Of the individual poems, some are more lyric and some are more descriptive or narrative. Each poem is fixed in a moment. All those moments written or read together take on the movement and architecture of a narrative.
quote by Marilyn Hacker
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We have a lot of long narrative poems written in the 20th century, but they're not very well known, and they're not read by very many people.
quote by Robert Morgan
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Without sounding too pretentious, I was sort of a slave to the narrative. When the narrative cracks in, I have to go where it takes me. I had to go to the Bohemian Grove. It was the obvious end to the book.
quote by Jon Ronson
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A narrative is like a room on whose walls a number of false doors have been painted; while within the narrative, we have many apparent choices of exit, but when the author leads us to one particular door, we know it is the right one because it opens.
quote by John Updike
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Southern poets are still writing narrative poems, poems in forms, dramatic poems.
quote by Robert Morgan
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Moments Of Writing Poetry
Draft poems sometimes like
loose ripped off pieces of paper
to be drafted out roughly upon.
Draft poems hang around
in the strangest places waiting
to be written out one day.
Draft poems wait for a poet
to wake at the beginning of day
to be written out, in any
seized moments, sacrificed.
This is now time, shower time, eating time,
reflective time, conversation time, work time;
t.v. time, driving time, riding motorcycle time,
going to sleep time, cooking time, or any time.
Draft poems can only be written
in spared moments of seized time.
Draft poems can only be written today,
they will not wait for fair weather like hay,
which lays around waiting to be harvested.
Draft poems will not wait for a clear sunny day to dawn,
and then mature slowly, over a perfect golden summer.
Draft poems are ever now or never
if they are ever to be swiftly written.
A draft may possibly be perfected
upon any future day of favoured writing;
but a draft never written is a poem
never written, never completed, never known.
poem by Terence George Craddock
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FDR created today's 30 percent coalition. Obama wants to finish the job by turning it into a permanent ruling majority. There's nothing new about the Obama Narrative. It is the FDR Narrative on steroids. It is intended to lead to greater statism and political gain.
quote by Arthur C. Brooks
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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A Poem Is Not The Answer To Everything
A POEM IS NOT THE ANSWER TO EVERYTHING
A poem is not the answer to everything-
Perhaps it is not the answer to anything
Though I wouldn't take it that far-
There have been times
When a poem was the answer-
Many times
A poem written by someone else
A poem I tried to write by myself-
Poems can be an answer
Perhaps not for most things
Perhaps not for all the major things
But for moods and pains and feeling
And desire for Beauty
Poems can be answers at time-
A poem is not really the answer to my problem of the moment now
But it is an answer of a kind anyway
Thank God for poems and for this poem also.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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The Poem That Perhaps Never Should Have Been Written
THE POEM THAT PERHAPS NEVER SHOULD HAVE BEEN WRITTEN
Not the poem of yesterday
Nor the poem of tomorrow
But the poem of today-
What gives life meaning now.
Not the poem as it is read
But the poem as it is written.
Not the certain poem
But the poem that does not know
If it truly is a poem.
The poem that gives hope only when it is written-
The lesser poem-
The poem that perhaps never should have been written.
The poem I am writing now,
Perhaps for myself alone
The lesser poem
The poem that perhaps should never have been at all.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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I Wanted My Poem To Be A Real Poem
I WANTED MY POEM TO BE A REAL POEM
I wanted my poem to be a real poem-
I have read and studied and memorized
So many real poems-
I wanted my poem to be one of them
Which others would read and feel and memorize
And make their own –
We want and we want and we want
And who are we with all our wanting?
Who am I with all my wanting?
One more dreamer
One more ambitious person
One more lover of poems
One more writer of poems
One more wanter of real poems
Who writes this poem
For others
who dream like me
of writing real poems.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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Not Every Poem Knows How To Say Its Own Name Properly
NOT EVERY POEM KNOWS HOW TO SAY ITS OWN NAME PROPERLY
Not every poem knows how to say its own name properly-
There are poems that have no name
And poems that are named by others who have not written them-
There are poems whose names make them what they are
And poems whose names contradict and belie them-
Many poems have their first lines as their names
And these poems often are as memorable as one line only-
Great poems and good poems can be nameless
Or can have unforgettable names.
Not every poem knows how to say its own name properly -
Poems are poems are poems
And names are names are names
And sometimes they meet and are one
And live happily ever after-
But there are times when perhaps
They never should have met each other at all.
Poems have their names
And names have their poems
But sometimes they love each other
And truly are one.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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The History Poems Have Not Been Written
The history poems have not been written
The poems after Milosz
The Wallace Stevens poems will never be written
I can’t come close
I have tried the Blake poems
But of course I am not near them either
I would like to the ironic intellectual poems
I might be able to do them
I could do a kind of surrealistic association mind poem a prose poem
But I don’t like that very much
The poems of Jerusalem have not been good enough
Poems of propaganda are awkward and unacceptable
The small poems that tell of my life
They are for me the chance at real poetry
And I will continue as best I can with them
The American poems I have not yet found the idiom for
I can be epigrammatic in Emerson Thoreau fashion
But not with the hard New England observing eye
Borges poems I love
And the stories of mind and literature
Making the drama of a life of a storyteller
Interest me
But I doubt I could truly do them well
Imitation can only take one so far
And through it one may lose one’s way entirely
I can really do only what I am
Not the Dickinson poems nor the Hopkins poems nor the Wordsworth poems nor the Keats poems nor the Amichai poems nor the poems of many others whose poetry I love
The Biblical poems have been tried
The poems of cosmic and scientific reflection
I could try to improve them
There are too many different kinds of poems to write
And I cannot write almost all of them
This is another poem about poems and poetry
I have written many for a long time now
Perhaps I need to go elsewhere and write in a new way
A way I have not dreamed or even remotely understood possible before.
