酷我-北美枫

[anna]

How to make you happy?
I wish I could huddle you –
my arms stretch, but capture the void.

Why are you so thin?
I have the urge to feed you –
chocolates, tulips, and me, if you wish.

But you are in your coldness,
not caring what happens to you;
the moon sheds your solitary
on my shattered heart
no matter wherever I go.

I think I should leave you
where you could find your happiness.
Under the straight spotlight,
will you shrivel in a sudden,
and disappear without farewell?
_________________
---------------------

Anna Yin

《爱的灯塔-星子安娜双语诗选》
<Nightlights> <Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac> ...

http://annapoetry.com

[[星子安娜]]

How to make you happy?
I wish I could huddle you –
my arms stretch, but capture the void.

Why are you so thin?
I have the urge to feed you –
chocolates, tulips, and me, if you wish.

But you are in your coldness,
not caring what happens to you;
the moon sheds your solitary
on my shattered heart
no matter wherever I go.

I think I should leave you
where you could find your happiness.
Under the straight spotlight,
will you shrivel in a sudden,
and disappear without farewell?
_________________
---------------------

Anna Yin

《爱的灯塔-星子安娜双语诗选》
<Nightlights> <Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac> ...

http://annapoetry.com

[anna]

Comments from Bernie

A---

three questions, no answers.

contradictions---we men would jokingly say--that's what drives us crazy about women---first, let's get together, then it's better to separate.

now, that can work for a poem---but when the narrator speaks so directly it might prove disruptive rather than sensitive and probing.

you decide.

1. How to make you happy?
I wish I could huddle you –
my arms stretch,


2. I have the urge to feed you –
chocolates, tulips, and me

then the oppositie:


A. I think I should leave you



but i like kthe monologue, a sensitive narrator speaking outloud from the heart. how to do that without slipping into romance novel sappiness---those passages that earn even good writers the award for the worst . description of the year.


John Updike and Eleven Minutes by Paolo Coelho (HarperCollins) and The Stranger at the Palazzo d'Oro by Paul Theroux (Hamish Hamilton) were on the shortlist to win several years ago. a sample from Theroux:



Quote:
The Stranger at the Palazzo d'Oro by Paul Theroux (Hamish Hamilton)

The softness of her skin in the dark, far softer-seeming because of the dark, was irresistible. And the aroma of her lily-fragrant perfume mingled with the cat smell of her....

...made me salivate and pant like a lion, my nose tormented by damp fur and hot blood. Still I could not tell where her soft skin ended and her silk began,


... like another elaborate silken garment she had put on for me to stroke. I adored the gleam of her body in the light from the ... streetlamps and the blistered moon... She knelt and worshipped my cock with her mouth and her gloved hands and she cried out louder than I did....



i took out the very direct, overtly sexual words....bad writing.

comments from Writer's Blog---

http://www.writerswrite.com/wblog.php?wblog=1201061



Quote:
What organisers call Britain's "most dreaded literary prize" went to first time novelist Iain Hollingshead and Twentysomething for the "passage considered to be the most redundant in an otherwise excellent novel". The award sponsors at Literary Review magazine said it was Hollingshead's "bulging trousers" which put him ahead of runner-up Tim Willocks for The Religion.

"I am delighted to be the youngest ever recipient of the Literary Review's bad . award," said 25-year-old Hollingshead. "I hope I win it every year." Hollingshead is now part of a select club of writers that includes Tom Wolfe and Sebastian Faulks. He collected a statue representing . in the 1950's and a bottle of champagne over shortlisted writers including Thomas Pynchon, Will Self and Irvine Welsh.

