The thread in which sawdust eats Pokey Stix, drinks beer, dedicates you a poem

[sawdust restaurants]

English major what.

[sppunk]

Fuck English majors. English professors teach people to write like shit.

[Lie]

Pokey Stix?

[Lie]

This thread is a disappointment to mankind.

[Toby]

cold pizza is the best thing ever.

[sawdust restaurants]

Originally posted by Lie
This thread is a disappointment to mankind.

Wordsworth - "London, 1802"

Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart:
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life's common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet the heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay.

[Sepiae]

That was really fast delivery.

[sawdust restaurants]

Originally posted by sppunk
Fuck English majors. English professors teach people to write like shit.

Ezra Pound - "Sestina: Altaforte"

Loquitur: En Bertrans de Born.
Dante Alighieri put this man in hell for that he was a
stirrer-up of strife.
Eccovi!
Judge ye!
Have I dug him up again?
The scene in at his castle, Altaforte. "Papiols" is his jongleur.
"The Leopard," the device of Richard (Cúur de Lion).

I

Damn it all! all this our South stinks peace.
You whoreson dog, Papiols, come! Let's to music!
I have no life save when the swords clash.
But ah! when I see the standards gold, vair, purple, opposing
And the broad fields beneath them turn crimson,
Then howl I my heart nigh mad with rejoicing.

II

In hot summer have I great rejoicing
When the tempests kill the earth's foul peace,
And the lightnings from black heav'n flash crimson,
And the fierce thunders roar me their music
And the winds shriek through the clouds mad, opposing,
And through all the riven skies God's swords clash.

III

Hell grant soon we hear again the swords clash!
And the shrill neighs of destriers in battle rejoicing,
Spiked breast to spiked breast opposing!
Better one hour's stour than a year's peace
With fat boards, bawds, wine and frail music!
Bah! there's no wine like the blood's crimson!

IV

And I love to see the sun rise blood-crimson.
And I watch his spears through the dark clash
And it fills all my heart with rejoicing
And pries wide my mouth with fast music
When I see him so scorn and defy peace,
His lone might 'gainst all darkness opposing.

V

The man who fears war and squats opposing
My words for stour, hath no blood of crimson
But is fit only to rot in womanish peace
Far from where worth's won and the swords clash
For the death of such sluts I go rejoicing;
Yea, I fill all the air with my music.

VI

Papiols, Papiols, to the music!
There's no sound like to swords swords opposing,
No cry like the battle's rejoicing
When our elbows and swords drip the crimson
And our charges 'gainst "The Leopard's" rush clash.
May God damn for ever all who cry "Peace!"

VII

And let the music of the swords make them crimson!
Hell grant soon we hear again the swords clash!
Hell blot black for always the thought "Peace!"

[sawdust restaurants]

Originally posted by Sepiae
That was really fast delivery.

Oh, I haven't ordered them yet, but I wanted to get a head start.

[Sepiae]

Originally posted by sawdust restaurants


Oh, I haven't ordered them yet, but I wanted to get a head start.

where is my poem!

[Junebug]

yes, what are pokey stix? and what poem is your name from again?

[Lie]

Jesus, man, could you try any less? Are you flipping through the fucking Norton Anthology?

[Lie]

Originally posted by Junebug
yes, what are pokey stix? and what poem is your name from again?

The Fucking Love Song Of Fucking Alfred Fucking Prufrock by T.S. Fucking Eliot Fuck

[sawdust restaurants]

Originally posted by Sepiae
where is my poem!

Chris Coletta - "The Jazz Singer Examines a Bust of Buddha"

On your right you'll notice Louie Armstrong
weaving his way through the traffic of a line,
lips pursed below his blowfished cheeks
as he dances with Ella down the Eight-Fold Path.

What a beautiful life! to fall asleep a golden god
only to rise from bed as Satchmo,
to give up rice for the spice of New Orleans grub,
to enter Nirvana wearing a suit and tie, cradling a cornet.

I can see his finger fall from its upward current
as he samples gumbo for the first time
and begs for water in that gruff voice, as if a Creole
were doing the heebie jeebies on the roof of his mouth.

Confession: Louie and I sing love songs to each other
in my sleep. We say things like, "Doo-ey bop shoo-dap
oop teep tap." I say: "What a wonderful world."
He asks: "Does this hair net make my scalp look fat?"

[Sepiae]

Originally posted by Lie
Jesus, man, could you try any less? Are you flipping through the fucking Norton Anthology?

