HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: n2412@cray.com (Joe Green)
Subject: Re: melancholy
Organization: Cray Research, Inc.
Date: 9 Apr 92 09:42:57 CDT

In article <1992Apr7.170803.25388@cs.mcgill.ca> eagle@binkley.cs.mcgill.ca writes:
>Melancholy
>----------
> 
>A teaspoon lies on the road
>smashed flat by a cement truck.
>A window is open
>but nobody looks out.
>Perhaps that is why no one
>puts up a ladder and elopes with
>the one who isn't looking out -
>or has it already happened?
>In a fit of ladderlessness
>I pick up the teaspoon.
>Oh how flat it has become!

One hopes that the teaspoon is a metaphor for the monotonous instress
of words posing for you as they strut down the platform.  This stuff
very fashionable and as interesting as Alexandra Mussolini faking
a strip tease.

 
put your tongue in the ear of the Countess from Monaco.   
--
From: rhh@alice.att.com (r hardin)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: Re: The Business of Poetry
Date: 12 Apr 92 13:00:28 GMT
Article-I.D.: alice.22549
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill NJ



>"Consider the lillies of the field, how they grow..."

>Is there, ought there to be, more than this?

Here are the sons of Shem
for their clans, for their tongues,
in their lands, for their peoples.
Here are the clans of the sons of Noah for their exploits,
in their peoples:
from the latter divide the peoples of the earth, after the flood.

And it is all the earth: a single lip, one speech.
And it is all at their departure from the Orient: they find a canyon,
in the lang of Shine'ar.
They say, each to his like:
``Come, let us brick some bricks.
Let us fire them in the fire.''
The brick becomes for them stone, the tar, the mortar.
They say:
``Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower.
Its head: in the heavens.
Let us make ourselves a name,
that we not be scattered over the face of all the earth.''

YHWH descends to see the city and the tower
that the sons of man have built.
YHWH says:
``Yes! A single people, a single lip for all:
that is what they begin to do! ...
Come! Let us descend! Let us confound their lips,
man will no longer understand the lip of his neighbor.''

YHWH disperses them from here over the face of all the earth.
They cease to build the city.
Over which he proclaims his name: Bavel, Confusion,
for there, YHWH confounds the lip of all the earth,
and from there YHWH disperses them over the face of all the earth.

(from the Chouraqui translation, cited by Derrida)
From: mikeb@tamri.com (Mike Bracanovic)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: Shining light
Keywords: Shining light
Date: 10 Apr 92 17:46:25 GMT
Organization: TOSHIBA America MRI, San Francisco


			Day and the night pass their
			way at the speed of light.
			Knowing that I stop, and
			look for the traces of the
			past time.

			I ask my self, are you there or
			just a hiding light? I know that
			you are not, but the sparkle in
			the night.

			Perhaps I'm wrong, perhaps I'm
			right. I don't want to know
			just be my bright shining light.


  Mike M. Bracanovic 4-10-92


PS. Comments, suggestions and flames totaly acceptable.
From: stabosz@brahms.udel.edu (Rae Stabosz)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: "Man blows brains out": good TV, lousy fiction, lousier reality
Date: 10 Apr 92 21:34:51 GMT
Organization: University of Delaware


Free Willie: An American Tragedy in the Works

Willie wants to kill himself
but hasn't got the nerve
so he curls up Chinese fortune fish style,
bedroom hidden, reading 
all his books twice
drinking shots & doing lines
but for a coupla months now 'caine & alcohol
don't do it any more
so Willie thinks
I might as well just
marry the bitch

Willie has a flock of girls
in every line of business
who would sleep with him, get drugs for him,
be whorish, wife, or mommy
should he ask, but he never does
(except for the drugs) and Willie's plaintive cry is
"Women hate me."
Tell us another lie, sweet crooning baby

Willie tries to kill himself
but can't quite pull the trigger he
just drives too fast 
and drinks too much
and can't remember days 'n' nights
he can't remember much
but he never crashes,
guardian angel hustling overtime for Willie Boy

Willie, pitiful loser is he?  No!
for rounder than my words, 
he holds a high position
his employers near revere him
he's relied on, he's respected,
he's so much admired the expectation of it
pounds him, keeps him bedbound on the days
he calls in sick, they grow more frequent now,
the juggled balls will not stay in the air they drop & thud & fall
but he never crashes,
demons dragging overtime at Willie's heels 

Willie's not allowed in half
the houses of the ladies
he when sane calls friends
although it's babes he calls them
when he sees them on the street,
before he knows it's them he's lusting for

Willie's loved by all the men
he knows & he is trusted with their women
it's the ones he doesn't know who wonder
why their babes are spending time & money
on a miserable drug addicted suicide
who's thrown away the every woman come his way

Where will Willie's days and nights end?
When will the balls crash down for good?
How long can he shout defiance heavenward 
while whimpering in his own vampirish hated cell?

