Forgotten Poets

“I’m not interested in poetry at all. Poetry is—I dunno—it’s smelly.”

Howard Devoto 🖤

To Novalis The holy stranger rests in dark earth. God received the dirge from his soft modest mouth as he sank back, in his bloom-time. One blue flower sustains his song, in pain’s nocturnal house.

Georg Trakl, tr. Stephen Tapscott. just perfect

Toads studies his garden, waiting for the seeds to grow. From "The Garden" In *Frog and Toad Together*

“Now seeds,” said Toad, “start growing.”

Toad walked up and down a few times. The seeds did not start to grow.

FROM A SENSIBLE LONDON JOURNAL. Soft as a gathered flower falls When lightly thrown, So lies the hand of my dear love Within my own. II. As petals of the palest rose Her fingers white, The faint sweet fragrance of her palm Is love's delight. III. Like sleeping flowers, the fingers close I kissed apart. ... . In that soft, secret hiding-place Is hid my heart. If Hilda Trevelyan Thomson had written of "his" hands, "his" palm, it would have been more ordinary, I admit; but it might have: first, had a very bad influence; and secondly, done a lot of harm.

Love coming across little things like this while researching - a fragment of queer poetic history by Hilda Trevelyan Thomson in The Mask (1927) 🖤

🖤

Langston Hughes

SUPERSTITION I have painted a picture of a ghost Upon my kite, And hung it on a tree. Later, when I loose the string And let it fly, The people will cower And hide their heads, For fear of the God Swimming in the clouds.

Amy Lowell, for your Friday the 13th

—: To William Campbell :— I heard him say: “Tis hard Stand to it.” But how hard? Winds will not tell Nor mountains, stars nor seas. Birds will not tell How hard.

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From the latest issue of #ForgottenPoets
—A. Philip Randolph (civil rights leader and publisher)

#poetry #poems #booksky

As in Walt Watermelon 😂

Watermelon with a smile.

Meet my watermelon friend, Walt. 🍉

abstract photograph swarm of dreams take to air, pages of light

swarm of dreams

🖤

🖤🖤🖤

—: What You Will :— What is my sex and meaning and ambition? I am what you shall name me. Superstition Hangs on the lips of idols that are mute, Music is holy in the silent lute That waits the wings of every sleeping tone. You stand beside me—we are both alone. Where do I come from, go, what chains shall bind me? There is nothing before me or behind me, I come from all your margins, from your stress Of questioning, and I am the dividing guess Of life to dream. Or just a woman in a dress.

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From the latest issue of #ForgottenPoets
—Iris Tree

#poetry #poem #booksky

🖤

Toad, literally singing in the rain, serenades his seeds. From "The Garden" In *Frog and Toad Together*

All the next day Toad sang songs to his seeds.

Old Iron Old iron rustling in the nettles Hoops and girds and battered slag Coils and wheels writhing twisted Sharp and fanged in the bitter grass. If I had a flute or & whistle If I were a fiddler I would play on that scragged pile, in rags I would sit Because of a melancholy mood I would make tunes, new tunes, bitter and wild Out of the snarl of those dead fragments. Iron out of the earth, Iron out of the fire, Black iron jangling upon iron Old Iron rusting red on the green—

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From the latest issue of #ForgottenPoets
—Iris Tree

#poetry #poems #booksky

FAREWELL TO THE MUSES. My typewriter has been writing crookedly For a very considerable time. It is so hard to write in metre and in rime With a typewriter that writes crookedly. Lines should look clean and decent to the eye, And mine have ceased to do so. And so that is why I am ceasing to be a poet. . . . Because my typewriter writes so exacerbatingly, So distressingly crookedly.

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From 'Wheels' magazine (1917)
—Aldous Huxley

#ForgottenPoets #poetry #booksky

Act three The night sun is reserved for inconspicuous hunchbacks & golden lackeys. In the apocalyptic morning sanctimonious myths are sung high in memory of delicious America

Sara Sutterlin

$1.95 POET son

Lorine Niedecker
to Cid Corman

Fixed or impermanent All these objects fixed in their places-- trees, houses, the declaration of independence, the bill of rights, the constitution--awaiting an end. The earth spins as if in search of its executioner, perhaps a comet sent at random by the law of impermanence, fixed in us like a bent tree.

David Ignatow, from Living is What I Wanted: Last Poems (1999)

2/2

Joshua Beckman,
from A Guide for Making
Fragments from Diaries

Well excuse me

😂

Toad, all dressed up, leaves his house and heads to Frog's. From "A List" In *Frog and Toad Together*

He opened the door and walked into the morning. Soon Toad was at Frog's front door. He took the list from his pocket and crossed out: Go to Frog's House.

Sonnet To Mrs. Reynolds's Cat Cat! who hast pass'd thy grand climacteric, How many mice and rats hast in thy days Destroy'd? How many tit bits stolen? Gaze With those bright languid segments green, and prick Those velvet ears -- but prythee do not stick Thy latent talons in me - and upraise Thy gentle mew - and tell me all thy frays, Of fish and mice, and rats and tender chick. Nay, look not down, nor lick thy dainty wrists-- For all thy wheezy asthma -- and for all Thy tail's tip is nick'd off -- and though the fists Of many a maid have given thee many a maul, Still is that fur as soft, as when the lists In youth thou enter'dest on glass bottled wall.

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'Sonnet to Mrs. Reynold's Cat'
—John Keats

#poetry #poems #booksky