GIVE AN EXAMPLE of the best writing you've ever read (page 6)

funkyderek

The opening sentence of Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess:

It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me.

diamondblue1974

My all time favourite book has to be Birdsong, Sabastien Faulks...absolutely amazing book....everyone should read it....

DB74

MegaDude

Viktor Frankl writing about his experiences in the concentration camps in "Man's Search For Meaning"

"Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom."

"It becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone. Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him -- mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp."

"A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth-that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and is love."

eye 23

I just love wordsworths poem about his son

I loved the boy with the utmost love of which my soul was capable

and he was taken away from me

and yet

in the agony of my spirit at surrendering such a treasure

I feel a thousand times richer

than if I had never possessed it.

a very personal poem for me.

eye 23

Pistoff

Not my favorite, but this is a good one:

(john prine)

Sam Stone came home,
To his wife and family
After serving in the conflict overseas.
And the time that he served,
Had shattered all his nerves,
And left a little shrapnel in his knee.
But the morphine eased the pain,
And the grass grew round his brain,
And gave him all the confidence he lacked,
With a Purple Heart and a monkey on his back.

Chorus:
There's a hole in daddy's arm where all the money goes,
Jesus Christ died for nothin' I suppose.
Little pitchers have big ears,
Don't stop to count the years,
Sweet songs never last too long on broken radios.
Mmm....

Sam Stone's welcome home
Didn't last too long.
He went to work when he'd spent his last dime
And Sammy took to stealing
When he got that empty feeling
For a hundred dollar habit without overtime.
And the gold rolled through his veins
Like a thousand railroad trains,
And eased his mind in the hours that he chose,
While the kids ran around wearin' other peoples' clothes...

Repeat Chorus:

Sam Stone was alone
When he popped his last balloon
Climbing walls while sitting in a chair
Well, he played his last request
While the room smelled just like death
With an overdose hovering in the air
But life had lost its fun
And there was nothing to be done
But trade his house that he bought on the G. I. Bill
For a flag draped casket on a local heroes' hill.

MerryMagdalene

I'm rather partial to Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and these lyrics from the song Cautionary Tale by Ian Gill (tijkmo):

I don't wanna be

Just a cautionary tale

To be the height of expectation

And then to see it fail

To dream the perfect dream

Then watch it fall apart

To be a sad and lonely victim

Of this thing we call a heart

What is this strange unfeeling muscle

That has the power to sacrifice

All that you believe in

Without hardly thinking twice...

~Merry

Vanderhoven7

Just read this tonight. Someone had posted an incomplete version and the author responded...

Update: from writer Suzanne Reynolds :

L This is my poem in its entirety..

*************************

SHE WAS BEAUTIFUL....

.... but she didn't know what that meant.

When she was a little girl

they told her she was beautiful

but it had no meaning

in her world of bicycles

and pigtails

and adventures in make-believe.

Later, she hoped she was beautiful

as boys started taking notice

of her friends

and phones rang for

Saturday night dates.

She felt beautiful on her wedding day,

hopeful with her

new life partner by her side

but, later,

when her children called

her beautiful,

she was often exhausted,

her hair messily tied back,

no make up,

wide in the waist

where it used to be narrow;

she just couldn't take it in.

Over the years, as she tried,

in fits and starts,

to look beautiful,

she found other things

to take priority,

like bills

and meals,

as she and her life partner

worked hard

to make a family,

to make ends meet,

to make children into adults,

to make a life.

Now,

she sat.

Alone.

Her children grown,

her partner flown,

and she couldn't remember

the last time

she was called beautiful.

But she was.

It was in every line on her face,

in the strength of her arthritic hands,

the ampleness that had

a million hugs imprinted

on its very skin,

and in the jiggly thighs and

thickened ankles

that had run her race for her.

She had lived her life with a loving

and generous heart,

had wrapped her arms

around so many to

to give them comfort and peace.

Her ears had

heard both terrible news

and lovely songs,

and her eyes

had brimmed with,

oh, so many tears,

they were now bright

even as they dimmed.

She had lived and she was.

And because she was,

she was made beautiful.

Photo credit: Nina Djerff

Model: Marit Rannveig Haslestad

road to nowhere

Old thread. ??"

" it was a dark and stormy night"......

Actually:

Siegfried Sasoon

ee cummings; maggie, millie, molly and may. "...a smooth round stone, as small as the world, as big as alone"

poem; anyone lived in a pretty how town

Many many Frost poems

Longfellow; Erotion. (if you can convince the search it is about a slave girl, not aboutheavy rain

Burns

Poe

road to nowhere

Post script

Mixed up poets, RL Stevenson;

HERE LIES EROTION

Mother and sire, to you do I commend
Tiny Erotion, who must now descend,
A child, among the shadows, and appear
Before hell's bandog and hell's gondolier.
Of six hoar winters she had felt the cold,
But lacked six days of being six years old.
Now she must come, all playful, to that place
Where the great ancients sit with reverend face;
Now lisping, as she used, of whence she came,
Perchance she names and stumbles at my name.
O'er these so fragile bones, let there be laid
A plaything for a turf; and for that maid
That ran so lightly footed in her mirth
Upon thy breast—lie lightly, mother earth!

←Of schooners, islands and maroons

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GIVE AN EXAMPLE of the best writing you've ever read

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