How will Willie die, exposed to the cutting light?

Metaphors & elegance will not suffice for Willie
for his life is not a subject for a distanced pen
when we on every second day
imagine that the bedroom floor
is messy with his brains
and though a headline on page 2
(a cover story if the news is slow)
is a fucking lousy elegy to
one more victim soulless times
gone spinning down the drain,
a host of impotent survivors
we will gather one last time
for Willie's sake, to
curse his stubborn soul,
should Willie will to do himself
this weekend, while we sleep.

Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
From: mcoffin@IASTATE.EDU (Marie A Coffin)
Subject: 'Your dad is dead.' / Marie Coffin
Reply-To: mcoffin@IASTATE.EDU (Marie A Coffin)
Organization: Iowa State University
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1992 19:49:44 GMT

	'Your dad is dead.'
	------------------------------------------

	so i will bear three gifts
	(i am not wise)

	my forehead 
	pressed against the kitchen cupboard
	will take the grain of wood

	and these four words
	will cool to little marbles and
	knock against

	the wound that crying will
	carve into me

	for life. 


Marie Coffin
4/15/92

Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
From: comptec91072@camins.camosun.bc.ca
Subject: just a piece of scrap metal
Organization: Camosun College
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1992 20:41:56 GMT




               ____ _ _____ __ _____ _____

Well I was standing in the welfare line
Waiting for my check
When a man in uniform came up
And grabbed me by the neck.

He said "Son this ain't the life for you
And your country needs you bad
We got something for you to do.
Now don't that make you glad?"

"Now it's not very hard, son
It's nothing much to do.
Just go out and kill people.
Now ain't that the job for you?"

Before I could say a word
I was blinded by his shirt.
Some shiney polished things
Without a speck of dirt.

"Well I got that in a war
That's long ago been settled.
For honour, courage, bravery
I got all this scrap metal."


It's just a poiece of scrap metal
That's pinned on my chest
A silent reminder of the souls I've laid to rest.
A piece of scrap metal
Hung over my heart.
They called me to war
And I did my part.

I was stationed in a far off land
With the sound of bombs in the air
People screaming all around,
Bullets grazed my hair.

A fellow right beside screamed
"Oh my God, I'm hit!"
He was bleeding and going to die
I hated to admit.


It's just a piece of scrap metal
Buried in his chest
A silent reminder
That he'll soon be laid to rest.
A piece of scrap metal
Buried in his heart.
They called him to war
And he did his part.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
From: sharon@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov (Sharon Hopkins)
Subject: Re: The Business of Poetry
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory (NASA)
Date: Sat, 11 Apr 1992 04:59:34 GMT

In article <1992Apr10.131536.28619@hemlock.cray.com> n2412@cray.com (Joe Green) writes:
>
>Another banality is the banality imposed by the commodification
>of everything (including language).  This banality is a consequence
>of capitalism.  Adorno.  Gramsci. Marx.  The metaphor of the commodity
>is of a piece with the metaphor of apocalypse which is of a piece
>with the process of the Hegelian dialectic, which is of a piece
>with metaphors and myths imposed by patriarchy.

"This banality is a consequence of capitalism."

The cry of the dull, doomed youth of the '10s, wanting war, action,
heroism, escape from the banality of bourgeois burgher life.  Getting
the Great Machine instead.  Trenches, stalemate, industry as war hero
and chief general.  Dead piled in heaps at the Somme, over ground
abandoned in a tightening of lines.  Half a million, my recollection
(too many books ago).  What is the alternative?  They envisioned one
escape, found none.  And us, a new myth?  Some other economy, if that
of Marx is discredited as that of the East India Company?  (That itself
a thumbed nose at aristocracy, at land as fortune; again at old notions
of exchange, at silver as wealth -- instead the exchange as profit.)
What shall be enscribed on our collar, when the gift is also demand, is
attack, is pledge?  Whence, whence, when "Only a man harrowing clods/
In a slow silent walk ... Though Dynasties pass"?

