http://www.sojust.net/poetry.html

Color, Cast, Denomination
by Emily Dickinson
1864

Color — Caste — Denomination —
These — are Time’s Affair —
Death’s diviner Classifying
Does not know they are —

As in sleep — All Hue forgotten —
Tenets — put behind —
Death’s large — Democratic fingers
Rub away the Brand —

If Circassian — He is careless —
If He put away
Chrysalis of Blonde — or Umber —
Equal Butterfly —

They emerge from His Obscuring —
What Death — knows so well —
Our minuter intuitions —
Deem unplausible —

What I never thought I’d have
Revealed by wearing  M.S tops
A cleavage

Now modest dressing is in vogue
I’ll fear no  more exposure now
In dotage

I never try on clothes I  buy
But usually  I just get by
Unravaged

As I was thin as a birch tree
I never learned to watch my self
In mirrors

About the fall, I never knew the cost
Nor where the people went when they were lost
The group survived by building their own God
With his words,  they worshipped as they  left
He was given to serving them with texts
Written into rocks and sand they trod
About the Fall.

In early days God was a Father  proud
Given to punishment,even death allowed
A goat was killed and they each saw the blood
Reminding them ,the mortal, how we’re pruned
Like bonsai trees, the size and shape  are wound
God could do such things,it seems he did
It was in Fall

Supernatural,  fierce and finely tuned
Yet the sins of human beings ever loomed
Until his own son hung from unblessed wood
The curse of Cain.Bathsheba understood
In her mind she saw how evil’s good
The devil riding bareback was her groom
Teaching her the spells of whip and womb
It was the Fall

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartesian_theater

The beginning:

“Cartesian theater” is a derisive term coined by philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett to refer pointedly to a defining aspect of what he calls Cartesian materialism, which he considers to be the often unacknowledged remnants of Cartesian dualism in modern materialist theories of the mind.

Overview

Descartes originally claimed that consciousness requires an immaterial soul, which interacts with the body via the pineal gland of the brain. Dennett says that, when the dualism is removed, what remains of Descartes’ original model amounts to imagining a tiny theater in the brain where a homunculus (small person), now physical, performs the task of observing all the sensory data projected on a screen at a particular instant, making the decisions and sending out commands (cf. the homunculus argument).

The term “Cartesian theater” was brought up in the context of the multiple drafts model that Dennett posits in Consciousness Explained (1991):

Cartesian materialism is the view that there is a crucial finish line or boundary somewhere in the brain, marking a place where the order of arrival equals the order of “presentation” in experience because what happens there is what you are conscious of. … Many theorists would insist that they have explicitly rejected such an obviously bad idea. But … the persuasive imagery of the Cartesian Theater keeps coming back to haunt us—laypeople and scientists alike—even after its ghostly dualism has been denounced and exorcized.

— Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained [p.107, original emphasis.]^[1]

See also

• Circular reasoning

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umwelt

 umwelt (plural: umwelten; from the German Umwelt meaning “environment” or “surroundings”) is the “biological foundations that lie at the very epicenter of the study of both communication and signification in the human [and non-human] animal”.[1] The term is usually translated as “self-centered world”.^[2] Uexküll theorised that organisms can have different umwelten, even though they share the same environment. The subject of umwelt and Uexküll’s work is described by Dorion Sagan in an introduction to a collection of translations.[3] The term umwelt, together with companion terms Umgebung(an Umwelt as seen by another observer) and Innenwelt (the mapping of the self to the world of objects)^[4], have special relevance for cognitive philosophers, roboticists and cyberneticians, since they offer a solution to the conundrum of the infinite regress of the Cartesian Theater.

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poems?field_poem_themes_tid=1651

The Soul selects her own Society —
Then — shuts the Door —
To her divine Majority —
Present no more —

Unmoved — she notes the Chariots — pausing —
At her low Gate —
Unmoved — an Emperor be kneeling
Upon her Mat —

I’ve known her — from an ample nation —
Choose One —
Then — close the Valves of her attention —
Like Stone —

c. 1862

From a newspaper but I can’t remember.Now laugh

Please come to my thinner party this week.Water provided
When we lose weight we can eat a chocolate biscuit twice a year.Is it worth it?
What can we eat while fasting? Nothing! I say, that’s a bit steep.How about  bread and water? Or even just water?
Do your roast beside  your husband? Buy our nightwear, cool and invisible and thrill him to  a  near death experience while you sleep in our tiny bikini like pyjamas.
I plead guilty to kissing my husband before and after he died.I don’t care if it was a  crime; it wasn’t a sin.That is what matters,
I doubt if I would marry again as men don’t like  me laughing  while I am asleep.They take it personally.Always a  mistake.I  admit my husband’s  rubber face gave me hysterics in a dream.Is that bad? Was he to blame?What is blame? To assume everything has a cause and it might be me [I]  or you.

