Author Topic: Poetry Page  (Read 723956 times)

BarbStAubrey

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Re: Poetry Page
« Reply #3360 on: April 01, 2012, 01:03:19 PM »
The Rose of the World
          ~ William Butler Yeats

    WHO dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?
    For those red lips, with all their mournful pride,
    Mournful that no new wonder may betide,
    Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam,
    And Usna's children died.

    We and the labouring world are passing by:
    Amid men's souls, that waver and give place
    Like the pale waters in their wintry race,
    Under the passing stars, foam of the sky,
    Lives on this lonely face.

    Bow down, archangels, in your dim abode:
    Before you were, or any hearts to beat,
    Weary and kind one lingered by His seat;
    He made the world to be a grassy road
    Before her wandering feet.
“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” ~ Goethe

BarbStAubrey

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Re: Poetry Page
« Reply #3361 on: April 01, 2012, 01:06:39 PM »
A Cradle Song
          ~ William Butler Yeats

    THE angels are stooping
    Above your bed;
    They weary of trooping
    With the whimpering dead.

    God's laughing in Heaven
    To see you so good;
    The Sailing Seven
    Are gay with his mood.

    I sigh that kiss you,
    For I must own
    That I shall miss you
    When you have grown.
“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” ~ Goethe

hats

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Re: Poetry Page
« Reply #3362 on: April 01, 2012, 07:24:00 PM »
Enjoying and reading slowly the poetry, Barbara. Thank you. Happy Poetry Month.

Babi

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Re: Poetry Page
« Reply #3363 on: April 02, 2012, 09:43:09 AM »
That January Suite made interesting reading. Some I seemed to grasp, others I did
not. IX I found especially diffictult, tho' I read it three times.

 Can you give me a clue, BARB, about Yeats reference to the "Sailing Seven". I
probably should recognize it but I don't.
"I go to books and to nature as a bee goes to the flower, for a nectar that I can make into my own honey."  John Burroughs

BarbStAubrey

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Re: Poetry Page
« Reply #3364 on: April 02, 2012, 12:08:00 PM »
Glad you peeked in Hats - hope you enjoy the pages...

Babi the seven sisters are the Pleiades, who were nymphs, the seven daughters of the Titan Atlas and the sea nymph Pleione and seen in the sky I think in summer but I know in October.

http://www.naic.edu/~gibson/pleiades/pleiades_myth.html

This is copied from another site
Quote
The Pleiades is an open star cluster which is visible to the naked eye in the constellation Taurus. The Ancient Greeks saw seven stars in the cluster, and named them after the Pleiades, the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione. According to myth, the hunter Orion was in love with them and pursued them until the gods took them to safety, transforming them first into doves, and then into stars. Telescopes have shown that there are up to 500 stars in the cluster.

Pleiades (mythology), in Greek mythology, the seven daughters of Atlas and of Pleione, the daughter of Oceanus. Their names were Electra, Maia, Taygete, Alcyone, Celaeno, Sterope, and Merope. According to some versions of the myth, they committed suicide from grief at the fate of their father, Atlas, or at the death of their sisters, the Hyades.

Other versions made them the attendants of Artemis, goddess of wildlife and of hunting, who were pursued by the giant hunter Orion, but were rescued by the gods and changed into doves. After their death, or metamorphosis, they were transformed into stars, but are still pursued across the sky by the constellation Orion.

Maia, in Greek mythology, the eldest of the seven Pleiades, the children of Atlas and Pleione. A lover of Zeus, the ruler of the Olympian gods, Maia gave birth to Hermes.

In ancient Rome she was often confused with the obscure cult deity Maia, from whom the month named Maius (May) is derived

The badge of Subaru cars features the Pleiades.
Both the Great Pyramid of Giza and the Mayan Temple of the Sun in Cuzco are ialigned with the Pleiades.
“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” ~ Goethe

BarbStAubrey

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Re: Poetry Page
« Reply #3365 on: April 02, 2012, 12:16:14 PM »
One step further - the Pleiades is a seven line poem form with few restrictions as to content, but with strong imagery.

