What Is Your Favorite "Manly" Poem?

[gamzultovah]

Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminal Insane​

BY ETHERIDGE KNIGHT
Hard Rock / was / “known not to take no shit
From nobody,” and he had the scars to prove it:
Split purple lips, lumbed ears, welts above
His yellow eyes, and one long scar that cut
Across his temple and plowed through a thick
Canopy of kinky hair.

The WORD / was / that Hard Rock wasn’t a mean nigger
Anymore, that the doctors had bored a hole in his head,
Cut out part of his brain, and shot electricity
Through the rest. When they brought Hard Rock back,
Handcuffed and chained, he was turned loose,
Like a freshly gelded stallion, to try his new status.
And we all waited and watched, like a herd of sheep,
To see if the WORD was true.

As we waited we wrapped ourselves in the cloak
Of his exploits: “Man, the last time, it took eight
Screws to put him in the Hole.” “Yeah, remember when he
Smacked the captain with his dinner tray?” “He set
The record for time in the Hole—67 straight days!”
“Ol Hard Rock! man, that’s one crazy nigger.”
And then the jewel of a myth that Hard Rock had once bit
A screw on the thumb and poisoned him with syphilitic spit.

The testing came, to see if Hard Rock was really tame.
A hillbilly called him a black son of a bitch
And didn’t lose his teeth, a screw who knew Hard Rock
From before shook him down and barked in his face.
And Hard Rock did nothing. Just grinned and looked silly,
His eyes empty like knot holes in a fence.

And even after we discovered that it took Hard Rock
Exactly 3 minutes to tell you his first name,
We told ourselves that he had just wised up,
Was being cool; but we could not fool ourselves for long,
And we turned away, our eyes on the ground. Crushed.
He had been our Destroyer, the doer of things
We dreamed of doing but could not bring ourselves to do,
The fears of years, like a biting whip,
Had cut deep bloody grooves
Across our backs.

I looked up Ethridge Knight, what an interesting character. By the way, you win. Nobody is going to post a manlier poem than this.

 

[samanden]

I looked up Ethridge Knight, what an interesting character. By the way, you win. Nobody is going to post a manlier poem than this.

Indeed! When I saw this post, I knew I wanted to add this poem to the thread. Knight was part of an era of Black poetry in the 1960s that was very controversial for its militant, radical racial politics. This period in Black writing was also very problematic for its degradation of women. But still it made an important contribution to the African American literary tradition. So much so that when I teach students about the history of hip-hop music, I always include Knight and a few other Black Arts poets as stylistic and thematic forefathers to rap poetry. This poem in particular demonstrates well the irony of acts of crime and violence among Black men, which we continue to see in rap music today, and how violence was perceived in some communities as a political act of resistance. The last lines of the poem are particularly telling; these men feared and revered Hard Rock for his ability to stick it to the man. That fear and reverence of powerful violent men exists still today in many quarters of our society and across different cultural groups. I like this poem because, even though Knight is writing about a Black man living in Jim Crow, there is just something universal, I think, about a straight-up bad mo-fo.

 

[gamzultovah]

Indeed! When I saw this post, I knew I wanted to add this poem to the thread. Knight was part of an era of Black poetry in the 1960s that was very controversial for its militant, radical racial politics. This period in Black writing was also very problematic for its degradation of women. But still it made an important contribution to the African American literary tradition. So much so that when I teach students about the history of hip-hop music, I always include Knight and a few other Black Arts poets as stylistic and thematic forefathers to rap poetry. This poem in particular demonstrates well the irony of acts of crime and violence among Black men, which we continue to see in rap music today, and how violence was perceived in some communities as a political act of resistance. The last lines of the poem are particularly telling; these men feared and revered Hard Rock for his ability to stick it to the man. That fear and reverence of powerful violent men exists still today in many quarters of our society and across different cultural groups. I like this poem because, even though Knight is writing about a Black man living in Jim Crow, there is just something universal, I think, about a straight-up bad mo-fo.

Yes. And if you grew up in an inner city environment, there’s something very familiar about the entire theme of this poem. It crosses cultural lines because in every culture, amongst men, the strongest generally rise to the top. And in the inner city where poverty and ignorance run rampant (and hand in hand), so do the most daring and, the most violent. Thank you for your contribution and follow up. It sounds like you have an interesting career.

 

[Bengel]

​

"The Green Fields of the Mind "
It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops. Today, October 2, a Sunday of rain and broken branches and leaf-clogged drains and slick streets, it stopped, and summer was gone.

