Poetry Page

[BarbStAubrey]

Spring Poetry Join Us - We're Celebrating Spring! Famous Poets and Poems about Spring Spring Poems

SONNET 1   From fairest creatures we desire increase,   That thereby beauty's rose might never die,   But as the riper should by time decease,   His tender heir might bear his memory:   But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,   Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel,   Making a famine where abundance lies,   Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.   Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament   And only herald to the gaudy spring,   Within thine own bud buriest thy content   And, tender churl, makest waste in niggarding.       Pity the world, or else this glutton be,       To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.   Discussion Leader: Barb

[BarbStAubrey]

Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

[BarbStAubrey]

to me this is fascinating - two poets with a different slant and writing style about essentially the same or similar subject


Summer Song
William Carlos Williams, 1883 - 1963

Wanderer moon
smiling a
faintly ironical smile
at this
brilliant, dew-moistened
summer morning,—
a detached
sleepily indifferent
smile, a
wanderer’s smile,—
if I should
buy a shirt
your color and
put on a necktie
sky-blue
where would they carry me?

ROMEO
Lady, by yonder blessed moon I swear
That tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops--

JULIET
O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon,
That monthly changes in her circled orb,
Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.

[BarbStAubrey]

It has been years since we shared any of Anna Alchmotava's work - here is a heart breaker - no title

He was jealous, fearful and tender,
He loved me like God's only light,
And that she not sing of the past times
He killed my bird colored white.

He said, in the lighthouse at sundown:
"Love me, laugh and write poetry!"
And I buried the joyous songbird
Behind a round well near a tree.

I promised that I would not mourn her.
But my heart turned to stone without choice,
And it seems to me that everywhere
And always I'll hear her sweet voice.

 

[BarbStAubrey]

Interesting I found this poem by Anne Kingsmill Finch who I never heard of much less read. Looked up as we  all do now and found this --

In 1929, in her classic essay A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf both critiques Finch's writing and expresses great admiration for it. In Woolf's examination of the "female voice" and her search for the history of female writers, she argues that Finch's writing is "harassed and distracted with hates and grievances," pointing out that to Finch "men are hated and feared, because they have the power to bar her way to what she wants to do—which is to write."

However, Woolf excuses the flaws she perceives in Finch's work by claiming that Finch surely had to "encourage herself to write by supposing that what she writes will never be published." She goes on to acknowledge that in Finch's work, "Now and again words issue of pure poetry…It was a thousand pities that the woman who could write like that, whose mind was turned to nature, and reflection, should have been forced to anger and bitterness."

Woolf goes on in defense of her as a gifted but sometimes understandably misguided example of women's writing. It is evident that Woolf sympathizes deeply with Finch's plight as a female poet, and though she takes issue with some of the content in Finch's writing, she expresses grief that Finch is so unknown: "…when one comes to seek out the facts about Lady Winchilsea, one finds, as usual, that almost nothing is known about her." Woolf wishes to know more about "this melancholy lady, who loved wandering in the fields and thinking about unusual things and scorned, so rashly, so unwisely, 'the dull manage of a servile house.'"

The poem I found...

Jealousy

VAIN Love, why do'st thou boast of Wings,
That cannot help thee to retire!
When such quick Flames Suspicion brings,
As do the Heart about thee fire.
Still Swift to come, but when to go
Thou shou'd'st be more–Alas! how Slow.

Lord of the World must surely be
But thy bare Title at the most;
Since Jealousy is Lord of Thee,
And makes such Havock on thy Coast,

As do's thy pleasant Land deface,
Yet binds thee faster to the Place.

[mrssherlock]

Poetry is such a vital element to me that I wonder how so many people get along without it.  In My Ideal Bookshelf are/is collected the 'shelves' of 100 or so 'leading cultural figures'.  Dipping into its pages randomly is fun. To see what books and what authors are chosen by whom is vastly entertaining.  I may have to buy this one. Poetry appears on many shelves but Wallace Stevens keeps crops up.  I know beans about this man and his works but be sure that will change. Pulitzer awardee in 1955.  This is often mentioned:

The Emperor of Ice Cream

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal.
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

[BarbStAubrey]

wow powerful stuff - I love the tongue and cheek of it - reducing what can appear devastating to a simple statement that reminds me of a prayer wheel going round and round that we give so much reverence to but has no real affect any more than as emperor of ice cream.

[BarbStAubrey]

This one by Wallace Stevens makes me think


What is Divinity

What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch,
These are the measures destined for her soul.

[mrssherlock]

Barb:  Love Divinity!  And thanks for explaining Emperor in such a tactful way.

[Dana]

I was reading Folger's history of the sonnet (thanks for the link, Barb)....this bit seems more true the more I read:

" Shakespeare’s Sonnets represented a kind of apogée of the English sonnet-writing fashion, and, in fact, may have contributed to the vogue’s fading away, since no one could outdo him or even come close to matching his skill and versatility."

I'm up to  no.80 now, they're hard going, so clever, so convoluted, I swear he wrote them for the enjoyment of exercising his mind boggling word skills.  I don't think he was  expressing heartfelt emotion.  And that made me think about his plays and that perhaps for Shakespeare the joy was in the word play, not so much the story,( which he took over from history or the the classics.)

[BarbStAubrey]

Interesting Dana - I wonder if another aspect of his writing especially those Sonnets is the concept of the day to be a bit more what today we would call preachy - not Poetry at all but I recently got a book the Greek writer Epictetus who wrote a sort of manual that includes short essays on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness - this would have been available to Shakespeare but more, this time in history still had morality plays as well as, so many long poems in our canon of literature from this time that wrap themselves around issues of morality. I wonder if Shakespeare was two things, adding his two cents uncovering how morality plays out in life and then at times spoofing the morality in favor of the reality of life especially, how the passions and love alter what we do as compared to what we should do to be virtuous and effective.  

I am thinking this poem's bit of tongue and cheek - #80 - that in one breath elevates till you realize the person is elevated enough so that he is making a comment - He shows himself as less egotistical saying he is a bumbling tongue-tied clod although, saucy he dares to speak of the other's fame that he puts their pride right up there with the gods.

! how I faint when I of you do write,
Knowing a better spirit doth use your name,
And in the praise thereof spends all his might,
To make me tongue-tied speaking of your fame.
But since your worth, wide as the ocean is,
The humble as the proudest sail doth bear,
My saucy bark, inferior far to his,
On your broad main doth wilfully appear.
Your shallowest help will hold me up afloat,
Whilst he upon your soundless deep doth ride;
Or, being wracked, I am a worthless boat,
He of tall building, and of goodly pride:
   Then if he thrive and I be cast away,
   The worst was this, my love was my decay.

Epictetus says things like, " Do not use your body as an occasion for show or luxury.", "People are just people regardless of their talent or influence", "Once we fall, however slightly, into immoderation, momentum gathers and we can be lost to whim.", "A life based on narrow self-interest cannot be esteemed by any honorable measurement." -- just a few quotes that I could see would prompt a wordsmith like Shakespeare to further the explanations with examples of life using clever metaphors in a combo of words.

That last Shakespeare play we discussed - The Tempest - Jonathan found a book about an early sailing ship to the Americas that was blown off course and crash landed in Bermuda - you could see from the history included in the book and our further look into Britain at the time Shakespeare took that story that he would have known since we learned he was an investor and his close supporter was one of the main owner/investors who received the long letter explaining what happened that he would have read that letter and built his play the Tempest around some of the details of that sailing and shipwreck.

Learning all that at the time opened me to the idea that Shakespeare's greater strength is taking the ordinary of the day and building a play or poem using these ordinary events almost like writing material for a soap opera today. Like the soaps the stories are about people we recognize leading lives that we can understand which I do not remember was typical of the writers of his day. But you have to give him - he sure had a way with words expressing in new ways these observations. Somehow learning  how he built his stories took away some of the mystic and acclaim that is typical of academics and now I can enjoy reading him more than as if a special author whose books should be behind a locked vitrine wreathed in laurel.  

[Dana]

Yes I think The Tempest is a good example of how he takes a known story and, I was going to say, weaves his magic....but actually its not one I think is so magical.

Re #80...that's one of the "rival poet" sonnets, where he's comparing himself (saucy bark) to the "tall building" and "proudest sail" of his rival.

He does it again in #86

Was it the proud full sail of his great verse,
Bound for the prize of all-too-precious you          (cute!)
That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse,
Making their tomb the womb wherin they grew?

That's almost too clever, his thoughts entombed in the womb of their gestation and he's having fun, he's not upset by some rival lover....who Folger says (for various reasons ) has been thought to be George Chapman who had just published the first 7 books of his translation of the Iliad.
I wonder if there was a privately circulating set of sonnets by Chapman or some other guy....Folger says Shakespeare's were written for private circulation and only published later

[BarbStAubrey]

Hmm I wonder - I need to read the Folger's - golly there is so much to gobble up but this would be fun since you are already into it.

[BarbStAubrey]

Found this and it was perfect for my frustrating day of waiting for the phone call promised and never made - I was kicking myself for not getting things done I had planned and realized if i take and give a promise seriously than of course I would keep my end and forgo other plans and so stop kicking myself for not carrying out my original plans. Lesson I hope learned and this poem helped me sort it out.

Unkept Promises

The forest is dark here.
Trees are haunting me.
The sky is clouded with pain.

She told me she would be here.
She told me to be patient,
but she wouldn't be late.

Her lies have stolen me before.
Yet here I am,
believing one more.

The ground is becoming cold .
The night is wrapping me in a cloak.
I feel the eerie air flow around me now.

I should have never come here.
I should have never believed her.

Those staggering words,
she left them in the air.

She promised me.
Never again.

She is late now.
But it's to late for me to leave.
The night has stolen me.
Left me falling to my knees.

If you find me here,
know that it was for you.
You left me waiting here,
but my promise was true.

[BarbStAubrey]

Well for heavens sake even Shakespeare has something to say about ill-kept time promises.

Sonnet 115

Those lines that I before have writ do lie,
Even those that said I could not love you dearer:
Yet then my judgment knew no reason why
My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer.
But reckoning Time, whose million'd accidents
Creep in 'twixt vows, and change decrees of kings,
Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp'st intents,
Divert strong minds to the course of altering things;
Alas! why, fearing of Time's tyranny,
Might I not then say, 'Now I love you best,'
When I was certain o'er incertainty,
Crowning the present, doubting of the rest?
   Love is a babe, then might I not say so,
   To give full growth to that which still doth grow?

[BarbStAubrey]

Found this Amy Lowell poem - quite lovely

Madonna of the Evening Flowers

All day long I have been working,
Now I am tired.
I call: "Where are you?"
But there is only the oak-tree rustling in the wind.
The house is very quiet,
The sun shines in on your books,
On your scissors and thimble just put down,
But you are not there.
Suddenly I am lonely:
Where are you?
I go about searching.

Then I see you,
Standing under a spire of pale blue larkspur,
With a basket of roses on your arm.
You are cool, like silver,
and you smile.
I think the Canterbury bells are playing little tunes.

You tell me that the peonies need spraying,
That the columbines have overrun all bounds,
That the pyrus japonica should be cut back and rounded.
You tell me these things.
But I look at you, heart of silver,
White heart-flame of polished silver,
Burning beneath the blue steeples of the larkspur,
And I long to kneel instantly at your feet,
While all about us peal the loud sweet
  Te Deums of the Canterbury bells.

[PatH]

Sonnet 115; it’s  an odd sort of ill-kept promise, since what he is saying is that he promised that he loved her as much as possible, and now he’s saying “no, I love you even more, and it may still increase, I just said that because I was afraid that in the future time’s changes would mess things up, so this would be the peak, as good as it gets, but now I know that my love is evolving, has grown beyond then, and will grow even more in the future, so it was a lie that I loved you as much as possible then.”

Wow, the sonnet sure sounds a lot better than my summary.

I didn’t know there was a rivalry between Shakespeare and Chapman.  Indeed, I hadn’t quite taken in how early he was.  I knew him only from Keats’ sonnet On first looking into Chapman’s Homer until we read the Iliad on the old site.  Then, comparing translations, I looked at Chapman.  I found him almost unreadable, though one of the other participants loved him.  

[BarbStAubrey]

The Summer Day
Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

[JoanK]

I love Mary Oliver!

[BarbStAubrey]

Late September
            Charles Simic, 1938

The mail truck goes down the coast
Carrying a single letter.
At the end of a long pier
The bored seagull lifts a leg now and then
And forgets to put it down.
There is a menace in the air
Of tragedies in the making.


Last night you thought you heard television
In the house next door.
You were sure it was some new
Horror they were reporting,
So you went out to find out.
Barefoot, wearing just shorts.
It was only the sea sounding weary
After so many lifetimes
Of pretending to be rushing off somewhere
And never getting anywhere.


This morning, it felt like Sunday.
The heavens did their part
By casting no shadow along the boardwalk
Or the row of vacant cottages,
Among them a small church
With a dozen gray tombstones huddled close
As if they, too, had the shivers.

[BarbStAubrey]

Autumn
      Amy Lowell, 1874 - 1925

They brought me a quilled, yellow dahlia,
Opulent, flaunting.
Round gold
Flung out of a pale green stalk.
Round, ripe gold
Of maturity,
Meticulously frilled and flaming,
A fire-ball of proclamation:
Fecundity decked in staring yellow
For all the world to see.
They brought a quilled, yellow dahlia,
To me who am barren
Shall I send it to you,
You who have taken with you
All I once possessed?

[BarbStAubrey]

Autumn Grasses
       Margaret Gibson

In fields of bush clover and hay-scent grass
the autumn moon takes refuge
The cricket’s song is gold

Zeshin’s loneliness taught him this

Who is coming?
What will come to pass, and pass?

Neither bruise nor sweetness nor cool air
not-knowing
knows the way

And the moon?
Who among us does not wander, and flare
and bow to the ground?

Who does not savor, and stand open
if only in secret

taking heart in the ripening of the moon?

[Frybabe]

I've just run across, in Project Gutenberg, a volume by Andrew Lang called The Library. In it he includes a few poems including this from the front matter which I assume he himself wrote.

Books, books again, and books once more!
These are our theme, which some miscall
Mere madness, setting little store
By copies either short or tall.
But you, O slaves of shelf and stall!
We rather write for you that hold
Patched folios dear, and prize “the small,
Rare volume, black with tarnished gold.”

You might like this epigram about a book-worm written by Evenus, the grammarian (the well respected if not well known Greek poet who lived around the same time as Socrates).

Pest of the Muses, devourer of pages, in crannies that lurkest,
Fruits of the Muses to taint, labour of learning to spoil;
Wherefore, oh black-fleshed worm! wert thou born for the evil thou workest?
Wherefore thine own foul form shap’st thou with envious toil?

[BarbStAubrey]

Oh ho hoe - both great but the Evenus - ahhh saying it aloud wraps the tongue in wonderful sounds - I love it - now I need to look and find more of his work translated to English - Frybabe to you have a favorite poet?

[Frybabe]

Barb, I have never been big on poetry. However, Ogden Nash and Robert Frost held my attention when I was young. The Epic of Gilgamesh, the Odyssey and the Illiad later. I've read some of Ovid's Metamorphosis and even tried to read Beowulf in old English. Oh, Helen Steiner Rice. I forgot about her. I used to routinely pick out cards with her poems on them to send, but never managed to buy any of her works for myself.

I have been collecting some old poetry volumes on Project Gutenberg to try to read sometime, like The Man for Snowy River which, by the way, I didn't know was a poem until recently.

Oh, can't forget Mother Goose when I was a little one. Loved those.

[BarbStAubrey]

We had someone from Australia who used to include for us bits of The Man from Snowy River - she like so many of those who regularly shared poems have passed on - the last round of losses put a dent in what was. Hope they lived their last years as the young cowboy, The Man from Snowy River descended the mountain.

When they reached the mountain's summit, even Clancy took a pull,
It well might make the boldest hold their breath,
The wild hop scrub grew thickly, and the hidden ground was full
Of wombat holes, and any slip was death.
But the man from Snowy River let the pony have his head,
And he swung his stockwhip round and gave a cheer,
And he raced him down the mountain like a torrent down its bed,
While the others stood and watched in very fear.


He sent the flint stones flying, but the pony kept his feet,
He cleared the fallen timber in his stride,
And the man from Snowy River never shifted in his seat -
It was grand to see that mountain horseman ride.
Through the stringybarks and saplings, on the rough and broken ground,
Down the hillside at a racing pace he went;
And he never drew the bridle till he landed safe and sound,
At the bottom of that terrible descent.

[Frybabe]

Are you talking about Gumtree? I still think of her on occasion. As best as I can tell, we haven't seen KiwiLady in almost two years. Octavia seems to still be about, although she hasn't posted in quite a while. I do miss our Australian/New Zealander contingent.

[BarbStAubrey]

Yes, Gumtree and you are right we have not seen a post from Kiwilady in awhile - seems to me she posted last winter but only once or twice - the biggest loss for me was Babi - she was so positive in every discussion she posted and she regularly posted here in poetry.

[PatH]

The Man from Snowy River reminds me of Robert W. Service--maybe the frontier voice.  Who is the author?

Goodness, I miss all of them.  Gumtree and I shared a lot of interests, and often thought alike about books.  Octavia and I shared an interest in some Greek poets--C. P. Cavafy and George Seferis.  (Of course she was reading them in Greek and I was reading them in English.)  Seferis is very difficult, like T. S. Eliot, and I only understand about half of what he's saying, but he resonates with me.

Looking up Kiwilady, I see she was last here in Feb., 2013, and even longer ago on the other site.  I hope she's all right.

Babi had wide-ranging interests, and she used to post first thing in the morning, to free up the computer for her daughter, so I always knew when I signed on in the morning I'd find her good comments.

[Frybabe]

I found this in a book called The Winds of the World(1917) by Talbot Mundy. It looks like a novel of intrigue, the poem excerpt (maybe from Yasmini's Song, parts quoted elsewhere) appears to be a warning of war or insurrection. The book setting is India.

  Have you heard the dry earth shrug herself
  For a storm that tore the trees?

  Have you watched loot-hungry Faithful
  Praising Allah on their knees?

  Have you felt the short hairs rising
  When the moon slipped out of sight,

  And the chink of steel on rock explained
  That footfall in the night?

  Have you seen a gray boar sniff up-wind
  In the mauve of waking day?

  Have you heard a mad crowd pause and think?
  Have you seen all Hell to pay?

[BarbStAubrey]

Wow that was powerful and yet filled with veils and dusky beauty.

[PatH]

That's indeed powerful.  But I had a weird deja-vue.  The structure is almost identical to a light-hearted Shakespearean love poem from Ben Johnson:

Have you seen the bright lily grow
Before rude hands have touched it?

Have you marked but the fall of snow
Before the soil hath smutched it?

Have you felt the wool of the beaver,
Or swan's down ever?

Or have smelt o' the bud o'the brier,
Or the nard in the fire?

Or have tasted the bag of the bee?
O so white, O so soft, O so sweet is she.

Totally unrelated in subject, but I wonder if the author (somehow I think it's a woman) had been fed this in a British school and was playing on it for her audience.

[BarbStAubrey]

you do have to wonder don't you...his bio indicates he left school and England when he was age 16 and it sounds like his adventures were as exciting as his novels.

[PatH]

Frybabe, was the poem by Mundy, or is it a quote?

[Frybabe]

I don't know, PatH. None of the online copies of the book that I could find included front matter or acknowledgements of any kind. Odd. The only reason I know the book was published in 1916-1917 is from mention in articles I read about the author.

The only other remote possibility I came up with is that Laurence Hope (ne: Adela Florence Cory) who wrote spent time in India helping to edit her father's newspaper the "Sind Gazette".  She had a short but interesting history of her own. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/laurence-hope#about  She would have been known to Mundy, I think. Here poems can be found here, or downloaded free from Project Gutenberg. http://www.poemhunter.com/laurence-hope/poems/

[BarbStAubrey]

Well y'all have me so curious and after reading his bio I ended up finding the book on Amazon that they are selling for less than the coast of shipping - for less than three dollars total the book is on its way - and then if there is anything giving credit I will share but this guy sounds like life was one long adventure - reading adventure stories brings me back to my youth - I especially loved sea stories although I have never been fond of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey–Maturin -

Regardless if the poem was a parody or not it is a powerful poem with depth and beauty - one of the online sites I read about the book said the poem is from - oh now i forget the name of the piece but it was an Indian sect or religious 'song' and parts of this long traditional 'song' are seeded throughout the story.     

[PatH]

And I went on to read some of the poems of "Laurence Hope".  I really like them.  Some of the rhythms remind me of Kipling.  She has both an understanding of the problems of a woman in that society, trying to find a place for her passionate nature, and for a man, faced with the need for courage and keeping to one's duty.  But I don't see her writing that fine insurrection poem.

Barb, if you remember what the "religious song" was, I'd really like to know.

[BarbStAubrey]

I will try - i read so many links when looking for something and my history only gets those that are from their own web site. As I remember the word 'song' was used as some would call an early epic story in verse a 'song' like The Song of Roland.

[Frybabe]

I am by no means a sports fan, but I ran across this poem in a little volume that seems primarily devoted to Cricket called CRICKET SONGS, by Norman Gale. I thought it was fun as are others, like "Rub It In".


OUT

O very potent little word,
'Out!'
How often have we sadly heard
'Out!'

When stupid umpires surely sin,
Just as to settle we begin,
And say, in place of saying 'in,'
'Out!'
Though I am Captain of the team,
'Out!'
Though I in doubt may gravely seem,
'Out!'
Though I have barely scored a run
My average goes down with one,
And other Bats must have the fun—
'Out!'

I see Jones laugh behind his hand—
Out!
Next match, by Jove, the brute shall stand
Out!
Our cousin, Lydia Lake, is here,
And in her eyes I would appear
A Swell; hinc illae—Jones's sneer—
Out!

Ah! lucky Jones begins to hit
Out!
Another four! I wish he'd get
Out!
I see him look where Lydia sits
To note if she applauds his hits—
She does! She'll burst her gloves to bits!—
Out!

Yet why should I be Jones's butt,
Out?
I have a plan that chap to cut
Out!
What boots it thus to mope, my soul?
I go to sit by Lydia. Scowl,
O Jones, for you, methinks, I bowl
Out!


http://www.gutenberg.org/files/47354/47354-h/47354-h.htm  

[PatH]

Tee hee.