Seeking poems about personal anger
June 11, 2018 7:41 AM Subscribe
Looking for poems about anger/hatred focused on individuals, not large, systemic issues. The only one I can think of is "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister." I'm interested in high-quality literary poems, not doggerel, though humor is OK if it's well done. (Trying to write such a poem myself, and it's not going well.)
Best answer: How about A Just Anger by Marge Piercy?
posted by centrifugal at 8:05 AM on June 11, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by centrifugal at 8:05 AM on June 11, 2018 [1 favorite]
Best answer: 'The Book of my Enemy Has Been Remaindered', by Clive James
posted by rollick at 8:12 AM on June 11, 2018 [6 favorites]
posted by rollick at 8:12 AM on June 11, 2018 [6 favorites]
Best answer: Daddy
By Sylvia Plath
You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.
Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time——
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal
And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.
In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend
Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.
It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene
An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.
The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.
I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You——
Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.
You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who
Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.
But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look
And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I’m finally through.
The black telephone’s off at the root,
The voices just can’t worm through.
If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two——
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.
There’s a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.
Sylvia Plath, “Daddy” from Collected Poems. Copyright © 1960, 1965, 1971, 1981 by the Estate of Sylvia Plath. Editorial matter copyright © 1981 by Ted Hughes. Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
Source: Collected Poems (HarperCollins Publishers Inc, 1992)
posted by theora55 at 8:12 AM on June 11, 2018 [2 favorites]
By Sylvia Plath
You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.
Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time——
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal
And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.
In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend
Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.
It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene
An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.
The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.
I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You——
Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.
You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who
Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.
But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look
And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I’m finally through.
The black telephone’s off at the root,
The voices just can’t worm through.
If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two——
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.
There’s a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.
Sylvia Plath, “Daddy” from Collected Poems. Copyright © 1960, 1965, 1971, 1981 by the Estate of Sylvia Plath. Editorial matter copyright © 1981 by Ted Hughes. Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
Source: Collected Poems (HarperCollins Publishers Inc, 1992)
posted by theora55 at 8:12 AM on June 11, 2018 [2 favorites]
Best answer: I always loved this one: For the Ex-Wife on the Occasion of Her Birthday by Thomas P. Lynch
Also: How to Steal the Laptop of Your Childhood Nemesis by Eric McHenry
posted by dlugoczaj at 8:13 AM on June 11, 2018 [4 favorites]
Also: How to Steal the Laptop of Your Childhood Nemesis by Eric McHenry
posted by dlugoczaj at 8:13 AM on June 11, 2018 [4 favorites]
Best answer: This Be The Verse By Philip Larkin
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
The friend By Marge Piercy
We sat across the table.
he said, cut off your hands.
What’s That Smell in the Kitchen By Marge Piercy
All over America women are burning dinners.
posted by theora55 at 8:18 AM on June 11, 2018 [2 favorites]
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
The friend By Marge Piercy
We sat across the table.
he said, cut off your hands.
What’s That Smell in the Kitchen By Marge Piercy
All over America women are burning dinners.
posted by theora55 at 8:18 AM on June 11, 2018 [2 favorites]
Best answer:
On a very different note, Tom Wayman, "Did I Miss Anything?"
posted by brianogilvie at 8:37 AM on June 11, 2018
Rage—Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles,(From Robert Fagles's translation.)
murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,
hurling down to the House of Death many sturdy souls,
great fighters' souls, but made their bodies carrion,
feasts for the dogs and the birds,
and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end.
Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed,
Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles.
On a very different note, Tom Wayman, "Did I Miss Anything?"
posted by brianogilvie at 8:37 AM on June 11, 2018
Best answer: "A Poison Tree"
By William Blake
I was angry with my friend;
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
And I waterd it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears:
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.
And it grew both day and night.
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine.
And into my garden stole,
When the night had veild the pole;
In the morning glad I see;
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.
posted by MonkeyToes at 8:42 AM on June 11, 2018
By William Blake
I was angry with my friend;
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
And I waterd it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears:
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.
And it grew both day and night.
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine.
And into my garden stole,
When the night had veild the pole;
In the morning glad I see;
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.
posted by MonkeyToes at 8:42 AM on June 11, 2018
Response by poster: Thanks everyone . Just to clarify, when I say not systemic issues, I also mean I'm not looking for political poems.
posted by FencingGal at 10:03 AM on June 11, 2018
posted by FencingGal at 10:03 AM on June 11, 2018
Best answer: Roman writers were bored as hell and did this sort of thing for fun. Martial's epigrams have loads, often with a sexual (or just sexist) bent:
Rumor tells, Chiona, that you are a virgin,
and that nothing is purer than your fleshy delights.
