Hello fellow poetry lovers,
Sarah, thanks for sharing your poetry information with us.
The best Poetry website to start with is www.australianpoetrycentre.org.au
Apart from anything else, it's a very smartly-designed, fun and interesting website.
There are links there to other sites (cordite is a very good poetry website), including literary magazines and journals (Heat, Meanjin), links to Students resources, writers, competition, links to poets both AUstralian and International, as well as the most recent and invigorating poetry.
What poets have you discovered recently? What Australian Poet can you find on the website mentioned above, and what poem strikes a chord with you?
Looking forward to some interesting, poetical discussion!
Here's my fave for today, by the amazing Les Murray, from 2002
The Meaning of Existence
Everything except language
knows the meaning of existence.
Trees, planets, rivers, time
know nothing else. They express it
moment by moment as the universe.
Even this fool of a body
lives it in part, and would
have full dignity within it
but for the ignorant freedom
of my talking mind.
Hey Guys,
ReplyDeleteI just wanted to quickly say just as I am getting into the Return to Crawford, after I got used to the language, I found out that last night was in fact the LAST night! Too sad!
It did make me wonder, though, because I know in the late eighteen / early nineteen hundreds, people would be very discontent with stories that didn't end perfectly - did anyone at all write sad stories? Dickens - no. Austen - no. Was there even one book that, perhaps at the time was shunned, that broke apart from the norm? And, if so, would it still exist today?
Just food for thought.
Sarah
P.S.
There are so many lovely poets and poems out there, especially those that are unknown, or so I think. So here's one:
A Poor Man's Prayer
By Tony L. Jefferson
Lord lend me a bit of food
So I can feed my hungry brood
And let my lights stay on till dawn
So my children can have a little more fun
I come to you lord on bended knee
Praying please let me keep my sanity
Once had a car that the repo took
They stole it outta my yard leaving me shook
But my misery is only compounding
My wife left me three months and counting
Said she wanted a rich man
So she can chill on a beach of jet black sand
My roofs sags and my floorboards creak
Lord please release us from this bad luck streak
I fantasize of better times
A day when I don’t have to sell these dimes
I had a job but they were “over strength”
Such a fancy word for fired but I took the hint
Some would say it ain’t that bad
But our daily life seems to drag
But lord I pray for the betterment of my children
I want them to experience the joys of good living
Lord just let me know if you’re even there
To hear this poor man’s little prayer
Very Sad. Found it at
http://tjefferson85.com/
Hello Sarah - Very interesting comments. There are so many sad, tragic stories written from that period. Austen was criticised by some for being too "happily ever after"! George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, The Bronte sisters, Mary Shelley, Tolstoy (Anna Karenina famously throwing herself in the path of an oncoming train), Flaubert's "Madame Bovary", Thackery's "Vanity Fair", Emile Zola's "L'Assoumoir". All weepies. George Eliot's "The Mill on the Floss" is so heart-achingly sad but lovely at the end when Maggie and Tom... but I won;t spoil it for you! I would argue that there is a lot of sadness in Dickens.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the poem, I always enjoy them.
JC
Hey JC,
ReplyDeletejust sent the creative response to the painting to you. dunno if it'll work though. Last time i tried to send soomething the person never got it. So if it fails: i can give u a hard copy 2moro, or u can post something and i'll sent it via another email address.
regards, MRs. Dr who
Hi all,
ReplyDeleteJust commenting on the discussion we had in class on Friday. I believe people have a preference for novels with a 'happy ending' because its an escape. An escape from the daily grind of life, our everyday crap. When we turn on the news and all we hear and see is death, death, death.... in a book we get to see the good people get rewarded for their worthy actions. If we didn't have this why would we bother to dream, to aspire to be or do anything.
Georgia.