The review distributed selected passages of steamy and graphic prose from "Twentysomething" involving groans, grunts, squeaks and "flashing unconnected images and explosions of a million little particles." The prize was founded by then Review editor Auberon Waugh, son of 20th century British novelist Evelyn Waugh, and a prominent journalist and satirist. Now in its 14th year, the prize aims "to draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it."



do i think this poem is "bad writing?"

no. it stops well before falling over the cliff of excess verbage, of self-indulgent and self-laudatory praise---

but is it redundant? does the poem probe cliches?

a speaker asks, how can i please you. then answers by saying, the best way is for me to leave.

no meaningful discussion, all one-sided. like an election with only one party---only one candidate.

the Russian communist system was to avoid the candidate, but vote on the agenda. made sense, didn't work any better than our method that champions personal popularity.

still, this is a poem about shipwrecked love.

i want to feel that love --- the poem tends to give me the surface of love---telling, telling, telling.

think we have discussed this before, oh, nine times is it now?


a good poem lurks here, the vulnerability of the narrator is unmistakable, but a puppy is vulnerable too. and when the puppy playfully runs into the street---we all hold our breath, but has the story narrator created tension? or a cliche?




i would start here---


Why are you so thin?

objective observation.



then one of the best lines in the poem, direct and sensuous:



I have the urge to feed you –
chocolates, tulips, and me, if you wish.

don't underestimate that plaintive, playful "...if you wish."


and then, it is almost as though the narrator is answered:

But you are in your coldness,


odd, haven't learned now, that when a lover is unresponsive it's because they just aren't into us that much....? the . and the city TV show made that clear five years ago.

i like this line:


the moon sheds your solitary
on my shattered heart


but why not something even more clear, direct:


My heart shatters
under the solitary moon.


this looping, back ain't helping:


no matter wherever I go.


I think I should leave you

don't look now, but the narrator is the one who got dumped, who got left. five bullets fired into the narrator's heart, nothing to do but just just fall down.

the last lines:



Under the straight spotlight,
will you shrivel in a sudden,
and disappear without farewell?


this character left Monday --- here it is Friday and the narrator still ain't got the message---makes the narrator not so much a tragic figure, but dumb. wise up this narrator---let her feel fully what has happened---who hasn't been dumped and felt bad? but give me that crisis, that agonizing moment of feeling and understandig, confusion and despair.

i use an image, but direct statement can be used. plain talk, but in either case it is very easy to lapse into cliche and dumbness.


Why are you so thin?


I have the urge to feed you –
chocolates, tulips, and me, if you wish.


but you wish for only the solitary,
you are in your coldness,

the moon sheds your solitary
on my shattered heart


I write my story
on rice paper.

you sleep late this morning,
one naked leg from under
the wrinkled sheet, I sit
by the bed waiting for you
to open your eyes.


the speaker still passive, but in more control, the subject is for flesh and blood, but still the spotlight remains on the narrator---wounded and we wait for the collapse---will it come or will she rise and save herself?


i like the poem more than it might seem, just talking outloud.



bernie



(by the way, Oprah and the radio psych ladies say, if you really care about him, allow him to fall in love all over again --- develop your own friends, hobby, and work. dress as you if you were single and still linterested in being attrractive and smart --- make him compete with other men for your favor and attention---earn you once again. talking ain't going to help. cuddling, unless motivated by desire, won't help. complaining drives him away, making yourself into a victim is worst of all---know what i mean?

what is that movie where jennifer anniston and vince vaughn (the breakup) are getting a divorce, but they continue to live in the same apartment. one night she walks down the hall, naked,, the almost ex-husband is watching---as she well knows....of course, the ploy works. it is not a permanent cure, just calling attention to this scene.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3i53FPhbPzE


here is a world famous poet saying good bye ---


Quote:
Saddest Poem

- Pablo Neruda


I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.

Write, for instance: "The night is full of stars,
and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance."

The night wind whirls in the sky and sings.

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

On nights like this, I held her in my arms.
I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her.
How could I not have loved her large, still eyes?

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
To think I don't have her. To feel that I've lost her.

To hear the immense night, more immense without her.
And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass.

What does it matter that my love couldn't keep her.
The night is full of stars and she is not with me.

That's all. Far away, someone sings. Far away.
My soul is lost without her.

As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her.
My heart searches for her and she is not with me.

The same night that whitens the same trees.
We, we who were, we are the same no longer.

I no longer love her, true, but how much I loved her.
My voice searched the wind to touch her ear.

Someone else's. She will be someone else's. As she once
belonged to my kisses.
Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her.
Love is so short and oblivion so long.

Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,
my soul is lost without her.

