|
Post by lola on Mar 6, 2010 18:12:32 GMT
Missouri has a new Poet Laureate, our second 2 year termer. I don't know him, though he teaches at a U up the road a-ways. I feel lucky to count poets, including some of you, among my acquaintance.
An excerpt from "New Year's Eve Letter to Friends" by David Clewell
It used to be the world was so small You could walk out to the end of it and back in a single day. Now it seems to take all year to make it mostly back. And so this is for my friends all over: a new year. Year the longshot comes home. The year letters pour in, full of the good word that never got as far as you before. The year lovers come to know a good thing When they find it in the press of familiar flesh. Walk out onto the planet tonight. Even the moon is giving back your share of borrowed light and you take it back, in the name of everything you can't take back in your life. Imagine yourself filling with it, letting yourself go and floating through the skeleton trees to your place at the top of the sky.
|
|
|
Post by bixaorellana on Mar 6, 2010 18:22:11 GMT
Absolutely beautiful. I felt that prickle almost of tears reading "Even the moon [etc.]".
Lola, lovely muse, I'm sure the poets feel the same about you.
|
|
|
Post by lola on Mar 6, 2010 18:56:07 GMT
You are way too kind, bixa. I did have a poem written about me once, though, a nice short one, like one sentence. I'll look for it.
|
|
|
Post by hwinpp on Mar 10, 2010 10:10:01 GMT
What? You had a poem dedicated to you and you can't remember it by heart? Imagine what the guy put into it!!!
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Mar 10, 2010 13:08:34 GMT
Oh that reminds me; somebody wrote a poem about me once. I wonder what I did with it.
|
|
|
Post by lola on Mar 10, 2010 14:27:12 GMT
The guy who wrote mine was a friend and neighbor, not a sweetheart or anything. I thought he was an ancient old man at the time. I can remember the words of the poem, hw, but not the title or the punctuation. Something like:
In the Quiet Heart of the Universe by Bob Dyer
Somewhere In the quiet heart of the universe You sit, Sewing leaves together Talking to the bees.
Okay, k, now yours.
|
|
|
Post by bixaorellana on Mar 10, 2010 15:51:58 GMT
Oh, Lola ~~ you must have been stunned by that lovely, lovely poem. What an exquisite tribute.
|
|
|
Post by lola on Mar 10, 2010 17:54:30 GMT
I should have been stunned, bixa. I think at the time my reaction was more along the lines of "Oh, that's nice."
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Apr 6, 2010 11:08:00 GMT
The Saints of April by Todd Davis
Coltsfoot gives way to dandelions,cherry, plum to apple blossom. Fills our woods,white petals melting like the last late snow. Dogwood's stigmata shine with the blood of this season. How holy forsythia and redbud are as they consume their own flowers,green leaves running down their crowns. Here is the shapeliness of bodies newly formed,the rich cloth that covers frail bones and hides roots that hold fervently to this dark earth.
|
|
|
Post by tillystar on Jun 19, 2010 8:52:40 GMT
When you wake tomorrow - Brian Patten
I will give you a poem when you wake tomorrow. It will be a peaceful poem. It won’t make you sad. It won’t make you miserable. It will simply be a poem to give you When you wake tomorrow.
It was not written by myself alone. I cannot lay claim to it. I found it in your body. In your smile I found it. Will you recognise it?
You will find it under your pillow. When you open the cupboard it will be there. You will blink in astonishment, Shout out, ‘How it trembles! Its nakedness is startling! How fresh it tastes!’
We will have it for breakfast; On a table lit by loving, At a place reserved for wonder. We will give the world a kissing open When we wake tomorrow.
We will offer it to the sad landlord out on the balcony. To the dreamers at the window. To the hand waving for no particular reason We will offer it. An amazing and most remarkable thing, We will offer it to the whole human race Which walks in us When we wake tomorrow.
|
|
|
Post by palesa on Jun 19, 2010 10:17:14 GMT
I really like that Tilly! Thank you for sharing.
|
|
|
Post by bixaorellana on Jun 19, 2010 14:28:40 GMT
That is a truly wonderful poem, Tilly. Thank you.
|
|
|
Post by cigalechanta on Jun 19, 2010 15:06:29 GMT
The Look by Sara Teasdale
Strephon kissed me in the spring, Robin in the fall, But Colin only looked at me And never kissed at all.