But there is Thomas' answer:

	"Not for the proud man apart
	 From the raging moon I write
	 On these spindrift pages
	 Nor for the towering dead
	 With their nightengales and psalms
	 But for the lovers, their arms
	 Round the griefs of the ages,
	 Who pay no praise or wages
	 Nor heed my craft or art."

Yet what is that but perhaps the commodification of banality:  grief
paid-for but not owned, not shared?  The gift ignored, unwanted; but the
grief a gift (a theft); the dead, dead.  (But borrowed with nightengales
and moonlight, another theft, even a deceit -- it is for the dead, who care
no more than the lovers.  Less, being dead.)  What's the alternative, or
must we seek one?  The living live, grieve, love, join the dead:  even
the poets.  Gift, theft, or exchange.  Even we who are "seared with trade;
bleared, smeared with toil"?

"Consider the lillies of the field, how they grow..."

Is there, ought there to be, more than this?

--Sharon Hopkins
  sharon@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov
From: estrada@inland.com
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: Re:  O F 	T A X E S   &  	D E A T H
Date: 15 Apr 92 23:34:36 GMT
Organization: Inland Steel Company; East Chicago, IN

In article <1992Apr15.173141.1952@inland.com>, estrada@inland.com writes:
> Just for humor, here it is right in the midst of doing my Taxes (Late bird
> arent ?)
> 


OOps! I forgot the poem.... here it is.. I hope!
From: daq@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM (Doug Quarnstrom)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: Re: re:  the business of poetry (0)
Date: 16 Apr 92 20:42:03 GMT
Organization: Hewlett-Packard, Fort Collins, CO, USA

In rec.arts.poems, n2412@cray.com (Joe Green) writes:

> >I think that I agree with what I understand of many of Joes' points,
> >but I really wonder where that leaves us.  I, too, am greatly
> >offended by the commodification of EVERYTHING, but where do we
> >go?  Do we need new myths to create a better world or will the
> >new myths just lead us into more carnage.  Perhpas Sharon
> >was not trying to express this cynicism.
> 
> Maybe a start is to remove poetry from the realm of the commodity.
> I've seen the possibility during my time in Bangladesh.  Also I think it
> is necessary to try to understand just what our current myths are
> and what their effect is.  Currently -- and for a long time --
> we loathe embodiment -- life in time that ends in death.  This loathing
> is transferred (in a complicated way) to a loathing of Nature, of woman,
> of what is outside our corporate body and the result is a longing
> for apocolypse (Marxist or otherwise) in which there is no
> differentiation and everything is known by one knower.  The longing
> for Paradise, the longing for an Eternity in which (of course)
> time is banished, the conviction that this world is fallen, and
> the inabilty to escape from mimetic desire (the desire which fastens
> on an object belonging to another) are what need to be understood
> and possibly overcome.  

Yep, I think I agree that this is worth pursuing.
The part about the loathing of embodiment is particularly
compelling to me.  I understand that, and i think it DOES
drive a lot of western thought.

doug
From: CCPHIL@UMCVMB.MISSOURI.EDU (Phil Leith)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: Warning!
Date: 16 Apr 92 19:20:09 GMT


  Warning
  -------

fish swimming
currents free
undulating pattern
up ahead
hypnotizing
mezmerizing
closer closer
all engulfing
all consuming
life passes
text lines
before your
eyes
WAKE UP!!!
don't get
too
wrapped up
in the
net
     pgl 4/16/92
From: sheila@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (sheila)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: Objective poetry, what is it?
Date: 7 Apr 92 15:46:20 GMT
Organization: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin TX

i was given this poem to read and told it was
objective...

Six Quatrains

1
From the water east of our fence, sun
Ascends. North of home: mud-born clouds.
A kingfisher cries from bamboo heights,
And on the sand below, magpies dance.

2
Blossoms scatter, bees and butterflies
Stitching the lavish confusion with flight.
Perched in solitude, I plumb idleness--
What would guests come looking for?

3
For a new well--wellrope of braided palm
Leaves, drains cut through bamboo roots. Antic
Little boats aer just tangled rigging; here,
Small paths weave our village into itself.