Although this may be the last pain she causes me,
and this may be the last poem I write for her.
_________________
---------------------

Anna Yin

《爱的灯塔-星子安娜双语诗选》
<Nightlights> <Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac> ...

http://annapoetry.com

[[星子安娜]]

Comments from Bernie

A---

three questions, no answers.

contradictions---we men would jokingly say--that's what drives us crazy about women---first, let's get together, then it's better to separate.

now, that can work for a poem---but when the narrator speaks so directly it might prove disruptive rather than sensitive and probing.

you decide.

1. How to make you happy?
I wish I could huddle you –
my arms stretch,


2. I have the urge to feed you –
chocolates, tulips, and me

then the oppositie:


A. I think I should leave you



but i like kthe monologue, a sensitive narrator speaking outloud from the heart. how to do that without slipping into romance novel sappiness---those passages that earn even good writers the award for the worst . description of the year.


John Updike and Eleven Minutes by Paolo Coelho (HarperCollins) and The Stranger at the Palazzo d'Oro by Paul Theroux (Hamish Hamilton) were on the shortlist to win several years ago. a sample from Theroux:



Quote:
The Stranger at the Palazzo d'Oro by Paul Theroux (Hamish Hamilton)

The softness of her skin in the dark, far softer-seeming because of the dark, was irresistible. And the aroma of her lily-fragrant perfume mingled with the cat smell of her....

...made me salivate and pant like a lion, my nose tormented by damp fur and hot blood. Still I could not tell where her soft skin ended and her silk began,


... like another elaborate silken garment she had put on for me to stroke. I adored the gleam of her body in the light from the ... streetlamps and the blistered moon... She knelt and worshipped my cock with her mouth and her gloved hands and she cried out louder than I did....



i took out the very direct, overtly sexual words....bad writing.

comments from Writer's Blog---

http://www.writerswrite.com/wblog.php?wblog=1201061



Quote:
What organisers call Britain's "most dreaded literary prize" went to first time novelist Iain Hollingshead and Twentysomething for the "passage considered to be the most redundant in an otherwise excellent novel". The award sponsors at Literary Review magazine said it was Hollingshead's "bulging trousers" which put him ahead of runner-up Tim Willocks for The Religion.

"I am delighted to be the youngest ever recipient of the Literary Review's bad . award," said 25-year-old Hollingshead. "I hope I win it every year." Hollingshead is now part of a select club of writers that includes Tom Wolfe and Sebastian Faulks. He collected a statue representing . in the 1950's and a bottle of champagne over shortlisted writers including Thomas Pynchon, Will Self and Irvine Welsh.

The review distributed selected passages of steamy and graphic prose from "Twentysomething" involving groans, grunts, squeaks and "flashing unconnected images and explosions of a million little particles." The prize was founded by then Review editor Auberon Waugh, son of 20th century British novelist Evelyn Waugh, and a prominent journalist and satirist. Now in its 14th year, the prize aims "to draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it."



do i think this poem is "bad writing?"

no. it stops well before falling over the cliff of excess verbage, of self-indulgent and self-laudatory praise---

but is it redundant? does the poem probe cliches?

a speaker asks, how can i please you. then answers by saying, the best way is for me to leave.

no meaningful discussion, all one-sided. like an election with only one party---only one candidate.

the Russian communist system was to avoid the candidate, but vote on the agenda. made sense, didn't work any better than our method that champions personal popularity.

still, this is a poem about shipwrecked love.

i want to feel that love --- the poem tends to give me the surface of love---telling, telling, telling.

think we have discussed this before, oh, nine times is it now?


a good poem lurks here, the vulnerability of the narrator is unmistakable, but a puppy is vulnerable too. and when the puppy playfully runs into the street---we all hold our breath, but has the story narrator created tension? or a cliche?




i would start here---


Why are you so thin?

objective observation.



then one of the best lines in the poem, direct and sensuous:



I have the urge to feed you –
chocolates, tulips, and me, if you wish.

don't underestimate that plaintive, playful "...if you wish."


and then, it is almost as though the narrator is answered:

But you are in your coldness,


odd, haven't learned now, that when a lover is unresponsive it's because they just aren't into us that much....? the . and the city TV show made that clear five years ago.

i like this line:


the moon sheds your solitary
on my shattered heart


but why not something even more clear, direct:


My heart shatters
under the solitary moon.


this looping, back ain't helping:


no matter wherever I go.