Wicking
          ~ Tumbleweed

wicks of low white candles
whisper into the dark
waltz minute by minute
with washboard harmonics
whistled up by the wind,
wise beyond spoken words
willowy shadows bend


Shanties
          ~ Sandra Martyres

Sneezing and wheezing
Showering in rain
Shrill voices cry out
Stocks of food are low
Starving shanty kids
State governments
Soulless spectators
“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” ~ Goethe

BarbStAubrey

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Re: Poetry Page
« Reply #3366 on: April 02, 2012, 12:25:09 PM »
 :D  ::)  ;)   Wow all that from a short poem to a baby in its cradle.  8)
“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” ~ Goethe

Babi

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Re: Poetry Page
« Reply #3367 on: April 03, 2012, 08:19:45 AM »
 Oh, that seven sisters.   ;) I can assume then that Yeats will be raising his child to
be familiar with the classics.
"I go to books and to nature as a bee goes to the flower, for a nectar that I can make into my own honey."  John Burroughs

BarbStAubrey

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Re: Poetry Page
« Reply #3368 on: April 06, 2012, 04:13:40 AM »
The Country
          ~ Billy Collins

I wondered about you
when you told me never to leave
a box of wooden, strike-anywhere matches
lying around the house because the mice
might get into them and start a fire.

But your face was absolutely straight
when you twisted the lid down on the round tin
where the matches, you said, are always stowed.

Who could sleep that night?
Who could whisk away the thought
of the one unlikely mouse
padding along a cold water pipe
behind the floral wallpaper
gripping a single wooden match
between the needles of his teeth?

Who could not see him rounding a corner,
the blue tip scratching against a rough-hewn beam,
the sudden flare, and the creature
for one bright, shining moment
suddenly thrust ahead of his time-
now a fire-starter, now a torch-bearer
in a forgotten ritual, little brown druid
illuminating some ancient night.

Who could fail to notice,
lit up in the blazing insulation,
the tiny looks of wonderment on the faces
of his fellow mice, one-time inhabitants
of what once was your house in the country?
“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” ~ Goethe

Babi

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Re: Poetry Page
« Reply #3369 on: April 06, 2012, 09:16:08 AM »
 Which only illustrates that a poet can find a subject in anything!  And a good one, too.  ;D

   Here's one from Walt Whitman, who I must admit is not a favorite of mine. But I like this one.

      A Noiseless Patient Spider
a poem by Walt Whitman 


A noiseless patient spider,
I marked where on a promontory it stood isolated,
Marked how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launched forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be formed, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

 
"I go to books and to nature as a bee goes to the flower, for a nectar that I can make into my own honey."  John Burroughs

hats

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Re: Poetry Page
« Reply #3370 on: April 07, 2012, 08:59:47 AM »
I'm here, Barbara. Catching up on the posted poems. Happy National Poetry Month to all of you.

BarbStAubrey

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Re: Poetry Page
« Reply #3371 on: April 07, 2012, 05:30:23 PM »
Here is an excerpt of Rumi founder of the Whirling Dervishes and the highest read poet in America today - http://www.rumipoet.com/
“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” ~ Goethe

BarbStAubrey

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Re: Poetry Page
« Reply #3372 on: April 07, 2012, 07:49:59 PM »
From: Essential Rumi

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don't go back to sleep.

You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep.

People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.

The door is round and open.
Don't go back to sleep.
“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” ~ Goethe

BarbStAubrey

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Re: Poetry Page
« Reply #3373 on: April 07, 2012, 07:51:59 PM »
From: Essential Rumi
           ~ by Coleman Barks

If you want what visible reality
can give, you're an employee.
If you want the unseen world,
you're not living your truth.
Both wishes are foolish,
but you'll be forgiven for forgetting
that what you really want is
love's confusing joy.
“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” ~ Goethe

Babi

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Re: Poetry Page
« Reply #3374 on: April 08, 2012, 08:41:32 AM »
The 'highest read poet in America today' and I've never heard of him! Obviously, I am
not keeping up-to-date in poetry. I love the two examples you gave us, BARB, and I'm
going to look for more of Rumi.
"I go to books and to nature as a bee goes to the flower, for a nectar that I can make into my own honey."  John Burroughs

hats

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Re: Poetry Page
« Reply #3375 on: April 08, 2012, 10:48:33 AM »
Good morning,

Like the poem "Digging." Says a lot about writing, I think.

I would love to read more Rumi. Hope you posted it here.

BarbStAubrey

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Re: Poetry Page
« Reply #3376 on: April 08, 2012, 11:33:25 AM »
          ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, (1207-1273 ce) saint and mystic, from Essential Rumi

You've no idea how hard I've looked for a gift to bring You.
Nothing seemed right.

What's the point of bringing gold to the gold mine, or water to the Ocean.
Everything I came up with was like taking spices to the Orient.

It's no good giving my heart and my soul because you already have these.

So- I've brought you a mirror.

Look at yourself and remember me.
“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” ~ Goethe

hats

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Re: Poetry Page
« Reply #3377 on: April 08, 2012, 03:43:37 PM »
Barbara, isn't that just beautiful?? Soooo romantic.

Babi

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Re: Poetry Page
« Reply #3378 on: April 09, 2012, 08:32:09 AM »
  I am all too familiar with that problem; what to give the person who needs nothing and has
more than they need of everything? 
"I go to books and to nature as a bee goes to the flower, for a nectar that I can make into my own honey."  John Burroughs

BarbStAubrey

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Re: Poetry Page
« Reply #3379 on: April 09, 2012, 12:27:27 PM »
Fascinating how we can all read into poetry our own understanding that hits a button within us - I was looking at the poem as God talking putting that together in my head because of Rumi being a mystic - so many of the mystics from any religious practice write the most romantic - provocatively romantic poetry - I am thinking of  John of the Cross and Teresa of Ávila. - both mystics - both writers and especially John whose Dark Night of the Soul is a poem written in 1587 was only roughly translated into English in the late 1880s. The most lyrical translation was done by E. Allison Peers in the 1940s and 50s. The Bride is the symbol of the soul meeting God symbolized by the Groom.

Here is one of many translations...

Once in a dark of night,
Inflamed with love and wanting, I arose
(O coming of delight!)
And went, as no one knows,
When all my house lay long in deep repose

All in the dark went right,
Down secret steps, disguised in other clothes,
(O coming of delight!)
In dark when no one knows,
When all my house lay long in deep repose.

And in the luck of night
In secret places where no other spied
I went without my sight
Without a light to guide
Except the heart that lit me from inside.

It guided me and shone
Surer than noonday sunlight over me,
And lead me to the one
Whom only I could see
Deep in a place where only we could be.

O guiding dark of night!
O dark of night more darling than the dawn!
O night that can unite
A lover and loved one,
A lover and loved one moved in unison.

And on my flowering breast
Which I had kept for him and him alone
He slept as I caressed
And loved him for my own,
Breathing an air from redolent cedars blown.

And from the castle wall
The wind came down to winnow through his hair
Bidding his fingers fall,
Searing my throat with air
And all my senses were suspended there.

I stayed there to forget.
There on my lover, face to face, I lay.
All ended, and I let
My cares all fall away
Forgotten in the lilies on that day.
“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” ~ Goethe

BarbStAubrey

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Re: Poetry Page
« Reply #3380 on: April 11, 2012, 05:31:55 AM »
Well this one isn't a love story or a spiritual cry of the heart. However, it could be called Romantic since it does tap into an aesthetic experience that includes awe, confronting the wilds of nature.

Page from a Tale
          ~ by Wallace Stevens [1879-1955]

In the hard brightness of that winter day
The sea was frozen solid and Hans heard,
By his drift-fire, on the shore, the difference
Between loud water and loud wind, between that
Which has no accurate syllables and that
Which cries so blau and cries again, so lind
Und so lau, between sound without meaning and
   speech,
Of clay and wattles made as it ascends
And hear it as it falls in the deep heart's core.
A steamer lay near him, foundered in the ice.

So blau, so blau...Hans listened by the fire.
New stars that were a foot across came out
And shone. And a small cabin build there.
So lind. The wind blazed as they sang. So lau.
The great ship, Balayne, lay frozen in the sea.
The one-foot stars were couriers of its death.
To the wild limits of its habitation.

These were not tepid stars of torpid places.
But bravest at midnight and in lonely spaces,
They looked back at Hans' look with a savage faces.
The wet weed sputtered, the fire died down, the cold
Was like a sleep. The sea was a sea he dreamed.
Yet Hans lay wide awake. And live alone.
In the bee-loud glade. Lights on the steamer moved.
Men would be starting at dawn to walk ashore.
They would be afraid of the sun: what it might be,
Afraid of the country angels of those skies,
The finned flutterings and gaspings of the ice,
As if whatever in water strove to speak
Broken dialect in a break of memory.

The sun might rise and it might not and if
It rose, ashen and red and yellow, each.
Opaque, in orange circlet, nearer than it
Had ever been before, no longer known,
No more that which most of all brings back the known,
But that which destroys it completely by this light.
For that, or a motion not in the astronomies,
Beyond to the habit of sense, anarchic shape
Afire-- it might and it might not in that.
Gothic blue, speed home its portents to their ends.

It might become a wheel spoked red and white.
In alternate stripes converging at a point
Of flame on the line, with a second wheel below,
Just rising, accompanying, arranged to cross,
Through weltering illuminations, humps
Of billows, downward, toward the drift-fire shore.
It might come bearing, out of chaos, kin
Smeared, smoked, and drunken of thin potencies,
Lashing at images in the atmosphere,
Ringed round and barred, with eyes held in their.
  hands,
And capable of incapably evil thought:
Slight gestures that could rend, the palpable ice,
Or melt Arcturus to ingots dropping drops,
Or spill night out in brilliant vanishings,
Whirlpools of darkness in whirlwinds of light...
The miff-maff-muff of water, the vocables
Of the wind, the glassily-sparkling particles
Of the mind -- They would soon climb down the side of.
   the ship.
They would march single file, with electric lamps, alert
For a tidal undulation underneath.

“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” ~ Goethe

Babi

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Re: Poetry Page
« Reply #3381 on: April 11, 2012, 08:41:20 AM »
 I'm afraid I found both Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross a bit too
much. I can't help thinking they were very passionate people who should have
married and raised kids. However, they sublimated that passion..at considerable
cost, I would say...and accomplished a great deal.

"Of clay and wattles made".  "And a small cabin build there"?  Yeats and
Stevens were both writing poetry at this time. Who borrowed these words from
whom. They don't seem to fit in Stevens poem about wind and sea sounds. Is
he deriding Yeats with his 'blau, so blau'? 
"I go to books and to nature as a bee goes to the flower, for a nectar that I can make into my own honey."  John Burroughs

BarbStAubrey

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Re: Poetry Page
« Reply #3382 on: April 11, 2012, 12:11:10 PM »
Interesting on many counts isn't it Babi that St. John of the Cross and Teresa of Ávila use the metaphor of Bride and Groom and yet, during that time in history in spite of the romantic novels in reality love seldom entered the picture when folks married - the nobility married to increase their power and land holdings - some married for the use of the Dowery and among the peasants it was simply necessary to take care of each other - also the church having a strong opinion already about sex before marriage it was often a case of either rape or sexual need satisfied with a good woman who knew her way around the land and kitchen.

I guess magically even when marriage was not based on the kind of love we know there was this romantic notion that once a Bride and Groom the couple would experience love. Based on that premice the passionate love relationship to each other was used in reference to man and God.

I wonder on the concept of Stevens writing using Yeats as a mentor - their lives did overlap some - that would be interesting to read the poems of each and see if there was a similarity - I would not be surprised since I have heard and read that poets do use pieces of each others work. I thought the strange words were supposed to be imitating the wind and water - the words do not make the sounds that I associate however, I am sure the wind and water sounds differently in the north where water freezes.
“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” ~ Goethe

BarbStAubrey

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Re: Poetry Page
« Reply #3383 on: April 11, 2012, 12:49:36 PM »
Here is a Yeats poem that includes wind and water - lighter than the Steven's

To a Child dancing in the Wind
          ~ W B Yeats
I

DANCE there upon the shore;  
What need have you to care  
For wind or water’s roar?  
And tumble out your hair  
That the salt drops have wet;          
Being young you have not known  
The fool’s triumph, nor yet  
Love lost as soon as won,  
Nor the best labourer dead  
And all the sheaves to bind.  
What need have you to dread  
The monstrous crying of wind?  
  
II

Has no one said those daring  
Kind eyes should be more learn’d?  
Or warned you how despairing    
The moths are when they are burned,  
I could have warned you, but you are young,  
So we speak a different tongue.  
  
O you will take whatever’s offered  
And dream that all the world’s a friend,  
Suffer as your mother suffered,  
Be as broken in the end.  
But I am old and you are young,  
And I speak a barbarous tongue.

“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” ~ Goethe

Babi

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Re: Poetry Page
« Reply #3384 on: April 12, 2012, 08:27:14 AM »
Interesting theory, BARB. The idea still makes me uncomfortable,
but those were different times.
  On the Stephens/Yeats comparison, I did not think of Yeats as the
mentor. It seemed to me that Stephens was mocking him, but I may
be doing the man an injustice.
   I really liked Yeats idea of the words of elder wisdom being 'barbarous'
for an innocent child.  Time enough for warnings later; late the child enjoy
innocence while they can.

  What do you think of this one:

Wind and Water and Stone
 
The water hollowed the stone,
the wind dispersed the water,
the stone stopped the wind.
Water and wind and stone.
 
The wind sculpted the stone,
the stone is a cup of water,
The water runs off and is wind.
Stone and wind and water.
 
The wind sings in its turnings,
the water murmurs as it goes,
the motionless stone is quiet.
Wind and water and stone.
 
One is the other and is neither:
among their empty names
they pass and disappear,
water and stone and wind.
 ~ Octavio Paz ~
     
"I go to books and to nature as a bee goes to the flower, for a nectar that I can make into my own honey."  John Burroughs

BarbStAubrey

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Re: Poetry Page
« Reply #3385 on: April 12, 2012, 03:35:24 PM »
ah Octavia Paz - I love his work and so little of it has been translated into English - he has been a pull on me to learn Spanish - so many things to do in one life - I need a double - rushing around today - back tonight.
“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” ~ Goethe

bellemere

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Re: Poetry Page
« Reply #3386 on: April 19, 2012, 10:48:11 PM »
I
In a solitude of the sea
Deep from human vanity,
And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.
II
Steel chambers, late the pyres
Of her salamandrine fires,
Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.
III
Over the mirrors meant
To glass the opulent
The sea-worm crawls -- grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.
IV
Jewels in joy designed
To ravish the sensuous mind
Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.
V
Dim moon-eyed fishes near
Gaze at the gilded gear
And query: 'What does this vaingloriousness down here?'...
VI
Well: while was fashioning
This creature of cleaving wing,
The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything
VII
Prepared a sinister mate
For her -- so gaily great --
A Shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate.
VIII
And as the smart ship grew
In stature, grace, and hue,
In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.
IX
Alien they seemed to be:
No mortal eye could see
The intimate welding of their later history,
X
Or sign that they were bent
By paths coincident
On being anon twin halves of one august event,
XI
Till the Spinner of the Years
Said 'Now!' And each one hears,
And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.

Convergence of the Twain, Thomas Hardy  
Read a lot about titanic on its 100 anniversary of the sinking, but nobody brought this our .  
Great, great poem.

BarbStAubrey

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Re: Poetry Page
« Reply #3387 on: April 20, 2012, 02:00:03 AM »
Not as wonderful as a poem by Hardy but another poem about the ship.

THE PRIDE OF BELFAST

She was the pride of Belfast and she was declared to be
The ocean's greatest greyhound, the mistress of the sea;
And as she left her moorings with thousands on the shore,
That cried "God speed" not thinking that they'd never see her more.

'Twas on a Sunday evening, with the ocean calm and clear,
And hope and joy in every breast, no thought of danger near.
For like a stately queen she glides, then comes a crash, and lo,
Their hope is turned to anguish, and their joy to bitter woe.

"Women and children first," they cry, as they swing the lifeboats clear,
Wherever danger's lurking, brave men are always near.
God bless the gallant heroes, their agonies are o'er,
But their deed in sago and in song, shall live for evermore.

Titantic. O Titantic! her fate makes strong men weep;
She carried fifteen hundred souls to a briny grave and deep.
A sacrifice to the lust for gold, a sacrifice to fame,
The White Star line now a record holds to her everlasting shame.

CHORUS: "Nearer My God" they sang, "Nearer to Thee,"
Of earthly hope bereft, facing eternity.
O how the music swelled from brave men's hearts it welled:
"Nearer My God to Thee." and they sank in that icebound sea.
“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” ~ Goethe

BarbStAubrey

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Re: Poetry Page
« Reply #3388 on: April 20, 2012, 02:05:55 AM »
Fog was part of the story and this poem is about fog from the sea to the city...

The White Fog Creeps From The Cold Sea Over The City
          ~ Conrad Aiken

The white fog creeps from the cold sea over the city,
Over the pale grey tumbled towers,--
And settles among the roofs, the pale grey walls.
Along damp sinuous streets it crawls,
Curls like a dream among the motionless trees
And seems to freeze.

The fog slips ghostlike into a thousand rooms,
Whirls over sleeping faces,
Spins in an atomy dance round misty street lamps;
And blows in cloudy waves over open spaces . . .

And one from his high window, looking down,
Peers at the cloud-white town,
And thinks its island towers are like a dream . . .
It seems an enormous sleeper, within whose brain
Laborious shadows revolve and break and gleam.
“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” ~ Goethe

BarbStAubrey

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Re: Poetry Page
« Reply #3389 on: April 20, 2012, 02:52:26 AM »
from the 2012 Pulitzer Prize winner of poetry, Tracy K. Smith.

Duende    
          ~ by Tracy K. Smith

                1.

The earth is dry and they live wanting.
Each with a small reservoir
Of furious music heavy in the throat. 
They drag it out and with nails in their feet
Coax the night into being.  Brief believing. 
A skirt shimmering with sequins and lies.
And in this night that is not night,
Each word is a wish, each phrase
A shape their bodies ache to fill—

             I’m going to braid my hair
         Braid many colors into my hair
             I’ll put a long braid in my hair
         And write your name there


They defy gravity to feel tugged back.
The clatter, the mad slap of landing.


      2.

And not just them.  Not just
The ramshackle family, the tios,
Primitos, not just the bailaor
Whose heels have notched
And hammered time
So the hours flow in place
Like a tin river, marking
Only what once was.
Not just the voices scraping
Against the river, nor the hands
nudging them farther, fingers
like blind birds, palms empty,
echoing.  Not just the women
with sober faces and flowers
in their hair, the ones who dance
as though they're burying
memory—one last time—
beneath them.

     And I hate to do it here.
To set myself heavily beside them.
Not now that they’ve proven
The body a myth, parable
For what not even language
Moves quickly enough to name.
If I call it pain, and try to touch it
With my hands, my own life,
It lies still and the music thins,
A pulse felt for through garments.
If I lean into the desire it starts from—
If I lean unbuttoned into the blow
Of loss after loss, love tossed
Into the ecstatic void—

It carries me with it farther,
To chords that stretch and bend
Like light through colored glass.
But it races on, toward shadows
Where the world I know
And the world I fear
Threaten to meet.


                3.

There is always a road,
The sea, dark hair, dolor.

Always a question
Bigger than itself—

   They say you’re leaving Monday
   Why can’t you leave on Tuesday?
“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” ~ Goethe

bellemere

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Re: Poetry Page
« Reply #3390 on: April 20, 2012, 08:42:23 PM »
this is a non poem, a quote from "To End All Wars" by Adam Hochschild, comparing war to a mistress.

"You can have no other mistress.  No wine gives fiercer intoxication, no drug mor vivid exaltation. 
You may loathe , you may execrate, but you cannot deny her.  Even those who hate her most are prisoners of her spell.  They rise from her embrace pillaged, soiled, maybe even ashamed, but they are still hers."
Striking in the light of our troops" recent behaviour in Afghanistan.
The quote is attributed to someone named Gilbert Chapman.  Does anyone know him?  Widipedia's references are far from literary. I thought he might be a poet.

BarbStAubrey

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Re: Poetry Page
« Reply #3391 on: April 21, 2012, 01:47:40 AM »
there is an author Colin Gilbert Chapman that could fit since his books are religious as well as about conflict.
“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” ~ Goethe

JoanK

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Re: Poetry Page
« Reply #3392 on: April 21, 2012, 03:07:06 PM »
BARB: love your Winnie-the-Pooh picture and quote. Yes, we are humming "hums" aren't we!

BarbStAubrey

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Re: Poetry Page
« Reply #3393 on: April 21, 2012, 07:02:42 PM »
:D  ;)  :-*
“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” ~ Goethe

bellemere

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Re: Poetry Page
« Reply #3394 on: April 23, 2012, 09:15:47 AM »
thank you Barb StAubrey, I think you found the Gilbert Chapman I was seeking.  I see he has written a lot of nonfiction books, but I think he should have een a poet for that analogy about war.

BarbStAubrey

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Re: Poetry Page
« Reply #3395 on: May 02, 2012, 02:42:01 PM »
I love this - no author listed - found it on a page about celebrating...

My grandfather's name was moon
Because his eyes were bright and round
And no amount of time or liquor could dull them
My grandmother's name was joy
Because it spilled out of her heart
And bathed her precious children in its warmth
And there was happiness in life beyond the sorrow
And the pain
But how they ever found it I cannot explain
I guess time has a way of making everything alright
It's just there is not enough of it
And so we drink and we sing and we celebrate
This lie and hope that it will last
Morning is here night has passed
My grandfather was a doctor
He cured the sick with his kind hands
And he taught me how to sail and how to find dry land
My grandmother was all sweetness
And when she spoke we all heard bells and
They rang in such a way that we were comforted
And they held on to each other with all the strength they had
And they loved with devotion beyond what I understand
But I guess fear has a way of making sleep unbearable
And the days seem dark and long
But we cry and we dance
And we stumble into love with perfect, awkward grace
The moon is gone and the sun has took its place
“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” ~ Goethe

Babi

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Re: Poetry Page
« Reply #3396 on: May 03, 2012, 08:25:00 AM »
 I love it, too, BARB.  It's a pity we don't know who wrote it.

  I think it is now the perfect time to post an old, short classic.

    "The year's at the spring,
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hill-side's dew-pearled;
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn;
God's in his Heaven—
All's right with the world!"
-  Robert Browning, The Year's at the Spring 

"I go to books and to nature as a bee goes to the flower, for a nectar that I can make into my own honey."  John Burroughs

BarbStAubrey

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Re: Poetry Page
« Reply #3397 on: May 03, 2012, 01:27:48 PM »
Perfect Babi - yes, just perfect - the kind of words and thoughts that make us think all is right with our world or if it isn't it could be.
“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” ~ Goethe

Babi

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Re: Poetry Page
« Reply #3398 on: May 04, 2012, 08:11:15 AM »
 We have to seize those moments and savor them.  It does so much for one's peace of mind.

         
 
"I go to books and to nature as a bee goes to the flower, for a nectar that I can make into my own honey."  John Burroughs

BarbStAubrey

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Re: Poetry Page
« Reply #3399 on: May 16, 2012, 08:28:04 PM »

Discussion Leaders: Barb
 Sun...Sand...Surf...Wild Meadows

Summer Poetry


Emily Dickinson
#122  

A wild Blue sky abreast of Winds
That threatened it — did run
And crouched behind his Yellow Door
Was the defiant sun —
Some conflict with those upper friends
So genial in the main
That we deplore peculiarly
Their arrogant campaign —
“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” ~ Goethe