4
Streams swollen after headlong rains, late
Light caresses a tree's waist. Two yellow
Birds keep hidden in their nest. Where
Shattered reeds float, a white fish leaps.

5
Bamboo needles our fence. Cane is toppled
In under eaves. The land turning to sunlit
silk slowly, reeds and the river gone
White weave together in tracery shadows.

6
Moonlight across stone, the river flows.
At the brook's mirage, clouds touch blossoms.
A perched bird knows the ancient Tao. Sails
Only drift toward night spent in whose home?

--Ch'eng-Tu

This is very beautiful. 
He could say much more about himself directly
but only does twice near the two questions. does
that make this "objective"?
I really like him referring to himself as a perched
bird...i wish i could read the original language,
i wonder if the same word for "perched" is used in
both places? it makes me picture his hands as
very old and with big knuckles. or perhaps the 
knuckles only look big because his fingers are so
slender.
he does not refer to himself directly...but the
whole poem is him because it is what he sees.
this makes the poem incredibly subjective!?
we can never write an objective word or thought.
I will never be able to exit my stage. and the
audience -- myself.
but i do not really know.
see how happy teh poem is though! or is it my
imagination. how peaceful, and all the weaving
words. they make him sound very content. all
objectiveness is lost. i am caught up with
imagined emotions. is this objective poetry?
to tease you by being aloof and then grabbing
you in a warm scented embrase? your hair
smells of honeysuckle and your skin musky
from walking sweat. the heat rising off your
shoulder onto my cheek.
-- 
stark raving sane -- sheila@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu
From: sheila@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (sheila)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: but only in my thoughts
Summary: um...well, in this poem too.
Keywords: grin, smile, gush, shameful display of emotion
Date: 14 Apr 92 15:51:54 GMT
Organization: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin TX


over and over
i will tell you
i kissed you in a dream
over and over
i will tell you
i kissed you in a dream
over and over
i will tell you
i kissed you in a dream
-- 
stark raving sane -- sheila@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu
From: sharon@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov (Sharon Hopkins)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: Re: The Business of Poetry
Date: 14 Apr 92 15:00:09 GMT
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory (NASA)

In article <22567@alice.att.com> rhh@alice.att.com (r hardin) writes:
>
>Yes, seeing what is done! But with such opposite results, you see
>a politics, I see the levers of rhetoric: if you change this, then
>it seems like this, and if you change that, then it seems like that.
>
>The experiment has to do with skepticism in philosophy; there is
>one with respect to objects, and one with respect to others; this is
>the latter.
>
>Unlike the object skepticism, you can actually live an other-skepticism.
>So the investigation is, how is it started, and how is it stopped; how
>do you get into it, how out of it.  This is in Stanley Cavell's
>The Claim of Reason
>
>If you say, No! No! there are actually people who are manipulated just
>as your literary experiments manipulate their (other) people, this is all part
>of that, then I wonder what kind of fantasy of inexpressiveness it
>is you are having.
>
>Cavell is interested in responsibility, he knows that language
>is first of all an ethical relation.  He ends in a politics, he doesn't
>start in one.
>
>You dismiss him too quickly.

Ahem.  Shouldn't there be at least a *little* bit of poetry here?
Just a quote or two, even a reference, even a hint of discussion as to
whether poetry ought or ought not be a cash-crop.  Take a look at
the Newsgroups: line if you're wondering why I'm picky about this.

To justify this post of mine (as I think Lewis put it, "God did more than
lipstick can/to justify your lips to man"), here's a poem I posted long
enough ago that many folks probably won't have seen it.  As far as I can
tell, it has nothing to do with this thread.  Except, perhaps, in mentioning
a different kind of speechlessness, another voice stolen.


	    MARTIN'S TRIOLET

		You know, I wish that you would
		touch me.  Just once won't you
		lose your fear of fatherhood?
		You know I wish that you would.
		I'd help you if I could,
		but I'm really scared too,
		you know.  I wish that you would
		touch me.  Just once.  Won't you?