I think I should leave you

don't look now, but the narrator is the one who got dumped, who got left. five bullets fired into the narrator's heart, nothing to do but just just fall down.

the last lines:



Under the straight spotlight,
will you shrivel in a sudden,
and disappear without farewell?


this character left Monday --- here it is Friday and the narrator still ain't got the message---makes the narrator not so much a tragic figure, but dumb. wise up this narrator---let her feel fully what has happened---who hasn't been dumped and felt bad? but give me that crisis, that agonizing moment of feeling and understandig, confusion and despair.

i use an image, but direct statement can be used. plain talk, but in either case it is very easy to lapse into cliche and dumbness.


Why are you so thin?


I have the urge to feed you –
chocolates, tulips, and me, if you wish.


but you wish for only the solitary,
you are in your coldness,

the moon sheds your solitary
on my shattered heart


I write my story
on rice paper.

you sleep late this morning,
one naked leg from under
the wrinkled sheet, I sit
by the bed waiting for you
to open your eyes.


the speaker still passive, but in more control, the subject is for flesh and blood, but still the spotlight remains on the narrator---wounded and we wait for the collapse---will it come or will she rise and save herself?


i like the poem more than it might seem, just talking outloud.



bernie



(by the way, Oprah and the radio psych ladies say, if you really care about him, allow him to fall in love all over again --- develop your own friends, hobby, and work. dress as you if you were single and still linterested in being attrractive and smart --- make him compete with other men for your favor and attention---earn you once again. talking ain't going to help. cuddling, unless motivated by desire, won't help. complaining drives him away, making yourself into a victim is worst of all---know what i mean?

what is that movie where jennifer anniston and vince vaughn (the breakup) are getting a divorce, but they continue to live in the same apartment. one night she walks down the hall, naked,, the almost ex-husband is watching---as she well knows....of course, the ploy works. it is not a permanent cure, just calling attention to this scene.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3i53FPhbPzE


here is a world famous poet saying good bye ---


Quote:
Saddest Poem

- Pablo Neruda


I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.

Write, for instance: "The night is full of stars,
and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance."

The night wind whirls in the sky and sings.

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

On nights like this, I held her in my arms.
I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her.
How could I not have loved her large, still eyes?

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
To think I don't have her. To feel that I've lost her.

To hear the immense night, more immense without her.
And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass.

What does it matter that my love couldn't keep her.
The night is full of stars and she is not with me.

That's all. Far away, someone sings. Far away.
My soul is lost without her.

As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her.
My heart searches for her and she is not with me.

The same night that whitens the same trees.
We, we who were, we are the same no longer.

I no longer love her, true, but how much I loved her.
My voice searched the wind to touch her ear.

Someone else's. She will be someone else's. As she once
belonged to my kisses.
Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her.
Love is so short and oblivion so long.

Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,
my soul is lost without her.

Although this may be the last pain she causes me,
and this may be the last poem I write for her.
_________________
---------------------

Anna Yin

《爱的灯塔-星子安娜双语诗选》
<Nightlights> <Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac> ...

http://annapoetry.com

[anna]

Hi Bernie,

Thank you very much for your detail comments and suggestions.

I know you really want to help me. Yes. I always have problems to write deep feelings. Sometimes I wonder if I have such deep fleeings, or my feelings are always on the surface?

I don't know if I can open the door or not, but I do hope I can write freely and bravely.

I know you mentioned a few times that I should write like a girl in downtown New York... such such...

But I could not find any true experience through my heart, if I wrote I felt faked... Though I really work up to imagine...

Yesterday I went to a workshop, the speaker said sometimes we wrote poems like starting breeding rabbits, first one, then more and more....

I guess my fish poems are like that... I know that is not good. Sometimes I may need to hold and let things settle down, then write...

I guess I have too many promises to revise my poems, and fail my promises too.

Guess I should jail myself now.

