Poetry Page

[BarbStAubrey]

Welcome to our Autumn Poetry Page.
A haven for those who listen to the words
that open hearts, imagination, and our feelings
that we share about the poems we post - Please Join Us.

Poetry can be part of life       rather than a thing apart. Share with us       Poems about the end          of the natural year.            Tell us       How you celebrate          a poet's life and poems. Autumn holidays -       Tell us about Poetry in          Fall parties and gift giving.

A few Poetry Links:

• Famous Poets and Poems about Autumn
• Fall Poetry
• Poems for Autumn

Discussion Leaders: BarbStAubrey & Fairanna

[Babi]

 "September, 1961" sounds like an elegy, lamenting the loss of some
personal heroes or guides of the poet. One wonders who E.P., Williams and
H.D. were. 
  They have told us
the road leads to the sea,
and given the language into our hands.

 It sounds as though they must have been writers, perhaps poets. What
about your list of poets, BARB.  Do you find an E.P., an H.D. or Wiliams
dying or no longer able to write in 1961?

Oh, I must object to the "suicide", JACKIE. The leaves fall, but the
tree does not die. And these words to his friend: "Don't you see? Don't you believe?
The things we can do, the things we can achieve." This poet seems to be
placing heavy expectations on that friendship. I find myself wanting to
take a careful step backwards!

I hadn't read "Going For Water", either, and I love it. Same for the
leaf raking poem. Frost is a great favorite.

[BarbStAubrey]

the word suicide is part of her on-line name - she wants to become a published poet - my take on her Pseudo Nam is that she wants to change by destroying who she was - in affect suicide - to become who she aspires.

And yes, a Eulogy in many ways - many folks see Autumn as the dying of our natural world - of course that does not take into consideration half the planet but then most of these myths written into literature and poetry are born from a canon of western literature where the greats, from the Greeks to today, lived in Europe and North America.

As to the three folks - Williams is easy - in 1961 his long time compainion Marlot died and Tennessee Williams went into a 10 year depression when he did not write anything.

E.P. has to be Ezra Pound and I had to find out what happened in his life in 1961 - sure enough he too was experiencing depression and while visiting a Yale psychologist who later edited Pound's radio broadcasts, he sat silently while being recorded by Doobs for 3  hours. At the time this was big news.

H.D. is Hilda Doolittle who died in 1961 - here is one of her poems.

PEAR TREE

by: Hilda Doolittle (1886-1961)

SILVER dust
lifted from the earth,
higher than my arms reach,
you have mounted,
O silver,
higher than my arms reach
you front us with great mass;
  
no flower ever opened
so staunch a white leaf,
no flower ever parted silver
from such rare silver;
  
O white pear,
your flower tufts,
thick on the branch,
bring summer and ripe fruits
in their purple hearts.

[BarbStAubrey]

Here is a Tennessee Williams poem...

Heavenly Grass

My feet took a walk in heavenly grass.
All day while the sky shone clear as glass.
My feet took a walk in heavenly grass,
All night while the lonesome stars rolled past.
Then my feet come down to walk on earth,
And my mother cried when she give me birth.
Now my feet walk far and my feet walk fast,
But they still got an itch for heavenly grass.
But they still got an itch for heavenly grass.

[BarbStAubrey]

THE GARDEN

by: Ezra Pound (1885-1972)

LIKE a skein of loose silk blown against a wall
She walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens,
And she is dying piece-meal
of a sort of emotional anemia.
  
And round about there is a rabble
Of the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor.
They shall inherit the earth.
  
In her is the end of breeding.
Her boredom is exquisite and excessive.
  
She would like some one to speak to her,
And is almost afraid that I
will commit that indiscretion.

[Babi]

 BARB, you're a wonder.  Tennessee Williams and Ezra Pound!  I've never
heard of Hilda Doolittle, tho', and I can't say "The Pear Tree" greatly
impresses me.
   Ezra Pound...it's amazing how much he has gotten into those few lines.
"Her boredom is exquisite and excessive." Such a perfect little sneer.

[BarbStAubrey]

Autumn

The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up,
as if orchards were dying high in space.
Each leaf falls as if it were motioning "no."

And tonight the heavy earth is falling
away from all other stars in the loneliness.

We're all falling. This hand here is falling.
And look at the other one. It's in them all.

And yet there is Someone, whose hands
infinitely calm, holding up all this falling.

Rainer Maria Rilke

[mrssherlock]

Here is an Emily Dickinson; notice that she includes her ubiquitous bees!

INDIAN SUMMER

Emily Dickinson [1830-1886]

These are the days when birds come back,
A very few, a bird or two,
To take a backward look.

These are the days when skies put on
The old, old sophistries of June, -
A blue and gold mistake.

Oh, fraud that cannot cheat the bee,
Almost thy plausibility
Induces my belief,

Till ranks of seeds their witness bear,
And softly through the altered air
Hurries a timid leaf!

Oh, sacrament of summer days,
Oh, last communion in the haze,
Permit a child to join,

Thy sacred emblems to partake,
Thy consecrated bread to break,
Taste thine immortal wine!

[mrssherlock]

Diane Glancy is an American Indian poet. 

Indian Summer

There’s a farm auction up the road.
Wind has its bid in for the leaves.
Already bugs flurry the headlights
between cornfields at night.
If this world were permanent,
I could dance full as the squaw dress
on the clothesline.
I would not see winter
in the square of white yard-light on the wall.
But something tugs at me.
The world is at a loss and I am part of it
migrating daily.
Everything is up for grabs
like a box of farm tools broken open.
I hear the spirits often in the garden
and along the shore of corn.
I know this place is not mine.
I hear them up the road again.
This world is a horizon, an open sea.
Behind the house, the white iceberg of the barn.

[mrssherlock]

Another view:

September

How lovely the world is
In September

Warm air
Leaves just turning gold

Summer still lingering
Autumn coming nearer

It is a time of bittersweet endings
And bittersweet beginnings

It seems that every September
The world takes a deep breath

Shakes off the August heat
Prepares for a long winter

Knowing no one will feel this way again
Until next
September.

Nina Dringo

[mrssherlock]

And, in memory:

 

If Only
by Adam
   

    Take a snapshot view of your world
    One that is sedate and serene
    You’re at the top and it’s not a dream
    You look out and everything’s fine
    And in a New York minute you’re spun on a dime

    Suddenly you are face to face
    With the limits of Company ambition
    And the scars of America’s political marketplace

    Ever close your eyes
    Ever think why?
    Sit, really think and listen
    Find a reason for so many to die

    No sign of life, it’s all gone
    Take a walk in an empty room
    Memories come rushing up to loved ones now
    Sadness is mixed with war and gloom

    You know it never ceases to amaze you and me
    This world where we just exist
    Is absolutely full of maniacs and crazies
    Who demand protection from a well-produced list

    You know I can’t help thinking
    That one day soon
    We will all wake up
    We will all be on the moon

    Soaring above the heavens
    Looking back on what has been
    Seeing things we’ve never really seen
    Thinking how it all could have been

    If only the Moon had stayed up
    If only the Sun hadn’t woke
    If everyone were late for work
    They would have been warned off by the smoke

    If Only

[mrssherlock]

One more:

Firefighter's Prayer
by David Cochrane
   

Our training took place on stairs
In a brick-built tower leading nowhere
With glassless windows issuing false smoke
The concrete crumbling to fine dust
With the incessant passage of rubber booted feet
Sweltering equipment to the scene of some imagined fire.
Hours over years spent on such stairs
The action of climbing them so grained into my mind
That the flutter of fear seems superficial by comparison.

And this Tuesday morning
In my heavy gear and helmet
Stairs lined by the subdued and stunned
Elegant in morning pressed clothes and fresh deodorant
Eyes eloquent in their despair for me
They shuffle down as I lumber sweating up
Each stair the rhythm of my mantra
Ah Jesus,
Ah Jesus,
Ah Jesus,
Ah

[BarbStAubrey]

Wow  - you shared for us to read quite a few wonders - Today 9/11 the Firefighter's Prayer was perfect to read -

A rainy day here with a few downpours - we need the rain but it makes me feel melancholy - even took a nap - I better get ready because we are supposed to have a wet fall and winter - we really need the rain - the lakes are lower then they have ever been since they were created in the late 1930s - they are finding roofs and pieces of the few towns that were covered up when the dams filled the river and formed the chain of lakes.