Hi guys,
ReplyDeleteI liked our class discussion in class on Friday about the excursion and poetry. I'm with Georgia on this one. I think that although Austen was criticised for her novels for portraying such a pleasant life, I believe that people wanted a happy ending for their escape. An escapre from the grim outlook Dickens had on life during that time period. I think that the happy endings, as Georgia said, gave them hope that their lives could be as happy as Austen (and others) may have presented it. Just food for thought. Speaking of food, that TV show that Lyndel was talking about where two presenters surround themselves with a certain time period is so fascinating! I know that it's on Foxtel, but I'm not to sure when.
Maddi :)
i agree to a certain extent also.
ReplyDeleteGeorgia and Maddi make some great points, though a fictitious book does not capture the full essence of reality, it gives people hope. However, i do understand Sarah's point, it is true that not so many books end in tragedy (other than some of our beloved Shakespeare), and that could make some people feel a little "ripped off".
When looking at the job description for an author, not once does it say,
'you must always end your stories happily'
neither does it say,
'your stories must be 886 pages long'
or,
'all stories you write must have a male protagonist, aged 44'
I think this just adds to the diversity of 'stories', books, films, magazine articles.
As we all know, there is no law for writing, however there preferable methods and techniques...
Who Knows, perhaps it is harder to write a book with a 'sad' ending.
elisha.
my favorite books are those that end in suspense, with some sadness, and some happiness. The best kind. Like the vampire academy serries. Every book leaves you ALMOST content, but craving the next book desperately. someone dies or a mysterious letter comes. and something nice happens. They are satisfying. Books that are pure happy or pure sad at the end, i find, are books where the author hasn't made the effort to evoke that spectacular combination of feelings in the reader at the end. :)
ReplyDeletecheerio
Oh loving the class discussion and I agree with all the valid points everyone has made about short stories. I personally believe that the ending to a story depends solely on the type of novel it is.
ReplyDeleteHowever, back onto the topic of poetry... There is an amazing poem I have recently discovered from the film ‘Invictus’- although it is not from an Australian writer. It is written by the English poet, William Ernest Henley, in 1875. I believe that it is truly an emotive and moving poem, especially with the last two lines, that I have found inspirational and empowering by its message of self mastery.
This is it:
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/r/rainer_maria_rilke.html
ReplyDeletewhoah! i understand y sarah like this rilke person. GENIUS. NAWWWW. AND INSIGHTFUL.
i liked this quote website.
Also Zoe, i agree, the end of that line is like WOW as. :) :)
as we are looking at austalian stuff atm. i thought this way a fairly good poem about australia.
A MIDSUMMER NOON IN THE AUSTRALIAN FOREST
Not a bird disturbs the air!
There is quiet everywhere;
Over plains and over woods
What a mighty stillness broods.
Even the grasshoppers keep
[All the birds and insects keep]
Where the coolest shadows sleep;
Even the busy ants are found
Resting in their pebbled mound;
Even the locust clingeth now
In silence to the barky bough:
And over hills and over plains
Quiet, vast and slumbrous, reigns.
Only there's a drowsy humming
From yon warm lagoon slow coming:
'Tis the dragon-hornet - see!
All bedaubed resplendently
With yellow on a tawny ground -
Each rich spot nor square nor round,
But rudely heart-shaped, as it were
The blurred and hasty impress there,
Of vermeil-crusted seal
Dusted o'er with golden meal:
Only there's a droning where
Yon bright beetle gleams the air -
Gleams it in its droning flight
[Tracks it in its gleaming flight]
With a slanting track of light,
Till rising in the sunshine higher,
[Rising in the sunshine higher,]
Its shards flame out like gems on fire.
[Till its shards flame out like fire.]
Every other thing is still,
Save the ever wakeful rill,
Whose cool murmur only throws
A cooler comfort round Repose;
Or some ripple in the sea
Of leafy boughs, where, lazily,
Tired Summer, in her forest bower
Turning with the noontide hour,
Heaves a slumbrous breath, ere she
Once more slumbers peacefully.
0 'tis easeful here to lie
Hidden from Noon's scorching eye,
In this grassy cool recess
Musing thus of Quietness.
by Charles Harpur
cheerio lit-buddies