Anna
_________________
---------------------

Anna Yin

《爱的灯塔-星子安娜双语诗选》
<Nightlights> <Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac> ...

http://annapoetry.com

[[星子安娜]]

Hi Bernie,

Thank you very much for your detail comments and suggestions.

I know you really want to help me. Yes. I always have problems to write deep feelings. Sometimes I wonder if I have such deep fleeings, or my feelings are always on the surface?

I don't know if I can open the door or not, but I do hope I can write freely and bravely.

I know you mentioned a few times that I should write like a girl in downtown New York... such such...

But I could not find any true experience through my heart, if I wrote I felt faked... Though I really work up to imagine...

Yesterday I went to a workshop, the speaker said sometimes we wrote poems like starting breeding rabbits, first one, then more and more....

I guess my fish poems are like that... I know that is not good. Sometimes I may need to hold and let things settle down, then write...

I guess I have too many promises to revise my poems, and fail my promises too.

Guess I should jail myself now.

Anna
_________________
---------------------

Anna Yin

《爱的灯塔-星子安娜双语诗选》
<Nightlights> <Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac> ...

http://annapoetry.com

[anna]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A---


yes, that is a good feeling for a poem.

to feel like you belong in jail.

to start there.


(by the way, kathleen and i will always come on sunday to smuggle in writing paper and cigars....when i say, looking over new york from a high hotel window smoking a cigar, i mean feeling deeply, but cool, meditative, the intellectual and the emotional---smoking a cigar, symbol and trigger for deeper thoughts, a willingness to break the surface bonds that often trap us into popular reaction which we record as thinking.)

your writing is sensitive and discrete, your english is fine --- it is your thinking that doesn't want to budge.

some writers travel to a foreign place---or use a new technique to force their thinking to change. President Obama has encouraged many americans to think differently about race....the twin towers forced us to think differently about ourelves and the world.

Nixon encouraged Americans to think differently about what we so flippantly once dismissed as Red China.

Lincoln helped americans think differently about four million slaves.

Rev. King about justice.

is it possible that visualizing yourself smoking a cigar, might free you foir three hours from your conventional associations and thoughts---three hours as an actress on a stage while you write a poem --- are we any less actors because we believe we are truthful --- when we are 15 we think we know the truth---when we first leave home---when we are young marrieds---and a different truth in old age---all these versions of the truth are true reflections of our personality. yes/no?



hopefully, we think more deeply, avoid the first thought that comes to mind on popular, often prejudicial waves of impulse---

A---sorry, but i don't care too much right now about your feeling "honest" or comfortable. this is a workshop, a safe place to experiment---when we learn to read, we read a lot of things we don't love---but we prepare our perceptive, cognitive skills for the encounter with poems, books that we do love. you stayed with english, i can't believe it was easy to learn a second language, to come to america, but you decided to be brave, to grow. and now, the door opens in the Forum for more growth. time enough to feel comfortable once you have safely explored what you are capable of producing.

that goes for me, too. That's why you see me change / revise a pom---in public.



here is a very successful young woman in england, winner of the t s eliot 2005 prize for this pom:



Quote:
Rapture

Carol Ann Duffy


'Not a red rose or a satin heart.
I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light
like the careful undressing of love.
[…] I am trying to be truthful.'



'[…] What do I have
to help me, without spell or prayer,
endure this hour, endless, heartless, anonymous,
the death of love? […]'
(Extract from ‘Over’)



some lines from t s eliot---


Preludes


by Thomas Stearns Eliot

I

The winter evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.
Six o'clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
And newspapers from vacant lots;
The showers beat
On broken blinds and chimney-pots,
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
And then the lighting of the lamps.


-----

You had such a vision of the street
As the street hardly understands;
Sitting along the bed's edge, where
You curled the papers from your hair,
Or clasped the yellow soles of feet
In the palms of both soiled hands.


----

Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.



Quote:
I decide to smoke your cigar
as i look out over
a cool, downtown shanghai.

I feel like I should be in jail,
not because i love you,
but because you do not
love me.

Why are you so thin?


