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I tend to have very particular tastes in poetry, and those tastes are not universal. Lots of folks here at WMB have (when commenting on one of the Friday poems) suggested other poets or specific poems that you really, really like. Many of you seem quite vociferous in your complaints against certain styles, poems, and poets, and I like that vociferousness so much that I want to post the poems you love. So…
…at least for the time being, I will take poem nominations. You can nominate a poem for next week by commenting below. In the future, you can nominate the following week’s poem by commenting in that week’s “Friday poem” comments section. And so on and so forth. Please include the poet’s name and the poem title, and I’ll look for the text online. Or, if it’s not too long, you can copy the poem text into the comment. Feel free to include the origin, too (i.e., the collection or anthology in which you found the work). Thanks, and I look forward to hearing from the two or three people who care.
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One more diversion
I enjoy the Friday Poem, though I may not always enjoy your selection. I do weary of the redundant complaining, so I look forward to seeing what some of the critics suggest. Good call, HSK.
Paradise Lost!
“Him the Almighty Power
Hurl’d headlong flaming from th’ Ethereal Sky
With hideous ruin and combustion down
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
In Adamantine Chains and penal Fire,
Who durst defy th’ Omnipotent to Arms.”
Since we are coming up on the Christmas Season I like Jest Fore Christmas by Eugene Field. I have already posted Maud Muller. I will go through my books and come back with the rest of my suggestions, but see if you can find The Minuet, The Spider and the Fly, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.
Classic Romantics like:
Wordsworth, Sheats, Shelley, and Byron.
Or:
Robert Frost
Well, I am the Persistent Whiner, not the Redundant Complainer, so I am glad that it could not be me who so inconsiderately wearies the long-suffering denizens of the blog.
Anyway, this is a good idea, Mr. Key.
However, your selections for Friday poem ARE fine. I had sort of assumed though that they were put there for comments, both postitive and negative and querying reactions. Actually calling the question on the ‘poetry’ or ‘prosy’ nature of an individual work, does not constitute thinking it ‘bad’, by the way.
It would seem that one of the defining ‘movements’ in modern poetry, such as it is, is to move away from structure and rhythm (whether free verse or not). That (it seems to me) then naturally brings up the very important question of what actually constitutes poetry to the modern mind (that category does not include me, I am pretty sure).
I have tried to be satisfied with the idea (after being justly chastized - on this blog, actually, for complaining too much) that poetry is all ‘in the eyes of the beholder’. But I don’t think that is right, so why should I believe it - or pretend to, here or anywhere else?
There IS (or should be) a universality to poetry (like music and art) that transcends all time and space. So a good translation of the Gilgamesh Epic after 5 thousand years should and does still ring convincingly as word-shaping magic - with all the wonders that implies. I think it is all tied up in the concept of the Absolute, the Creative mainspring of the Universe, to be honest about it, and so it (poetry, like true music and true art) IS universal.
For instance, I don’t think that an ode wrung directly from the instruction manual of how to operate a sewing machine would be universal, in either theme, or in rhythm or word-weaving magic, no matter how much you sweated over it and how well and elegantly the prose in the instruction manual might be written.
Good prose can be just as meaningful (and magical) as good poetry. But there IS still a basic and (to me) discernable difference. So the question is where is the line (or the gray area) between poetic prose and poetry?
And also: Should not good poetry be universal?
But I will submit a couple of poems, if you don’t object. Or try to.
It kind of depends on your purpose in having a Friday poem here to begin with. If only a handful of readers care, why bother with it? I could name you thousands of poems, but why choose one rather than another?
Anthony Hecht
www.cs.berkeley.edu/~richie/poetry/html/aupoem61.html
www.randomhouse.com/boldtype/0401/poetrymonth/hecht.html
“The End of the Weekend,” one of my favorites of his: plagiarist.com/poetry/2410/
Geoffrey Hill
Ovid in the Third Reich
non peccat, quaecumque potest peccasse negare,
solaque famosam culpa professa facit.
—(Amores, III, xiv)
I love my work and my children. God
Is distant, difficult. Things happen.
Too near the ancient troughs of blood
Innocence is no earthly weapon.
I have learned one thing: not to look down
So much on the damned. They, in their sphere,
Harmonize strangely with the divine
Love. I, in mine, celebrate the love-choir.
(www.cs.berkeley.edu/~richie/poetry/html/aupoem136.html)
www.cs.berkeley.edu/~richie/poetry/html/aupoem157.html
A newer one, “On Reading Crowds and Power”–http://www.poetrymagazine.org/magazine/0307/poem_179338.html
I vote for Wendell Berry. “The Mad Farmer’s Liberation Front” is always a chat-provoker.
http://www.randomhouse.com/knopf/authors/merrill/kimono.html
The Kimono
When I returned from lovers’ lane
My hair was white as snow.
