21st century poetry

I’m not a nihilist

Nihilist_poet

What happens at city
when blank is a building
and the corner is brutish
and the road ahead pale
like something at the end of time
see nihilism is a tentative position
an aggressive form of modesty
because below the blue sky
a head is incapable of understanding
the many things that are absurdly naked
in the world;
of all words
we select a crown
to place that holy concept
over our heads like laurel
to impress the wavering leaves of trees
see nihilism is nothing about thought
but about feeling what thought cannot attain
at the light you stop and feel the beast
the wise thunder of blood
and what happens when city
is trembling and being chased
by whiteness or a hot drunkenness
you pick a word
and make claim that it will save you
under the streetlamp
like a natural haze
at that common street
you remember like an ascetic
that this flesh will be forgotten

 

Contemporary Poetry

near everything

new_poet_modern

Maybe the air is vertebra
only you walk home
bending the muscle
of time,
a drunk man leaves

on the pub’s counter
the fire of thought
nothing changes

we can amass anguish
into a dragon
and see it writhe in
its halo

find a way knower
comb a molecule at a time
to be handsome

for destiny
that now dissolves in your honey-
dripping cupped hands

perhaps we hang immense
with city at our roots
what matters to be
draped in cloud

when age has a swollen
idea buried like a spine on
the morning soft

earth
step on pure grass
who leaves this animal
to sow in structure

the dream the
struggle
the science

of being such
near everything.

Contemporary Poetry

her beauty

abstract_poetry

No one could deny her beauty,
her voluptuous center
her sweet ramifications
or her essential boundaries,
no one could falsify or ruin
her alliance to what’s desirable
and good in this life,
no one dared consider,
for a second,
that her decisive form
was a mode of deception
or biased perception,
no one ever attempted
to reduce her legend
by expressing platitudes
to describe or envy her,
no one,
at any rate,
saw in her the imperfections
and failures of our troubled world,
no one doubted the primal meaning
of her existence,
no one questioned her exclusivity
as being the only radiant entity
within the greyness and vapidity
of our routines,
no one ever challenged
her status of being the pinnacle of nature,
the overt instinct of some divinity,
no one, not once, asked why
she was visualized
as the mirrored image of ecstasy,
in the end
no one was capable of dying
without returning – in their minds –
to the pure concept
of her reality.

21st century Poetry

They

were sitting on the ledge of a building
talking about the pursuit of happiness,
how every human action is motivated
by self-love and trying to reconcile
morality with a mechanistic view
of a universe, everywhere ruled
and determined by inflexible laws
the talk went on for some time
they would interject a few modern expressions
to avoid falling into a complete anachronistic conversation
reminiscent of the 18th century philosophes
then the one on the right said,
– What if we jump?
– there’d be a fall
– yeah, and then what?
– who knows
– do you think there’s consciousness after death?
– as much as you can find in the drunk man’s sleep
– should we jump? what stops us from finding out?
– fear, our loved ones, the desire to seek new experiences and store them in the insatiable coffins of memory. But mostly fear.
– if you could have anything in the world before you die, what would it be?
– another lifetime to figure that out
– do you often think of death?
– on rare special occasions, like funerals and that kind of thing
– do you find any consolation in the thought of death?
– yeah in the thought that death dissolves all suffering with the same intensity as life withheld happiness from the individual
– I’m going to jump
– I’ll take the stairs

He did not jump but was he really considering it? They decided to go home. As they walked together over the bridge they both noticed the sea was restless that day.

 

21st_century_poetry_blog

21st century Poetry

a bibliography

poetry_of_death

People breathe. Struggle. Write.
Talk. Read. Write. Publish.
Die.

While most will never even
know his name.

And will die as well.

