Bellow Can Only Be Bellow
BELLOW CAN BE ONLY BELLOW
Bellow can only be Bellow
Kierkegaard-Kierkegaard
Kafka- Kafka
Joyce- Joyce
Borges- Borges
Pessoa-Pessoa
There is only one of each of us-
And no matter how many pages we write
And how many names we give ourselves and our own characters
No matter how many styles we invent
Each one is only one-
And so this small poem too
Will not be for anyone else
Any more or other
Than so much else
Which has already failed to give me the kind of name
Only the truly great have-.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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Emily Dickinson Is Not Borges
EMILY DICKINSON IS NOT BORGES
Emily Dickinson is not Borges
And Borges is not Kafka
And Kafka is not Dickens
And no one is Shakespeare-
Each one is only one self
Except for those who are many selves
And those who are many selves
Do not know
Who they themselves are-
Lear is not Falstaff
And Falstaff is not Hamlet
And Hamlet is not Shakespeare
And Shakespeare is not Donne-
No one is anyone but themselves
And even those who are really ‘someone'
Are not all the others who also are-
And we who are nothing at all?
What are we?
We are not nothing at all.
We are not great
And no one will remember our names
But we are still here now
Reading Borges and Dickenson and Kafka and Shakespeare
And wondering how and why
There are those in a world of their own
With names of their own
They themselves will never completely know.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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Literary Envy
LITERARY ENVY
Not Shakespeare
Not Tolstoy
Not Kafka Joyce Proust
Not Keats Yeats Wordsworth
Not Hopkins Dickinson
Not Whitman
Not I.B. Singer
Not Hemingway
Not Bellow
Not even Philip Roth
Updike or Salinger.
Not any of the writers
Whose work I love and admire.
Not even the living names now
Who will cease to be
Names In Time.
Like the great mass of mankind
When I die
I will not be in the Consciousness
Of future generations.
I will not be.
I will be ‘not’.
I
poem by Shalom Freedman
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I don't even like to talk about it. I hated being a number and not merely because I was a very small one. I let them bellow at me for just as long as it took me to find enough pluck to bellow back at them.
quote by George Grosz
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I Learned My Literature As Myself
I learned my Literature as myself-
Kafka was my soul
In the days of my early anxiety-
Joyce was my soul
Also in literary striving -
Wordsworth my soul in calm and love of nature-
Salinger my soul
Bellow my soul
Singer my soul
Soul after soul
But when I came to write
Near the end
After all the meaning
I and all the other souls together conspired
A voice perhaps my own?
poem by Shalom Freedman
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Season's Crops
On top of the mountain
he gazed bellow, green leaves,
Green fields painted the scenery bellow
Up the clouds gathered,
Black and expectant,
Crops would feast..
He blew a song in whistle, how great
The sign in dew, hope is in human heart
Life is full, with a promise, so bright.
poem by Charles Jagongo Ogola
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The Poem Is A Catalogue
The Poem is a Catalogue
The Poem is a Catalogue
A Long List
Of all things seen and known
All one’s memories
All the times and loves one has had
The great story of many other lives.
The Poem is a Catalogue of a Continent
Of a new world seen through fresh eyes
It is the night of all Rabelais body- functions
And Whitman’s wanderings
And Borges literary labyrinths
Of Joyce’s English language styles
Oxen of the Sun.
The Poem is a Catalogue of all the people
One has known
Their names and faces and lives
All the relationships one has wanted and regretted
And loved and lived in and needed to be.
The Poem is a Catalogue
Of a few small possessions
One takes in one’s hand
And goes far away with
The books on the desert island
And the last few things a hospice can hold.
The Poem is a Catalogue
Of all one will never be
All one wanted and did not get
The empty half glass.
The Poem is the Catalogue God makes
Of everything there is.
God’s Poems
And we if we can be
Privileged to be
Occasional readers
Or not.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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With Kafka.
Kafka would have liked
the way you said that.
You kept his books on
the shelf next to those
of Burroughs and Joyce.
You like the painting on
the book’s paper cover.
Paperbacks are cheap
and soon worn out,
Thornton used to say.
He liked hard covered
books, first editions if
he could afford. He said
Kafka was too morbid
for you. You need a lighter
read, he said, something
that doesn’t mess with
your female head. You
take down the Kafka and
read again where you read
before, the whole drama
unfolding, the printed words
bringing a different world,
and ghostly by the window
with steady stare, Franz Kafka
in silence just sitting there.
poem by Terry Collett
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You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.
quote by Saul Bellow
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Borges
BORGES
Life is a Story,
An Essay,
A Poem.
Its characters are not real -
Its lines are long,
Its rivers are in you
As you play games
With Time and Identity,
You write
And we see
readings
Never heard before.
Greater more humane writers
have been and will be-
But there is only one Borges.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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Whoever wants to reach a distant goal must take small steps.
quote by Saul Bellow
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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There is only one way to defeat the enemy, and that is to write as well as one can. The best argument is an undeniably good book.
quote by Saul Bellow
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In The Manner Of Borges I Write Poems In My Old Age
IN THE MANNER OF BORGES I WRITE POEMS IN MY OLD AGE
In the manner of Borges I write poems in my old age
And dream that they are not only imitations
Of poems written by others
When we all were young.
Instead I go on now in the darkness of the night
Because the fear of what will be
Is always so deep in me
It does not need Poetry or Happiness or any other Meaning
Outside itself.
We are small sands drifting on the edge of stars
Lesser beings of a time we will never know
All that we have done comes back to us over and over again
As if we never were
I don’t believe I will ever write Borges lines
He wrote them in his own imagined words
And I must in my own little life
Suffer to the end of time
All I have not been
And never will be.
God Who is Good
God of Love
You gave me so much
You did not have to give me Poetry also.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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The Black Angus Bull
Out there in the paddock I hear the black bull
He never stops bellowing when the moon is full
I wonder does the moon effect him in some strange way
For I've never heard him bellow in the light of the day
The full moon does effect people 'tis said
It has an unsettling effect in the head
And if a mental weakness in humans the full moon can find
Why not it too effect the animal kind
He has his herd of cows with him yet I do wonder why
He bellows all night when the moon's in the sky
During the hours of day he is always so quiet
And I've never heard him bellow on a dark night
But he never stops bellowing when the moon is full
Out there in the paddock the black angus bull.
poem by Francis Duggan
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A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.
quote by Saul Bellow
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The part can never be well unless the whole is well.
quote by Saul Bellow
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We are always looking for the book it is necessary to read next.
quote by Saul Bellow
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A man is only as good as what he loves.
quote by Saul Bellow
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The worst of all deceptions is self-deception.
quote by Saul Bellow
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Conquered people tend to be witty.
quote by Saul Bellow
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