“When you talk about prayer in Judeo-Christian terms, prayer is usually construed as a kind of dualistic act. You’re praying to somebody else for something. Prayer in the Western sense is usually construed as making a connection. I don’t think that connection has to be made; it’s already there. Poetry probably has to do with the recognizing of that connection, rather than trying to create something that isn’t there.”

W S Merwin

Can you come round for a feel on Sunday?
Can I bring my flamingo?
Sartre is smarter
Are you showing any resistance on Saturday?
What do you make for sinners  on Sundays ?
His food is defectable and his drinks are on tap
Do you like  whips and flesh on  Fridays?
Shall we sin together in the choir?
How many lovers have you broken even with?
Shall I bring a DVD or is it DIY only?
What music do you lark to?
How barge is your TV?
I felt a surge of hatred when Enoch Powell  appeared in a dream,Is it a sin?
What is a sin now ? Anything or nothing?

I have been making a shorter edition of my book so I can sell it cheaply. That is £6.99 instead of £39.99.It’s all about page sizes and the price of printing.I will only get 38 pence per copy so I shall raise tzhe price in a week or two as I am not a Charity yet,Unlike Eton

I lie back in the weather-proofed green chair
To gaze up at the flowering maple tree.
Now, touched by sun,lungs full of scented air
I embrace with joy the beauty I now see.

Old celandine show brightly by my feet
Neglected currant bushes straggle round the path
There is no birdsong yet a silence sweet
Soothes my heart and quietens my wrath.

For my heart's sore and anguished is my mind
Yet in this little wood I feel deep calm.
My eyes are shadowed and my face is lined.
May this green spring bring me a gentle balm.

For even in depression and deep grief,
The mind makes healing medicine of a leaf.

http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/p-as_docs/PoetryandProse.pdf

An extract

“Poetry and Prose: What’s the Difference?
Nearly all writing shares the goal of communicating a message to an
audience, but how that message is communicated can differ greatly.
The divisions between poetry and prose aren’t clear-cut, but here are some
generally accepted differences.
Prose
Most everyday writing is in prose
form.
The language of prose is typically
straightforward without much
decoration.
Ideas are contained in sentences that
are arranged into paragraphs.
There are no line breaks. Sentences
run to the right margin.
The first word of each sentence is
capitalized.
Prose looks like large blocks of
words.

 
Poetry
Poetry is typically reserved for
expressing something special in an
artistic way.
The language of poetry tends to be
more expressive or decorated, with
comparisons, rhyme, and rhythm
contributing to a different sound and
feel.
Ideas are contained in lines that may
or may not be sentences. Lines are
arranged in stanzas.
Poetry uses line breaks for various
reasons—to follow a formatted
rhythm or to emphasize an idea.
Lines can run extremely long or be as
short as one word or letter.”

We hold  minnow parties now and then but with women working it’s too much
He said he had  a tart desire.
Do you  know rice screams?
We meet for toffee after math.
He loved Eve’s pudding more than mine
He followed me all over the net, so now the windows are bare
Did you ask for my hand or an elastic band?
She led me a merry dance all over the moon on its beams
I saw her heart was smoking.I wondered whether to shoot her but my camera was  flat
She was well spoken apart from saying “scuttle my badger” now and then
We live a part.We are actors.
Why have King Lear on Match of the Day?
Richard the Bird has always fascinated people.But he’s dead!

Dandruff, menstruation ,acne , scent
Deodorants,shampoo  and strange new thoughts
The anxious adolescent  in torment

Tampons,towels. skin care and defence
Confession, absolution, count for naught
Dandruff, menstruation ,acne , scent

Wet and dry the dreams are wryly bent
We wake confused from what we never sought
The anxious adolescent  in torment

The virtues and the vices must be learnt
The will and the desire cannot be bought
Dandruff, menstruation ,acne , scent

Parents’ words our own strength can augment
But for the nervous, it is much too late
The anxious adolescent,  the torment

“Civilised”. we  might just kiss a date
Until we lose our heads and challenge fate
Dandruff, menstruation ,acne , scent
Poor  adolescent in   this  mad torment

Who are you?
Your sister out-law.

And who are you?
I’n the even job man

I’m the pardoner.