Poetry: main collections
1966: Death of a Naturalist, Faber & Faber
1969: Door into the Dark, Faber & Faber
1972: Wintering Out, Faber & Faber
1975: Stations, Ulsterman
1975: North, Faber & Faber
1979: Field Work, Faber & Faber
1984: Station Island, Faber & Faber
1987: The Haw Lantern, Faber & Faber
1991: Seeing Things, Faber & Faber
1996: The Spirit Level, Faber & Faber
2001: Electric Light, Faber & Faber
2006: District and Circle, Faber & Faber
2010: Human Chain, Faber & Faber

Poetry: collected editions

1980: Selected Poems 1965-1975, Faber & Faber
1990: New Selected Poems 1966-1987, Faber & Faber
1998: Opened Ground: Poems 1966-1996, Faber & Faber

Prose: main collections
1980: Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968–1978, Faber & Faber
1988: The Government of the Tongue, Faber & Faber
1995: The Redress of Poetry: Oxford Lectures, Faber & Faber
2002: Finders Keepers: Selected Prose 1971–2001, Faber & Faber

Plays
1990: The Cure at Troy A version of Sophocles’ Philoctetes, Field Day
2004: The Burial at Thebes A version of Sophocles’ Antigone, Faber & Faber

Translations
1983: Sweeney Astray: A version from the Irish, Field Day
1992: Sweeney’s Flight (with Rachel Giese, photographer), Faber & Faber
1993: The Midnight Verdict: Translations from the Irish of Brian Merriman and from the Metamorphoses of Ovid, Gallery Press
1995: Laments, a cycle of Polish Renaissance elegies by Jan Kochanowski, translated with Stanisław Barańczak, Faber & Faber
1999: Beowulf, Faber & Faber
1999: Diary of One Who Vanished, a song cycle by Leoš Janáček of poems by Ozef Kalda, Faber & Faber
2002: Hallaig, Sorley MacLean Trust
2002: Arion, a poem by Alexander Pushkin, translated from the Russian, with a note by Olga Carlisle, Arion Press
2004: The Testament of Cresseid, Enitharmon Press
2004: Columcille The Scribe, The Royal Irish Academy
2009: The Testament of Cresseid & Seven Fables, Faber & Faber

Limited editions and booklets (poetry and prose)
1965: Eleven Poems, Queen’s University
1968: The Island People, BBC
1968: Room to Rhyme, Arts Council N.I.
1969: A Lough Neagh Sequence, Phoenix
1970: Night Drive, Gilbertson
1970: A Boy Driving His Father to Confession, Sceptre Press
1973: Explorations, BBC
1975: Stations, Ulsterman Publications
1975: Bog Poems, Rainbow Press
1975: The Fire i’ the Flint, Oxford University Press
1976: Four Poems, Crannog Press
1977: Glanmore Sonnets, Editions Monika Beck
1977: In Their Element, Arts Council N.I.
1978: Robert Lowell: A Memorial Address and an Elegy, Faber & Faber
1978: The Makings of a Music, University of Liverpool
1978: After Summer, Gallery Press
1979: Hedge School, Janus Press
1979: Ugolino, Carpenter Press
1979: Gravities, Charlotte Press
1979: A Family Album, Byron Press
1980: Toome, National College of Art and Design
1981: Sweeney Praises the Trees, Henry Pearson
1982: A Personal Selection, Ulster Museum
1982: Poems and a Memoir, Limited Editions Club
1983: An Open Letter, Field Day
1983: Among Schoolchildren, Queen’s University
1984: Verses for a Fordham Commencement, Nadja Press
1984: Hailstones, Gallery Press
1985: From the Republic of Conscience, Amnesty International
1985: Place and Displacement, Dove Cottage
1985: Towards a Collaboration, Arts Council N.I.
1986: Clearances, Cornamona Press
1988: Readings in Contemporary Poetry, DIA Art Foundation
1988: The Sounds of Rain, Emory University
1989: An Upstairs Outlook, Linen Hall Library
1989: The Place of Writing, Emory University
1990: The Tree Clock, Linen Hall Library
1991: Squarings, Hieroglyph Editions
1992: Dylan the Durable, Bennington College
1992: The Gravel Walks, Lenoir Rhyne College
1992: The Golden Bough, Bonnefant Press
1993: Keeping Going, Bow and Arrow Press
1993: Joy or Night, University of Swansea
1994: Extending the Alphabet, Memorial University of Newfoundland
1994: Speranza in Reading, University of Tasmania
1995: Oscar Wilde Dedication, Westminster Abbey
1995: Charles Montgomery Monteith, All Souls College
1995: Crediting Poetry: The Nobel Lecture, Gallery Press
1997: Poet to Blacksmith, Pim Witteveen
1998: Commencement Address, UNC Chapel Hill
1998: Audenesque, Maeght
1999: The Light of the Leaves, Bonnefant Press
2001: Something to Write Home About, Flying Fox
2002: Hope and History, Rhodes University
2002: Ecologues in Extremis, Royal Irish Academy
2002: A Keen for the Coins, Lenoir Rhyne College
2003: Squarings, Arion Press
2003: Singing School / Poems 1966 – 2002, Rudomino, Moscow
2004: Anything can Happen, Town House Publishers
2005: The Door Stands Open, Irish Writers Centre
2005: A Shiver, Clutag Press
2007: The Riverbank Field, Gallery Press
2008: Articulations, Royal Irish Academy
2008: One on a Side, Robert Frost Foundation
2009: Spelling It Out, Gallery Press
2010: “Writer & Righter”, Irish Human Rights Commission