Joy, incomprehension, pain
I’d seen like seasons come and go.
How I got home again
Frozen half dead, perhaps you know.
You hide a smile and quote a text:
Desires ungratified
Persist from one life to the next.
Hearths we strip ourselves beside
Long, long ago were x’d
On blueprints of “consuming pride.”
Times out of mind, the bubble-gleam
To our charred level drew
April back. A sudden beam . . .
–Keep talking while I change into
The pattern of a stream
Bordered with rushes white on blue.
John Donne!
Favorite Poems? Alright!!!
Milton: How Soon Hath Time
Donald Hall The Day I was Older. His poems of grief i>Without are also very nice.
A couple of poems by African Americans deserve mention:
Nikki Giovanni’s Nikki-Rosa about growing up in Chicago.
For fun, Quincy Troupe A Poem for “Magic” is ok, tho’ re-reading it, a little on the prosy side.
Rita Dove in American Smooth has a set of very interesting poems about the black soldiers who served in WWI. (The dance-themed poems are ok, too).
For sheer music, I love to read Vachel Linday’s Bryan, Bryan, Bryan, Bryan. But it’s so long, no way you can use it. Still, a great picture of a political campaign a century ago.
Finally, the poems of Wadislawa Symborska often some thoughtful points. But her poems are modern (and translated).
I found this poem on the website listed below. I like a number of things he has written, but my favorite is this one:
..so I get to a fork in the road..
and take it..
and then..
they end up serving
soup
www.davidonthelake.blogspot.com/
In the “for fun” category, “The Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat” or C. S. Lewis’s “The Late Passenger.” I could nominate lots of other favorites, but those are fun ones. Or Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky.”
A few suggestions:
The Invitation - Oriah Mountain Dreamer
I Will Not Die an Unlived Life - Dawna Markova
The Journey - Mary Oliver
And anything by Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson!
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
An Old Opossum’s Book of Cats
Harrison, I may not like every poem you post, but I’m glad to be exposed to newer poetry. I have been moved to look up some of the poets and read more of their works.
How about a compromise–one reader-suggested poem and one contemporary poem that you choose?
You will make me happy with aything by Emily Dickinson or Robert Frost. Also I like sonnets; there’s just something about the form, so any sonnet by any poet would suit me fine.
Posting the poem here makes it this week’s poem, not nest week’s.
For the shear pleasantness, how about some A.A. Milne in his two volumes of children’s poetry When we were young and Now we are six. (Or is it Now we are young and When we were six?) Either way, several of these short ditties are quite humorous.
Two poets I enjoy are John Greenleaf Whittier and Walt Whitman. I am not sure either one of them are great poets. Both have meandering styles, more like folk songs, earthy, telling the story of 19th century America. Both also suffered for their poems, which weren’t always well received.
Whittier, the abolitionist Quaker, wrote a lot about New England history and shone a spotlight on slavery and inequity to Indians. Though I disagree with Whitman’s philosophy, his poetry causes my mind to wander back to an American past as though I am there experiencing it.
But how beautiful is this from Whitman’s Song of Myself, speaking of the green leaves of grass which play so prominently in the lives of men.
I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.
Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say Whose?
“Their Lonely Betters”
by W.H. Auden
As I listened from a beach-chair in the shade
To all the noises that my garden made,
It seemed to me only proper that words
Should be withheld from vegetables and birds.
A robin with no Christian name ran through
The Robin-Anthem which was all it knew,
And rustling flowers for some third party waited
To say which pairs, if any, should get mated.
Not one of them was capable of lying,
There was not one which knew that it was dying
Or could have with a rhythm or a rhyme
Assumed responsibility for time.
Let them leave language to their lonely betters
Who count some days and long for certain letters;
We, too, make noises when we laugh or weep:
Words are for those with promises to keep.
The More Loving One
by W.H. Auden
Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.
Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total darkness sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.
Holy Sonnet
An aging hippie breaks the modern hush
of Starbucks in the morn, and loudly parrots
the complaints the Times has of Bush.
The dumb faux pas makes HSK distraught
Enough to howl his hurt on WorldMagBlog,
where readers go to get their proof that man
without the grace of God is just a glob
of liberal mush, a worldview in a jam.
But no one cares about the tattoed bikers
who loudly thank the Lord (but not the workers)
for the Macs and fries and appeal to Him “to keep
the rain out of this area in the coming week.”
“Request denied. No sunshine for the meek.
And don’t complain. My weather’s in the Times.”
Hmmm. Not bad Scroop. Are you an aging caffeinated hippie?