Strephon's kiss was lost in jest, Robin's lost in play, But the kiss in Colin's eyes Haunts me night and day.
|
|
|
Post by bixaorellana on Jun 21, 2010 1:06:23 GMT
Thanks, Cigalechanta. Speaks volumes, as they say.
|
|
|
Post by tillystar on Jun 21, 2010 8:19:01 GMT
It gave me goosebumps!
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 21, 2010 15:52:53 GMT
Grazie,C.!!! ( nice to see you btw )
|
|
|
Post by patricklondon on Jul 26, 2010 18:09:19 GMT
This was quoted in a new TV sitcom (about an inner city vicar) the other day:
Fanfare For The Makers by Louis MacNeice
A cloud of witnesses. To whom? To what? To the small fire that never leaves the sky. To the great fire that boils the daily pot.
To all the things we are not remembered by, Which we remember and bless. To all the things That will not notice when we die,
Yet lend the passing moment words and wings.
*
So fanfare for the Makers: who compose A book of words or deeds who runs may write As many who do run, as a family grows
At times like sunflowers turning towards the light. As sometimes in the blackout and the raids One joke composed an island in the night.
As sometimes one man’s kindness pervades A room or house or village, as sometimes Merely to tighten screws or sharpen blades
Can catch a meaning, as to hear the chimes At midnight means to share them, as one man In old age plants an avenue of limes
And before they bloom can smell them, before they span The road can walk beneath the perfected arch, The merest greenprint when the lives began
Of those who walk there with him, as in default Of coffee men grind acorns, as in despite Of all assaults conscripts counter assault,
As mothers sit up late night after night Moulding a life, as miners day by day Descend blind shafts, as a boy may flaunt his kite
In an empty nonchalant sky, as anglers play Their fish, as workers work and can take pride In spending sweat before they draw their pay.
As horsemen fashion horses while they ride, As climbers climb a peak because it is there, As life can be confirmed even in suicide:
To make is such. Let us make. And set the weather fair.
|
|
|
Post by alanseago on Jul 26, 2010 20:14:49 GMT
The Look by Sara Teasdale Strephon kissed me in the spring, Robin in the fall, But Colin only looked at me And never kissed at all. Strephon's kiss was lost in jest, Robin's lost in play, But the kiss in Colin's eyes Haunts me night and day. Oh Yes, Oh Yes Beautiful.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Jul 26, 2010 20:48:44 GMT
Well, thank you to patricklondon, even if his poem was less emotionally intense, for bringing someone back to this thread, if only to appreciate the poem posted by cigalechanta. I particularly liked this part of your poem, patrick: And yet, as I have said more than once, I am allergic to poetry.
|
|
|
Post by bixaorellana on Jul 26, 2010 22:20:33 GMT
Intense -- no? Certainly profound. How lovely that someone was able to slot it into a place where it would be introduced to people who might otherwise avoid poetry. If ever a the early death of someone was a loss for literature, it was the death of Louis MacNeice. Many of you might enjoy this site, which features poets reading their own work: www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=1559
|
|
|
Post by lola on Aug 4, 2010 1:30:20 GMT
Here's one of my brother's I happened upon, from his college days I guess. I'd be tempted to tinker with the last line.
Crinoid #1 By Peter Stokely
When drawing the threads of time’s stuff together The woof through the warp, the humming shuttle Sticks, catches and wavers, hesitates: It is about to… But it pauses yet, Listens to the cold trickle of a glacier melting The cosmic drone of field filled with weeds and bees, Smiles, And steps in to the light. Stop when the loom of time breaks down. See if you can sense Irregularities in the texture of the fabric of our days.
|
|
|
Post by bixaorellana on Aug 4, 2010 4:25:10 GMT
I hope you're happy, Lola! It's a lovely poem, but the word "tinker" set me off.
|
|
|
Post by cigalechanta on Aug 5, 2010 19:20:47 GMT
My dog has died. I buried him in the garden next to a rusted old machine.
Some day I'll join him right there, but now he's gone with his shaggy coat, his bad manners and his cold nose, and I, the materialist, who never believed in any promised heaven in the sky for any human being, I believe in a heaven I'll never enter. Yes, I believe in a heaven for all dogdom where my dog waits for my arrival waving his fan-like tail in friendship.
Ai, I'll not speak of sadness here on earth, of having lost a companion who was never servile. His friendship for me, like that of a porcupine withholding its authority, was the friendship of a star, aloof, with no more intimacy than was called for, with no exaggerations: he never climbed all over my clothes filling me full of his hair or his mange, he never rubbed up against my knee like other dogs obsessed with sex.
