 Poetry: September 18, 2013 Issue [#5897] |
  Poetry
This week: Joseph Brodsky Edited by: Stormy Lady  
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This is poetry from the minds and the hearts of poets on Writing.Com. The poems I am going to be exposing throughout this newsletter are ones that I have found to be, very visual, mood setting and uniquely done. Stormy Lady
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Seaward
by Joseph Brodsky
Darling, you think it's love, it's just a midnight journey.
Best are the dales and rivers removed by force,
as from the next compartment throttles "Oh, stop it, Bernie,"
yet the rhythm of those paroxysms is exactly yours.
Hook to the meat! Brush to the red-brick dentures,
alias cigars, smokeless like a driven nail!
Here the works are fewer than monkey wrenches,
and the phones are whining, dwarfed by to-no-avail.
Bark, then, with joy at Clancy, Fitzgibbon, Miller.
Dogs and block letters care how misfortune spells.
Still, you can tell yourself in the john by the spat-at mirror,
slamming the flush and emerging with clean lapels.
Only the liquid furniture cradles the dwindling figure.
Man shouldn't grow in size once he's been portrayed.
Look: what's been left behind is about as meager
as what remains ahead. Hence the horizon's blade.
On May 24, 1940 Aleksandr Brodsky and his wife Maria Volpert Brodsky welcomed so Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky into their family. His father Aleksandr worked as photographer and his mother Maria was accountant. They lived a life of poverty in communal apartments, in large because of their Jewish status. His family barely survived the Siege of Leningrad, both parents almost starved to death, and an aunt of his did. Brodsky was not the best student growing up, he was known as a trouble maker and left school at 15. Many of his teachers were anti-Semitic and this left Brodsky feeling like a dissident from as early as the first grade.
After leaving school Brodsky worked many odd jobs from working at the mill to a morgue, to a ship’s boiler room. During the next seven years Brodsky taught himself Polish and English. One of his jobs taking part in “geological” expeditions had an unexpected turn in store for Brodsky. It came after work was finished many of the workers would sit around campfires, singing and sharing poetry, it was then that Brodsky decided he could write better and did, he wrote “Pilgrims,” and it became a campfire hit.Brodsky writing and poetry got him into more trouble, at 24 he was arrested for being anti-Soviet. His writings were considered pornographic and socially offensive. He was charged with social parasitism in a trail. He was sentence to 5 years in a labor camp in northern Russia. He was released after serving only 18 months, and was exiled. After his exile Brodsky moved to America.
Brodsky taught for the next fifteen years at Columbia University and Mount Holyoke College. Brodsky wrote nine volumes of poetry and several collections of essays. Elegy for John Donne and Other Poems was published in1967. Brodsky’s first book of poetry in English translation was published in 1973. A Part of Speech was published in 1980 then Less Than One was published in1986. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1987. His next volume Selected Poems was published in 1992 followed by Watermark in 1992.
Later in his life, Brodsky served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1991 to 1992. The in 1993, he joined with Andrew Carroll to found the American Poetry & Literacy Project. It was a not-for-profit organization devoted to making poetry a more central part of American culture. He published On Grief and Reason in 1995 and So Forth 1996. Joseph Brodsky died on January 28, 1996, of a heart attack in his Brooklyn apartment
Seven Strophes
by Joseph Brodsky
I was but what you'd brush
with your palm, what your leaning
brow would hunch to in evening's
raven-black hush.
I was but what your gaze
in that dark could distinguish:
a dim shape to begin with,
later - features, a face.
It was you, on my right,
on my left, with your heated
sighs, who molded my helix
whispering at my side.
It was you by that black
window's trembling tulle pattern
who laid in my raw cavern
a voice calling you back.
I was practically blind.
You, appearing, then hiding,
gave me my sight and heightened
it. Thus some leave behind
a trace. Thus they make worlds.
Thus, having done so, at random
wastefully they abandon
their work to its whirls.
Thus, prey to speeds
of light, heat, cold, or darkness,
a sphere in space without markers
spins and spins.
Thank you all!
Stormy Lady
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The winner of "Stormy's poetry newsletter & contest" [ASR] is:
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Both young and old suffered that fateful day.
New York. The Pentagon. Shanksville, PA.
Not a weapon was used, just our own jets.
It's not a thing America forgets.
The explosions tore through the Twin Towers.
Terrorists challenging higher powers.
Though not at war, we were still held at bay.
Both young and old suffered that fateful day.
Responders fought bravely to save them all,
not knowing it would be duty's last call.
Leaving nothing to do but watch and pray.
New York. The Pentagon. Shanksville, PA.
All our strength was drained, our hearts full of grief.
All hope seemed gone, without any relief,
as we were glued to television sets.
Not a weapon was used, just our own jets.
Then on a plane, hijacked while in the air,
passengers plotted what brave few would dare.
Marble now marks where there were no regrets.
It's not a thing America forgets.
Honorable mention:
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You totally forgot all the songs he wrote for Bobby Bare. And not to mention Dr Hook. Wonderful, humorous songs sometimes, like the Cover of the Rolling Stone for example. It reflected how I felt, when I reached the cover of Inside Crochet (a UK crochet magazine) and Knit Circus (a former US knitting magazine), as my goal was to reach the cover of Knit Magazine (UK in that time) and lateron Yarnwise Magazine.
25 minutes to go was my father's favourite...
One of my favourites can be found on Bare's CD "Lullabies, legends and lies", written by Silverstein and sung by Bobby Bare. True Story takes just a minute, but is a perfectly written monorhyme.
Silverstein and Bare were friends, and Bare sang many of his songs.
One of the songs sung by Bare (2005) is the Ballad of Lucy Jordan, also written by Silverstein, earlier performed as well by Dr Hook. When you think it through it is a sad song, which characterizes the life of Silverstein. The song "Wonderful Soup Stone" is also a classic.
Poets should study Silverstein's style - sometimes light, sometimes with a sense of dark humour. Bare lost a great friend when Silverstein died, but his legacy in poems and songs is enormous.
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Good luck to all 