I have the urge to feed you –
chocolates, tulips, and me,
if you only wished.


but you wish for only the solitary,
you are in your coldness,

the moon sheds your solitary
on the little Chinese dumpling
of my shattered heart


I write my story
on rice paper.

you sleep late this morning,
one naked leg from under
the wrinkled sheet, I sit
by the bed waiting for you
to open your eyes.




well, is this fun?


and this additional line, if you really wanted to push the limits and be both bold and bitter---
--


in your sleep
a little heron rises
under the sheet,
do you dream of me
or the discoteque
waitress you devoured
from behind your
sunglasses?




bernie
_________________
---------------------

Anna Yin

《爱的灯塔-星子安娜双语诗选》
<Nightlights> <Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac> ...

http://annapoetry.com

[[星子安娜]]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A---


yes, that is a good feeling for a poem.

to feel like you belong in jail.

to start there.


(by the way, kathleen and i will always come on sunday to smuggle in writing paper and cigars....when i say, looking over new york from a high hotel window smoking a cigar, i mean feeling deeply, but cool, meditative, the intellectual and the emotional---smoking a cigar, symbol and trigger for deeper thoughts, a willingness to break the surface bonds that often trap us into popular reaction which we record as thinking.)

your writing is sensitive and discrete, your english is fine --- it is your thinking that doesn't want to budge.

some writers travel to a foreign place---or use a new technique to force their thinking to change. President Obama has encouraged many americans to think differently about race....the twin towers forced us to think differently about ourelves and the world.

Nixon encouraged Americans to think differently about what we so flippantly once dismissed as Red China.

Lincoln helped americans think differently about four million slaves.

Rev. King about justice.

is it possible that visualizing yourself smoking a cigar, might free you foir three hours from your conventional associations and thoughts---three hours as an actress on a stage while you write a poem --- are we any less actors because we believe we are truthful --- when we are 15 we think we know the truth---when we first leave home---when we are young marrieds---and a different truth in old age---all these versions of the truth are true reflections of our personality. yes/no?



hopefully, we think more deeply, avoid the first thought that comes to mind on popular, often prejudicial waves of impulse---

A---sorry, but i don't care too much right now about your feeling "honest" or comfortable. this is a workshop, a safe place to experiment---when we learn to read, we read a lot of things we don't love---but we prepare our perceptive, cognitive skills for the encounter with poems, books that we do love. you stayed with english, i can't believe it was easy to learn a second language, to come to america, but you decided to be brave, to grow. and now, the door opens in the Forum for more growth. time enough to feel comfortable once you have safely explored what you are capable of producing.

that goes for me, too. That's why you see me change / revise a pom---in public.



here is a very successful young woman in england, winner of the t s eliot 2005 prize for this pom:



Quote:
Rapture

Carol Ann Duffy


'Not a red rose or a satin heart.
I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light
like the careful undressing of love.
[…] I am trying to be truthful.'



'[…] What do I have
to help me, without spell or prayer,
endure this hour, endless, heartless, anonymous,
the death of love? […]'
(Extract from ‘Over’)



some lines from t s eliot---


Preludes


by Thomas Stearns Eliot

I

The winter evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.
Six o'clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
And newspapers from vacant lots;
The showers beat
On broken blinds and chimney-pots,
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
And then the lighting of the lamps.


-----

You had such a vision of the street
As the street hardly understands;
Sitting along the bed's edge, where
You curled the papers from your hair,
Or clasped the yellow soles of feet
In the palms of both soiled hands.


----

Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.



Quote:
I decide to smoke your cigar
as i look out over
a cool, downtown shanghai.

I feel like I should be in jail,
not because i love you,
but because you do not
love me.

Why are you so thin?


I have the urge to feed you –
chocolates, tulips, and me,
if you only wished.


but you wish for only the solitary,
you are in your coldness,

the moon sheds your solitary
on the little Chinese dumpling
of my shattered heart


I write my story
on rice paper.

you sleep late this morning,
one naked leg from under
the wrinkled sheet, I sit
by the bed waiting for you
to open your eyes.




well, is this fun?


and this additional line, if you really wanted to push the limits and be both bold and bitter---
--


in your sleep
a little heron rises
under the sheet,
do you dream of me
or the discoteque
waitress you devoured
from behind your
sunglasses?




bernie
_________________
---------------------

Anna Yin

《爱的灯塔-星子安娜双语诗选》
<Nightlights> <Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac> ...

http://annapoetry.com

[anna]

Hi Bernie,

So much I want to say thank you!
Great poems and excellent reference.