No, my dog used to gaze at me, paying me the attention I need, the attention required to make a vain person like me understand that, being a dog, he was wasting time, but, with those eyes so much purer than mine, he'd keep on gazing at me with a look that reserved for me alone all his sweet and shaggy life, always near me, never troubling me, and asking nothing.
Ai, how many times have I envied his tail as we walked together on the shores of the sea in the lonely winter of Isla Negra where the wintering birds filled the sky and my hairy dog was jumping about full of the voltage of the sea's movement: my wandering dog, sniffing away with his golden tail held high, face to face with the ocean's spray.
Joyful, joyful, joyful, as only dogs know how to be happy with only the autonomy of their shameless spirit.
There are no good-byes for my dog who has died, and we don't now and never did lie to each other.
So now he's gone and I buried him, and that's all there is to it.
Pablo Neruda
|
|
|
Post by bixaorellana on Aug 5, 2010 23:41:58 GMT
Cigalechanta, I'm going to admit right here that I quickly scrolled past that poem. I know it and love it, but as soon as I read the first couple of lines and realized what it was, I decided to spare myself the tears and nose-blowing this time.
|
|
|
Post by patricklondon on Aug 7, 2010 19:32:20 GMT
In Britain the Royal Mail has announced it is no longer going to include county names in postal addresses, but just use the more prosaic, but precise, postcode on its own. Among the comments in my paper today is this from our Poet Laureate (Carol Ann Duffy, who am I increasingly thinking is a thoroughly good thing):
The counties
But I want to write to an Essex girl,
greeting her warmly.
But I want to write to a Shropshire lad,
brave boy, home from the army,
and I want to write to the Lincolnshire Poacher
to hear of his hare
and to an aunt in Bedfordshire
who makes a wooden hill of her stair.
But I want to post a rose to a Lancashire lass,
red, I'll pick it,
and I want to write to a Middlesex mate
for tickets for cricket.
But I want to write to the Ayrshire cheesemaker
and his good cow
and it is my duty to write to the Queen at Berkshire
in praise of Slough.
But I want to write to the National Poet of Wales at Ceredigion
in celebration
and I want to write to the Dorset Giant
in admiration
and I want to write to a widow in Rutland
in commiseration
and to the Inland Revenue in Yorkshire
in desperation.
But I want to write to my uncle in Clackmannanshire
in his kilt
and to my scrumptious cousin in Somerset
with her cidery lilt.
But I want to write to two ladies in Denbighshire,
near Llangollen
and I want to write to a laddie in Lanarkshire,
Dear Lachlan …
But I want to write to the Cheshire Cat,
returning its smile.
But I want to write the names of the Counties down
for my own child
and may they never be lost to her …
all the birds of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire...
[PS: there are no prizes, but a great sense of self-satisfaction, if you can identify the poetic references!]
|
|
|
Post by bixaorellana on Aug 7, 2010 19:58:23 GMT
A literary love-poem to her country from the Poet Laureate -- how perfect!
(I didn't get anywhere near all the references, but now finally know how to say Slough!)
|
|
|
Post by tillystar on Aug 8, 2010 7:45:08 GMT
Oh I love that poem!
|
|
|
Post by patricklondon on Aug 11, 2010 20:50:41 GMT
I was noticing only last night how the daylight hours are growing noticeably shorter again, and in the tube this morning I saw this, by the National Poet of Wales, Gillian Clarke:
Ode to Joy (it fits Beethoven's melody, by the way):
Exultation! Salutation to the long midsummer days, to the light lost by the minute, sing, and sing the dark away.
In the park the lovers listen, blackbird's last song of the day. Bats are scribbling verse on twilight. Owls are calling, Kyrie.
Soon, a gathering of swallows, like a stanza on a wire, voices rising in crescendo. in hall and stadium and choir.
In the theatre of summer, stars ascending in their arc, company and conversation. Sing, and sing away the dark!
|
|
|
Post by bixaorellana on Aug 11, 2010 23:50:45 GMT
Wonderful, exalting-to-the-spirit poem! I started it w/Beethoven, then wisely dropped that in order to enjoy it more. I can't pick out favorite lines because I love it all.
|
|
|
Post by lola on Aug 12, 2010 23:15:58 GMT
Really nice last two poems, Patrick. Thanks. I was only able to overcome the Beethoven by reading it out loud. Worth it. The bats scribbling might be my favorite image.
I got maybe a handful of the lit references, but I love the names of the counties.
PS really like the Samba Drummer, too.
|
|