"You want some poems, I got some f'ing poems..."
Posted on 06/10/2008 10:01:58 AM PDT by PghBaldy
Following are two poems by Barack Obama that were published in the Spring 1981 issue of “Feast,” a 51-page student literary journal that described itself as "a semi-annual journal of short poetry and fiction collected from the Occidental College community.” The journal is no longer published, according to a college spokesman.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Heard one ape howl, you’ve heard them all...
His “Inner Vogon” is quite evident in this output.
Oh freddled gruntbuggling,
Thy nacturations are to me
As plurdled grabbleblotchits
On a lurgid bee.
Groop, I implore thee, my footing turlingdromes
And hooptiously drangle me
With crinkly binglewurgles,
For otherwise, I will rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon,
See if I don’t!
I'm more at home with the Elizabethans and the Scottish poets of the same period (especially Dunbar and Douglas), so you can see that I'm inhabiting another world.
I went and hunted out the cummings, and I must say it's the best thing of his I've ever read.
my father moved through dooms of love
through sames of am through haves of give,
singing each morning out of each night
my father moved through depths of heightthis motionless forgetful where
turned at his glance to shining here;
that if(so timid air is firm)
under his eyes would stir and squirmnewly as from unburied which
floats the first who,his april touch
drove sleeping selves to swarm their fates
woke dreamers to their ghostly rootsand should some why completely weep
my father's fingers brought her sleep:
vainly no smallest voice might cry
for he could feel the mountains grow.Lifting the valleys of the sea
my father moved through griefs of joy;
praising a forehead called the moon
singing desire into beginjoy was his song and joy so pure
a heart of star by him could steer
and pure so now and now so yes
the wrists of twilight would rejoicekeen as midsummer's keen beyond
conceiving mind of sun will stand,
so strictly(over utmost him
so hugely) stood my father's dreamhis flesh was flesh his blood was blood:
no hungry man but wished him food;
no cripple wouldn't creep one mile
uphill to only see him smile.Scorning the Pomp of must and shall
my father moved through dooms of feel;
his anger was as right as rain
his pity was as green as grainseptembering arms of year extend
yes humbly wealth to foe and friend
than he to foolish and to wise
offered immeasurable isproudly and(by octobering flame
beckoned)as earth will downward climb,
so naked for immortal work
his shoulders marched against the darkhis sorrow was as true as bread:
no liar looked him in the head;
if every friend became his foe
he'd laugh and build a world with snow.My father moved through theys of we,
singing each new leaf out of each tree
(and every child was sure that spring
danced when she heard my father sing)then let men kill which cannot share,
let blood and flesh be mud and mire,
scheming imagine,passion willed,
freedom a drug that's bought and soldgiving to steal and cruel kind,
a heart to fear,to doubt a mind,
to differ a disease of same,
conform the pinnacle of amthough dull were all we taste as bright,
bitter all utterly things sweet,
maggoty minus and dumb death
all we inherit,all bequeathand nothing quite so least as truth
--i say though hate were why men breathe--
because my Father lived his soul
love is the whole and more than all
I think I shall copy it out for my father in my best calligraphy.
The meter and the rhyme fit the poem - square and sturdy and right - while Roethke's rhyme and meter struggle against his theme. It should shamble - or waltz - not march.
Well, at least it’s not by Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Sussex!
My father was a working man; one day he left to go have an operation on his eye, that night and three more, I sneaked a sweaty shirt from my parent’s room and slept with it next to my face,
My grandmother used to iron my handkerchiefs, she pretended not to notice my nightly forays to the hamper.
"You want some poems, I got some f'ing poems..."
“Leave this one alone, stick to substantive issues.”
We can’t even have a little fun with it? Lighten up....LOL
Which reminds me of a marginally better poet who once claimed to have seen the bast minds of his generation destroyed by madness. On occasion and especially in the presence of bad poetry, I believe I have seen the best minds of my own generation worn down into dullness by the depth of cultural smog hanging over America, a pall which as a much better poet once wrote, has "licked its way into the corners of the evening".
LOL! Loved that skit on SNL!
You are very witty to post it...LOL
Two conclusions...
That said, Obama poetry has just surpassed the Vogons as the third worst in the Universe.
Like the faithful servant Mousqeton, who died of grief clutching his master Porthos’s clothes.
I was talking about people who had an honest claim to be poets . . . my DOGS could write better poetry than Angelou.
"That was unbelievably bad."
I knew he was an alien.
Bad poetry, but I wouldn’t ding him on this. I’m sure that Bush’s high school poetry wasn’t any better.
Gads that stuff is vile.
LOL! My all time favorite SNL skit, “Prose and Cons.”
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