Of all the poems Jackie my favorite is Diane Clancy's Indian Summer - these lines will stay with me...

The world is at a loss and I am part of it
migrating daily.
Everything is up for grabs
like a box of farm tools broken open.

[JoanK]

I go,
thou stayest--
two autumns.

Buson

[Babi]

 Down here in Texas, that gorgeous blue sky of Autumn appears in October.
September is just beginning to edge off from 'too d--- hot!'.

"Adam" doesn't specifically say so, but don't you think his poem is also
about 9/ll?  "If everyone were late for work they would have been warned off by the smoke." Too bad the 'maniacs and crazies' don't appear with tell-tale signs anyone could recognize.
  "The 'Firefighters Prayer' is painfully eloquent. At that point, what more could
one say?

[mrssherlock]

Adam's poem was in a web site for 911 poems. 

[BarbStAubrey]

Autumn Day

Lord: it is time. The summer was immense.
Lay your shadow on the sundials
and let loose the wind in the fields.

Bid the last fruits to be full;
give them another two more southerly days,
press them to ripeness, and chase
the last sweetness into the heavy wine.

Whoever has no house now will not build one
anymore.
Whoever is alone now will remain so for a long
time,
will stay up, read, write long letters,
and wander the avenues, up and down,
restlessly, while the leaves are blowing.

Rainer Maria Rilke

[JoanK]

Late autumn.
my neighbor-
how does he live, I wonder?

Buson

[JoanK]

In the Japanese tradition autumn Haiku are always sad:

Autumn evening.
A crow
settles on the bare branch.

Basho

In that one word, settles, Basho conveys, to me anyway, the feeling of late autumn.

But I haven't found a poem that conveys the feeling of early autumn. Since I was around schools and universities for so long, Autumn starts with new beginnings, glorious leaves, and crip air that tastes like wine.

[BarbStAubrey]

Here is one with joy entwined with the sadness from a famous Indian Poet who assisted Ghandi during her life in the early part of the 20th century.

Autumns Song

Like a joy on the heart of a sorrow,
   The sunset hangs on a cloud;
A golden storm of glittering sheaves,
Of fair and frail and fluttering leaves,
   The wild wind blows in a cloud.

Hark to a voice that is calling
   To my heart in the voice of the wind:
My heart is weary and sad and alone,
For its dreams like the fluttering leaves have gone,
   And why should I stay behind?

Sarojini Naidu

[BarbStAubrey]

Emily is not too depressing but again we are in mid-autumn when the leaves have turned

Nature XXVII, Autumn
by Emily Dickinson

The morns are meeker than they were,
The nuts are getting brown;
The berry's cheek is plumper,
The rose is out of town.

The maple wears a gayer scarf,
The field a scarlet gown.
Lest I should be old-fashioned,
I'll put a trinket on.   

[BarbStAubrey]

"Equal dark, equal light
Flow in Circle, deep insight
Blessed Be, Blessed Be
The transformation of energy!
So it flows, out it goes
Three-fold back it shall be
Blessed Be, Blessed Be
The transformation of energy!"

[Babi]

JOANK, I think it is the years of starting a new school season every
Autumn that gives us that sense of new beginnings. That, and the
invigorating change from the heat of summer to that crisp air you spoke
of. October is one of my favorite times of the year.

 BARB, even after reading that Dickinson poem so many times, I still
smile when I read "The rose is out of town", and am amused at the idea
of putting on a trinket, since the maple is wearing a gayer scarf.

