Szymborska was involved in the poetry movement in Poland and also was politically active. I think her poetry is both intimate and detached, if that's possible. It's true that she often writes as if outside the scene, but there's always a hint of something that places her within it. Take "Cat in an Empty Apartment." Surely the missing person was someone she knew. Is she herself the one who comes to feed the cat?

Our shared tendency to skip introductions and get right to the body of the work caused me to overlook the useful intro to the other Szymborska collection, "Sounds, Feelings, Thoughts," --which, incidentally, quotes a 16th-century Polish poet, Jan Kochanowski, on a subject that is related to the Odyssey:
"Agamemnon was not the first to command a thousand troops,
Troy was destroyed more than once; before Hector there had been
myriad brave men, for whom death for the fatherland was sweet,
Yet all are sunk in silence eternal,
For they have been overlooked by the silence of a worthy bard."
Ros

And tied him to the railroad track!

The whistle blew, the train drew nigh

Bill Grogan's goat was doomed to die!

He gave a groan of mighty pain

Coughed up the shirts and flagged the train!

I liked the Jane Kenyon pieces I saw in the New Yorker. And there's our new Poet Laureate, Robert Pinsky, who appeared on PBS last night and spoke a couple of his poems for the audience. His works seem highly approachable.

Anyone familiar with the poetry of May Sarton?

Joan Grimes,the French poetry we learned in high school was rather limited but I can still remember parts of "Heureux qui comme Ulysse a fait un beau voyage...", "Le temps a laisse son manteau de vent, de froidure, et de pluie,"..."Nous n'irons plus aux bois, les lauriers sont coupes," "Du paresseux sommeil ou tu gis endormi..." "Quand vous serez bien vieille, au soir, a la chandelle,...", and "Maitre Corbeau sur unarbre perche tenait dans son bec un fromage..."
Ros

Ginny

I'm so glad you've set up a poetry place. I love Robert Frost, too. His brief poem entitled "Out, Out --" affected me so much that I cannot even write its title without getting a lump in my throat.

I have a dozen favorite poets, I guess. In the 10th grade I went bonkers over Carl Sandburg. Here's one that used todrive my family nuts because I constantly recited it at home. I still like it.

The Four Horsemen shall ride again in a bitter dust,

The granaries of great nations shall be the food of fat rats,

And shooting stars shall write new alphabets on the sky

Before we come home,

Before we understand.

Off in our western sky,

Off in a burning maroon,

Shall come in a wintrish haze,

Shall come in points and crystals--

A shovel of stars.

Let us wigwag the moon,

Let us make new propellers,

Go past old spent stars

And find blue moons on a new star path.

Let us look on

And listen in

On God's great workshop

Of stars...and eggs...

 
You were like a sliver 
 of almond, bare and napping 
 on the sundeck 
 Plumera in your hair 
 of chestnut, live and growing 
 on the brown waves. 
 And when you left, scented 
 of jasmine, shy and fawning, 
 I never asked for a name.

  Several years ago when I was taking a class in calligraphy we were given an assignment to show an example of what we learned.  I wrote the folloring poem: 
                                   TO MY SONS 

I would give you the sun if I had my way, 
the moon and the stars, the night and the day, 
the green grass in summer, a re leaf in fall, 
one perfect snowflake, a meadowlark's call. 
I would give you a mountain, an ocean, the sky, 
an evergreen forest, a stream running by, 
a dewdrop in morning, a rainbow in spring, 
a sweet dream while sleeping, a bird on the wing. 

But since I'm just human I'll give in their stead 
a touch of my hand, a warm loaf of bread, 
a fire to warm you when winter winds blow, 
a roof to protect you from rain and from snow, 
a stern word to guide you, a tear when you're sad, 
a friend when you're lonely, a smile when you're glad,  
a pillow to sleep on and if that's not enough 
two hands to help when the going gets tough. 
And to wrap up the things that I lovingly give-- 
All the love in my heart for as long as I live. 

   A little maudlin, but, hey!, that's mother love.

It is heartwarming to see the poems written by members' children--not only because of the talent and creativity that they reflect but because they tell us that these children have so lovingly and willingly shared something of themselves with their parents. Of course we all enjoy the spontaneous affection and closeness of younger children, but as they grow up these gifts--these signs of love--are often rarer and more precious.

You might have heard or read that the winner of this year's Pulitzer Prize for poetry is a woman who is nearly blind. It was reported that she has to memorize her poems in order to participate in a poetry "reading" because she wouldn't be able to see them in print. She began writing poetry after the death of her mother, who was only 54. Do you agree that the impetus for poetry often comes from a deep emotional experience? That could be a crisis like a family death, a birth, or a new or old relationship, or it could be the strong reaction to a beautiful scene in nature, wonderful music, etc. I'd love to know other people's thoughts about this.
Ros

 
Sonnet XII 

     When I do count the clock that tells the time, 
     And see the brave day sunk in hideous night; 
     When I behold the violet past prime, 
     And sable curls all silver'd o'er with white; 
     When lofty trees I see barren of leaves 
     Which erst from heat did canopy the herd, 
     And summer's green all girded up in sheaves 
     Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard, 
     Then of thy beauty do I question make, 
     That thou among the wastes of time must go, 
     Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake 
     And die as fast as they see others grow; 
     And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence 
     Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.
 

Joan

Ros

Here is an old poem by Robert Bridges that I have always cherished because in a few words it describes the need of "ordinary people" to create something, whether with words or music, pictures or crafts:

I love all beauteous things,
I seek and adore them;
God hath no better praise,
And man in his hasty days
Is honoured for them.

I too will something make,
And joy in the making,
Altho' tomorrow it seem
Like the empty words of a dream
Remembered on waking.

Ros

Ros

 
SONATA FORM
 

Like a raft the bed flows high
 
under the broad window sill
 
where beside their reach
 
two glasses of wine flint sparkle
 
city lights from the mirror
 
on the wardrobe door opposite
 
to penetrate, expose senses, excite coherence
 
between earthly bodies.
 
One by one the city lights go out
 
the wine remains untouched.

I give you the books I've made,
Body and soul bled and flayed.
Yet the essence they contain
In one poem is made plain,
In one poem is made clear;
On this earth,
Though far or near,
Without love there's only fear.


Pearl Buck

 I wrote this 24 years ago for our 25th anniversary. 
                                  TO KON 

Once it was Spring and our love was a new thing; 
It sparkled with laughter and dreams that we shared. 
"Today" was forever,  and all life would be Spring; 
There was nothing important except that you cared. 
Soon Spring became Summer and though we learned sorrow, 
You always were there with a hand I could hold. 
We eagerly waited for each new tomorrow, 
And never believed that one day we'd grow old. 
We didn't take note of each busy day's passing 
And soon the tomorrows became yesterday. 
While we were fulfilling the dreams of our Springtime 
Our youth and our Summer just faded away. 
Oh, love, hold my hand now that Winter grows nearer; 
I need you much more than I did in the Spring,  
For now it is Autumn and each moment dearer 
As life grows more selfish with joys it will bring. 
The years pass so quickly; tomorrow grows shorter 
And memories replace most the dreams we once knew. 
Now Autumn brings promise of days of contentment 
Remembering the years that I've spent loving you. 

P.Roe

šjane›

I fear you would not care much for the poetry of the 70-something Polish poet whose Nobel Prize inspired the establishment of this folder. That is, you might appreciate her sentiments but not her style, which is quite modern.

It's an absolute requirement of Seniornet Books and Literature that we must not fear to state our opinions even when we disagree with the majority! So don't hesitate to be forthright about your favorites and un-favorites.

Roy, that eohippus is going to haunt me too. In the time period that you mention, "light verse" was popular and there were numerous writers producing it. Oliver Herford is one who comes to mind.

Ginny, I 'spect Lucia and the others had to memorize Casabianca in school and were still half-tied to the symbols of heroism, loyalty, obedience, etc., that it embodied. It certainly lends itself to a tableau vivant if one could find enough red and yellow crepe paper to simulate the flames.

Saireygamp's messages inspire me to ask whether we all have a favorite "old" poem that we'd like to share?

Ros

I can think of a few well-known poems celebrating the pleasant effects of alcohol but not many that speak truthfully about the other side of it.

Ginny, how about A favorite, not necessarily the only one? (Didn't we start to do this, e.g. with Shakespeare's sonnets, when the folder was opened?) I can think of a bunch right off--Donne's Death, Be Not Proud; Hopkins's Pied Beauty; Frosts's Choose Something Like a Star; several of Millay's teen-agey sonnets; Arnold's Dover Beach; Morris's Love Is Enough; Milton's On His Blindness....

Ros

Let not young souls be trampled out before
They do bold deeds and fully flaunt their pride;
It is the world's one crime its babes grow dull,
Its poor are ox-like, limp, and leaden-eyed.

Not that they starve, but starve so dreamlessly;
Not that they sow, but that they seldom reap;
Not that they serve, but have no gods to serve;
Not that they die, but that they die like sheep.

Ros

I think this poem says a lot in a few words, which means it's not only memorable but easy to memorize!

Ros

I've always assumed that the "they" in the poem refers to the "young souls" in the first line and the "babes" and "poor" in the next two. Think of the way a hopeful, happy baby can change if it is hungry, cold, and neglected. Think of the head-down, plodding hopelessness of the unemployed, the underemployed, the people who feel doomed to minimum-wage jobs or welfare. Lindsay's concern about babies and poor people seems self-explanatory. From Dickens onward, if not earlier, haven't writers wanted us to be aware that life wasn't always fair to the underclasses? In Lindsay's case he was not only protesting the material poverty but the spiritual and intellectual poverty he felt he had found as he worked his way across the country trading--as he said in his first book--"rhymes for bread."

Well, there are several ways to approach a poet's meaning. This would make for a fascinating discussion! Shall we pursue it, Ginny? In my misspent youth I had the task of writing footnotes for a literature anthology, including looking up every single possible reference in T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land"....The task enlightened me about one aspect of Eliot's scholarship but I don't know if that helped me to understand the poem any better.

Ros

I've told my daughters, and other women as well, that the 40's mark a point when our lives change drastically. I always thought this applied to women. Maybe it's universal. But mid-life, if we are lucky, seems to be the beginning of our ability to make sense out of what has gone before, and to shape wisdom from our experiences and our mistakes. I'm sure your life now is richer and more meaningful than ever.

Ros

Ros

I like your idea about making your own music-backed tapes. When I taught school I used to make book or story tapes for my classes, and often inserted a bit of music here and there.

Ros

This is a sonnet by John Donne which is quite well known. He did write some beautiful love poetry, but much of his work dealt with philosophical themes like this one, which confronts our fear of death. I like the way he put some very important ideas into the strict 14-line form and followed a rhyme scheme that added music to his thoughts. But I won't say any more about it until I have read your reactions!

DEATH BE NOT PROUD

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so:
For those, whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor Death; nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow;
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and souls' delivery.

Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And Death shall be no more: Death, thou shalt die!
--John Donne (1573-1631)

Fire away, poetry lurkers--it's your turn now!

Ros

Donne reminds us that many of the world's evils lead to death. People of my age are getting better acquainted with death as one by one those we know and love are facing it, and we are confronting our own mortality no matter how we fight it and deny it by continuing to be active and alert and by maintaining contacts with the real world.

As I looked through some of my poetry anthologies I was struck by how often death is the subject of great poems (as well as of many less well-known but still memorable ones). Some are memorials to friends and loved ones. Many others are speculations about the writer's own death and how he or she will be remembered by the world. That makes an interesting area for discussion

I do appreciate your response. Are there any poems on this (rather morbid) topic that you like and want to share?

Ros

Ros

I'm glad you've "looked in" and hope you'll come back!

Ros

Here are a couple that I enjoy reading and re-reading:

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to see the woods in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go,
To see the cherry hung with snow.

A. E. Housman

AND ... Excerpts from Fitzgerald's The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

. He evidently published different versions of this long set of verses. Here are a few I particularly enjoy reading. You might find some book-titles or movie-titles concealed here!

Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light.

Dreaming when Dawn's Left Hand was in the Sky
I heard a Voice within the Tavern cry,
"Awake, my Little ones, and fill the Cup
Before Life's Liquor in its Cup be dry.

...vii
Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring
The Winter Garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To fly--and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.

...xi
YOU MIGHT REMEMBER A SLIGHTLY REVISED FORM OF THIS!
Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse--and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness--
And Wilderness is Paradise enow.

...xviii
I sometimes think that never blows so red
The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled;
That every Hyacinth the Garden wears
Dropt in its Lap from some once lovely Head.


li
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy tears wash out a Word of it.



xcix
Ah Love! could you and I with Him conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Would not we shatter it to bits--and then
Re-mould it nearer to the Heart's Desire!

Have these lines awakened any echoes in your poet's (or poetry-lover's) hearts? It would be nice to hear from you.

Ros

Unfortunately I seem to be experiencing a lot of backward-looking just now, and I think that's what has resurrected some of the poetry I'm lining up to post. "Tomorrow" I'll try to put into words some of the associations that are strongest.

Ros

Bill, I've been putting off the arrival of the "tomorrow" when I would defend my affection for Fitzgerald's Rubaiyat. I loved the garden images of lush grass, roses, dawn, birds, and so on, and the suggestion that there was so much in the material world to be tasted and enjoyed while we were still on earth. Omar - at least as interpreted by Fitzgerald - didn't seem to put much faith in having any fun after this lifetime had run its course. You could almost subtitle the whole thing "Eat, Drink, and Be Merry, for Tomorrow Youll Be a Handful of Dust." The clay of the potter and the clay from which humans were fashioned--both the same, both doomed to dust. Frankly, in my innocence I never thought about how much wine-guzzling was praised in these verses. Nothing about hangovers or other disasters.

Look out, here comes another bucket of nostalgia: Somewhere in the 1930's there was actually a dramatic radio series about the Rubaiyat ...no doubt entirely invented by the scriptwriters as I don't recall Omar's being portrayed as a middle-aged tentmaker. I can still remember the passionate nasal voice of the hero addressing the fictional heroine, Nouralon (isn't that a lovely name?), in some garden of Naishapur, while not having Musketeer-like adventures. By any chance is there anyone else out there who ever heard of it?

