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cinaedBeen reading mostly decent poems in Contemporary Literature (although on Monday we're starting in on Plath *shudder*), and so I thought I'd share. :) Creeley and Brooks are famous for other poems, "I Know A Man" and "We Real Cool," respectively, so I decided to post my favorite poems of theirs that weren't as well-known.
The Flower
By Robert Creeley
I think I grow tension
like flowers
in a wood where
nobody goes.
Each wound is perfect,
encloses itself in a tiny
imperceptible blossom,
making pain.
Pain is a flower like that one,
like this one,
like that one,
like this one.
*
The Egg Boiler
By Gwendolyn Brooks
Being you, you cut your poetry from wood.
The boiling of an egg is heavy art.
You come upon it as an artist should,
With rich-eyed passion, and with straining heart.
We fools, we cut our poems out of air.
Night color, wind soprano, and such stuff.
And sometimes weightlessness is much to bear.
You mock it, though, you name it Not Enough.
The egg, spooned gently to the avid pan,
And left the strict three minute, or the four,
Is your Enough and art for any man.
We fools give courteous ear -- then cut some more,
Shaping a gorgeous Nothingness from cloud.
You watch us, eat your egg, and laugh aloud.
*
Man in Space
By Billy Collins
All you have to do is listen to the way a man
sometimes talks to his wife at a table of people
and notice how intent he is on making his point
even though her lower lip is beginning to quiver,
and you will know why the women in science
fiction movies who inhabit a planet of their own
are not pictured making a salad or reading a magazine
when the men from earth arrive in their rocket,
why they are always standing in a semicircle
with their arms folded, their bare legs set apart,
their breasts protected by hard metal disks.
The Flower
By Robert Creeley
I think I grow tension
like flowers
in a wood where
nobody goes.
Each wound is perfect,
encloses itself in a tiny
imperceptible blossom,
making pain.
Pain is a flower like that one,
like this one,
like that one,
like this one.
*
The Egg Boiler
By Gwendolyn Brooks
Being you, you cut your poetry from wood.
The boiling of an egg is heavy art.
You come upon it as an artist should,
With rich-eyed passion, and with straining heart.
We fools, we cut our poems out of air.
Night color, wind soprano, and such stuff.
And sometimes weightlessness is much to bear.
You mock it, though, you name it Not Enough.
The egg, spooned gently to the avid pan,
And left the strict three minute, or the four,
Is your Enough and art for any man.
We fools give courteous ear -- then cut some more,
Shaping a gorgeous Nothingness from cloud.
You watch us, eat your egg, and laugh aloud.
*
Man in Space
By Billy Collins
All you have to do is listen to the way a man
sometimes talks to his wife at a table of people
and notice how intent he is on making his point
even though her lower lip is beginning to quiver,
and you will know why the women in science
fiction movies who inhabit a planet of their own
are not pictured making a salad or reading a magazine
when the men from earth arrive in their rocket,
why they are always standing in a semicircle
with their arms folded, their bare legs set apart,
their breasts protected by hard metal disks.
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no subject
Date: 2007-03-31 02:37 am (UTC)I loved the other two, especially the last few lines of the last one. Thank you for sharing these. I love poetry, but I never take the time to read it.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-31 03:24 am (UTC)I'm always glad to share poems! Actually, I've posted quite a few during this semester due to my prof being crazy about poems, all under the poetry tag, so feel free to enjoy. :)