Fall is Here
Helen H. Moore


Fall is here.
Another year
is coming to an end.
Summer's finished,
Summer's gone,
Winter's round the bend.
Fall is piles of crunchy leaves,
orange, gold, and red.
Fall is sweaters with long sleeves
and blankets on the bed.
Fall is footbell,
Fall is pumpkins,
Fall's where summer ends.
And
Fall is coming back to school,
and seeing all my friends

[mrssherlock]

Such a rich treasure trove of words to ponder, assimilate and enjoy. 

[BarbStAubrey]

Sunset

Slowly the west reaches for clothes of new colors
which it passes to a row of ancient trees.
You look, and soon these two worlds both leave you
one part climbs toward heaven, one sinks to earth.

leaving you, not really belonging to either,
not so hopelessly dark as that house that is silent,
not so unswervingly given to the eternal as that thing
that turns to a star each night and climbs-

leaving you (it is impossible to untangle the threads)
your own life, timid and standing high and growing,
so that, sometimes blocked in, sometimes reaching out,
one moment your life is a stone in you, and the next, a star.

Rainer Maria Rilke

[Babi]

  Does it sometimes seem to you that Rainer Maria Rilke has a lot of 'tangled threads' in himself, and that his poetry serves to help him try to untangle some of them?

[BarbStAubrey]

Could be Bibi - however, he is considered now one of the best - how faithful to his words are the translations I do not know because I no longer know my German -

When I was a child before WWII we talked German at home but not since - and where I understand some German it no longer flows off my tongue and certainly what I did know was a child's vocabulary. All to say I do not know enough to know how good the translations are but I have a book ordered that has his 'Duino Elegies' in German on one side of the page and in English on the other.

So many are talking about his work here of late that I thought it was time to become more acquainted with his poetry.

[mrssherlock]

Rilke is a name that has appeared many times in literature though I can't recall a single instance right now.  His words are not quoted as much as "Rilke says . . ."  Funny, I have never read much of his work. 

[Babi]

 "All Quiet On The Western Front" is probably Rilke's best known work, JACKIE.
 For some reason, tho', I've never read it.  When I first heard of it, many years
ago, I was just reluctant to read it.  I can't even tell you why; it was simply a
personal reaction.

[BarbStAubrey]

These Germans - sure is easy to mix them up - All Quiet on the Western Front was written by a WWI German Vet, Erich Maria Remarque

Rainer Maria Rilke was born in Prague back when it was Bohemia and lived most of his adult life in Paris, Trieste and caught in Germany during WWI he worked with records till his discharge when he moved to his beloved Switzerland, where he died in 1926. He traveled several times to Russia with his married lady love and his poetry is often showing the difference to the human spirit in a communistic controlled state versus freedom. His poetry reflects the classical symbolism and motifs of the ancient gods.

[mrssherlock]

End of Summer
by James Richardson September 3, 2007

Just an uncommon lull in the traffic
so you hear some guy in an apron, sleeves rolled up,
with his brusque sweep brusque sweep of the sidewalk,
and the slap shut of a too thin rental van,
and I told him no a gust has snatched from a conversation
and brought to you, loud.

It would be so different
if any of these were missing is the feeling
you always have on the first day of autumn,
no, the first day you think of autumn, when somehow

the sun singling out high windows,
a waiter settling a billow of white cloth
with glasses and silver, and the sparrows
shattering to nowhere are the Summer
waving that here is where it turns
and will no longer be walking with you,

traveller, who now leave all of this behind,
carrying only what it has made of you.
Already the crowds seem darker and more hurried
and the slang grows stranger and stranger,
and you do not understand what you love,
yet here, rounding a corner in mild sunset,
is the world again, wide-eyed as a child
holding up a toy even you can fix.

How light your step
down the narrowing avenue to the cross streets,
October, small November, barely legible December.

[mrssherlock]

Embers

Poor summer, it doesn't know it's dying.
A few days are all it has. Still, the lake
is with me, its strokes of blue-violet
and the fiery sun replacing loneliness.
I feel like an animal that has found a place.
This is my burrow, my nest, my attempt
to say, I exist. A rose can't shut itself
and be a bud again. It's a malady,
wanting it. On the shore, the moon sprinkles
light over everything, like a campfire,
and in the green-black night, the tall pines
hold their arms out as God held His arms
out to say that He was lonely and that
He was making Himself a man.

--Henri Cole

[mrssherlock]

September

By Ella Wheeler Wilcox

My life's long radiant Summer halts at last,
And lo! beside my path way I behold
Pursuing Autumn glide: nor frost nor cold
Has heralded her presence; but a vast
Sweet calm that comes not till the year has passed
Its fevered solstice, and a tinge of gold
Subdues the vivid colouring of bold
And passion-hued emotions. I will cast

My August days behind me with my May,
Nor strive to drag them into Autumn's place,
Nor swear I hope when I do but remember.
Now violet and rose have had their day,
I'll pluck the soberer asters with good grace
And call September nothing but September.

[Babi]

 Thanks for the info. in Rilke, BARB. I knew very little about him, only
that he served on the German side in the war.

 I haven't read anyhing by James Richardson before. I like him. I like
his images and he gives a freshness to an old, classic theme.

 Ah, Ms. Wilcox is talking about us, Ladies..

  I will cast
My August days behind me with my May,
Nor strive to drag them into Autumn's place,
Nor swear I hope when I do but remember.
Now violet and rose have had their day,
I'll pluck the soberer asters with good grace
And call September nothing but September.

[BarbStAubrey]

Sense Of Something Coming

I am like a flag in the center of open space.
I sense ahead the wind which is coming, and must live
it through.
while the things of the world still do not move:
the doors still close softly, and the chimneys are full
of silence,
the windows do not rattle yet, and the dust still lies down.

I already know the storm, and I am troubled as the sea.
I leap out, and fall back,
and throw myself out, and am absolutely alone
in the great storm.


          Translated by Robert Bly
Rainer Maria Rilke

[Babi]

 Has that beautiful song 'Remember' been posted already?  Just in case it
hasn't, I'm posting it now.

"REMEMBER”

Music: Harvey Schmidt
Lyrics: Tom Jones

Try to remember the kind of September
When life was slow and oh, so mellow.
Try to remember the kind of September
When grass was green and grain was yellow.
Try to remember the kind of September
When you were a tender and callow fellow.
Try to remember, and if you remember,
Then follow.

Follow, follow, follow, follow, follow,
Follow, follow, follow, follow.

Try to remember when life was so tender
That no one wept except the willow.
Try to remember when life was so tender
That dreams were kept beside your pillow.
Try to remember when life was so tender
That love was an ember about to billow.
Try to remember, and if you remember,
Then follow.


Follow, follow, follow, follow, follow,
Follow, follow, follow, follow.

Deep in December, it's nice to remember,
Although you know the snow will follow.
Deep in December, it's nice to remember,
Without a hurt the heart is hollow.
Deep in December, it's nice to remember,
The fire of September that made us mellow.
Deep in December, our hearts should remember
And follow.

 

[mrssherlock]

There are some songs that fit a particular voice so well.  I can hear Tom Jones singing as I read the words.  So lovely to recall.  Thank you for the warm glow I'm feeling.

[BarbStAubrey]

Falling Stars

Do you remember still the falling stars
that like swift horses through the heavens raced
and suddenly leaped across the hurdles
of our wishes--do you recall? And we
did make so many! For there were countless numbers
of stars: each time we looked above we were
astounded by the swiftness of their daring play,
while in our hearts we felt safe and secure
watching these brilliant bodies disintegrate,
knowing somehow we had survived their fall.

          Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming
Rainer Maria Rilke
 

[Babi]

   Oh, that wasn't me that asked the question about the trilogy, MARJ.
That was Pedln.  Whatever...you've posted the answer.

 Perry Como is another who sang that song beautifully, JACKIE. His is the
voice I 'hear' when I think about it.

  I especially liked that last Rilke poem, BARB.  So much softer than some of
his others.

[mrssherlock]

Barb:  That one is a 10 for sure!  The images are so strong.  The words just miss that frisson, maybe the problem with translating is never quite nailing the spirit of the poem. 

A song Tom Jones "owns" is Green Green Grass of Home.