As for the Housman, before his private life became public he was considered a safe example of the lyricist for high-school consumption. Actually, knowing more about him now, I like his work better. Some of his lines have been so often quoted that, like Shakespeare's being "so full of quotations," he now seems to be full of cliches.

Marie, I hope your return to the fold/folder will herald a reawakening of general interest in our subject!Greetings and good wishes to all.

Ros

. As for me, I've been delving into my old books, getting things from the library, and even buying a couple of new paperbacks--so I could go on posting poems until the cows come home, just for the pleasure of seeing them go out over the Internet. But it would be so much more fun to have a group discussion.

There was an old radio review-type show (The "Al Pearce Show") which included an ineffectual salesman, Elmer Blurp (Morrie Amsterdam), who began his skit with a knock on the door and a muttered "Nobody home--I hope, I hope, I hope." But here's Roslyn Blurp knocking hopefully and muttering instead, "Somebody home--I hope, I hope, I hope."

Wishing you all happy rhymes, limericks, and blank verse...

Ros

Do you agree with the famous lines from Tennyson's In Memoriam that it's "better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all"?

Ros

What is the name of the anthology? Are there other poems you particularly enjoy? Please share!

Marie,there must be as many kinds of "love" described in poetry as there are poets: requited, unrequited, lost, found, young, old, physical, spiritual, and the "you'll be sorry when I'm gone" type of--for example--Christina Rossetti and Edna St. Vincent Millay. I do like the Byron. (Now, if ever there was a man who knew what he was talking about....One suspects that he explored many an avenue.) I notice you omitted the line that asks, "Why wert thou so dear?" Does that mean, "What did I ever see in you?" Maybe it's better if old loves are never re-encountered. We get used to the gray, the spreading middle, the wrinkles, the trifocals, of those we love and live with--but to see them after many years--ouch!

I like a poem by Archibald MacLeish that discusses just what a poem "should be." I don't know if it will fit everyone's definition, but I'll trot it along shortly.

Ros

Ars Poetica

A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit

Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown--

A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs

Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves
Memory by memory the mind--

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs

A poem should be equal to:
Not true

For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf

For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea--

A poem should not mean
But be.

MacLeish doesn't use a standard rhythm or meter here. The first few lines rhyme at the end; then he moves the rhymes to the mid-line, then carries them into our ears so we're not sure whether there really is a rhyme--and finishes with a clear rhyme between "sea" and "be."

Try reading this aloud. It's quite musical.

Ros

"Forest Call" expresses feelings of today as well as--maybe even better than--it did in your Granmother's day as we see our forests and natural areas diminished by human "progress". The last two lines of the poem:

"Trees will stand and flowers blossom, Giving joys when we are no more"

are so wonderfully true. My husband and I hike locally to places in the San Gabriel Mountains that were famed spas with huge hotels accessible by multiple cable cars and trains at the turn of the Century. These spas are now, once again woods and habitat for forest creatures, the remnants of man's handiwork reclaimed by nature.

Maybe your Grandmother's gift to you was not a book but a perspective.

Thanks for sharing it with us.
--Marie

Ros

Ros

Ros

A Bookshop Idyll by Kingsley Amis

Between the gardening and the cookery

Comes the brief Poetry shelf;

By the Nonesuch Donne, a thin anthology

Offers itself.

Critical and with nothing else to do,

I scan the Contents page,

Relieved to find the names are mostly new;

No one my age.

Like all strangers, they divide by sex:

Landscape near Parma

Interests a man, so does The Double Vortex,

so does Rilke and Buddha.

"I travel, you see," "I think" and "I can read"

These titles seem to say;

But I Remember You, Love is my Creed,

Poem for J.,

The ladies' choice, discountenance my patter

for several seconds;

From somewhere in this (as in any) matter

A moral beckons.

Should poets bicycle-pump the human heart

Or squash it flat?

Man's love is of man's life a thing apart;

Girls aren't like that.

We men have got love well weighed up; our stuff

Can get by without it.

Women don't seem to think that's good enough;

They write about it.

And the awful way their poems lay them open

Just doesn't strike them.

Women are really much nicer than men:

No wonder we like them.

Deciding this, we can forget those times

We sat up half the night

Chock-full of love, crammed with bright thoughts, names, rhymes,

And couldn't write.

Marie, you've certainly given my busy Friday morning a jump start with A Bookshop Idyll. At first glance it seems Amis has a point; but I didn't recognize any of the titles he mentions and wondered just what kind of anthology this was. Maybe he chose it because it suited his idea? I hastily checked the Quotations book for the Byron line he borrows. Amis cleverly paraphrases Don Juan's second line, which is actually "'Tis woman's whole existence." But after all, that was Don Juan, eh? The meter and rhyme scheme are very pleasing. Now I'll have to review both mentally and between covers to find out whether his teasing generalization is correct. What's your opinion?

Thanks for waking up my brain today.

Ros

Come on, guys. It won't take you but a few minutes.

Just read the above poem "Bookshop Idyll" in Post #215 and post either "yes" (that men do feel that love/romance colors all facets of a woman whereas men have their love nicely filed away mentally) or "no" (in the fifty years or so since that poem was written, you men have become distraught at the mere thought of such perceived emotional differences between the sexes).

Ros: I hope we have some takers on this. I just showed the poem to my husband who promptly laughed out loud and said Amis had perfectly defined the ageless male/female communication problem.

In answer to your question, it's true for me and most of the women I know very personally, but maybe not someone like Janet Reno who is all career.

On the other hand, I can think of a number of serious published professional woman poets whose poems about other subjects at least equal the number of love poems they've printed. We'll except Edna St. Vincent Millay, whose romantic product is almost enough to overbalance the whole thing.

Larry, we're not--I hope-- generalizing that women dwell more intensively on love and that men seldom think about it, are we?. There's simply a difference in what gets expressed verbally. Maybe one of those Mars/Venus things?

Ros

I don't think women "dwell" on love/romance -- I think it's just so much a part of them that it's there, in the forefront of their minds, all the time. After all, we are the nest-building nurturers.

I think men have to access the subject "love" like it's a website in their brains, and "close" whatever other "programs" they have running at the time.

Women can learn a lot by reading "love" poems written by really good male poets.

In the untitled poem below, Pushkin writes of his natural male feelings straightforwardly. But, of course, this was 1832 when girls aspired to womanhood rather than "personhood".

No, I don't miss the dissipated nights,
The moans and cries of a young bacchante
Writhing like a serpent in my arms
When, with fierce caresses and love-bites
She hastens the moment of final spasm.

Dearer to me are you, my quiet friend,
How tormentingly happier I am with you,
When at long last you condescend
To yield to my pleas, tenderly, without rapture,
Cold, ashamed, scarcely responding to
My transports, avoiding them with your lips, your eyes,
More and more coming to life, until
At last you share my pleasure against your will.

Larry

One enjoyable aspect of reading Guest's work is that it engages the reader in a game of "closure," because we're sure we always know how he'll complete his rhyming couplets. Sometimes he fools us; but the images are comfortingly familiar and the themes are upbeat enough to soothe many a heartache; there is no pretense of breaking new poetic ground. He's been gone for many years. He was definitely a poet of his time, and I don't know what he would have made of today's world.

Ros

It would be great to see one of yours here - personal or not - if you feel moved to share.

Ros

I just wrote you a lengthy response about how insightful YOU are (God knows the Poetry section needs your participation) and how I think the Amis poem is a bit of a tease, too, but resented his contemptuous amusement at a woman's innocently pouring her heart out.

The post may or may not show up. I'm on MSN with IE 4.0--which actually explains everything.

Your message was just super. Please post a poem for us to discuss. One as you described: written by an uninhibited poet about personal feelings with which we may identify.

Thanks for the compliments, Marie

It takes a heap o' livin' in a house t' make it home,
A heap o' sun an' shadder, an' ye sometimes have t' roam
Afore ye really 'preciate the things ye lef' behind,
An' hunger for 'em somehow, with 'em allus on yer mind.
It don't make any difference how rich ye get t' be,
How much yer chairs an' tables cost, how great yer luxury;
It ain't home t' ye, though it be the palace of a king,
Until somehow yer soul is sort o' wrapped round everything.

Home ain't a place that gold can buy or get up in a minute;
Afore it's home there's got t' be a heap o' livin' in it;
Within the walls there's got t' be some babies born, and then
Right there ye've got t' bring 'em up t' women good, an' men;
And gradjerly, as time goes on, ye find ye wouldn't part
With anything they ever used--they've grown into yer heart:
The old high chairs, the playthings, too, the little shoes they wore
Ye hoard; an' if ye could ye'd keep the thumb-marks on the door.

Ye've got t' weep t' make it home, ye've got t' sit an' sigh
An watch beside a loved one's bed, an' know that Death is nigh;
An' in the stillness o' the night t' see Death's angel come,
An' close the eyes o' her that smiled, an' leave her sweet voice dumb,
Fer these are scenes that grip the heart, an' when yer tears are dried,
Ye find the home is dearer than it was, an' sanctified;
An' tuggin' at yer always are the pleasant memories
O' her that was an' is no more--ye can't escape from these.

Ye've got t' sing an' dance fer years, ye've got t' romp an' play,
An' learn t' love the things ye have by usin' 'em each day;
Even the roses 'round the porch must blossom year by year
Afore they 'come a part o' ye, suggestin' some one dear
Who used t' love 'em long ago, an' trained 'em jes' t' run
The way they do, so's they would get the early mornin' sun;
Ye've got t' love each brick an' stone from cellar up t' dome;
It takes a heap o' livin' in a house t' make it home.

Ros

A Norman Rockwell graphic would go well just about now.... ---Marie

Ros

Eawr Joe’s Lad
 
Cliff Gerrard
 

Each time eawr Joe became a dad,
He’d act aw posh an’regal, 
An’ hopin’ it would be a lad,
He’d book t’top room at th’Eagle.
But every time he geet let deawn,
As lass would follow lass,
,His brow would wrinkle in a freawn,
An’he’d scarely raise his glass.
T’relations didn’t mind one bit,
Twelve lovely do’s they’d had,
They’d say ”Weel done Joe, this is it,
Ten bob says it’s a lad!”,
An’then-when Joe were forty-eight,
A lad! Eawr Joe went daft,
T’top room at th’Eagle groaned wi’ t’weight,
They supped, they skriked, they laughed.
”Who does he favver, Joe,” asked one
”Yore Jem,Yore Jack, or Grace?”,
Joe grinned, “Ah’ve no idea owd son,
Ah’ve ne’er looked at his face!”

Please do get back into poetry. If only so you and Ros can teach us I-don't-know-poetry-but-I-know-what-I-like-neophytes the difference between a poet and poetaster.

I looked up "poetaster" after you used it the other day, Bill, and Ros made an amusing response to you. The definition was "a writer of mediocre verse; a would-be poet..." So, does that mean Kingsley Amis is a "poetaster", period, or could he now and then come up with a real poem.

It bothers me to think that I've "always loved poetry" when all my favorites probably rate way below the "poem" level. You know--like finding out you're not a classical music buff unless you truly like the less accessible stuff like Bartok.

And, Ros, you just knock my socks off when you write about when different types of poetry were popular and why. And especially when you explain why a poem is well written--why it makes you feel the way it's intended to. Like hearing the echos and bugles in the Tennyson verses from "The Princess".

I think we'd all get a lot out of this section if you two would do more critiques and tell us what's good and what's bad.
--Marie

This is a huge disclaimer to my post #237 (above).

As God is my witness, I 'd just come home from having hours of root canal, and the pain meds infused me with sentimentality, leading me into posting that sophomoric, ingratiating prose.

Don't get me wrong, Ros and William, you two REALLY know your stuff; but my sudden inspiration that you should drag us Senior Citizens into meter/feet lessons is just plain laughable.

And can't you see telling any of us that our favorite poem is "bad poetry" -- you know how objectively insensitive we all are.

So please ignore the idiocy of that post. And, like everyone else who can now wear purple, muttering to no one while feeding pigeons at bus stops, I don't give a fig whether the rhymes I like are great poetry or detergent jingles I learned as a child from the radio. I guess I was just making a bid to be "teachers' pet".

Here's a favorite of mine:

THIS IS JUST TO SAY

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)

I think that "This Is Just to Say" is one of the best examples of a poem that could read as straightforward prose if the lines were juggled back into position...except for the slight awkwardness of "...that were in the icebox, and which...." I love to think about the setting. Where was he? Somehow I always imagine that he was an overnight guest somewhere, foraging in the kitchen for a midnight snack. In his own home, he would surely have known what was off limits?

Does anyone else know a poem which says so much, so simply, without using rhyme?

Ros

Speak, Muse, and tell us
Why two old people
Need four kinds of milk
And two of juice
To say nothing of breads:
Ranged in the freezer
In order of ascending deliciousness
And descending fiber content.

Ros

What a super poem! I'd like to read more of --hey, did you write that? It so exactly fits my fridge. If I could do that--write a poem--I'd write about having to rev up courage at the grocery to check out a heaping cart totally devoid of fresh veggies or fruits.

Someone told me that when the Normans invaded Britain, they insisted that cooked meats served at dining tables be referred to in French while the livestock on hoof raised and slaughtered by the Celts were to be referred to in Celtic terms. The true sign of civilization may be how far we can distance ourselves from the realitites of our being mere participants in life's food chain.

Here's one along that line:

GRACE TO BE SAID AT THE SUPERMARKET

That God of ours, the Great Geometer,
Does something for us here, where He hath put
(if you want to put it that way) things in shape,
Compressing the little lambs in orderly cubes,
Making the roast a decent cylinder,
Fairing the tin ellipsoid of a ham,
Getting the luncheon meat anonymous
In squares and oblongs with the edges bevelled
Or rounded (streamlined, maybe, for greater speed).

Praise Him, He hath conferred aesthetic distance
Upon our appetites, and on the bloody
Mess of our birthright, our unseemly need,
Imposed significant form. Through Him the brutes
Enter the pure Euclidean kingdom of number,
Free of their bulging and blood-swollen lives
They come to us holy, in cellophane
Transparencies, in the mystical body,

That we may look unflinchingly on death
As the greatest good, like a philosopher should.

Howard Nemerov (b. 1920)

ELEVATION TO DEITY
 

There was no hurt for them that day
in the lonely, lovely woods
among dead trees
rising straight
from bracken and hurtleberries
thin black columns
against the soft blue sky.
 