Somehow, the summer seemed to slip by faster this time. Maybe it wasn't this summer, but all the summers that, in this my fortieth summer, slipped by so fast. There comes a time when every summer will have something of autumn about it. Whatever the reason, it seemed to me that I was investing more and more in baseball, making the game do more of the work that keeps time fat and slow and lazy. I was counting on the game's deep patterns, three strikes, three outs, three times three innings, and its deepest impulse, to go out and back, to leave and to return home, to set the order of the day and to organize the daylight. I wrote a few things this last summer, this summer that did not last, nothing grand but some things, and yet that work was just camouflage. The real activity was done with the radio--not the all-seeing, all-falsifying television--and was the playing of the game in the only place it will last, the enclosed green field of the mind. There, in that warm, bright place, what the old poet called Mutability does not so quickly come.

But out here, on Sunday, October 2, where it rains all day, Dame Mutability never loses. She was in the crowd at Fenway yesterday, a gray day full of bluster and contradiction, when the Red Sox came up in the last of the ninth trailing Baltimore 8-5, while the Yankees, rain-delayed against Detroit, only needing to win one or have Boston lose one to win it all, sat in New York washing down cold cuts with beer and watching the Boston game. Boston had won two, the Yankees had lost two, and suddenly it seemed as if the whole season might go to the last day, or beyond, except here was Boston losing 8-5, while New York sat in its family room and put its feet up. Lynn, both ankles hurting now as they had in July, hits a single down the right-field line. The crowd stirs. It is on its feet. Hobson, third baseman, former Bear Bryant quarterback, strong, quiet, over 100 RBIs, goes for three breaking balls and is out. The goddess smiles and encourages her agent, a canny journeyman named Nelson Briles.

Now comes a pinch hitter, Bernie Carbo, onetime Rookie of the Year, erratic, quick, a shade too handsome, so laid-back he is always, in his soul, stretched out in the tall grass, one arm under his head, watching the clouds and laughing; now he looks over some low stuff unworthy of him and then, uncoiling, sends one out, straight on a rising line, over the center-field wall, no cheap Fenway shot, but all of it, the physics as elegant as the arc the ball describes.

New England is on its feet, roaring. The summer will not pass. Roaring, they recall the evening, late and cold, in 1975, the sixth game of the World Series, perhaps the greatest baseball game played in the last fifty years, when Carbo, loose and easy, had uncoiled to tie the game that Fisk would win. It is 8-7, one out, and school will never start, rain will never come, sun will warm the back of your neck forever. Now Bailey, picked up from the National League recently, big arms, heavy gut, experienced, new to the league and the club; he fouls off two and then, checking, tentative, a big man off balance, he pops a soft liner to the first baseman. It is suddenly darker and later, and the announcer doing the game coast to coast, a New Yorker who works for a New York television station, sounds relieved. His little world, well-lit, hot-combed, split-second-timed, had no capacity to absorb this much gritty, grainy, contrary reality.

Cox swings a bat, stretches his long arms, bends his back, the rookie from Pawtucket who broke in two weeks earlier with a record six straight hits, the kid drafted ahead of Fred Lynn, rangy, smooth, cool. The count runs two and two, Briles is cagey, nothing too good, and Cox swings, the ball beginning toward the mound and then, in a jaunty, wayward dance, skipping past Briles, feinting to the right, skimming the last of the grass, finding the dirt, moving now like some small, purposeful marine creature negotiating the green deep, easily avoiding the jagged rock of second base, traveling steady and straight now out into the dark, silent recesses of center field.

The aisles are jammed, the place is on its feet, the wrappers, the programs, the Coke cups and peanut shells, the doctrines of an afternoon; the anxieties, the things that have to be done tomorrow, the regrets about yesterday, the accumulation of a summer: all forgotten, while hope, the anchor, bites and takes hold where a moment before it seemed we would be swept out with the tide. Rice is up. Rice whom Aaron had said was the only one he'd seen with the ability to break his records. Rice the best clutch hitter on the club, with the best slugging percentage in the league. Rice, so quick and strong he once checked his swing halfway through and snapped the bat in two. Rice the Hammer of God sent to scourge the Yankees, the sound was overwhelming, fathers pounded their sons on the back, cars pulled off the road, households froze, New England exulted in its blessedness, and roared its thanks for all good things, for Rice and for a summer stretching halfway through October. Briles threw, Rice swung, and it was over. One pitch, a fly to center, and it stopped. Summer died in New England and like rain sliding off a roof, the crowd slipped out of Fenway, quickly, with only a steady murmur of concern for the drive ahead remaining of the roar. Mutability had turned the seasons and translated hope to memory once again. And, once again, she had used baseball, our best invention to stay change, to bring change on.

That is why it breaks my heart, that game--not because in New York they could win because Boston lost; in that, there is a rough justice, and a reminder to the Yankees of how slight and fragile are the circumstances that exalt one group of human beings over another. It breaks my heart because it was meant to, because it was meant to foster in me again the illusion that there was something abiding, some pattern and some impulse that could come together to make a reality that would resist the corrosion; and because, after it had fostered again that most hungered-for illusion, the game was meant to stop, and betray precisely what it promised.