Now I guess I feel safe to open the door to explore the fun of poetry.

Cheers!.

Anna
_________________
---------------------

Anna Yin

《爱的灯塔-星子安娜双语诗选》
<Nightlights> <Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac> ...

http://annapoetry.com

[[星子安娜]]

Hi Bernie,

So much I want to say thank you!
Great poems and excellent reference.

Now I guess I feel safe to open the door to explore the fun of poetry.

Cheers!.

Anna
_________________
---------------------

Anna Yin

《爱的灯塔-星子安娜双语诗选》
<Nightlights> <Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac> ...

http://annapoetry.com

[星子]

[[ANNA]]

[星子]

[[ANNA]]

[anna]

After I did another revision.

Comments from Bernie.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A---

i think the poem is a triumph.

this line may cause a question, but not for me.



On the surface,
our jailed reflections are blurred.


it takes the poem to an edge, good.

Zoro has already expressed concern about the second line.

its color turns like our sunglasses.

i love the line. i mention it because a poem cannot always win the vote of every reader, even good readers. good.

i expect myself to take chances, i encourage you to do the same. this poem, this current poem, creates a fragile world, but a complete world composed of real people---solid people, intelligent as well as deep feeling.

the poem finds several clever, several inspired devices (the tea and the sunglasses, later the cigarette smoke) to convey to the reader the depth of the characters feelings at this climactic moment of insight and pain.

the language, the devices, all clear and elegant in their simplicity. so often, these are the signs of powerful, memorable poetry. powerful emotions focused during a moment of great insight with both control and courage, a willingness to look into the naked truth, but finding a way to share that confrontation with the reader---to help us feel and learn


when i finish a poem, i think i will never find another image, but another image will come. trust your reading, trust your attention to craft, trust loving people to understand.

and another poem comes.

this one, i would make no other changes.

if you are uncertain where you would like to send this out, drop me a private message note and i will give you two suggestions---one magazine is published in Singapore but has an international group of poets.

once again, congratulations on this poem. i found it very meaningful. the feelings vivid, adult and relentless. i felt like a solo traveller, sitting across from this couple, coming home, i would tell kathleen what i saw on my trip.


bernie
_________________
---------------------

Anna Yin

《爱的灯塔-星子安娜双语诗选》
<Nightlights> <Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac> ...

http://annapoetry.com

[[星子安娜]]

After I did another revision.

Comments from Bernie.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A---

i think the poem is a triumph.

this line may cause a question, but not for me.



On the surface,
our jailed reflections are blurred.


it takes the poem to an edge, good.

Zoro has already expressed concern about the second line.

its color turns like our sunglasses.

i love the line. i mention it because a poem cannot always win the vote of every reader, even good readers. good.

i expect myself to take chances, i encourage you to do the same. this poem, this current poem, creates a fragile world, but a complete world composed of real people---solid people, intelligent as well as deep feeling.

the poem finds several clever, several inspired devices (the tea and the sunglasses, later the cigarette smoke) to convey to the reader the depth of the characters feelings at this climactic moment of insight and pain.

the language, the devices, all clear and elegant in their simplicity. so often, these are the signs of powerful, memorable poetry. powerful emotions focused during a moment of great insight with both control and courage, a willingness to look into the naked truth, but finding a way to share that confrontation with the reader---to help us feel and learn


when i finish a poem, i think i will never find another image, but another image will come. trust your reading, trust your attention to craft, trust loving people to understand.

and another poem comes.

this one, i would make no other changes.

if you are uncertain where you would like to send this out, drop me a private message note and i will give you two suggestions---one magazine is published in Singapore but has an international group of poets.

once again, congratulations on this poem. i found it very meaningful. the feelings vivid, adult and relentless. i felt like a solo traveller, sitting across from this couple, coming home, i would tell kathleen what i saw on my trip.


bernie
_________________
---------------------

Anna Yin

《爱的灯塔-星子安娜双语诗选》
<Nightlights> <Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac> ...

http://annapoetry.com