Fresh Air Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: A BCDDEFGGDHDIJKLLMJND OJDPJQPFDHQQDQGRQGPR QQ QQQDQR DDSSSS DQGQTGLUDQD QDQD DQRQ PFV HDH QW DDQFP G XGQGQWRQRDRQYQGRRFDR QQ QQ QZZQQQDQ A Q R| I | A |
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| At the Poem Society a black haired man stands up to say | B |
| You make me sick with all your talk about restraint and mature talent | C |
| Haven t you ever looked out the window at a painting by Matisse | D |
| Or did you always stay in hotels where there were too many spiders crawling on your visages | D |
| Did you ever glance inside a bottle of sparkling pop | E |
| Or see a citizen split in two by the lightning | F |
| I am afraid you have never smiled at the hibernation | G |
| Of bear cubs except that you saw in it some deep relation | G |
| To human suffering and wishes oh what a bunch of crackpots | D |
| The black haired man sits down and the others shoot arrows at him | H |
| A blond man stands up and says | D |
| He is right Why should we be organized to defend the kingdom | I |
| Of dullness There are so many slimy people connected with poetry | J |
| Too and people who know nothing about it | K |
| I am not recommending that poets like each other and organize to fight them | L |
| But simply that lightning should strike them | L |
| Then the assembled mediocrities shot arrows at the blond haired man | M |
| The chairman stood up on the platform oh he was physically ugly | J |
| He was small limbed and boned and thought he was quite seductive | N |
| But he was bald with certain hideous black hairs | D |
| And his voice had the sound of water leaving a vaseline bathtub | O |
| And he said The subject for this evening s discussion is poetry | J |
| On the subject of love between swans And everyone threw candy hearts | D |
| At the disgusting man and they stuck to his bib and tucker | P |
| And he danced up and down on the platform in terrific glee | J |
| And recited the poetry of his little friends but the blond man stuck his head | Q |
| Out of a cloud and recited poems about the east and thunder | P |
| And the black haired man moved through the stratosphere chanting | F |
| Poems of the relationships between terrific prehistoric charcoal whales | D |
| And the slimy man with candy hearts sticking all over him | H |
| Wilted away like a cigarette paper on which the bumblebees have urinated | Q |
| And all the professors left the room to go back to their duty | Q |
| And all that were left in the room were five or six poets | D |
| And together they sang the new poem of the twentieth century | Q |
| Which though influenced by Mallarm Shelley Byron and Whitman | G |
| Plus a million other poets is still entirely original | R |
| And is so exciting that it cannot be here repeated | Q |
| You must go to the Poem Society and wait for it to happen | G |
| Once you have heard this poem you will not love any other | P |
| Once you have dreamed this dream you will be inconsolable | R |
| Once you have loved this dream you will be as one dead | Q |
| Once you have visited the passages of this time s great art | Q |
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| Oh to be seventeen years old | Q |
| Once again sang the red haired man and not know that poetry | Q |
| Is ruled with the sceptre of the dumb the deaf and the creepy | Q |
| And the shouting persons battered his immortal body with stones | D |
| And threw his primitive comedy into the sea | Q |
| From which it sang forth poems irrevocably blue | R |
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| Who are the great poets of our time and what are their names | D |
| Yeats of the baleful influence Auden of the baleful influence Eliot of the baleful influence | D |
| Is Eliot a great poet no one knows Hardy Stevens Williams is Hardy of our time | S |
| Hopkins is Hopkins of our time Rilke is Rilke of our time Lorca is Lorca of our time who is still of our time | S |
| Mallarm Val ry Apollinaire luard Reverdy French poets are still of our time | S |
| Pasternak and Mayakovsky is Jouve of our time | S |
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| Where are young poets in America they are trembling in publishing houses and universities | D |
| Above all they are trembling in universities they are bathing the library steps with their spit | Q |
| They are gargling out innocuous to whom poems about maple trees and their children | G |
| Sometimes they brave a subject like the Villa d Este or a lighthouse in Rhode Island | Q |
| Oh what worms they are they wish to perfect their form | T |
| Yet could not these young men put in another profession | G |
| Succeed admirably say at sailing a ship I do not doubt it Sir and I wish we could try them | L |