Nevertheless, you do not bathe with the correct part covered:
if you have the decency, move your panties onto your face.
I felt a little ill and called Dr. Symmachus.
Well, you came, Symmachus, but you brought 100 medical students with you.
One hundred ice-cold hands poked and jabbed me.
I didn't have a fever, Symmachus, when I called you –but now I do.
Worth digging through them. (Some will inevitably be political - if you mean concerned with the political figures and structures of their time. In a broader sense you might consider every poem political?)
posted by Ted Maul at 10:12 AM on June 11, 2018
Rumor tells, Chiona, that you are a virgin,
and that nothing is purer than your fleshy delights.
Nevertheless, you do not bathe with the correct part covered:
if you have the decency, move your panties onto your face.
I felt a little ill and called Dr. Symmachus.
Well, you came, Symmachus, but you brought 100 medical students with you.
One hundred ice-cold hands poked and jabbed me.
I didn't have a fever, Symmachus, when I called you –but now I do.
Worth digging through them. (Some will inevitably be political - if you mean concerned with the political figures and structures of their time. In a broader sense you might consider every poem political?)
posted by Ted Maul at 10:12 AM on June 11, 2018
Response by poster: In a broader sense you might consider every poem political
Don't want to threadsit, but answering since this is a question. Yes, in a broader sense, every poem is political. So maybe I should say not overtly political? I don't want poems about people who are angered by laws or systemic injustice, sexism, racism, etc. Those are all great subjects for poems - just not what I'm looking for right now.
It's hard to draw a precise line in some cases. If someone is angry at a person who happens to be a politician who, say, cheated on her, that would be fine. If someone is angry because of the way that politician voted, not so much. If a woman is angry because a specific man was shitty to her, yes. If she's angry because women in general are treated in a shitty way by society - again, totally legitimate, but not what I want right now.
I hope that clears it up a bit - I get that this isn't always a clear differentiation.
posted by FencingGal at 10:34 AM on June 11, 2018
Don't want to threadsit, but answering since this is a question. Yes, in a broader sense, every poem is political. So maybe I should say not overtly political? I don't want poems about people who are angered by laws or systemic injustice, sexism, racism, etc. Those are all great subjects for poems - just not what I'm looking for right now.
It's hard to draw a precise line in some cases. If someone is angry at a person who happens to be a politician who, say, cheated on her, that would be fine. If someone is angry because of the way that politician voted, not so much. If a woman is angry because a specific man was shitty to her, yes. If she's angry because women in general are treated in a shitty way by society - again, totally legitimate, but not what I want right now.
I hope that clears it up a bit - I get that this isn't always a clear differentiation.
posted by FencingGal at 10:34 AM on June 11, 2018
Best answer: Prayer for the Man Who Mugged My Father, 72, by Charles Harper Webb
posted by Iris Gambol at 2:11 PM on June 11, 2018 [5 favorites]
posted by Iris Gambol at 2:11 PM on June 11, 2018 [5 favorites]
Would expressions of rage from ancient poetry be helpful, or not so much?
posted by clawsoon at 4:25 PM on June 11, 2018
posted by clawsoon at 4:25 PM on June 11, 2018
Response by poster: Ancient poetry is great if you’ve got it.
Also Iris Gambol, holy shit. That made me gasp!
posted by FencingGal at 5:40 PM on June 11, 2018 [1 favorite]
Also Iris Gambol, holy shit. That made me gasp!
posted by FencingGal at 5:40 PM on June 11, 2018 [1 favorite]
Most of the ancient stuff that I'm familiar with is the "heroic rage" of men raging before, during or after battle about some slight to their honour or injustice to avenge. I'm having less luck finding examples than finding essays about examples (rage in the Iliad, rage in Beowulf, etc.).
Apologies - I thought I'd be more helpful with that suggestion.
posted by clawsoon at 5:15 AM on June 12, 2018
Apologies - I thought I'd be more helpful with that suggestion.
posted by clawsoon at 5:15 AM on June 12, 2018
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posted by Logophiliac at 7:44 AM on June 11, 2018 [1 favorite]