The poems of the unknown poetry await me
I will go on but I am not sure now I know in which wa
poem by Shalom Freedman
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Will The Poem Written Today/ Read Well Tomorrow?
WILL THE POEM WRITTEN TODAY/ READ WELL TOMORROW?
Will the poem written today
Read well tomorrow?
Will what seems so right now
Last beyond the time of its being said?
Or am I a poet of the present moment only
Who in the saying believes in what is said
And who fails in the long – term reflection?
What will remain of all my ‘presents’
And all those times of writing
And feeling it is true?
Years from now
Long after I will be able to read any poem
Will these lines mean anything
To anyone?
poem by Shalom Freedman
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Narrative identity takes part in the story's movement, in the dialectic between order and disorder.
quote by Paul Ricoeur
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Just Beyond The Sunset Revisited
Time flies by so quickly
almost in a blink of an eye
and years vanish almost completely.
It does not seem forty-three years ago
I put pen to paper and wrote
what has turned out to be my best poem ever.
The one that has attracted more attention
than any other I have written.
Its accolades still confound me
as I am in wonder of them all.
Especially as it was never written
as a poem at all, but a lyric for a song.
As a lyric, it was turned down
as being rather immature,
but as a poem, it is loved by everyone.
I find it hard to believe that forty-four people
have added it to their favourites list.
I am still rather in awe of its reception.
I am still trying to comprehend
that any one of my works would be so highly prized.
Every time I read it, I try to find
the essence everyone else sees.
The beauty within it that captures their imagination.
One day someone might explain to me
the beauty I actually captured,
at least I hope they will,
as I’d dearly love to know.
16 November 2009
poem by David Harris
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The Poems Bring Me Back To Myself
THE POEMS BRING ME BACK TO MYSELF
The poems bring me back to myself
I begin to live again –
Without the poems
I would have to make a new life-
I do not know if I am capable of it-
A life without poems without poetry
With other words perhaps-
I am too old to slowly write the long narrative
I never was capable of before
Little poems
Little lines
What I am capable of now.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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God is the creator
God is the creator
poem is a creation
Poet is not God.
I am a lover of poem
Poet is my hero
God is hero's hero.
I just read poem
I just enjoy reading poem
I shall continue to read poem
As long as I enjoy poem.
At times
Poems are being written by me.
The credit goes to God
God direct me to write poem
And I write.
God only can explain the meaning
I am just an instrument
And nothing.
poem by Gajanan Mishra
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The Poems Everyday In Your Life
it takes a lot of
frustrations,
a little inspiration
but more
of melancholic
clamor
for someone like
you to write
a poem
sometimes only
once a year
or nothing at all
not a poem
even
when they read it
or when
you read it
yourself
it is a matter
of just
surviving
less the poems
which you
could have
written
everyday in your
life.
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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Like So Many Poems I Read
LIKE SO MANY POEMS I READ
Like so many poems I read
These poems I am reading now
Are not poems to me.
They are too detached
Too abstract
Too up in the air.
I want to hear the words
Make a music of feeling
In my soul.
A poem must move me
If it is to be real.
Why then do I write these words
as if a poem?
poem by Shalom Freedman
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There Are Days No Poem Can Be Written
THERE ARE DAYS NO POEM CAN BE WRITTEN
There are days no poem can be written
Grief and worry frighten the poem away
Yet the poem lives hidden
For our darkest moments our loneliest fears
Too need their poetry.
Poetry is a way of saying all we need to say
It is our deepest feeling most deeply expressed
It is all we are
The whole of our being
In words.
When a poet dies
Words die
When I will die
All I am will no longer be able to write
One more poem.
How afraid I am in the night
And how dark in the early morning before I rise
But now that I am here
Writing this
A bit of hope begins in me
And I can dream that
When I walk out the door
a few minutes from now
A new day will begin.
How many days I have left
How many poems to write
I do not know.
It is not light yet
And the darkness is still here
But I will feel the morning again
This morning
Thank G-d
You have given me so many poems.
A few small words
help me believe
I truly am alive.
.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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Typhoon
typhoons are not that strong
sometimes
they behave like
critics, passing by an
island, saying, hey you
are not an island after
all, you are just a hill
fit for a Bollywood
scene
I am in that island
feeling some itch
of its breeze, but i was too
busy then
climbing one
of the narrative trees
there
and he asks
is there such a thing
as a narrative tree?
i crack the nut
and drink the clouds
there
and he is filled with
so much
awe,
he gets itchy
and scratches
all the skins
and even the bones
he rattles like
a snake
and wants to bite
the narrative tree
has everything
to offer
gentle, and soft
and conversational
but he wants to deny
this kind of tree
saying
there is no such
thing as that
and this
oh my, what a man
he is
structured in his cage
not knowing
that he is meant to
be free
from the shackles of
his verse
from the narrow alleys
of his
rhyme
goodness, we do not
even try
grafting the metaphors
i love it here
this island where i touch
him not
but he touches me
i guess
that is envy.
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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