 

 

21st century Poetry

barely begun poem

new_poetry

I have a street and no metaphor
a layer of moonlight but
no tremulous..

This is a street and
not a metaphor
not a shivering slate of moonlight

I’ve seen my street bare without metap..

The street is cold without metaphor
drenched in the shudder of moonlight

This street is devoid of metaphor
a meaningless stretch of cold trembling
moonlight

I have a street but without metaphor
even tho I’ve left a ripple on its moonlight

A street sleeps without metaphor
moonlight awake floating away like a trembling mist

these streets are meaningless without metaphor
the light of the moon is afraid but isn’t visibly shaking

A street has no meaning and cannot be a metaphor
because it’s drowning in the yellow of its moonlight

I walk upon a street and find no metaphor
half of its moonlight has been wasted on rats

This street has an absence of metaphor
because moonlight is nothing but the light of the moon

Upon a street I walk without a metaphor
all the while thinking that the moonlight
is the simile of a smile

The street is empty; empty of metaphor
only a light is seen and it’s not from the moon

A street is a place where nobody cares for metaphors
and the moonlight is a spot you leap over

Somehow this street lost its metaphor
but I found the moonlight tattooed on my skin

A street is no metaphor
and a poem is not moonlight

 

 

21st century Poetry

Miserere mei, Deus

poetry_of_solitude

You sit
by the bus stop
and study the event
it’s a place
where you’ve cycled
innumerably     a place
where you sit
and watch the light
dissolve in the liquid
of your eye
you’re there because
you don’t know where to be
you’re there because
you’d like to witness
the event
and you see things happening
once and units of behavior
he was speaking to me
through a cloud of thought
through a wind of misery
through a vapor of memory
through a rain of laughter
he was another
man far away from everything
another or other man
another star failing in the dark
another strand of conscious throe
a man from denmark
in the glow of streetlight
toasting and talking spanish
transmitting his monad of sadness
and everything being faraway
like a flash above
our private picture of
solitude.

21st century Poetry

 

nocturnalist

poetry_of_time

There like a bolt
like a stone amidst
a dust beyond
deep in shine
a pocket w/noon
and no shadow
a golden fury
himself mad
speaking loudly
and evening
with lawlessness
into rivulets a feather
nobody wings
possibility’s a stream
hours whirl
he types ‘whiteness
merge with tear
and this earth
trickled like spark
upon memory’
he listens
apparently
the wind has a mouth
and the same questions
about time.

Contemporary Poetry

a thing imagined

new_poetry_2013

Preferably soft,
jelly-like
but resilient to heat
and the precarious nuisances of the jungle
tender but defiant
able to camouflage among
stones and clouds alike
its softness must be delicate
but decisive not necessarily static
as it can be allowed rigidity at times
equivalent to that of taut velvet
not too colorful nor flaunting
the impenetrability of black or white
capable of evaporating without dispersing
(i.e. losing its cohesion without sacrificing its wholeness)
different from the rest of its kind
without becoming an example of freak
it should waver at twilight at the risk
of turning ambiguous but never incomprehensible
its upper part magnificent
and evasive like the current of time in a dream
its lower part glorious and ubiquitous
like dawn in a desert’s sky
preferably sophisticated without being pompous
straightforward without being wholly divested of enigma
and existing mainly between
the eternal and the transient.

 

 

Contemporary Poetry