	    May 6, 1990


--Sharon Hopkins
  sharon@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov
From: daq@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM (Doug Quarnstrom)
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1992 14:36:43 GMT
Subject: Re: -
Organization: Hewlett-Packard, Fort Collins, CO, USA
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems

In rec.arts.poems, glj27240@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (the cult of Carrie ) writes:

> richh@tigger.jvnc.net (RICHH) writes:
> 
> >You know.  There's really no shame in *not* being a poet. 
> 
> 'You are right, sir.' - to quote Studs Terkel (from his radio
> show a couple years ago)
> 
> 

[stuff deleted]

>                                                   the cult of Carrie 

Yawn!

doug
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: THE AFTERNOON IS SO INFORMATIVE
From: sturner@vax1.umkc.edu
Date: 4 Apr 92 14:08:56 CST
Reply-To: sturner@vax1.umkc.edu
Organization: University of Missouri-Kansas City

AFTERNOONS ARE SO INFORMATIVE

the day is tinged with yearning.
I lay here, thoughts funnelled
into the energy of the afternoon
And yet my feet still smell,
my body is too medical.
Sunlight fills my murky cave
but not reaching to the abscesses.
Your fingers are attached to your
body in a way that defies me.
When they would fly off,
they stay very close.
Centripetal force of the universe:
spinning like a lazy hair brushing down my face.
I lay here, listening to
a dead composer's works.
In a slow-burning climax,
the day comes to rest in your hands.
From: daq@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM (Doug Quarnstrom)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: Re: john wesley hardin
Date: 16 Apr 92 20:17:12 GMT
Organization: Hewlett-Packard, Fort Collins, CO, USA

In rec.arts.poems, n2412@cray.com (Joe Green) writes:

> 
> The trick is for popular culture to not repeat the same
> symbolic sacrifice.  Insofar as it does, it does not
> provide a place for resistance.  
>  

A VERY intriguing statement Joe.

My system will be down for the weekend, so I will not be able
to add to the discussion for awhile, but this is interesting.

A brief note to Sharon:  Yes, perhaps poetry should appear in
every post, but I am not capable of achieving that, and since
the discussion here revolves around symobls, language, and 
metaphor, I would say the philosophical ideas are very
pertinent to poetry.  Let us continue the thoughts, all giving
of our time and energy to raise awareness.

A question for Joe.  Do you think the movie _Barton Fink_
provided the space for resistance?  It had its sacrifices,
but they were such obvious metaphors.  It ends with Barton
staring at the back of his beatrice on the beach.  He is 
in time, in infinity, perhaps a place of resistance.
I am curious how you read this movie, since I know you saw it.

doug
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
From: whisnant@iastate.edu (Kerry L Whisnant)
Subject: Re: definition of haiku
Keywords: haiku
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames, IA
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1992 15:34:40 GMT

Here's my attempt to write a haiku about haiku. I first posted this
over a year ago, but have revised it slightly.


                    What is a haiku?
                    So short, so precise, yet free
                    The essence of life


                    Kerry Whisnant 10Nov90/10Apr92
-- 
Kerry Whisnant                  High Energy Physics Group
whisnant@iastate.edu            Department of Physics and Astronomy
whisnant@alisuvax.bitnet        Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011
From: Roger K. Morris <rkmorris@igc.org>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Date: 05 Apr 92 20:48 PDT
Subject: we
Nf-ID: #N:cdp:1447800004:000:27
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!rkmorris    Apr  5 20:48:00 1992


WE
   Wistfull Entities
From: klaw@ecst.csuchico.edu (Almighty Nodens the Master of the Elder Sign)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: Re: nomad's song (prose)
Date: 15 Apr 92 23:06:39 GMT
Article-I.D.: ecst.1992Apr15.230639.15240
Organization: California State University, Chico

Now this is a proper balance of "optimism and death". 

Cristopher, I really loved this poem and I wish that everyone could see what
I see through these eyes, in fact I'd like to respond with a poem of my own.

I hold life in one hand and death in the other
neither my right nor my left should hold say
against the blackness of night, a starry sky
comforts my ageing bones as I am lulled to sleep

Yes, I feel the contorting pain inside
like my brains and soul biting cracked bone 
... against a concrete wall
... against a shrapnel filled world
I am stuck in a searing wind 
and sometimes in the blue skyed day
I can be found having drunk myself to sleep

alone, 
we are all alone 
we are never here
but you are there
and I cry...
and I cry.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 klaw@ecst.cscihp.csuchico.edu is Jason Livingston
				  305 Ash #1				
			 	  Chico, Ca 95928                            
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                               	 .PEACE.
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Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems