentially what it is but it looks a lot, lot more complicated than that. And I'm not sure if it achieves all that much more for all its complications xD

There is a beauty to the Night poem though, like it's very serene and the shapes are beautiful, the lines and stuff are interesting, but meh. I guess I'm not much of a fan of so many adjectives and such stuffed in there like "painted luminous rainbow" blegh. I suppose if you're trying to build a poem based on its syllables, you run into that issue. I do like the night one preferable to the rhyming one though.

Find me a digital poem. Not an online poem, but the actual digital poetry form. Find me one :)
  





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Thu Feb 27, 2014 10:11 pm
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rhiasofia says...



Never heard of electronic poetry, but this is pretty nifty!

http://collection.eliterature.org/1/wor ... ities.html

Find me a poem with similar style to E. E. Cummings, in subject and avoidance of grammar and formatting conventions, but it can't be E. E. Cummings.
Your head is a living forest full of song birds
~E. E. Cummings
  





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Sun Mar 02, 2014 4:08 pm
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Aley says...



That was difficult since e. e. cummings can't really be copied. The best I could do was "the gate" by Tadeusz Różewicz and translated.
the gate. It's not perfect, but it's the best I have.
@rhiasofia


Find me a poem by the current Poet Laureate of the country you live in.
  





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Sun Mar 02, 2014 4:46 pm
Rook says...



(just sneaking in to say that that thing was really cool @rhiasofia!)
Instead, he said, Brother! I know your hunger.
To this, the Wolf answered, Lo!

-Elena Passarello, Animals Strike Curious Poses
  





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Sun Mar 02, 2014 4:52 pm
rhiasofia says...



@fortis, I know! I never knew such things existed, it was really exciting.
Your head is a living forest full of song birds
~E. E. Cummings
  





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Sat Aug 04, 2018 12:38 am
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alliyah says...



@Aley I just found this thread from reading This Squills Article. So here I am answering your un-answered challenge.

Tracy K. Smith is the current poet-laureate of the United States, here's a neat poem she wrote: "The Good Life" I'm actually glad I came across this thread, because I didn't know who the current poet-laurette was, and it turns out Tracy K. Smith is pretty cool! I'm going to be reading more of her work.

Spoiler! :

"When some people talk about money
They speak as if it were a mysterious lover
Who went out to buy milk and never
Came back, and it makes me nostalgic
For the years I lived on coffee and bread,
Hungry all the time, walking to work on payday
Like a woman journeying for water
From a village without a well, then living
One or two nights like everyone else
On roast chicken and red wine."

- Tracy K. Smith


Challenge for the next person:
Find a poem about aliens with rhyme in it. Thanks in advance.
you should know i am a time traveler &
there is no season as achingly temporary as now
but i have promised to return
  





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Tue Sep 04, 2018 10:01 am
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Storybraniac says...



Heya! So this poem coincidentally we had to investigate for our grade 7 literature (brought back some memories). I don't think I cared too much about poetry back then. Seems like a legit poem now that I understand poetry better.

The Alien
Greg Delanty


I'm back again scrutinizing the Milky Way
of your ultrasound, scanning the dark
matter, the nothingness, that now the heads say
is chockablock with quarks & squarks,
gravitons & gravitini, photons & photinos. Our sprout,

who art there inside the spacecraft
of your Ma, the time capsule of this printout,
hurling & whirling towards us, it's all daft
on this earth. Our alien who art in the heavens,
our Martian, our little green man, we're anxious

to make contact, to ask divers questions
about the heavendom you hail from, to discuss
the whole shebang of the beginning&end,
the pre-big bang untime before you forget the why
and lie of thy first place. And, our friend,

to say Welcome, that we mean no harm, we'd die
for you even, that we pray you're not here
to subdue us, that we'd put away
our ray guns, missiles, attitude and share
our world with you, little big head, if only you stay.


Find me a poem that foucuses on love, but as a metaphor
Our thing progresses
I call and you come through
Blow all my friendships
To sit in hell with you
But we’re the greatest
They’ll hang us in the Louvre
Down the back, but who cares? Still the Louvre.

- Lorde

In my head I do everything right
  








The ink in which our lives are inscribed is indelible.
— Helena 'HG' Wells, Warehouse 13