Sounds Like Poetry

Poetry is the distillation of human experience, designed and packaged for response by other human beings. It's an affirmation of the species, in a physical, emotional and intellectual sense. Sounds, gestures and feelings are as important as the words. Share something!

[chrisredeye]

Tulips push their tips

Past their earthen carapace —

Spring is here to stay.

#haiku #poetry

[chrisredeye]

25K reactions · 802 shares | Kinetic sound sculpture by #etiennekrahenbuhl Art collector? Visit the link in our bio to be the first in line

Kinetic sound sculpture by #etiennekrahenbuhl Art collector? Visit the link in our bio to be the first in line for exclusive collections an

[chrisredeye]

Red-hot pokers stand

Proud against the horizon —

The winter hills wait.

[chrisredeye]

Autumn nights grow cold,

While travellers sip their tea —

Red moon, aeroplane.

[chrisredeye]

Poetry in motion — Chinese American artist Yuge Zhou draws circles with her suitcase, bringing the moon of loneliness down to earth

[chrisredeye]

Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir,

Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,

With a cargo of ivory,

And apes and peacocks,

Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.

Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus,

Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores,

With a cargo of diamonds,

Emeralds, amethysts,

Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.

Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack,

Butting through the Channel in the mad March days,

With a cargo of Tyne coal,

Road-rails, pig-lead,

Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.

— Cargoes, by John Masefield (1903)

[chrisredeye]

The buzzes, clanks and whirrs of prison life form a meditation on freedom | Aeon Videos

With their buzzes, clanks and whirrs, the rhythms of prison life form a meditation on conformity and freedom

[chrisredeye]

The grey smoke of rain drifts over headlands

And clear drops fall on the paper as I write.

Only the light thunder and murmur

Of ebbing and flowing furrows is endlessly repeated

And the rapid gulls flash over without sound.

Where is a house with windows open to the afternoon?

With light beer on tables and tobacco smoke

Floating; with a fire in the grate;

With music and the mind-filling pleasure of easy company.

Lying back in a chair to laugh or standing and smiling

One would accept all fates, and even the gold

Melancholy leaves of late autumn

Would seem as natural as a child's toy.

But labour and hunger strides the year

In seasonal repetition, more harsh than tidal waters.

The very rocks are cold: and they were lava once.

So stand the dull green trees bearing the weather

On solitary boughs; so the grey smoke of rain

Drifts on a painted verge of sea and air.

The fisherman casts his net to hold the tide.

Chilly the light wind blowing. And dark the face of noonday

As at the inconsolable parting of friends.

— James K Baxter, Sea Noon (1946)

[chrisredeye]

Isolated at home, this artist records meditative music made by rain drops

Listen to the meditative music made by rain drops.

Artist Nina Keith built a metallophone and uses it to regularly record the melancholy melodies rain drops create as they land on its bars. She uses a cassette tape loop to record the sounds and then digitally processes them, sometimes adding her own delicate touch to accompany the touch of nature. The music has an eerily meditative feel that seems to encapsulate the strangely lonesome times we live in today.

[chrisredeye]

Jesus’ blood never failed me yet. I’m not a religious person but this piece speaks so clearly of hope in a dark place

https://youtu.be/FmkC_leNM7M

[chrisredeye]

‘With poetic lyrics that feel both staggeringly prescient (“In a small dark room — where I will wait / Face to face I find — I contemplate,” “I complete my tasks, one by one / I remove my masks, when I am done”) and of sweeping timelessness (“In these troubled times, I still can see / We can use the stars, to guide the way / It is not that far, the one fine day”), this buoyant hymn of optimism ripples against the current of our time as a mighty countercultural anthem of resistance and resilience, worthy of Whitman.’

— Maria Popova, talking about David Byrne’s performance of his song ‘One Fine Day’, co-written with Brian Eno (2008).

[chrisredeye]

The sea is calm tonight.

The tide is full, the moon lies fair

Upon the straits

— Dover Beach, by Matthew Arnold (1867)

[chrisredeye]

Her little hot room looked over the bay Through a stiff palisade of glinting palms, And there she would lie in the heat of the day, Her dark head resting upon her arms, So quiet, so still, she did not seem To think, to feel, or even to dream.

The shimmering, blinding web of sea Hung from the sky, and the spider sun With busy frightening cruelty Crawled over the sky and spun and spun. She could see it still when she shut her eyes, And the little boats caught in the web like flies.

Down below at this idle hour Nobody walked in the dusty street; A scent of a dying mimosa flower Lay on the air, but sweet – too sweet.

— Katherine Mansfield, Sanary (1916)

[chrisredeye]


If there had been one bird, if there had been

One gull to circle through the wild salt wind

Or cry above the breaking of the waves,

One footprint or one feather on the sand,

Then the great rocks leaning from the hills

Might have been the ruins of great walls.


Because no bird flew there, because there was

Nothing on that beach that called or sang,

The rocks leaned out towards the sea and watched

As women watch beside the sea day-long,

Shut within themselves like flowers in rain,

For men and ships that will not come again.


Of that warm moment when they rang with song,

Threw back the clink of sharpened stone on stone,

When firelight dimmed the stars, and when they heard

Above the lonely sea-sound, creak and groan

Of keels on shingle, nothing now remained

But oven-stones, and mounds of shells and sand.


If there had been one bird – but no; as once

For pillar, pyramid and lion, all

Rock waited, still the great rocks waited, watched;

No cry of child or gull above the fall

Of waves on stones. Only the sea moved there,

And weeds within the waves like floating hair.


– Ruth Dallas, Deserted Beach (1953)

[chrisredeye]

This Is a Poem That Heals Fish: An Almost Unbearably Wonderful Picture-Book About How Poetry Works Its Magic

“A poem … is when you are in love and have the sky in your mouth.”

[chrisredeye]

The rhythm of the tongue brings wordless music into the air; it is in poetry that the human essence is refined to such ritualistic purity. It's in the steady beats, the sonorous rise-and-fall of speech; for a moment it appears as if all the mysteries of the world have unlocked themselves to our private view.

[chrisredeye]

Pipes Stream Poetry in an Interactive Response to Flint's Water Crisis

In the absence of a properly functioning political system, it is ever more vital for art to bestow parity.

Piping poetry