Let them stay for ever
not to be torn and broken;
a permanent salute to their love
petrified by a tight grasp
on burnt bark.
 
The roughness of the sun
shone through hair and lashes
to life-formed lines
around imparadised eyes
pupils reduced to pin points
with love's intensity.

It makes me think of the last two lines of Stephen Spender's "What I Had Expected"--

What I expected, was
Thunder, fighting,
Long struggles with men
And climbing.
After continual straining
I should grow strong;
Then the rocks would shake,
And I rest long.

What I had not foreseen
Was the gradual day
Weakening the will
Leaking the brightness away,
The lack of good to touch,
The fading of body and soul
--Smoke before wind,
Corrupt, unsubstantial.

The wearing of Time,
And the watching of cripples pass
With limbs shaped like questions
In their odd twist,
The pulverous grief
Melting the bones with pity,
The sick falling from earth--
These, I could not foresee.

Expecting always
Some brightness to hold in trust,
Some final innocence
Exempt from dust,
That, hanging solid,
Would dangle through all,
Like the created poem,
Or faceted crystal.

Marie, of course my bit of silliness was tossed off in fun--but it's truly based on my puzzlement over the accumulations of age and the difficulty of discarding superfluities. The construction of "What I Expected" suggests a difficult climb to the top of something and the discovery that the other side turns out not to be "what I expected." I had to look twice at the last two lines of the Nemerov poem before my memory delivered "Winston tastes good, Like a cigarette should."

Thanks, Bill, for the lyrical word-picture. I doubt that the author "never wrote another poem," though perhaps all her poetic thoughts stayed inside her head.

Jeanne and Pat, I've been racking my brains over "dialect poems" trying to think of or locate others. (You'll smile to read that in one textbook they're referred to, with great dignity, as "poems in the vernacular," certainly a fancier title than "dialect.") I finally remembered another famous one, much earlier, by James Russell Lowell, called "The Courtin'"-- about the girl named Huldy whose admirer ('Zek'l, I think) sat and fidgeted, hemmed and hawed, and finally "up and kissed her." Does that ring any bells? Also, a number of Paul Laurence Dunbar's poems are in dialect, and many, when read aloud, are melodious and moving. I found some poems in Italian dialect by a man named Thomas A. Daly, but wasn't much taken with them.

Do you have any other choice ones?

It would be fun to consider just what it is that charms us about this kind of verse.

Ros

To A Louse

Robert Burns

Thanks for posting. I think of you often!

Ros

Well, moving from the sentimental to the slightly spooky, I'm recalling a poem by Walter de la Mare which draws wonderful mysterious pictures:



The Listeners

"Is there anybody there?" said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
Of the forest's ferny floor:
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Traveller's head:
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
"Is there anybody there/' he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moon beams on the dark stair
That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
By the lonely traveller's call.
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
Their stillness answering his cry,
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
'Neath the starred and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head;--
"Tell them I came, and no one answered,
That I kept my word," he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone
And how the silence surged softly backward
When the plunging hoofs were gone.

As I typed this I noticed that it's only every other line that rhymes. I wonder if that, plus the rather irregular rhythm, adds to the mysteriousness. Our ears (or maybe our pulses) expect rhyme and rhythm. When they are missing, we feel a kind of tension. This edginess is repeated with every couplet. Perhaps that enhances the effect? And I loved that first image of the "moonlit door!

Ros

ALL THINGS BRIGHT AND BEAUTIFUL

All things bright and beautiful,

All creatures great and small,

All things wise and wonderful,

The Lord God made them all.

Each little flower that opens,

Each little bird that sings,

He made their glowing colors

He made their tiny wings.

The rich man in his castle,

The poor man at his gate,

God made them, high or lowly,

And order'd their estate.

The sunset and the morning,

The river running by,

The purple-headed mountain,

That brightens up the sky--

The cold wind in the winter,

The pleasant summer sun,

The ripe fruits in the garden--

He made them every one.

The tall trees in the greenwood,

The meadows where we play,

The rushes by the water

We gather every day.

He gave us eyes to see them,

And lips that we might tell,

How great is God Almighty,

Who has made all things well.

--by Cecil Frances Alexander

Could the Blake poem you have in mind be his ""Introduction 'to Songs of Innocence"?

Piping down the valleys wild,
Piping songs of pleasant glee,
On a cloud I saw a child,
And he laughing said to me:

"Pipe a song about a lamb."
So I piped with merry cheer.
"Piper, pipe that song again."
So I piped; he wept to hear.

"Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe;
Sing thy songs of happy cheer."
So I sung the same again
While he wept with joy to hear.

"Piper, sit thee down and write
In a book that all may read."
So he vanished from my sight,
And I plucked a hollow reed,

And I made a rural pen,
And I stained the water clear,
And I wrote my happy songs
Every child may joy to hear.

---William Blake (1757-1827)

Ros

 
Sun
light.    

Light
light light light.>

You asked about internal music. Yes, I'm one of those people blessed (or cursed) with music-in-the-head. I'm never without some kind of melody twanging away in there. It does help pass the time if one has insomnia. (Such bouts are rare, but on a few occasions from 3 to 5 AM I've gone through every musical comedy song, every folk song, art song, Christmas carol, fragments of Schubert lieder, every nursery rhyme I can summon. Orchestral music is more difficult.) There's an element of perseveration: You've started me back on All Things Bright and Beautiful and it's now played through half-a-dozen times. In between actual melodies there's a kind of repeated tweedle-deedle-deedle, like an early piano exercise, which my clever son has suggested is somehow related to my virulent head-noises. ("They" can send people to the moon but they can't cure tinnitus because they don't know what causes it. Loose brains, maybe?)

Actually I'm equipped with both words and music, because words, either heard or thought, appear in print in my head. I don't have many mental pictures, though, except for food.

I tell myself that all this weird cerebral wiring is compensation for my being physically uncoordinated, athletically null, optically feeble, and totally indolent except perhaps for the tips of my fingers on a keyboard.

That's a long way of saying, it's a gift, ha-ha-ha.

Thanks for your support of our enthusiasms in the folder. Please keep posting.

Ros

I am complimented beyond words that you would send my post to the author of "Elevation to Deity". Thank you.

Ros,
Isn't there some scientific conclusion that some people think in images and sounds whereas others think in written words?

And those of you with the sounds/images mind can do marvelous things like easily learning to speak foreign languages just from hearing them spoken, carrying a tune, playing instruments. It's as if you have direct contact with meanings and emotions. Are you left-handed?

I'm of the written word mentality. It's very confining artistically. I envy you.
--Marie

The Oxen

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.

"Now they are all on their knees,"

An elder said as we sat in a flock

By the embers in the hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek and mild creatures where

They dwelt in their strawy pen,

Nor did it occur to one of us there

To doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few would weave

In these years! Yet, I feel

If someone said on Christmas Eve,

"Come; see the oxen kneel

"In the lonely barton by yonder coomb

Our childhood used to know,"

I should go with him in the gloom,

Hoping it might be so.

Ros

Thanks for bringing Yeats into the Poetry folder. Please continue to visit!

Ros

Ros

Ros

I think that compared to his unrelentingly bleak prose, Hardy's poetry is a fiesta--maybe because it's so much shorter. On the more positive side, "The Oxen" does rhyme and is accessible.

And I like "The Oxen" so much. Don't we all secretly cling to something magical from our childhood to help us face the serious work of growing up, growing old? Orson Welles hit it right on target having "Citizen Kane's" last word be: "Rosebud".

But, for a change, here's a light-hearted poem I especially like: (It's e.e.cummings, so we all know what that means grammatically.)

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
--the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

Ros

I love "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" but all I could remember was I once knew a beautiful poem that began with something like "now is the time I shall arise..." No wonder I couldn't find it. My husband insisted I was thinking of Tennyson..."Come, my friends, "Tis not too late to seek a newer world...." from Ulysses--which is one of the two poems John knows by heart so naturally he brings it up at any opportunity. Anyway, Joyce, I just love the poem and thank you for posting it.

Does anyone have any books with Gabriela Mistral poems? I've lost the one with my favorite--have even emailed Chile through the Mistral website trying to locate the book containing this particular poem. It begins, more or less, "The earth shall vomit forth snakes if you betray my love...." It's the strongest, most honest love poem I've ever read written by a woman. If any of you have it, please post it.

--Marie

TARANTELLA 
by 
Hilaire Belloc 

Do you remember an Inn, Miranda? 
Do you remember an Inn? 
And the tedding and the spreading 
Of the straw for a bedding, 
And the flees that tease in the High Pyrenees, 
And the wine that tasted of the tar? 
And the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteers 
(Under the vine of the dark verandah)? 
Do you remember an Inn Miranda, 
Do you remember an Inn? 
And the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteers 
Who hadn’t got a penny, 
And weren’t paying any, 
And the hammer at the doors and the Din? 
And the Hip! Hop! Hap! 
Of the clap 
Of the hands to the twirl and the swirl 
Of the girl gone chancing, 
Glancing, 
Dancing. 
Backing and advancing, 
Snapping of the clapper to the spin 
Out and in- 
And the Ting, Tong, Tang of the guitar! 
Do you remember an Inn Miranda? 
Do you remember an Inn? 

Never more: 
	Miranda, 
Never more.

I 'm going to try to post one of the cummings' poems you mentioned (I need the HTML-coding practice).

And can anyone read it without feeling like a breathless schoolchild no longer snowed in and soon on vacation barefoot in sun-warmed ,thawed mud?

in Just-

spring     when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman

whistles    far      and wee

and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old balloonman whistles
far    and     wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's
spring
and
    the

          goat-footed

balloonMan      whistles
far
and
wee

e.e.cummings

Don't know a source for Gabriela Mistral, but does your local library have an index of world poetry?

Bill, I'm all out of breath after the tarantella. When the blood supply returns to my brain maybe I'll be able to think of a sequel.

Ros

Like the poem very much but find myself much more intrigued by your brief, but tantalizing, remarks about your learning the Tarntella!

Ros,

John's other totally memorized poem is "Patterns" by Amy Lowell. But, to be fair, he knows bits and pieces of lots of poems, has always loved poetry. As he likes to say, "If I hadn't taken Marie in hand when she was a teenager, she'd still be misty-eyed over "Trees" and thinking it was written by a woman."

Oh, Ros, how can you NOT like Robert Service's "Tales of the Yukon"?
--Marie

"Patterns" is connected with my 12th-grade Capital-D Discovery of Capital-M Modern Poetry. Unfortunately I pictured Amy Lowell as being slight and blonde like Amy March in Little Women, only to learn to my horror that she was a vast-bosomed cigar smoker with a formidable glare and a severe bun of dark hair. Later in life I realized that cup size and tobacco preferences weren't closely related to artistic ability, nor was sexual preference. Probably there was a slender and cuddly Amy March concealed within the high-caste Boston flesh. But all that pink and silver, and "aching, melting, unafraid..." still resonates pleasantly.

Ros

I'm just amazed when I read the Poetry posts. Everyone has such a different interpretation of each poem. But the thing that really floored me was your image of Amy Lowell before you knew how she looked and acted. No offense to any blondes, but I never think of writers as blonde--not even male writers. I wonder why? I can't think of any blondes even now...


--Marie

You're right about the vast range of responses to every kind of poetry. I find, incidentally, that I'm now conditioned to notice any bit of dialect verse that turns up anywhere. At our local school library it seemed like finding buried treasure to spot a collection of James Whitcomb Riley's verse on their poetry shelf. The librarian will let me borrow it after the holiday to hunt for quotable bits.

Must tell you that the editor of the Detroit Free Press quotes that last part of "Ulysses" in his op-ed piece today. He is preparing for retirement and doing some self-evaluation, asking the question we all ask ourselves -- have I been of any use at all in my lifetime? --and uses those lines to reinforce his conclusion that "to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield" is important regardless of one's personal success or failure.

Ros

Ros

The "hewers of wood" & so on; every damn 
craftsman has it while he's working 
               but it's not 
a question of work: some 
shine with it, in repose. Maybe it is 
response, the will to respond-('reason 
can give nothing at all/like 
the response to desire') maybe 
a gritting of the teeth, to go 
just that much further, beyond the end 
beyond whatever ends; to begin, to be, to defy. 

The Errancy (or is it plural?) is on my order list from my local independent bookstore; I also wanted her collected (or selected) poems from a couple of years back but they couldn't find the title right away.

Ros

You must be relying heavily on your imagination in Southern California as you summon up that frosty, silvery vision. And Edgar A. would have been weeping into his hot toddy with appreciation.

Ros

I'm going to delete it ("The Bells) tomorrow night because it's an illegal graphic--as graphics should be in discussion pages. And way too slow, although just using black and white should have speeded it up a bit. Just wanted our Poetry group to have something seasonal--and the only Christmas poem I know is so-o-o depressing, of course. Anyway, thanks. You always find something nice to say. Hmmmm--I had you figured for a teacher--actually university level. Maybe your career has been as a diplomat. (No, I'm not joking.) --Marie

Now you see what happens when you go a bit "beyond" and share something of your real self with others.

Ros

I'm so delighted! I mean I feel as if we've been awarded a medal or something here in Poetry. Let's not forget that YOU were the one who inspired--okay, slightly coerced--me into taking a look at traditional rhyming accessible poetry. Gosh! I hope everyone is learning new things and getting as much out of this folder as I.

You're a super leader!

You know Ros, I'm so excited because this is the first time in my life that I've ever read a poem I knew nothing about, had no one's opinion on, and was sort of "vindicated" in my feeling that it was good, special.

I'm just waiting for John to finish his breakfast so we can do the "gift opening" thing and came on line to see if we had any email from the family. So I've got to go now and do Christmas.

Thanks for the enthusiastic email! --Marie

Guess who wrote it, guess who quoted it?

Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine,
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.

These lines were written by William Blake and cited on Christmas Day by none other than Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II (whom the Beatles years ago characterized in song as "a nice old girl, but she doesn't have a lot to say.") Perhaps the Canadians among us watched or heard the Christmas message. I saw this in the NY Times along with a sweet picture of the Queen and the Queen Mum, who still has great legs and walks around in high heels (along with her cane) and her usual cheery smile. I don't want to digress into a discussion of the monarchy, but do want to declare my admiration and respect for the Queen as an honest, earnest woman with a daunting, unsolicited, thankless job which she has always done to the best of her ability and with an ever-decreasing reward in terms of public opinion.