| A plane flies over the ship holding a bomb but perhaps it will not drop the bomb | U |
| The young poets from the universities are staring anxiously at the skies | D |
| Oh they are remembering their days on the campus when they looked up to watch birds excrete | Q |
| They are remembering the days they spent making their elegant poems | D |
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| Is there no voice to cry out from the wind and say what it is like to be the wind | Q |
| To be roughed up by the trees and to bring music from the scattered houses | D |
| And the stones and to be in such intimate relationship with the sea | Q |
| That you cannot understand it Is there no one who feels like a pair of pants | D |
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| Summer in the trees It is time to strangle several bad poets | D |
| The yellow hobbyhorse rocks to and fro and from the chimney | Q |
| Drops the Strangler The white and pink roses are slightly agitated by the struggle | R |
| But afterwards beside the dead poet they cuddle up comfortingly against their vase They are safer now no one will compare them to the sea | Q |
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| Here on the railroad train one more time is the Strangler | P |
| He is going to get that one there who is on his way to a poetry reading | F |
| Agh Biff A body falls to the moving floor | V |
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| In the football stadium I also see him | H |
| He leaps through the frosty air at the maker of comparisons | D |
| Between football and life and silently silently strangles him | H |
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| Here is the Strangler dressed in a cowboy suit | Q |
| Leaping from his horse to annihilate the students of myth | W |
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| The Strangler s ear is alert for the names of Orpheus | D |
| Cuchulain Gawain and Odysseus | D |
| And for poems addressed to Jane Austen F Scott Fitzgerald | Q |
| To Ezra Pound and to personages no longer living | F |
| Even in anyone s thoughts O Strangler the Strangler | P |
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| He lies on his back in the waves of the Pacific Ocean | G |
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| Supposing that one walks out into the air | X |
| On a fresh spring day and has the misfortune | G |
| To encounter an article on modern poetry | Q |
| In New World Writing or has the misfortune | G |
| To see some examples of some of the poetry | Q |
| Written by the men with their eyes on the myth | W |
| And the Missus and the midterms in the Hudson Review | R |
| Or if one is abroad in Botteghe Oscure | Q |
| Or indeed in Encounter what is one to do | R |
| With the rest of one s day that lies blasted to ruins | D |
| All bluely about one what is one to do | R |
| O surely one cannot complain to the President | Q |
| Nor even to the deans of Columbia College | Y |
| Nor to T S Eliot nor to Ezra Pound | Q |
| And supposing one writes to the Princess Caetani | G |
| Your poets are awful what good would it do | R |
| And supposing one goes to the Hudson Review | R |
| With a package of matches and sets fire to the building | F |
| One ends up in prison with trial subscriptions | D |
| To the Partisan Sewanee and Kenyon Review | R |
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| Sun out perhaps there is a reason for the lack of poetry | Q |
| In these ill contented souls perhaps they need air | Q |
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| Blue air fresh air come in I welcome you you are an art student | Q |
| Take off your cap and gown and sit down on the chair | Q |
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| Together we shall paint the poets but no air perhaps you should go to them quickly | Q |
| Give them a little inspiration they need it perhaps they are out of breath | Z |
| Give them a little inhuman company before they freeze the English language to death | Z |
| And rust their typewriters a little be sea air be noxious kill them if you must but stop their poetry | Q |
| I remember I saw you dancing on the surf on the C te d Azur | Q |
| And I stopped taking my hat off but you did not remember me | Q |
| Then afterwards you came to my room bearing a handful of orange flowers | D |
| And we were together all through the summer night | Q |
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| That we might go away together it is so beautiful on the sea there are a few white clouds in the sky | A |
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| But no air you must go Ah stay | Q |
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| But she has departed and Ugh what poisonous fu | R |
Kenneth Koch
(1)
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