Of course, there are those who learn after the first few times. They grow out of sports. And there are others who were born with the wisdom to know that nothing lasts. These are the truly tough among us, the ones who can live without illusion, or without even the hope of illusion. I am not that grown-up or up-to-date. I am a simpler creature, tied to more primitive patterns and cycles. I need to think something lasts forever, and it might as well be that state of being that is a game; it might as well be that, in a green field, in the sun.

From A Great and Glorious Game: Baseball Writings of A. Bartlett
Giamatti, © 1998 by A. Bartlett Giamatti.

 

[Bengel]

"Tell Ol' Bill"

The river whispers in my ear
I've hardly a penny to my name
The heavens have never seemed so near
All of my body glows with flame

The tempest struggles in the air
And to myself alone I sing
It could sink me then and there
I can hear the echoes ring

I tried to find one smiling face
To drive the shadow from my head
I'm stranded in this nameless place
Lying restless in a heavy bed

Tell me straight out if you will
Why must you torture me within?
Why must you come down off of your high hill?
Throw my fate to the clouds and wind

Far away in a silent land
Secret thoughts are hard to bear
Remember me, you'll understand
Emotions we can never share

You trampled on me as you passed
Left the coldest kiss upon my brow
All of my doubts and fears have gone at last
I've nothing more to tell you now

I walk by tranquil lakes and streams
As each new season's dawn awaits
I lay awake at night with troubled dreams
The enemy is at the gate

Beneath the thunder blasted trees
The words are ringin' off your tongue
The ground is hard in times like these
Stars are cold, the night is young

The rocks are bleak, the trees are bare
Iron clouds go floating by
Snowflakes fallin' in my hair
Beneath the gray and stormy sky

The evenin' sun is sinkin' low
The woods are dark, the town isn't new
They''ll drag you down, they'll run the show
Ain't no telling what they'll do

Tell ol' Bill when he comes home
Anything is worth a try
Tell him that I'm not alone
That the hour has come to do or die

All the world I would defy
Let me make it plain as day
I look at you now and I sigh
How could it be any other way?

​

​

 

[Python 357]

"There once was a man from Nantucket..."

 

[Hillcrest]

The Windhover​

Gerard Manley Hopkins - 1844-1889

I caught this morning morning's minion, king-
dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

 

[telescopes]

We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

 

[gamzultovah]

The Clod and the Pebble
William Blake

"Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair."

So sung a little Clod of Clay
Trodden with the cattle's feet,
But a Pebble of the brook
Warbled out these metres meet:

"Love seeketh only self to please,
To bind another to its delight,
Joys in another's loss of ease,
And builds a Hell in Heaven's despite."

 

[samanden]

Those Winter Sundays​

BY ROBERT HAYDEN

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

 

[Flatfish]

I don't like poetry, but I like this one.
Sums up the British blunder "the charge of the Light Brigade" quite well.
Brave people carrying out orders not knowing there had been a mistake.

 

[vosBghos]

And death shall have no dominion​

Dylan Thomas - 1914-1953

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And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.
And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.
And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.

 

[gamzultovah]

Those Winter Sundays​

BY ROBERT HAYDEN

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

Beautiful.

 

[samanden]

Beautiful.

Indeed! The lines, “What did I know, what did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices?” gets me every time. Whenever I read them I think, “I need to call my dad an apologize for when I was sometimes being such a little sh!+ growing up.” And then I hug my own kids.

 

[vosBghos]

Indeed! The lines, “What did I know, what did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices?” gets me every time. Whenever I read them I think, “I need to call my dad an apologize for when I was sometimes being such a little sh!+ growing up.” And then I hug my own kids.

I was a night janitor at a middle school between construction gigs and found this very poem in one of the classrooms on the floor , folded it up and now it sits on my desk, that line kills me every time too

 

[bluegrassbrian]

This is a favorite of mine. Not sure if it qualifies as "manly"...

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Thanks PonyBoy

 

[WhiteDevilPress]

I'll submit this one, not because it's a favorite, but because it addresses the website's orientation. Originally published in The Pipe Smoker's Ephemeris years ago. Looking back, I think my Irish was showing...

Smokechanty

Feed me the fumes of another day's weird,
my unmatched companion of briar.
I'll suckle, I'll coddle, I'll blaze you to dottle,
most innocent furnace of untold desire--
a mirage of contentment for a half-an-hour,
old friend, old servant, old min'ster of fire.

Invoking old days and the smokin' of clays,
the puff and the glow are my choir.
Recalling the land like the back o' my hand,
I'm joined to those reaches of stone
and smoke, for in your thrall no man's alone,
O kiln, crucible, censer, pyre.

Restore me the vision of a distant man
who stands at the far shore of life
and laughs and mocks and spurs me on
to the greater, the purer, the stronger and higher.
Yes, and soothe me as I take you in,
one lightheaded dragon o' breathing fire.

I'll stoke your bowl, refilling my soul
from the stock of what once was a man,
and light up the dark with the woman's spark,
as only her embers can; and in ashes expire
when that fire is no more.

But for now we've a bit more,
so kindle me, 'warden, embarking on clouds
where woman is sister to lightning's fire
and sanctity's aroma is brother briar's.​

 

[Bengel]

The Conflict of Convictions​

Herman Melville - 1819-1891

On starry heights

 A bugle wails the long recall;

Derision stirs the deep abyss,

 Heaven's ominous silence over all.

Return, return, O eager Hope,

 And face man's latter fall.

Events, they make the dreamers quail;

Satan's old age is strong and hale,

A disciplined captain, gray in skill,

And Raphael a white enthusiast still;

Dashed aims, at which Christ's martyrs pale,

Shall Mammon's slaves fulfill?
(Dismantle the fort,

 Cut down the fleet—
Battle no more shall be!
While the fields for fight in æons to come
Congeal beneath the sea.)


The terrors of truth and dart of death

 To faith alike are vain;

Though comets, gone a thousand years,

 Return again,

Patient she stands—she can no more—

And waits, nor heeds she waxes hoar.
(At a stony gate,
A statue of stone,
Weed overgrown—

 Long 'twill wait!)


But God his former mind retains,

 Confirms his old decree;

The generations are inured to pains,

 And strong Necessity

Surges, and heaps Time's strand with wrecks.

 The People spread like a weedy grass,

 The thing they will they bring to pass,

And prosper to the apoplex.

The rout it herds around the heart,

 The ghost is yielded in the gloom;

Kings wag their heads—Now save thyself

 Who wouldst rebuild the world in bloom.
(Tide-mark
And top of the ages' strike,
Verge where they called the world to come,
The last advance of life—
Ha ha, the rust on the Iron Dome!)

Nay, but revere the hid event;

 In the cloud a sword is girded on,

I mark a twinkling in the tent

 Of Michael the warrior one.

Senior wisdom suits not now,

The light is on the youthful brow.
(Ay, in caves the miner see:
His forehead bears a blinking light;
Darkness so he feebly braves—
A meagre wight!)


But He who rules is old—is old;

Ah! faith is warm, but heaven with age is cold.
(Ho ho, ho ho,
The cloistered doubt
Of olden times
Is blurted out!)

The Ancient of Days forever is young,

 Forever the scheme of Nature thrives;

I know a wind in purpose strong—

 It spins against the way it drives.

What if the gulfs their slimed foundations bare?

So deep must the stones be hurled

Whereon the throes of ages rear

The final empire and the happier world.
(The poor old Past,
The Future's slave,
She drudged through pain and crime
To bring about the blissful Prime,
Then—perished. There's a grave!)

Power unanointed may come—

Dominion (unsought by the free)

 And the Iron Dome,

Stronger for stress and strain,

Fling her huge shadow athwart the main;

But the Founders' dream shall flee.

Age after age shall be

As age after age has been,

(From man's changeless heart their way they win);

 And death be busy with all who strive—

Death, with silent negative.
YEA, AND NAY—
EACH HATH HIS SAY;
BUT GOD HE KEEPS THE MIDDLE WAY.
NONE WAS BY
WHEN HE SPREAD THE SKY;
WISDOM IS VAIN, AND PROPHESY.

 

[Briar Lee]

As my hair turns to silver, I'm more grateful every single day for my mother reading me dozens and dozens of poems as a child. Every one was from a 1939 Required Poems for the Elementary Grades in Missouri text book my grandfather bought her when she was 13. She'd memorized them all.

What a better place this old sin cussed world would be, if seventh and eighth graders still were privileged to learn poems like this in the public schools.

GOD, give us men!
A time like this demands
Strong minds, great hearts, true faith and ready hands;
Men whom the lust of office does not kill;
Men whom the spoils of office can not buy;
Men who possess opinions and a will;
Men who have honor; men who will not lie;
Men who can stand before a demagogue
And damn his treacherous flatteries without winking!
Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog
In public duty, and in private thinking;
For while the rabble, with their thumb-worn creeds,
Their large professions and their little deeds,
Mingle in selfish strife, lo! Freedom weeps,
Wrong rules the land and waiting Justice sleeps.
Josiah Gilbert Holland

 

[gamzultovah]

For our dear friends who have recently departed:

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
~ John Donne