Is anyone enough of a Blake-omaniac to recognize the quote? I'll hunt up my Collected Blake and see if I can find the exact passage. Meanwhile, happy Boxing Day to all.

Ros

I feel about the Queen just as you do, Ros. However, it's no secret that the Windsors are much more into dogs, horses, and shooting parties than literary pursuits. One of the funniest sworn-to-be-true stories published about the Queen was that she entered into a conversation about Dante's Inferno thinking it was a race horse (Inferno out of Dante). That endeared her to me even more.

--Marie

Does anyone see the New York Times on paper or on line? In this morning's national edition there's a feature story about poetry "slam" sessions at Borders in D.C., led by Marcia Schwalb, a professional writer who volunteers to encourage the writing of poetry by kids in four inner-city Washington schools. ("Slams" were originated by Chicago poet Mark Smith, in barrooms where impromptu poetry readings were judged by whatever audience showed up.)

The article, captioned "Poetry Meaning More Than Rhyme," closes with an excerpt from a poem by Zulaikha Edmonson:

My poem has wings
Up the wall
Around and around the room and
There's no barrier in the way
To control it
My poem is strong and determined
And never, not ever
Will it be destroyed.

Ros

"So one must be wary of eerie but spurious similarities."

My question is whether the author of that sentence has an ear for poetry, or no ear for language at all.

Actually there's quite a bit of unconscious poetry in The Economist, especially in opening and closing paragraphs, as the unidentified writers strive for fresh ways of describing the business world:
"Now comes the flight from paradise."
"General Sani Abacha sat on a dais, above chattering rows of ministers and acolytes..."
"It's deplorable, but it all seems to meet some sort of need. Indeed."
"The Achilles heel of the electric vehicle has always been the battery."

And an article about the marketing of diamonds begins by describing the local Luanda (Angola) office of DeBeers, the world's "diamond barons," so lyrically that I must divide it into poetic lines:

"Outside, litter clogs the gutters
and battered low-slung cars
honk their horns at hawkers
of peanuts, pineapples and bright
plastic
rucksacks.
Inside the passage, the lift broke down
long ago. To reach the office
you must climb
seven dark flights of narrow steps,
which stink of stale urine.
And then, upstairs, a bright new world
unfurls."

In addition, this special holiday issue contains a long article on the present status of poetry and on its possible future. All with a business-oriented slant, of course.

Ros

Ros

DENSE MEMORIES
 

There is, of course, a price to pay 
intimacy in juxtaposition will not work 
under judgement, sullied with 
       deliberation 
disguising inexperience, innocence 
field of focus, infinitesimal 
       not just small 
precise in geometry, shaped 
finishes without rings of interference 
for the color-blind to see.
 

When achievement's price is paid 
one would move and the other stay 
the possibility of betterment 
         is relationship 
appreciation of a pebble polished  
         by the tide; 
closeness is stable, absolute, a break 
is tolerable, unstick of seal 
         matched statistics 
moving on, approaching 
         not yet touching 
accessing another address.
 

Bill

Yes, Pennsylvania snow has appeared several times on the weather channel lately. Here in the Detroit area we've had two small snowfalls and lots of false alarms which drive the news anchorpeople quite giddy as they alternately predict and then retract.

Bill, your interpretation of "magnetic poetry" is great. I like "infinitesimal, not just small." And the polished pebble -- though unfortunately after our symbolism-heavy Book Club discussion of Stones from the River, any reference to a stone inspires an automatic twitch. What I really meant is the "manufactured" poetry made from kits, $14.95. This started out as a kiddie thing and then somebody thought of jazzing it up for adults. You get a little folder full of words printed on magnets. You're supposed to scramble them up, pick up a handful, and make a poem. Then you put it on your fridge. Someone has called it refrigerator poetry. I see nothing wrong with it as an exercise, but it misses on a couple of my criteria. The kit also comes with a magnetized board if your fridge door is already full of other works of art. I thought of buying one for myself (kit, not fridge, we already have two of those), but the little words would be awkward to handle.

Discussing your contribution requires thinking about all the alliteration as well as the lovely metaphors. So...later.

Ros

You succinctly defined several relationships in my personal history. Relationships wherein the mystery of falling in love and the joy of the romance became matters, in my mind, to be examined, discussed, defined in terms of roles and responsibilities.

You seem to indicate in your second verse that an amicable physical parting can result. My experience has been that this can be true; but, also, after the "dissection stage", bitter estrangements are just as possible.

Your poem, coupled with my youthful experiences, reminded me of several lines by T.S.Eliot:

Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present. (Burnt Norton)

...And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinnned and wriggling on the wall
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?...(Prufrock)

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.(Prufrock)

Ros

over the years I've picked up(second hand) a number of anthologies of somebody-or-other's favorite "new," or "old" or "modern" poems of "today" or "yesterday." It's fascinating to glance through them and see how much styles change. Some collections are very heavy on religious themes, others have political overtones. Some are quite formal, while others don't seem to contain a single work that rhymes. I have a couple of "humorous" anthologies and I notice that as years go by they seem somewhat less funny.

Can't help it, I keep seeing "Patience Strong" as a kind of Quaker lady in a dark dress with a prim white collar. Was there a picture of the poet on this book?

Happy New Year to all poetry-lovers, and poetry-haters too, why not?

Ros

Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.

AULD LANG SYNE	                (old long ago)
  
Robert Burns
  
Chorus  
And for auld lang syne, my jo,  
For auld lang syne,  
We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,  
For auld lang syne.
 

Should auld aquaintance be forgot,  
And never brought to mind?  
Should auld aquaintance be forgot,  
And days o’lang syne?
  
And surely ye’ll be your pint-stowp!	(pay for)  
And surely I’ll be mine!  
And we’ll tak a cup o’kindness yet,  
For auld lang syne.
  
We twa hae run about the braes	        (hillsides)  
And pu’d the gowans fine;	        (pulled wild daisies)  
But we’ve wander’d many a weary foot  
Sin auld lang syne.	                (since)
  
We twa hae paidl’d the burn,	        (waded the brook)  
Frae mornin’ sun till dine;	        (noon)  
But seas between us braid hae roar’d	(broad)  
Sin auld lang syne
  
And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere!	(chum)  
And gie’s a hand o’ thine!	        (give me)  
And we’ll tak a right gude-willy waught,(good-will drink)  
For auld lang syne.

I really like having Auld Lang Syne in its original words--and with your thoughful translations along the way. It always makes me cry to hear it sung, even though I never knew--or thought about--what all the words meant. They were just so familiar, it made sense.

Can you do that with "Waltzing Matilda" (Mathilda?)?

My husband gave me two small books of poetry over the holidays, and I must share something totally fun and true with the poetry group to start the year. I wish I had written it...

The Little Old Lady in Lavendar Silk

I was seventy-seven, come August,

I shall shortly be losing my bloom;

I've experienced zephyr and raw gust

and (symbolical) flood and simoon.

When you come to this time of abatement,

to this passing from Summer to Fall,

It is manners to issue a statement

As to what you got out of it all.

So I'll say, though reflection unnerves me

And pronouncements I dodge as I can,

That I think (if my memory serves me)

There was nothing more fun that a man!

In my youth, when the crescent was too wan

To embarrass with beams from above,

By the aid of some local Don Juan

I fell into the habit of love.

And I learned how to kiss and be merry--an

Education left better unsung.

My neglect of the waters Pierian

Was a scandal when Grandma was young.

Though the shabby unbalanced the splendid,

And the bitter outmeasured the sweet,

I should certainly do as I then did,

Were I given the chance to repeat.

For contrition is hollow and wraithful,

And regret is not part of my plan,

And I think (if my memory's faithful)

There was nothing more fun that a man!

It wasn't just the drinking; it was the whole wonderful idea of living by one's wits, miraculously transformed into a raving beauty in mink, surrounded by sophisticated guys, instead of having to pound a prehistoric typewriter or a mastodon of a billing machine in a dirty factory office for eleven dollars a week and walk to the "family entrance" of the neighborhood tavern for a ten-cent lunch. Well, there was no place for one's life to go but up. Geez, I was so dumb, it's a wonder I escaped alive.

But that has less to do with her verse than with looking back a long, lo-o-o-n-g way and realizing that one's actual mistakes were probably better than the mistakes one could have made.

Thanks for the bit of retrospective semi-nostalgia you've afford me. And Happy New Year to you!

Ros

But, honestly, it seems to me that almost all the great writers drank and led very permissive lives. I really haven't given it much thought since--though I admire the output of many writers immensely--my personal ambitions were never in the literary area. I'm always pleased to learn about these people from your posts, Ros. Thanks for knowing so much!

-Marie

A Major Work

Poems are hard to read
Pictures are hard to see
Music is hard to hear
And people are hard to love

But whether from brute need
Or divine energy
At last mind eye and ear
And the great sloth heart will move.

Ros

         What Is Poetry
 

         John Ashbery
 

    The medieval town, with frieze 
    Of boy scouts from Nagoya? The snow
 

    That came when we wanted it to snow? 
    Beautiful images? Trying to avoid
 

    Ideas, as in this poem? But we 
    Go back to them as to a wife, leaving
 

    The mistress we desire? Now they 
    Will have to believe it
 

    As we believed it. In school 
    All the thought got combed out:
 

    What was left was like a field. 
    Shut your eyes, and you can feel it for miles around.
 

    Now open them on a thin vertical path. 
    It might give us--what?--some flowers soon?

I was planning to ask you, Ros, to discuss what Meredith means by his first line in A Major Work: "Poems are hard to read...". I sometimes find poems--even well-loved ones--impossible to read--as if I can't "face" the poem.

Then William's post of the Ashbery poem gave me a partial answer:"...Trying to avoid ideas as in this poem....".

Both these poems--obviously finer poetry than I've experienced-- pull me toward a higher level of feeling and understanding, but it remains beyond my grasp.

I think the Meredith and the Asbery poems are wonderful--but I dont't know why and don't know if they really are, and, worse of all, don't know if I'm even "getting" them.

Please tell me what you each think about these poems and why.

I love poetry but am realizing that I have no taste in poems. I'd like to develop some.
--Marie

Is there a single line of poetry that can't be interpreted in more than one way? When Meredith wrote. "Poems are hard to read," I think he might have meant both things that you've mentioned: the difficulty of understanding what the poet meant, and also the difficulty of confronting something that arouses so much emotion in us. His lines suggested to me that he understands the difficulty of reaching beyond the obvious, recognizing our feelings, and letting our hearts move. But I remember the Macleish statement that "a poem should not mean, but be." So it has a life of its own after the lines have been written

The Ashbery poem that Bill cited certainly works on a number of levels. On the second or third readings I saw that (for me) the "frieze of boy scouts from Nagoya" must have been their images burned onto a wall in either Hiroshima or Nagasaki, and then everything else supported and amplified that image, including the fragment of hope that flowers would once again bloom.

...I know that there is a feeling of rising excitement that I experience when I read what I think is poetry. It is really visceral and it sometimes makes me stand up or walk around instead of sitting still. But how can this possibly be translated into a standard of taste? Isn't it purely a personal reaction?

I didn't think of the Tewa weaver's chant as a poem although the thought was admirable and some of the images were very nice. I thought it was a prayer or invocation, and that although those forms can be used as vehicles for poetry, the language of this one was not "poetic" to me. So I suppose this indicates that I have some objective internal standards for judging, in addition to the purely emotional ones. And so do you. What are yours?

Ros

As for the Meredith, Ashbery, and Tewa verses--

I've spent the evening reading a spattering of poems by Meredith and by Ashbery which I found in some of my anthology books.

I loved the William Meredith ones:

Winter Verse for His Sister

The Open Sea

Wholesome

His Plans for Old Age

I was extraordinarily disappointed in the four I found by Ashbery:

White Roses

The Tennis Court Oath

Thoughts of a Young Girl

Fear of Death

Well, Fear of Death was okay, but nothing even similar to the poem William posted , What is Poetry (which gave me that hold-back-the-tears message.) As a matter of fact, I felt that Ashbury was being deliberately obscure, obtuse--foisting off unrelated prose fragments and calling it poetry. Maybe I feel that way just because I read them over and over and, except for Fear of Death, simply did not understand him at all--especially The Tennis Court Oath. I felt cheated. I just can't believe the same man wrote What is Poetry.

As far as the Tewa prayer goes, I don't think it's poetry. I think it's an incantation.

In answer to your question about internal standards for judging poetry, I haven't figured out what mine are, if any. Just the physical feeling. On the other hand, I like some poems just because of the turn of phrase, the cleverness--such as that Dorothy Parker poem. I didn't have any physical reaction to it at all, but thought it marvelously clever. Witty.

I'd like it if you'd name some of the poems/poets you consider truly great--or do like they do in "Sound and Sense" (did you have that in school--High School or College?). It was always a small paperback book from which you learned about meter and measure and pentameters. Then, toward the end they had a section called "Bad Poetry and Good", (always "Little Boy Blue" vs anything else) followed by one called "Good Poetry and Great". (Always Frost and T.S.Eliot as the "great") So there must be some standards floating about the Poetry world somewhere for such determinations.

Oh my gosh, this post is longer than the Canterbury Tales.
--Marie

Ros

Though paperbacks, these are wonderful books, packed with poetry and discussions of everything from how to read a poem to all the technicalities of meter, measure, metaphor, allegory, allusion, personification, etc. It concludes with the chapters called "Bad Poetry and Good" and "Good Poetry and Great"--which include a number of poems for YOU to sort out, now that you supposedly have worked through the whole textbook (about 400 pages) and KNOW poetry.

There is one last section called "Poems for Further Reading". Just a treasure trove of a wide variety of poets.

Anyway, I so enjoyed browsing through them again (the poems in them change with various editions), that I've just ordered the 1997 Edition of Sound and Sense from Amazon. Now you can get it in hardback, but the paperback was expensive enough for my little collection. The price is still in my 1956 edition, $1.75; can't find the price in Dan's 1982 edition; but the 1997 I just ordered is $23.95! But it's such a super Poetry thing.

The two editions I have both are introduced with this verse from Pope:

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance.
'Tis not enough no harshness gives offense,
The sound must seem an echo to the sense.