I get my public caffeination at MacDonalds so as not to run into or offend Harrison, a busy man who takes his caffein in silence at Starbucks. Besides, I like the populist fix, and believe that if Social Security won’t be there for me when I retire, at least the 50¢ senior coffee will. (Just kidding. In truth, I’m far more confident in Social Security.)
John Donne’s Holy Sonnet 14. And also his Holy Sonnets 1, 10, 15, and 19. Ooo, and Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poems “God’s Grandeur” and “Pied Beauty”. And George Herbert wrote a cool one called “Easter Wings” that’s actually written in the shape of wings. Umm, John Keats’ “When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be” and John Milton’s “When I Consider How My Light is Spent”.
Bartleby.com has tons of poems available for free. Just search for what ever you want under verse.
Introversion, by Evelyn Underhill
“What do you find within, O Soul, my Brother?
What do you find within?
I find great quiet where no noises come.
Without, the world’s din:
Silence in my home.
Whom do you find within, O Soul, my Brother?
Whom do you find within?
I find a friend that in secret came:
His scarred hands within
He shields a faint flame.
What would you do within, O Soul, my Brother?
What would you do within?
Bar door and window that none may see:
That alone we may be
(Alone! face to face, In that flame-lit place!)
When first we begin
To speak one with another.”
Where I’m From, by Litoralise
I’m from well worn ivory keys, peppered with ebony,
from glass Coca-Cola bottles and Peace roses,
from forks dirtied and bent to extract dandelions.
(“Carrington!” The only time Two-Mama yelled.)
I’m from the large rock remembered only from a photograph,
and the handmade tire and rope swing
whose swirling and groaning I remember
as my own.
I’m from peanut butter balls and field hockey sticks,
from 24th Parkway near the DC projects and San Jose near Silicon Valley,
from the never-give-ups
and the always-look-ups,
from be on time and find time to be.
I’m from When I Survey the Wondrous Cross
and two popsicle sticks glued together–
harmony of transcendence and childlikeness.
I’m from the Paulette’s and the Blair’s with a bit of the French’s, too,
BBQ pork chops and instant hot cocoa (mini-marshmallows, naturally),
from the fragmenting of my first family
to the reconfiguring of my second
to the blossoming of my own.
I am from the dark sanctuary, alone
piano heart strings were played from deep within,
hours of communion,
sorrow and healing flowed mingled down.
I am from these many moments—and more
the tangled strings behind the tapestry
woven by scarred Hands
framed by extravagant Grace
the reveal for all eternity to see.
Where I’m From, by Litoralise (I couldn’t resist!)
I’m from well worn ivory keys, peppered with ebony,
from glass Coca-Cola bottles and Peace roses,
from forks dirtied and bent to extract dandelions.
(“Carrington!” The only time Two-Mama yelled.)
I’m from the large rock remembered only from a photograph,
and the handmade tire and rope swing
whose swirling and groaning I remember
as my own.
I’m from peanut butter balls and field hockey sticks,
from 24th Parkway near the DC projects and San Jose near Silicon Valley,
from the never-give-ups
and the always-look-ups,
from be on time and find time to be.
I’m from When I Survey the Wondrous Cross
and two popsicle sticks glued together–
harmony of transcendence and childlikeness.
I’m from the Paulette’s and the Blair’s with a bit of the French’s, too,
BBQ pork chops and instant hot cocoa (mini-marshmallows, naturally),
from the fragmenting of my first family
to the reconfiguring of my second
to the blossoming of my own.
I am from the dark sanctuary, alone
piano heart strings were played from deep within,
hours of communion,
sorrow and healing flowed mingled down.
I am from these many moments—and more
the tangled strings behind the tapestry
woven by scarred Hands
framed by extravagant Grace
the reveal for all eternity to see.
Dark waters blossom white in breaking,
High souls are made in the unmaking.
–Charles Fox
Journey Of The Magi, by T. S. Eliot
‘A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.’
And the camels galled, sore-footed,
refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the
terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and
grumbling
And running away, and wanting their
liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the
lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns
unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high
prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all
night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears,
saying
That this was all folly.
Then at dawn we came down to a
temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of
vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill
beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped in
away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with
vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for
pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no imformation, and so
we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment
too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say)
satisfactory.
All this was a long time ago, I
remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth,
certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had
seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different;
this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like
Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these
Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old
dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their
gods.
I should be glad of another death.
Said the Traveler to the Churchyard, by Anthony McCarten
The sign told you
it was built four hundred years
but you scarcely believe
faith could have existed
that long
and so you speak, perhaps hastily,
as others have
“isn’t it beautiful.”