He kept it. I bet he is.

[sawdust restaurants]

Originally posted by Lie
Jesus, man, could you try any less? Are you flipping through the fucking Norton Anthology?

No and no, respectively.

[Nimrod's Son]

What's a Pokey stick?

[Lie]

Originally posted by Nimrod's Son
What's a Pokey stick?

[Lie]

Google search for "pokey stix":

http://www2.uiuc.edu/ro/AlphaOmegaEp...rlsnite2wp.jpg

[sawdust restaurants]

Originally posted by Junebug
yes, what are pokey stix? and what poem is your name from again?

Pokey Stix are these breadstick/garlic type contraptions from Gumby's Pizza, a really nasty Southern chain that only sets up shop in college towns. They are strictly late-night-with-beer food only, and I shouldn't order them since I'll be headed to bed in a few hours, but I haven't eaten since noon and there's nothing I want to eat here.

Edit: The thing in the pizza boxes toward the bottom of that picture.

[sawdust restaurants]

Oh, and your poem:

Billy Collins - "Reading Myself to Sleep"

The house is all in darkness except for this corner bedroom
where the lighthouse of a table lamp is guiding
my eyes throught the narrow channels of print,

and the only movement in the night is the slight
swirl of curtains, the easy lift and fall of my breathing,
and the flap of pages as they turn in the wind of my hand.

Is there a more gentle way to go into the night
than to follow an endless rope of sentences
and then to slip drowsily under the surface of a page

into the first tentative flicker of a dream,
passing out of the bright precincts of attention
like cigarette smoke passing through a window screen?

All late readers know the sinking feeling of falling
into the liquid of sleep and then rising again
to the call of a voice that you are holding in your hands,

as if pulled from the sea back into a boat
where a discussion is raging on some subject or other,
on Patagonia or Thoroughbreds or the nature of war.

Is there a better method of departure by night
than this quiet bon voyage with an open book,
the sole companion who has come to see you off,

to wave you into the dark waters beyond language?
I can hear the rush and sweep of fallen leaves outside
where the world lies unconscious, and I can feel myself

dissolving, drifting into a story that will never be written,
letting the book slip to the floor where I will find it
in the morning when I surface, wet and streaked with daylight.

[Lie]

http://www.personal.psu.edu/users/r/.../pokeystix.jpg

[Lie]

Originally posted by sawdust restaurants
Oh, and your poem:

Billy Collins - "Reading Myself to Sleep"

Billy Collins - "Flames"

Smokey the Bear heads
into the autumn woods
with a red can of gasoline
and a box of wooden matches.

His ranger's hat is cocked
at a disturbing angle.

His brown fur gleams
under the high sun
as his paws, the size
of catcher's mitts,
crackle into the distance.

He is sick of dispensing
warnings to the careless,
the half-wit camper,
the dumbbell hiker.

He is going to show them
how a professional does it.

[sawdust restaurants]

Originally posted by Nimrod's Son
What's a Pokey stick?

For the single and single at heart.

Philip Larkin - "Home is So Sad" (yes, another fucking Norton Anthology poem EAT ME ELISABETH)

Home is so sad. It stays as it was left,
Shaped to the comfort of the last to go
As if to win them back. Instead, bereft
Of anyone to please, it withers so,
Having no heart to put aside the theft

And turn again to what it started as,
A joyous shot at how things ought to be,
Long fallen wide. You can see how it was:
Look at the pictures and the cutlery.
The music in the piano stool. That vase.

[Lie]

I'm going to bed. By the way, you write better than most English majors or supposed writers I've met, despite the kind of cute constrained contemporary American approach. And that's a real compliment coming from me, because I'm a real asshole when it comes to poetry.

[sawdust restaurants]

Hey, thanks. I wrote that my freshman year, and it's not the best thing I've ever written, but it's the cutesiest and 'twas for Amy.

[Lie]

Originally posted by sawdust restaurants
For the single and single at heart.

Philip Larkin - "Home is So Sad" (yes, another fucking Norton Anthology poem EAT ME ELISABETH)

Home is so sad. It stays as it was left,
Shaped to the comfort of the last to go
As if to win them back. Instead, bereft
Of anyone to please, it withers so,
Having no heart to put aside the theft

And turn again to what it started as,
A joyous shot at how things ought to be,
Long fallen wide. You can see how it was:
Look at the pictures and the cutlery.
The music in the piano stool. That vase.

I kind of like that one, but I like "High Windows" better. I take it that's not in the latest edition, though.