I’m the Parish beast

I’m the Kill it

I’m the polouse man

I’m the gatden know ’em

I’m your Freudian angel from Devon

I am your psychotic   analyst

I’ m the pests cat

I am the  brother with paws

I’m the cat’s lover

I’m  wit when wined

I am Professor Blackhead and  this is my strife Whistle

I am a  logical terror

I am Ted, you?

I shall now reveal the new proof
Mathematics is a religion in truth
For nothing is  not zero
Unless Newton says so
And Leibniz  swore oaths on his roof

Mathematical objects all float
Around the demon who sails the big boat
If  you have no faith
They leave little trace
Like Father Xmas and fairies   sweet notes

Numbers are abstract  and shady
And God is a very sweet lady
I saw seven eggs
And a cat with no legs
I reckon I ‘ll soon have gone crazy

I was taught to read Latin and Greek
Before I  had managed to speak
Quo vadis ,I printed?
As mother had hinted
The lavatory needed a new seat

I prefered getting washed in a bucket
Till I swore and told mother to feck it
She said, you are no longer mute
And you look  very cute
But keep well away from  light sockets

Our larder was full of baked  tarts
Mother taught me the  best of her art
Apple,fig and lemon
But never a melon
Unless you get sad in your heart

We never had coffee at home
We drank tea or the washing up foam,
So when I went to Uni
The coffee ran through me
And wetted a mathematical tome

http://www.thehypertexts.com/Best%20Nonsense%20Verse.htm

There was an Old Man with a beard,
Who said, “It is just as I feared!
Two Owls and a Hen,
Four Larks and a Wren,
Have all built their nests in my beard!”
—Edward Lear

Quite a miracle this morning.
I  just missed the bus
Well,I thought I can sit  down for 15  minutes but even before I reahed the stop
I saw another one coming.
So I held my hand out and they let me on
I was listening to a woman in the Coffee Shop then I felt a  bit odd so I decided I had had some exercise  and sunshine and the bookshop was not  inviting
I went to the bus stop and saw my bus waas due in one minute!
I was whirled up into this  chariot of fire and here I am back home wondering what went so right today.
I know it’s chance but some days it’s all one way and others it’s like this
I call it “walking in tune with the rhythm  of the world” or in this case
Moving in rhythm with the buses of the city.

N

“Shyness is just egotism out of its depth,” Penelope Keith once told an interviewer – a line the writer Sadie Stein credits with curing her own shyness. “For some reason, the unequivocal harshness of that quote was what I needed,” Stein wrote. “OK, I thought… No one is looking at you; to think they are is the worst form of solipsism.”

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/m/mendelson-auden.html?scp=28&sq=father%2527s+day+gift&st=cse

This is  an extract

Demon or Gift

In his first days in New York Auden felt a new sense of liberation and power. He arrived in the harbor with Christopher Isherwood on 26 January 1939, in the dead of winter, while a light snow disfigured the public statues. During their voyage, he and Isherwood had spoken aloud for the first time of their disaffection with the mass political movements they had hoped to serve with their poetry and plays. Three days after their arrival, the news came that W. B. Yeats had died at seventy-three. Auden, who was not yet thirty-two, had left England with the half-formed resolution that he would begin his career anew in a new country. He now wrote a memorable and audacious poem on the death of Yeats in which he proclaimed the rebirth of poetry and foresaw in the heroic labors of a living poet the renewal of the world.

Two ideas of poetry contend against each other in “In Memory of W. B. Yeats.” The opening section, with its solemn, meditative, unrhymed verse paragraphs, acknowledges that the most a poet can achieve in the world is to be remembered by his admirers. The closing section, with its drumbeat stanzas and soaring visionary rhetoric, celebrates poetic language as a force more powerful than time or death, and glorifies the poet as a source of sustenance, healing, and rejoicing. The closing argument wins this debate, but the ironies and doubts insinuated by the opening one remain unanswered.

The first published version of the poem drew an absolute contrast between the dying impotence of the poet and the reviving power of verse. This version—it appeared in The New Republic, 8 March 1939—was not yet the poem familiar from Auden’s books: the opening and closing sections had almost reached their final form, but the quietly discursive middle section, where “poetry makes nothing happen” and “Ireland has her madness and her weather still,” had not yet been written.

The opening section transforms traditional elegy into a bleak new mode:

He disappeared in the dead of winter:
The brooks were frozen, the air-ports almost deserted,
And snow disfigured the public statues;
The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.

The metaphors point to a world where facts may be counted or measured or reported in news bulletins, where neither poetry nor metaphor is any use. In English elegies, until Auden wrote this one, nature itself mourned the dead while an exclamatory “O” announced the personal grief of the elegist. In Milton’s “Lycidas,” for example:”