Anyway, I haven't embarked on a world cruise via tramp steamer, but am occupied with chores that keep me from the computer and also from leisurely contemplation of poetry. Back to both as soon as possible.

Ros

Dear Ann
 

I have a new lover 
but 
I 
call 
her 
Ann 
at times 
............. 

Writers such as Dorothy Parker and Ogden Nash and that ilk, should not be allowed to touch "Dear Ann" with ten-foot poles.

And what do you mean "finish this". It's perfect right now. I love it. Talk about being flooded with complex feelings by a minimum number of words.

Why would you even mention cute/clever writers in the same breath as this poem.

Sorry you've been ill. Missed you a lot!
--Marie

How great to have another poetry lover join us. Why don't you post something you personally love? Or hate? We can have some great discussions now that Ros and William are posting again. Sometimes....well, sometimes it's almost like group therapy....though, of course, none of has ever experienced the need for that sort of thing I'm sure....
--Marie

"I'm in love." Joe's face,
alight with sweetness,
told us how Ann, still with him,
stood behind his new love
and blessed their happiness.
At eighty,
Joe still calls "the girls" by maiden names
surrendered golden years ago.
In the old neighborhood
while Sister This and That stood guard
these bonds were forged
that still are strong today.
For Joe, for Kate,
for Mike and Mary Agnes,
those schoolmate faces shine beneath the wrinkles
and glossy curls replace the scanty gray .

This is a true story and coincides oddly with your fragment, though I understand my spontaneous addendum is not entirely poetic. Yesterday I met the real "Joe," a sweet and charming man, who really is "in love" with an old schoolmate of his dead wife. There's a circle of people, more widows than widowers, who went to parochial schools together (some of the "girls" to a fancier convent school), worshipped in the same parish church, and have never lost touch. I met many of them more than 30 years ago when we organized a community "ecumenical" movement to strengthen a changing urban neighborhood. For most, it was their first social contact with Jews, but they followed the teachings of their church and they were good neighbors and good friends.

May you soon be rid of Syd and your poll return to its usual clarity.

Ros

There's obviously a distinction here between a poet (you) and one who reads and enjoys poetry (me). I find it difficult to disengage sex and age from my understanding of poetry. I am not what I was when I thought "Oh world, I cannot hold thee close enough," and "Now she is gone, but all her clocks are ticking" excruciatingly beautiful. (Not to mention "I have been faithful to thee, Cynara, in my fashion.") I read more meaning now into images of illness, loss, and death than I could have sixty years ago. (I noticed this even in examining a sticky mass of Victoriana and early 20th-century verse.)

As for sex, it's more Darby and Joan than Romeo and Juliet. That's sex, you understand, not love.

When it comes to the influence of gender on production/appreciation of poetry, I think we'd have to open a whole new folder to discuss it adequately, and we'd also have to have a committee to agree on terminology.

Let's arbitrarily pinpoint 1937 as the year I began to read and think about poetry seriously. Think how much the language has changed since then, in formal usage, conversation, the media, and in poetry. How can I fail to reflect on that and to recognize how much time has passed? It would be pathetic self-deception to imagine that I as a reader have kept entirely current. I have only to listen to a 40-year-old or a 20-year-old, or watch a popular sitcom, to hear Time's winged chariot grinding its gears at my back. I'll also take the liberty of assuming that what you write is somewhat different from what you at the time of your earliest work. If I'm wrong about that please correct me.

Always your fan,

Ros

P.S. OPEN INVITATION TO ALL MEMBERS TO JOIN IN THE FRAY - OOPS, I MEANT DISCUSSION.

I just read "Little Boy Blue" today for the first time in a million years and think it's not so bad--actually pretty good for being straightforwardly manipulative and sentimental. As an act of contrition for having been so snobby about "Little Boy Blue", here is a poem that is considered much finer poetry although it achieves the same end: leaving the reader sobbing and parentally guilt-wracked. Personally, I love it.

THE TOYS

My little Son, who looked from thoughtful eyes
And moved and spoke in quiet grown-up wise,
Having my law the seventh time disobeyed,
I struck him, and dismissed
With hard words and unkissed,
His Mother, who was patient, being dead.
Then, fearing lest his grief should hinder sleep,
I visited his bed,
But found him slumbering deep,
With darkened eyelids, and their lashes yet
From his late sobbing wet.
And I, with moan,
Kissing away his tears, left others of my own;
For, on a table drawn beside his head,
He had put, within his reach,
A box of counters and a red-veined stone,
A piece of glass abraded by the beach,
And six or seven shells,
A bottle of bluebells,
And two French copper coins, ranged there with careful art,
To comfort his sad heart.
So when I prayed
To God, I wept, and said:
Ah, when at last we lie with trancèd breath,
Not vexing Thee in death,
And thou rememberest of what toys
We made our joys,
How weakly understood
Thy great commanded good,
Then, fatherly not less
Than I whom Thou hast moulded from the clay,
Thou'lt leave Thy wrath, and say,
"I will be sorry for their childishness."

Welcome to our Poetry Discussion Section! Seeing your name, Shelby, takes me back to my childhood--my two best friends (girls) both had the first name of Shelby. Well, I digress--it's okay, though, this is a section where we seem to wander all over the mental map.

You know, the name Helen Steiner Rice is so familiar to me yet I couldn't find her in any of my poetry anthologies (which isn't saying much since I have only three).

As I think of it, isn't she the one who writes those beautiful friendship cards? Well, whether she's the one or not, I do love to receive those cards! (I was never warm and outgoing enough to actually send one, and, if I did at this stage of my life, my friends would think either I was dying or they were.)

Anyway, I'm looking forward to your joining in our discussions--listen, you don't have to even discuss the subject anyone else is--just post whatever comes to mind.

Johann McCrackin--

I've been looking forward to seeing your post subsequent to your Jan 16th one. You said you liked Emily Dickinson; she's such a great poet. Isn't it strange that we don't have any of her poems posted in this section--and they're so perfect for posting. Here's one I like:

To hang our head ostensibly,

And subsequent to find

That such was not the posture

Of our immortal mind,

Affords the sly presumption

That, in so dense a fuzz,

You, too, take cobweb attitudes

Upon a plane of gauze!

Ros

I'm so glad you said what you did about being able to indulge emotionally in Old-Yeller-tears while understanding the level of intellectual devices being used.

On the other hand, I was weeping so hard at the end of "Cinema Paradisio" that my husband had to debrief me for about 10 minutes before I could pull myself together and leave the theater. And I will forever think of that movie as pure poetry, but it probably isn't.
--Marie

Tracing lost poems from mere fragments of information is one of our great joys here at Poetry. It gives us a chance to show off our years of devotion to the art plus use pompous jargon that will make you giggle.

Seriously,
--Marie
P.S.--I'm with you on "Peter you're home." And when a newscaster says anything about animals then "We must warn you these scenes are graphic...." My husband and I simultaneously race from all over the house to shutdown the TVs.

I used to have a notebook filled with little bits from various places and sometimes forgot to note where I got them. Then there was the envelope I found tucked into an old book, filled with poems I had cut out of the Ladies' Home Journal and other "women's magazines" of the 1930's, in the days when those mags actually published poetry. We really got our dime's worth in those days, a serial, half a dozen short stories, the poetry, recipes, a column for teen-agers, a column in diary form from a farm-dweller or dog-raiser or some such, fashion, patterns, and the very first pre-Oprah reality-based articles called "Can This Marriage Be Saved?" (You can bet the answer in those days was almost always yes, provided Mrs. gets cracking with the house-cleaning and loses a little weight, and Mr. promises to keep closer track of where his $35 pay envelope goes, and so on.) All for ten cents a month! Backward, turn backward, O Time in thy flight, but I know my old dresses would be much too tight.

Ros

Well, it's just as Francois Villon asked plaintively in "Where Are the Snows of Yesteryear?"

Where is the Maudie of 1937?
Perhaps she dwells in Sub-Deb Heaven
or, if alive, that flat-hipped chick
simmers within a waist that's thick,
the snub-nosed face that invited passes
glitters behind trifocal glasses.
The glossy hair so bright and sleek
Is blued and blow-dried every week
and the rosy glow upon her cheek
now comes discreetly from Clinique.
But the smile enhanced by perfect dentures
recalls the spice of those adventures...

Sorry, it just leaked out. You can finish it.

Ros

Another of Denise Levertov's poems, "Namings," deals with the human need to classify and name everything. She refers to an aging poet in a new apartment, "lost and distraite." When Levertov offers to help, the woman says, "Identify things!" such as a box of buttons, a picture frame ...

"The need to know maenad from dryad, to know when you see the green drift
of watergrass combed by current, the word you desire is naiad."*

*from Evening Train," New York: New Directions, 1992, 1993

Ros

Now dogs pretent they like to fight;
They often bark, more seldom bite;
But yet a Dog is, on the whole,
What you would call a simple soul.
Of course I'm not including Pekes,
And such fantastic canine freaks.
The usual Dog about the Town
Is much inclined to play the clown,
And far from showing too much pride
Is frequently undignified.
He's very easily taken in--
Just chuck him underneath the chin
Or slap his back and shake his paw,
And he will gambol and guffaw.
He's such an easy-going lout,
He'll answer any hail or shout.

Again I must remind you that
A Dog's a Dog--A CAT'S A CAT.

With Cats, some say, one rule is true:
Don't speak till you are spoken to.
Myself, I do not hold with that--
I say, you should ad-dress a Cat.
But always keep in mind that he
Resents familiarity.
I bow, and taking off my hat,
Ad-dress him in this form: O CAT!
But if he is the Cat next door,
Whom I have often met before
(He comes to see me in my flat)
I greet him with an OOPSA CAT!
I think I've hear them call him James--
But we've not got so far as names.

Before a Cat will condescend
To treat you as a trusted friend,
Some little token of esteem
Is needed, like a dish of cream;
And you might now and then supply
Some caviare, or Strassburg Pie,
Some potted grouse, or salmon paste--
He's sure to have his personal taste.
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
A Cat's entitled to expect
These evidences of respect.
And so in time you reach your aim,
And finally call him by his NAME.
So this is this, and that is that:
And there's how you AD-DRESS A CAT.

 
"Do you like dogs, Grandpa?"
 
"Yes I do. We have had two."
 
"I don't. I like cats."
 
Grandpa would have smiled
 
But Elizabeth was very serious
 
And you don't smile
 
At very serious people
 
Do you?
 

I love your verses. They are wonderfully sparse, uncluttered. No sighing to muses or references to little known characters in ancient classics. And no foreign phrases tossed in here and there. I feel comfortable and unintimidated with them, sure that you are not writing to impress readers but to reach them, touch them by expressing shared, complex emotions simply. So that they will say, "Yes, that's it. I know just what you mean but could never put it in words."

Thank you for posting the verse from "Granddaughters". -- Marie

DOG'S PLEA Treat me kindly, my beloved friend, for no heart in all the world is more grateful for kindness than the loving heart of me.

Do not break my spirit with a stick, for though I should lick your hand in between blows, your patience and understanding will more quickly teach me the things you would have me to learn.

Speak to me often, for your voice is the world's sweetest music, as you must know by the fierce wagging of my tail when your footstep falls on my waiting ear.

Please take me inside when it is cold and wet for I am a domesticated animal, no longer accustomed to bitter elements.

I ask no greater glory than the privelege of sitting at your feet beside the hearth.

Keep my pan filled with fresh water, for I can not tell you when I suffer thirst.

Feed me clean food that I may stay well, to romp and play and do your bidding, to walk by your side, and stand ready, willing and able to protect you with my life should your life be in danger.

And, my friend when I am very old and no longer enjoy good health, and sight, do not make heroic efforts to keep me going. I am not having any fun.

Please see that my trusting life is taken gently. I shall leave this earth knowing with the last breath that my fate was always safest in your hands.

Claire

Material which has appeared in print in any form and is currently under copyright should not be included in its entirety, though a few lines might be quoted. Figure copyright as at least 28 years or in some cases 56. (That's why we use a lot of Victorian verse.)
The author, and the print source if available, should always be credited. This would apply even to such informal publications as a church bulletin or club newsletter. "Anonymous" should be taken to mean that the work has appeared in print with that designation, not simply that we ourselves don't know where it came from. If the poem you want to post has actually appeared in print as by "Anonymous" that should be explained.
Similarly, if a poem is by an actual person but has never been published, the poet's name should still be given; otherwise someone else might decide to appropriate it.

I hope this hasn't discouraged you completely.

Ros

   





          I ONCE (AINSE) LOVED A LASS  

          I ainse loved a lass and I loved her sae well 
          That I hate all others that spoke of her ill 
          But now she's rewarded me ill for my love 
          She's gone tae get wed tae another 

          When I saw my love tae the kirk go 
          Wi bride and bridemaidens they made a fine show 
          And I followed after, my heart filled wi woe 
          To see my love wed tae another 

          When I saw my love sit doon tae dine 
          I sat doon beside her and poured oot the wine 
          And I drank tae the lassie that shoulda been mine 
          But she's gone tae be wed tae another 

          The men of yon forest, they ask it o' me 
          How many strawberries grow in the salt sea 
          I answer them back wi a tear in ma e'e 
          How many ships sail in the forest 

          Go dig me a grave, both long, wide and deep 
          And cover it over wi florets sae sweet 
          And I'll turn in for to take a long sleep 
          And maybe in time I'll forget her 

          And they dug him a grave, both long, wide and deep 
          And they covered it over wi florets sae sweet 
          And he's turned in for to take a long sleep 
          And maybe by now he's forgot her 

          

Claire

Kay V, where is your 21-verse "author unkown" poem? My whole software system having collapsed I've had to rebuild it bit by bit, what the techs call a "clean reinstall," meaning you boot up the barest system basics and then cautiously add one software item at a time, checking each nervously to see if that's what did the damage in the first place. So far it's taken 48 hours and $57 in service charges plus a couple of free calls and the attendant long waits on the phone. I've lost all my URL Bookmarks, but fortunately our financial records, which had disappeared for a while, have returned. Meanwhile I logged on to Poetry expecting to find the A.U.'s opus, but it's not here. Maybe if I disappear for a while?

Ros

Ros

You'll note that this is a 14-line poem in iambic pentameter, so it meets the minimum requirements for a sonnet. It doesn't follow the Shakespearean pattern of ending with a rhyming couplet that sums up the thoughts of the preceding 12 lines. Instead, it follows the "8 and 6" scheme and is a kind of extended simile: The first 8 lines are the "As" part - describing the feeling of being fed up with too much sweetness and longing for something stronger and more rugged. The final sextet is the "So" part, in which the "surge and thunder" of Homer's epic refresh us when we are weary of "the songs of modern speech."

The language is perhaps typical late-Victorian, romantic, formal, and a bit sugary, but I liked the thought, and it did ring a bell! If any reader is interested in giving it a second glance, there are at least a dozen points for discussion in the ideas, the imagery, and the poetic construction.

Ros

Enid, of course we're interested in a poem about love (original, authored, or anonymous, rhymed, unrhymed, new, or old), so please post.

Ros

Ros

The Iliad - I'll read it in three days!
So, Corydon, post "Keep Out!" on the door.
If I'm disturbed - as I've warned you before,
I swear you'll suffer - and you know my ways!



Don't let the maid come in to clean the room.
You keep out too, you and that other boy.
I want three days to dwell in windy Troy,
Then a week's rioting to purge the gloom.



Well...if Cassandra sends a messenger?
Open the door for anyone from her -
Come right through, help me straighten up the place --



Only for such a one I'll show my face.
Elsewise, let gods from heaven come down and knock,
Even for them don't you dare loose the lock.


--Pierre de Ronsard (1524-1585)

The "Cassandra" referred to was a real person, one of the lady-loves to whom Ronsard addressed much of his exquisite love poetry. So he's saying that this burst of scholarly activity can be interrupted only by a message from his beloved.

Ros

I don't want to push this French poetry thing too hard, but I have just found a really delightful dog poem written by another 16th-century poet, Joachim du Bellay. It's much too long to translate here but it's really sweet: an epitaph for his loyal little poodle, Peloton (a word that means a big fuzzy ball of yarn).

What a great little dog he was! All curly white fur except for his huge black eyes and black muzzle. His principal exercises were yapping and braying, jumping up and down, standing on his hind legs, and of course acting as watchdog during the night. If he heard a sound he would be up and barking immediately, ready to protect his master. He was a dainty eater, not gulping down huge pieces of meat but only eating the bits that came from his master's hand. No one else could feed him. He would not allow himself to be petted by strangers.

Alas, says his grieving master, he has died and his body is buried in the earth and covered with roses and grass, while his spirit has been taken into the underworld to amuse the god Pluto. What a pity, says the poet, that he should have been sent to Pluto, when such a wonderful little dog should really have ascended to the sky to form a new constellation!

Ros

Owen's poems about war have been reprinted in many anthologies. This one is often used even today, though some its language may seem old-fashioned to today's readers.

The thoughts that you have posted, and your verses, strongly convey your feelings about war, loss, and bravery. I think Wilfred Owen was expressing some of the same emotions, but as a poet of 80 or more years ago, he used more formal verse and more formal language.

Any comments?

Ros

George Hall suggested Emily Dickinson (1831-1886) as a possible author of the fragment he is trying to locate. That sent me to Dickinson's Complete Poems. The subject index indicated nothing relevant, but I had a pleasant time browsing through those fascinatingly irregular poems, which have strict meter and some rhyme but a very high Puzzle Factor. I found a couple of short things I hadn't seen before. Here's an intriguing one:

Ros

Now for something entirely different, a lovely spring poem I copied from one of the displays at the school where I volunteer:

While You Were Chasing a Hat

The wind that whirled your hat away
soared a flag,
filled a sail,

led a boat, tugged a kite,
tweaked its tail,

towed a cloud,
rode a wave,

chased some crows,
flung them far,
strummed on a telephone-wire guitar,

thrumming a tune
mile on mile
all the while you were chasing a hat.

The author, Lilian Moore.
The book, Something New Begins, published/copyright in 1982 by Atheneum and later picked up by Scholastic.

Think spring, everybody!

Ros

This is quite long so I am doing it in several takes. Hope it goes through:

Moonlight Ride
(Author Unknown)



Jenny was so happy about the house they had found.
For once in her life, it was on the right side of town.
She unpacked her things with such great ease.
As she watched her new curtains blow in the breeze.



How wonderful it was to have her own room.
School would be starting, she'd have friends over soon.
There'd be sleep-overs, and parties; she was so happy.
Itís just the way she wanted her life to be.



On the first day of school, everything went great.
She made new friends and even got a date!
She thought, I want to be popular and I'm going to be,
Because I just got a date with the star of the team!

"Well, I just won't tell them the entire truth.
They won't know the difference; what's there to lose?"
Jenny asked to stay with her friends that night.
Her parents frowned, but said, "All right."



Excited, she got ready for the big event.
But as she rushed around like she had no sense,
She began to feel guilty about all the lies,
But what's a pizza, a party, and a moonlight ride?


Well, the pizza was good, and the party was great,
But the moonlight ride would have to wait,
For Jeff was half drunk by this time.
But he kissed her and said that he was just fine.



Then the room filled with smoke and Jeff took a puff.
Jenny couldn't believe he was smoking that stuff.
Now Jeff was ready to ride to the point,
But only after he'd smoked another joint.

They jumped in the car for the moonlight ride,
Not thinking that he was too drunk to drive.
They finally made it to the point at last,
And Jeff started trying to make a pass.



A pass is not what Jenny wanted at all
(and by a pass, I don't mean playing football).
"Perhaps my parents were right....maybe I am too young.
Boy, how could I ever, ever be so dumb."



With all of her might, she pushed Jeff away:
"Please take me home, I don"t want to stay."
Jeff cranked up the engine and floored the gas.
In a matter of seconds they were going too fast.


As Jeff drove on in a fit of wild anger,
Jenny knew that her life was in danger.
She begged and pleaded for him to slow down,
But he just got faster as they neared the town.



"Just let me get home! I'll confess that I lied.
I really went out for a moonlight ride."
Then all of a sudden, she saw a big flash.
"Oh God, please help us! We're going to crash!"

She doesn't remember the force of impact.
Just that everything all of a sudden went black.
She felt someone remove her from the twisted rubble,
And heard, "Call an ambulance! These kids are in trouble!"



Voices she heard....a few words at best.
But she knew there were two cars involved in the wreck.
Then wondered to herself if Jeff was all right,
And if the people in the other car were alive.



She awoke in the hospital to faces so sad.
"You've been in a wreck and it looks pretty bad."
These voices echoed inside her head,
As they gently told her that Jeff was dead.





They said, "Jenny, we've done all we can do.
But it looks as if we'll lose you too."
"But the people in the other car?" Jenny cried.
"We're sorry, Jenny, they also died."



Jenny prayed, "God, forgive me for what I've done.
I only wanted to have just one night of fun.
Tell those people's family, I've made their lives dim,
And wish I could return their families to them.



"Tell Mom and Dad I'm sorry I lied,
And that it's my fault so many have died.
Oh, nurse, will you please tell them that for me?"
The nurse just stood there, she never agreed.



But took Jenny's hand with tears in her eyes,
And a few moments later Jenny died.
A man asked the nurse, "Why didn't you do your best
To bid that girl her one last request?"



She looked at the man with eyes oh so sad,
"Because the people in the other car were her mom and dad."
This story is sad and unpleasant but true,
So young people take heed, it could have been you.

The Subject Index in her Collected Poems covers literally hundreds of topics, though as you might expect, the listings under Death, Love, God, Graves, Life, Heaven, and Friends are numerous, as are those under Nature and various subtopics like birds, bees, and flowers.

I agree about the comparative regularity of Dickinson's meters, though I think many of her rhymes are intriguingly stretchy and far-fetched. But then, the Welsh think a rhyme is a rhyme if just the vowel sounds match, and that might be true of other Gaelic-Celtic tongues as well.

Ros

June, your reference to "Queen Hope" reminds me of the old myth about Pandora's box. When that curious teen-ager opened the box which Epimetheus had begged her not to touch, all the world's troubles flew out to plague us, but at the bottom of the box Pandora found the little winged creature Hope, stored there to offer a bit of comfort to us hapless humans.

Ros

As for the endurance of truth as a worthy principle for life, we might look back at Kay's poem and speculate that if the little girl had told the truth to her parents, the whole tragedy might have been avoided.

Ros

Ros

In Chapter 5 of the biblical Book of Daniel, King Darius had Daniel cast into a den of lions, because he was discovered worshiping his own (Hebrew) God instead of bowing down to the king. The den was closed with a stone and sealed up, but in the morning, Daniel was still alive, and informed Darius that God had sent an angel to shut the mouths of the lions. Although according to current scholarship Daniel is seen as a legendary, rather than a historical, figure, the story serves as a paradigm of the power of faith to overcome danger and temptation. (The whole incident was politically motivated because the king's officials were jealous of Daniel's power over the king and couldn't find any other way to undermine him except his religious practices.)

The last line seemed to me to be really powerful: "...and hold red lion silent at our feet." But why is the poet competing with Daniel? Maybe that was the only word available to complete the rhyme. Or is there another reason?

Dear Ginny, it would make an old woman happy to learn that, before looking for further critical analysis, you had read a dozen, or 50, or 100, of Dickinson's poems and had allowed yourself to be carried away by her thoughts and images. Yes, she did wear white most of the time, and she did seem to float up and down the stairs quietly (probably wore the 19th-century equivalent of Dearfoam house slippers), but just think about the ideas that boiled in that brain! Dozens of references to faraway places with strange-sounding names. Imaginary adventures on land and sea, voyages in her mind, with who knows what bruises and bumps and tears as she came bitterly back to earth.Innumerable keen notes about nature. The turning of the seasons. The way her moods were affected by sunlight, weather, bird-song. The way she enshrined her (probably) few physical contacts with men in passionate words. How did she deal, in that era of dubious hygiene and limited laundry, with the conflict between her menstrual cycles and her "lady-in-white" appearance? What wicked chuckles did she enjoy as she scribbled some sharp comment about a stuffed-shirt visitor or a pompous neighbor?

As for Macleish, it's been years since I pored earnestly over any of his longer works. He made nice pictures and I dimly recall he had some ideas about democracy, America, etc. And doesn't a Pulitzer suggest that his ideology pleased the publishing establishment? But "Ars Poetica" has been important to me. I fancy I can hear music acompanying it.

Ros

Fog is enchanting, isn't it, as long as one doesn't have to drive in it, or catch a plane!

As for the sterility of plastic roses, it led me to wonder how those indestructible blossoms would have appeared to some of the old poets who wrote so feelingly of "beauty that must die" and who compared the perishability of flowers to the perishability of youth and love.

You'll find full instructions for posting poetry and lots of other things in the main Seniornet listing, Introduction to the Round Table. There are several "lessons" which demonstrate the various codes to insert in your message box, and there's also a place for you to practice. You can even learn how to use big print and different colors, if that's what turns you on.

Ros

June, Ars Poetica could be roughly translated as "A Treatise on Poetry," and was actually the title assigned by later scholars to a kind of essay by the Roman poet Horatius Flaccus setting down some guidelines for writing Latin poetry within the strict set of meters and subjects considered appropriate for that 1st century BC. Macleish's borrowing of the title was in a sense humorous, because his "should-be" guidelines couldn't be more remote from Horace's fairly rigid ones. I skimmed through our Modern Library Horace hoping to find some light-hearted bit of translated verse to post here, but do you think I found anything? Nah.

So, Ginny, please come to the defense of the Roman bard. Rescue his laurel wreath (which in one translation is described as PARSLEY??), correct all my errors, and help us all to learn something.

Ros

Up-Hill

Does the road wind up-hill all the way?
Yes, to the very end.
Will the day's journey take the whole long day?
From morn to night, my friend.



But is there for the night a resting-place?
A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.
May not the darkness hide it from my face?
You cannot miss that inn.



Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?
Those who have gone before.
Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?
They will not keep you standing at that door.



Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?
Of labour you shall find the sum.
Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
Yea, beds for all who come.

-- Christina Rossetti

I like the way she carried out (as simply as if she were describing an actual inn for tourists) the metaphor of the tedious climb, the oncoming darkness, and the welcome that awaited the faithful traveler at journey's end.

Ros

I value the privilege of posting my selections here. I think I've located the internal, physical place where they seem to resonate. It's somewhere inside my chest cavity, maybe close to the point that chokes up when I watch something sentimental or try to sing an old song.

June, I liked your quotation from Pamela Starr. That kind of determined optimism is really valuable. (I have to admit it reminded me -- by contrast --of a saying from the cynical 1960's which summarized hard luck, depression, and resignation, "I've been down so long it seems like up to me.")

I have a longish poem to post that contains some hopeful ideas, and will move it to the next message.

Ros

Do you find this poem a little stiff and formal? I do, but it's redeemed by that last stanza and the beautiful, hopeful last line ... meaningful to me since many of our lives are now facing "westward."

Ros

The scars of wind and floodtide slowly fade;
The healing power of time and sun and rain
Caress the earth and draw forth from the sod
The greenery that covers it again.

Nature never lingers with the past
Or yesterday's lost joy. It turns its face
Forever to the day that lies at hand
Sustaining life with steadfastness and grace.

God's gift of life demands that it be lived
And only cowards seek to abdicate
The choice we each must make--how we will live--
Courageously or cursing fickle fate.

Our failures never write the final word;
Each moment holds a challenge fresh and bright.
To hearts that live in love and leap in hope,
Sunrise is certain after darkest nights.

You referred to having written this "several years ago." If you were doing it now, would you do anything differently? (In the poem, I mean -- not in your life.)

Ros

Our various messages are certainly a testament to the way in which poetry can illuminate our thoughts and speak to our personal experiences.

For the end of March, here are two little poems with similar titles, and with vastly different approaches:

THE DAY BEFORE APRIL

The day before April
Alone, alone,
I walked in the woods
and sat on a stone.

I sat on a broad stone
And sang to the birds.
The tune was God's making
But I made the words.

(Mary Carolyn Davies)

The Sandburg poem is taken from Early Moon, a 1930 collection of his poems intended for young readers. They are largely descriptive and have very little social comment. The collection includes "Fog," as well as numerous other weather-related pieces.

I don't think I'll be able to resist posting one of the "daffodil" poems that always come to mind at this time.

Ros

Ros

What is your interpretation of the poet's thought? And, incidentally, do you have further information about the poet and the source?

Ros

June, I thought of you as I typed this in, seeing some connection to the thread of ideas we've been pursuing.)

Ros

Ros

When daisies pied and violets blue
And lady-smocks all silver-white,
And cockoo-buds of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight.

His 'daisies pied' are bellis perennis which have light red splotched on their tips. These old English meadow flowers were said to bloom about Annunciation, the 25th of March. We have seen the California desert wildflowers in early spring with all the small flowers spreading carpets of color: yellow, pink, blue, lavender, and they literally 'do paint the meadows with delight.'

I've already said that this is one of my favorite poems. It's full of images that keep unfolding themselves in my mind like real pictures: the swimming spotted trout, for example, and the birds' wings, and that astonishing description of a landscape that Hopkins himself could never have seen - an aerial view of fields alternately fallow and plowed, with patches where animals are sheltered. Of course in England he could have climbed a steep hill and looked down on such a patchwork of different colors and textures of the land. (I'm still not sure if by "fold" he meant animal pens or possibly a narrow and steeply rolling part of the land that couldn't be plowed or cultivated.)

We often speak of a poet's "economy" of words. I think Hopkins achieved this by using terms that could be interpreted in many ways. We might take "pied" literally as meaning spotted black-and-white like a piebald horse; or we can extend it to mean anything that has more than one color, more than one texture, pattern, pace, flavor, or light level.

The poem takes us from sky to water to earth, and doesn't leave out humans, each of us different in some wondrous way - each pursuing our trade (writing, teaching, farming, house-building) with a different kind of gear. And there's that piercing question in parentheses: "Who knows how?"

Ros

Ros

The Wife
She rose to his requirement, dropped
The playthings of her life
To take the honorable work
Of woman and of wife.

If aught she missed in her new day
Of amplitude, or awe,
Or first prospective, or the gold
In using wore away,

It lay unmentioned, as the sea, Develops pearl and weed,
But only to himself is known
The fathoms they abide.
Emily Dickinson
Well guess I will have a nice glass of sweet Jewish wine now...They say there is a seder in every bottle! I was once at a seder and found that it was wonderful how people could cherish the historical past...Hope to read some more of your postings! Ann Marie

There's more than one possible interpretation of 732: The first, as you suggest, is that she is acknowledging how a woman's doubts, fears, and wishes can disappear when she experiences a love-relationship that is "fathoms deep." The second is that a wife silently surrenders her original personhood, submerging it in the daily requirements of wifehood (which you'll agree in those pre-technology days involved a lot of manual labor and very little brainwork; in short, a kind of servitude)....and that she alone knows that the hopes, strivings, and ideas are still there, however deeply buried.

I suppose we'll never learn the truth about Dickinson's romantic life. The accepted theory today is that it was largely fantasy, possibly based on a few brief physical approaches --not sexual assaults -- which overwhelmed an impressionable young woman caught up in hero-worship for an attractive clergyman.

Regardless of its nature, her experience reinforced her reclusive behavior and actually made possible this wonderful treasure-trove of poems that range from light-hearted bits about nature to really serious meditations on religion, eternity, death, and human relations.

Most of us learned about Dickinson only through the "nature" poems about butterflies, seasons, and wild flowers. I think it's important to explore the deeper Emily and everything that her work can teach us about a woman's mind and heart. Thank you for adding to that aspect of our discussion. It would be good to hear from you again.

Ros

I just had a strange thought: Suppose Emily Dickinson had had e-mail! She could have reached out and been in touch with people all over the world. Every day of her life she could have shared her insights, her wisdom, love of nature, faith --instead of putting it all in writing not to be discovered until after her death. On the other hand, the world would probably have lost this treasured collection of poems, because her emotions and her questions would have been dissipated in daily conversations over the miles. So maybe the way things went was the better way in the end.

Ros

One of my goals in starting this discussion was to encourage participants - lurkers and posters alike - to consider, not only the emotional content of our most-loved poems, but the ways in which poetry shapes language to contain meaning that goes beyond the literal meaning of the words. Whenever something is posted that people like, there's always a discussion of the emotions it arouses; but I particularly value the opportunities to talk about the mysteries of the poetic process itself.

Of course poetry is not gender-specific...but you knew that all the time. Won't you prove it by sharing one of your favorite poems to help us celebrate National Poetry Month?

Ros

One wonders how Emily Dickinson could have been such a recluse and still show such insight. She came from a learned family, her father had a large reception each year, she had a few friends, and kept up some correspondence. For her with her talents it obviously was enough. On her poem The Wife I would like to give my view.

She rose to his requirement, dropped / The playthings of her life / To take the honorable work / Of woman and of wife. This was expected and looked forward to in life. A life of labor, yes, but not tedious (except in the case of total poverty, which she probably was not acquainted with). Even the once a week all-day job of washing clothes brought a sense of accomplishment, and even pride of having whites that were the whitest possible hanging on the clothesline. A lively mind could continue, with planning needlework, correspondence, a book or so, songs, conversation, socials, etc. If aught she missed in her new day / Of amplitude, or awe, / Or first prospective, or the gold / In using wore away This is to a large extent still true. All the interesting things one is exposed to in school, the feeling of newnes, sometimes a chance for a trip or other adventure, cannot fully continue as one settles down. True automatically for the man too as he has to make the living for the household. It lay unmentioned, as the sea / Develops pearl and weed, / But only to himself is known / The fathoms they abide. Life develops pearls too. I wonder about the pronoun "himself". Should it be "oneself." Though sometimes it is not oneself but others who see the pearls.

A curious thing about some of the words in her poems. Her poems were hand written, of course. In a facsimile of her poem Renunciation of seven verses, three words seems to be printed differently than she wrote them: 'revelations' is printed for 'resurrections', 'symbol' for 'falling', 'failed' for 'leaked'. (In verses 1, 3 and 6, in Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson It does say that she sometimes made footnotes with choices of words and phrases, and sometimes she sent friends different versions.) The words in her handwriting seem a little more like her. One wonders about other poems if other versions.

No matter what, hers was a unique talent, and thank you Ann Marie for posting The Wife, a poem I would have totally overlooked otherwise. Here is one of my favorites:

I never saw a moor,
I never saw the sea;
Yet know I how the heather looks,
And what a wave must be.

I never spoke with God,
Nor visited in heaven;
Yet certain am I of the spot
As if the chart were given.
by Emily Dickinson

Yes, the many possible variations and re-writings that were found for Dickinson, as well as the "editing" that some suspect was done by her earliest posthumous publishers, provide plenty of speculation. But you know yourself, if you've ever written so much as a paragraph for a newsletter, how much of what e.e. cummings described as "changing and arranging" goes on. Pick your favorite and stick to it!

Thanks for posting that lovely, familiar, and always welcome verse saluting the mysterious power of our imagination to build on our earthly knowledge. Sometimes that's what keeps us going amid pain, stress, and disappointment.

Here's a poem by William H. Davies (1870-1940) which I thought spoke to the same idea:

National Poetry Month! Let all of us include the joys of poetry in the mysteries that give our happy hearts "the power to make a stone a flower."

Ros

Frost's "Nothing Gold Can Stay" is a good example of the way Frost often introduced a rueful pang to temper any hint of sweetness. Spring is full of promise, but "nothing gold can stay." (Sigh!)

Have you a favorite short poem, or excerpt from a longer one, that you can post - with your comments - for our enjoyment?

Ros

The sun was warm but the wind was chill,
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You're one month on in the middle of May.

But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you're two months back in the middle of March.

by Robert Frost
from Two Tramps in Mud Time

Come to think of it, it may apply to a few people/relationships too.

Changing the subject entirely before the season is all gone, to the collection of daffodil verses posted April 1st: Daffodils are designated as the March flower, but only the earlier ones appear by the end of March here. We drove across the high country in Montana in mid-May and the daffodils there were in their prime then. Anyway, one species evidently were once wildflowers in England. England, like the U.S. seems to have lost much of their wildflowers, due to cultivation leading to mass eradication of native plants and loss of habitat, and from over-collecting. While the Wordsworth poem written in 1807 is tops, Robert Herrick (1591-1674) also wrote one on daffodils.

Oh, still the air of Devon thrills,
After two centuries long!
For here behold these daffodils
Saved by a snatch of song.

from For a Flyleaf of Herrick's Poems, 1893
by Lizette Woodworth Reese

Marie, welcome back to the page. The subject, nominally, is spring. Here's a stanza from "Perhaps the Best Time," by the distinguished American poet William Meredith, that's about both love and spring in equal proportions:

This would be spring, if seasons could be found
In everything; or if times, this would be morning.
We dazzle at this first warm shy half-turning
As at a sunrise or at quickening of the ground.
There leafs along our boughs what would astound
Old botanists and set dead lovers yearning--
And yet October will see all this burning:
I know because I stay here year around.


This, together with many more of Meredith's wonderful poems, appears in his collection Effort at Speech, published in 1997 by Northwestern University Press. ( It lists at $17.95, probably available at Barnes & Noble online, but whether discounted I know not.)

Spurred by the excitement of our current Book Club Online selection, Road from Coorain, I've been reading Jill Ker Conway's second memoir, True North, also fascinating and packed with information and ideas. She mentions that both she and her husband carried with them a collection of T. S. Eliot's poems. Do you have a cherished favorite book of poetry - anthology or single author, old textbook or new paperbook - that has been on your bookshelf for a long time? It would be interesting to compare notes. You first!

Ros

I keep any old poetry anthologies I have, because some poems seem to drop out of print due to the influx of new ones. And yet some of them were very good poems. So I have no favorite single volume. But I do like one for a different reason - its cover. Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson by Gramercy Books, probably still in print. The jacket cover is white with an etching-type illustration of yellow and pink old-fashioned roses. The cover itself is mauve-pink or what used to be called “ashes of roses”, with a cloth spine of burgundy with gold printing. I always have said it is the contents that count, yet somehow cherish this one more because of its cover.

Jackie, could the “ash bringing to mind the memory of fire” that you were looking for, be from Byron in To the Countess of Blessington,

 
THE SPRING OF MOCKING BIRDS
 

I count no more than nine puffs
 
of cotton-wool blossoms
 
on the Flowering Cherry.
 
Two Mocking Birds guard it;
 
the large male shows off
 
white breakers and hops
 
on the lower power cable
 
and the small female
 
is poised still above.
 
They claim their territory
 
their right to squat
 
to build, to love
 
to bear young
 
all through song
 
not yet too distinguished.
 
It is early to mock
 
it's only spring.

It's good to see your name once more on the page at this season of renewed hopes and reawakened loves, avian or otherwise.

Ros

Here is another poem about the cherry in flower. It is one the the most quoted in anthologies, and for good reason. It has been posted in this Round Table before, but still, ‘tis the season. He writes as a 20 year old and he is certainly not jaded.

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to see the woods in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go,
To see the cherry hung with snow.

A. E. Housman

Poems turn up, like dust bunnies, when you're not looking for them. I found this one in a book of Double-Crostic puzzles and was able to track it down further in an anthology. It has nothing to do with either spring or blossoms, but I thought it might speak wisdom to some of us:

PLAYS
(1846)



Alas, how soon the hours are over
Counted us out to play the lover!
And how much narrower is the stage
Allotted us to play the sage!
But when we play the fool, how wide
The theatre expands! Beside,
How long the audience sits before us!
How many prompters! what a chorus!



Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864)

Landor straddled the Romantic and Victorian periods, though by the time the latter was in full swing he was already advanced in years and devoted many lines of verse to announcing, bewailing, and bragging about that fact.

Ros

Is it too late to add to the daffodil bouquet? They are still blooming here. I stumbled upon these two.

from ENDYMION
John Keats

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o’er-darkened ways
Made for our searching; yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old, and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in...

from JOURNAL April 15, 1802
Dorothy Wordsworth

When we were in the woods beyond Gowbarrow park we saw a few daffodils close to the waterside. ...But as we went along there were more and yet more and at last under the boughs of the trees, we saw that there was a long belt of them along the shore, about the breadth of a country turnpike road. I never saw daffodils so beautiful; they grew among the mossy stones about, and about them, some rested their heads upon these stones as on pillow for weariness and the rest tossed and reeled and danced and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the lake.

Dorothy was the sister and life-long companion of William Wordsworth, and this seems like the experience that he wrote about in his famous poem (part of which was posted April 1st), 5 years later. Did his memory stay as vivid as her writing, or did he consult her journal entry??

It is now believed by many critics that William made ample use of Dorothy Wordsworth's journals and indeed borrowed her poetic inspirations. She is seen as a classic example of the "selfless" loving sister who gave her brother whatever he needed in every way, including personal service, ideas and possibly even actual poems; for after all, it was a man's world and woman's place was to serve. Dorothy found it hard to accept William's late marriage, which displaced her as queen of his little household. I wonder if you have the same edition of the journals as I do (purchased as a marked-down remainder years ago), with lovely illustrations of flowers and nature scenes.

Ros

Many thanks for the suggestion which opens so many possibilities. Alas, no, I don't recognize the line about the dustcloth. Maybe someone else does. Can you recall anything else about the poem?

Ros

The author in this poem recognises that she has to be what she is, but appreciates her sister for what she is. Some things are universal!

IN PRAISE OF MY SISTER
from Sounds, Feelings, Thoughts
Wislawa Szymborska

My sister [Moja siostra] does not write poems
and it’s unlikely she’ll suddenly start writing poems. . . .
In my sister’s desk there are no old poems
nor any new ones in her handbag.
And when my sister invites me to dinner,
I know she has no intention of reading me poems.
She makes superb soups without half trying,
and her coffee does not spill on manuscripts. . . .

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,
And smale fowles maken melodye,
That slepen al the night with open ye,
(So priketh hem nature in hir corages),
Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages....

(Geoffrey Chaucer, c.1340-1400)

An oldie but a goodie! Stay tuned for exciting excerpts from The Shepheardes Calendar, The Earthly Paradise, The Song of Hiawatha, and Idylls of the King.

Meanwhile, in the interests of circumspection, let's try to limit quotations from more contemporary works to a few lines rather than the entire poem, and remember to give full publisher, date, and copyright attribution to any work less than 56 years old.

A happy rest-of-Poetry-Month to all! Remember, next week contains Shakespeare's birthday.

Ros, the Poetry Pusher

Here are two flower-filled excerpts from earlier poets. I thought they made lovely word-pictures of a blossoming English spring, and they do contain our magic word:

(1)From Edmund Spenser, The Shepheardes Calender, Aprille, lines 136 - 145, a tribute to Queen Elizabeth I:



"Bring hether the Pincke and purple Cullambine,
With Gelliflowers:
Bring Coronations, and Sops in wine,
Worne of Paramoures.
Strowe me the ground with Daffadowndillies,
And Cowslips, and Kingcups, and loved Lillies:
The pretie Pawnce,
And the Chevisaunce,
Shall match with the fayre flower Delice....."

(The flowers named are the pink, columbine, carnation, clove-pink, daffodil, cowslip, marsh-marigold, pansy, wallflower, and iris. "Paramoures" in this context means lovers.)



A related passage, said to have been influenced by the above, is from Milton's Lycidas, lines. 133-151, where the poet is summoning the beauties of spring flowers and of poetry to deck the imagined hearse of his drowned friend, Edward King, memorialized here as "Lycidas":



....return Sicilian Muse,
and call the vales and bid them hither cast
Thir bells, and flowrets of a thousand hues.
Ye valleys low where the mild whispers use,
Of shades and wanton winds, and gushing brooks,
On whose fresh lap the swart star sparely looks,
Throw hither all your quaint enamel'd eyes
That on the green terf suck the honied showrs
And purple all the ground with vernal flowrs.
Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies,
The tufted crowtoe and pale Gessamine,
The white pink, and the pansie freakt with jet,
The glowing violet,
The musk rose and the well-attir'd woodbine,
With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,
And every flower that sad imbroidrie wears:
Bid Amaranthus all his beauties shed
And daffadillies fill thir cups with tears
To strew the laureat herse where Lycid lies.

The word "rathe" means "early." Crowtoe is the same as crowfoot, a kind of buttercup. The "amaranthus" summoned here is not so much the drooping purple-red weedy blossom we know in the midwest as it is the imaginary "flower that never fades," of Greek mythology. King's body was actually lost at sea and the memorial ceremonies Milton envisioned would have been performed over an imaginary bier, the "laureat herse" - crowned with laurel in celebration of a hero or a poet - merely a stretch of beautiful, flower-strewn ground.

Last etymologic note: It occurred to me to hunt for "daffodil" in the Oxford English Dictionary, which gives much information about origins and first printed citations, and I found that it was originally "affodil," and derived from "asphodel," the name for a species of narcissus long known in the Mediterranean area, often cited in Greek mythology, sometimes associated with the dead and/or the underworld. All the citations for "daffodil" itself and its diminutives and extended forms seemed to have begun in the late 16th and early 17th century.

The Poetry Pusher

Here are excerpts from two poems by Hart Crane (1899-1932) that speak of flowers and the sharp thorn of loneliness:

from PASTORALE
(published in "White Buildings," 1926)

No more violets,
And the year
Broken into smoky panels.
What woods remember now
Her calls, her enthusiasms.

...
...I can only query, "Fool--
Have you remembered too long;

Or was there too little said
For ease or resolution--
Summer scarcely begun
And violets,
A few picked, the rest dead?


from OLD SONG (1927)

Thy absence overflows the rose,--
From every petal gleam
Such words as it were vain to close,
Such tears as crowd the dream.

....
The burden of the rose will fade
Sped in the spectrum's kiss.
But here the thorn in sharpened shade
Weathers all loneliness.

I believe the last stanza suggests that the rose will fade in the sunlight but the thorn (loneliness) remaining in the shade, will survive.

Hart Crane's poetry was full of challenging images and emotions. He had a troubled life which he ended during an ocean voyage in 1932. His works have gone in and out of print several times; they were collected in 1966 by Liveright as "Complete Poems and Selected Letters" and later appeared as an Anchor paperback, but may now be out of print again.

Ros, the Poetry Pusher

Yes, Poetry Month is nearing the end - well, 9 more days including Shakespeare's birthday. I'm grateful for the level of participation.

I'd been hoping for some clarification of the "fair use" question before May Day. This isn't a question of delusions of grandeur - we're not popular enough to attract a lot of attention ourselves - but I don't want to discover that someone picked up some unattributed selection for this folder and circulated it as "original." (I recall that during the deluge of bathos following the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, someone copied Auden's dirge "Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone" -- originally popularized in Four Weddings and a Funeral -- and tacked it to a wreath as if the mourner had made it up on the spot, and it was read, without credits, over a number of broadcasts. Poor old WHA deserved better than that.) So, as the benevolent desk sergeant used to say on Hill Street Blues, let's be careful out there.

The Poetry Pusher

He wrote the following about a chapel, and again, how descriptive; it is just how we felt walking into a cathedral with the organ playing.

from Il Penseroso, 1631
John Milton

And storied windows richly dight,
Casting a dim religious light.
There let the pealing organ blow,
To the full-voiced quire below,
In service high, and anthems clear,
As may, with sweetness, through mine ear
Dissolve me into ecstasies,
And bring all Heaven before mine eyes.

William Frost notified us of the recent death of Octavio Paz. In today's New York Times Paz's publisher, New Directions, has an obituary ad containing the following poem, translated by Paz'z longtime friend and official translator, Eliot Weinberger:

BROTHERHOOD
Homage to Claudius Ptolemy

I am a man: little do I last
and the night is enormous.
But I look up:
the stars write.
Unknowing I understand:
I too am written,
and at this very moment
someone spells me out.

(A little mysterious, perhaps, but full of hints at meaning.)

Ros

In honor of Shakespeare's birthday, here's a sonnet that has a touch of spring in it, as well as rue "with a difference," as Ophelia would have said:

SONNET 98



From you I have been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April (dressed in all his trim)
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,
That heavy Saturn laughed and leapt with him.
Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odour and in hue,
Could make me any summer's story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew:
Nor did I wonder at the lily's white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
Yet seemed it winter still, and, you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play.



This poem reminds us that Saturn was indeed a gloomy and taciturn god, in spite of the riotous festivals celebrated in his name. Shakespeare suggested that even Saturn must rejoice at the glorious blossoming of spring, but the poet could only hang his head and yearn for his absent beloved.

That the Bard and all that his name symbolizes may cheer our poetic hearts today is the wish of

The Poetry Pusher

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

The dictionary defines a sonnet as "a 14-line poetic form embodying the statement and resolution of a single theme." I chuckled at Wordsworth's comment on restriction and finally coming to the restriction of the sonnet, yet acknowledging the somewhat universal need of parameters.

Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room;
And Hermits are contented with their Cells;
And Students with their pensive Citadels:
Maids at the Wheel, the Weaver at his Loom,
Sit blithe and happy; Bees that soar for bloom,
High as the highest Peak of Furness Fells,
Will murmur by the hour in Foxglove bells:
In truth, the prison, unto which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me,
In sundry moods, 'twas pastime to be bound
Within the Sonnet's scanty plot of ground:
Pleased if some Souls (for such there needs must be)
Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,
Should find short solace there, as I have found.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

Reading "Nuns fret not..." I thought irrelevantly of Anne Shirley's favorite phrase in the Green Gables books, "scope for the imagination." Wordsworth admits he had plenty of that within the 140 beats of the sonnet form. His are less passionate than Shakespeare's but rich and rewarding nonetheless.

I'm luxuriating in Helen Vendler's book, The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets (Harvard, 1997), in which she examines every one in astonishing detail, showing how Shakespeare used the form and language to wonderful purpose. Let me quote one sentence that she wrote about Sonnet 18, having identified it as "the most familiar of the poems and the most indisputably Shakespearean, Elizabethan, and sonnetlike":

"There are many things to praise here, but I will use this poem as an instance of one of Shakespeare's greatest compositional powers--his capacity to confer greater and greater mental scope on any whim of the imagination, enacting that widening gradually, so that the experience of reading a poem becomes the experience of pushing back the horizons of thought." (p. 120)

"Pushing back the horizons of thought." Isn't that a fascinating way to think about a poem? Vendler continues for another two and a half pages examining everything about the sonnet: alliterations, rhymes and near-rhymes,repetitions, puns, ideas, and ends up by showing how the couplet, lines 13 and 14, ties things together. She does this for all 154 of 'em, and the book never becomes tiresome. It's a labor of love, a treasurehouse of ideas, and delightful to read - perfect browsing literature except for being too heavy to read in bed.

Ros

Our Library has "National Poetry Month" signs up all over. So does our big bookstore. Yet I would not have paid any attention, or cared, without this Poetry Round Table! How much you all have contributed to my understanding about poetry, about creativeness, and the human condition.

THUNDERSTORMS
Wm. H. Davies

My mind has thunderstorms,
That brood for heavy hours:
Until they rain me words;
My thoughts are drooping flowers
And sulking, silent birds.

Yet come, dark thunderstorms,
And brood your heavy hours;
For when you rain me words,
My thoughts are dancing flowers
And joyful singing birds.

Jackie and Daphne, thank you for your messages. That Elizabethan tribute to the "lovely" (meaning important and powerful) Gloriana the Queen is sweetly romantic indeed.

It's truly heartening to know that people read and enjoy the Poetry discussion even if they don't always participate. Just to know that there are so many of us out there who are thinking about poetry gives me a wonderful feeling! I hope we can continue to share this special pleasure and that we can bring others to "push back the horizons of thought," as Helen Vendler says.

Ros, the Poetry Pusher

What works for me in finding old postings is to Search using the title or a few distinctive words, then if several are found, if you know the date you can just click on that one. One can understand why the entry #s are not searchable, as theoretically they could change. Dates, such as Apr 7, 1998, by themselves are not searchable, either.

Here is a poem, of rhymed couplets, that expresses the feeling of discovery, of wonder, of newness, "the first time". We need also to remember that children are smaller, and thus everything is relatively larger to them.

THE HAPPY CHILD
W. H. Davies

I saw this day sweet flowers grow thick --
But not one like the child did pick.

I heard the packhounds in green park --
But no dog like the child heard bark.

I heard this day bird after bird --
But not one like the child has heard.

A hundred butterflies saw I --
But not one like the child saw fly.

I saw the horses roll in grass --
But no horse like the child saw pass.

My world this day has lovely been --
But not like what the child has seen.

Loma, what is your source for W. H. Davies? I've found a few often-reprinted ones in anthologies, but haven't seen "The Happy Child" before.

If you want to locate a message by its number without using the "Search" feature, here's a way of locating a previous message by number alone:
Choose a numbered message on whatever page you're currently on.
Click on the message number.
That number should appear at the end of the URL address at the top of the page.
Delete that number from the URL and replace it with the number of the message you want to find.
Press the Enter or Return key.
If WebX is functioning, it will go to the page containing the number you asked for, or a message number close to it. Be warned that there's not always an exact correspondence between the address and the message number - if you put up 241, and hoped to get to message 241, for example, the actual messages on the page might be range from 235 to 240, and you would have to click on "More" to get to the one you want. But at least it's faster than going back through endless pages of "Previous Messages."

Helen, the kind of lurker who notices things! What could be better?

While engaged in a futile effort to dispose of some of my books, I found the following poem reprinted in a paperback young-adult novel:

OF WOUNDS AND SORE DEFEAT

Of wounds and sore defeat
I made my battle stay;
Winged sandals for my feet
I wove of my delay;
Of weariness and fear
I made my shouting spear;
Of loss, and doubt and dread
And swift oncoming doom
I made a helmet for my head
And a floating plume.
From the shutting mist of death,
From the failure of the breath
I made a battle horn to blow
Across the vales of overthrow.
Oh, harken, love, the battle horn!
The triumph clear, the silver scorn.
Oh, harken, where the echoes bring
Down the gray disastrous morn,
Laughter and rallying!

from "The Fire Bringer" (1904), by William Vaughan Moody

Moody, an American, was known around the turn of the century for several verse dramas, of which "The Fire Bringer" is one. Some of his lyric poems appear in old school anthologies. I think the strongly inspirational tone offsets the slight awkwardness of rhythm and rhyme. (It's not quite irregular enough to be "modern" according to the standard of its time. )

Ros

Earlier references to cummings are found in messages 107, 108, 110, 268, 272, and 449.

Ros

Tennyson himself described Elaine's doom in this early version as the result of that glimpse of "Camelot" - or more correctly, that glimpse of Lancelot - that caused her to move from isolation into the real world. Could he have been hinting at the belief held by Victorian men that "ladies" should see life only in the mirror (i.e., through fairy-tales or the interpretation of their menfolk) and not directly, in order to avoid confronting its ugliness? The Victorian myth was that ladies were too delicate for coarse reality; that experience was reserved for women of the lower classes, those who had fallen (who pushed 'em over, by the way?), those with whom men could satisfy their needs without guilt.

Later, in Idylls, the poet came just a bit closer to the story Malory told, and admitted that Lancelot's connection to the Fair Elaine (the Lady in this poem) was a bit more earthy than just riding past her tower. In fact, wasn't he pledged to her only to throw her over when he met Guinevere? And wasn't there said to be, in fact, a little bundle from heaven somewhere in the picture?

Ros

Bliss Carman also wrote a poem on trees, as have several poets, each in his own way. Bliss Carman’s TREES began with the lines: In the Garden of Eden planted by God, / There were goodly trees in the springing sod. Joyce Kilmer’s TREES is of course the best known: I think that I shall never see / A poem as lovely as a tree. George Pope Morris wrote the stirring WOODMAN, SPARE THAT TREE back in 1830: Woodman, spare that tree! / Touch not a single bough!. Also: Author unknown, but a school recitation: What will you be when we’re old and gray, / Dear little tree we plant today?. Henry Cuyler Bunner, THE HEART OF A TREE: What does he plant who plants a tree? / He plants the friend of sun and sky. Lucy Larcom, PLANT A TREE: He who plants a tree plants a hope. And the following which was read at an Arbor Day Celebration the other day:

SALUTE TO THE TREES (about 1909)
Henry Van Dyke
Many a tree is found in the wood
And every tree for its use is good. . . .
But the glory of trees is more than their gifts;
‘Tis a beautiful wonder of life that lifts
From a wrinkled seed in an earth-bound clod,
A column, an arch in the temple of God -
A pillar of power, a dome of delight,
A shrine of song, and a joy of sight!
Their roots are the nurses of rivers in birth,
Their leaves are alive with the breath of the earth. . . .