Rapture is induced quietly
by delicate calculated
appraisal. Indeed, there are many graves.
A stone fallen from a parapet
hoarded by the long grass portrays
a public face, the face of silent grace,
it’s own figurative ryhme.
There you are struck stiffly by
a sensation of the end,
the one thing you are sure of
you are unsure of; what
you know you konw, you do not care for.
The epitaph is by Longfellow.
Flowers, grass, evidence
of time coming apart; only
through the gaps does life manage.
Is is the sun that is depriving
the wider view? The deep variable
of night alone speaks of
a truer possibility. Infinity. The mechanism
of not saying.
Yet remiss to confess
the loss of night
the ready charm of an afternoon plays
a cool host.
I describe you
as you walk away from the churchyard
Stepping lightly over a slab of silent stone
larger than life itself.
You leave nothing behind.
The escape is flawless.
But then you stop, write you name
in one of those books
with your address and a comment
as if history notes everything and cares:
“Thoroughly enjoyable visit” is what you say.
Said the Traveler to the Churchyard, by Anthony McCarten
The sign told you
it was built four hundred years
but you scarcely believe
faith could have existed
that long
and so you speak, perhaps hastily,
as others have
“isn’t it beautiful.”
Rapture is induced quietly
by delicate calculated
appraisal. Indeed, there are many graves.
A stone fallen from a parapet
hoarded by the long grass portrays
a public face, the face of silent grace,
it’s own figurative rhyme.
There you are struck stiffly by
a sensation of the end,
the one thing you are sure of
you are unsure of; what
you know, you do not care for.
The epitaph is by Longfellow.
Flowers, grass, evidence
of time coming apart; only
through the gaps does life manage.
Is is the sun that is depriving
the wider view? The deep variable
of night alone speaks of
a truer possibility. Infinity. The mechanism
of not saying.
Yet remiss to confess
the loss of night
the ready charm of an afternoon plays
a cool host.
I describe you
as you walk away from the churchyard
Stepping lightly over a slab of silent stone
larger than life itself.
You leave nothing behind.
The escape is flawless.
But then you stop, write your name
in one of those books
with your address and a comment
as if history notes everything and cares:
“Thoroughly enjoyable visit” is what you say.
Resurrection, by Mark Littleton
A call lifts me out of sleep
I grasp at handfuls of air
and rist, a kite on the wind.
Brightness.
A confetti of stars.
Or is it people?
I reach out and touch a sun–
No burn.
Fire fills me.
A darkness suddenly falls away
like a great heap of iron.
Lighter than air,
I climb on rungs of rainbow.
Others. Others.
All clothed in light.
All transparent.
All free.
He speaks
and his words are suns
that draw green laughter out of us
like oaks out of earth.
I grow more like him.
A body of sunlight,
a God-mirror,
a blaze of white.
O to be alive.
O to sing.
O to draw a warm clock of holiness about me like cotton
and know its rhythms like woodgrain
its depths like sunshine.
O to know and be known
through to the spark.
$3 Worth of God, by Wilbur Rees
I would like $3 worth of God,
please,
not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep
but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk
or a snooze in the sunshine.
I don’t want enough of Him to make me love a Black man
or pick beets with a migrant worker.
I want ecstasy,
not transformation;
I want the warmth of the womb,
not a new birth.
I want a pound of the Eternal in a paper sack.
I would like to buy $3 worth of God,
please.
Sorry for all the posting, but I rarely have an opportunity to read the blog and can’t help myself from sharing poetry during one of the few times I’m “here!”
Harrison, all of these are from a blank journal I had in high school, where I wrote down poems and song lyrics that meant a lot to me. So, I would not know now to where to send you to find them on the internet; hence, I’ve posted them outright.
I have more, but I’ll show some small measure of discipline and not hog the comments any longer.
Xion,
I was going to mention Whitman…. but was afraid to mention it. Thanks..
Litoralise,
Thank you. Those are wonderful! (Though I have to admit I didn’t find Evelyn Underhill’s as good as the others.)
I also used to keep a collection of poems I had found here and there, though I typed them up and kept them in a large envelope, instead of in a journal. But I can’t find them now. This last move, we left a lot of things in boxes and that must be one of them, but I haven’t figured out which box.
When I was a senior in high school I won a poetry contest and went on to represent the school at a statewide poetry meet. The “poet” there critiqued our poems. When she got to mine she was horrified.
She said, “This rhymes!” To which I quickly defended, “Yes, I wrote it in the style of Emily Dickinson!!” The poet looked down at me through the spectacles on the end of her crinkled nose and answered, “Well, when you are as famous as Emily Dickinson, then you can rhyme!” Thus ended my career as a poet!
Later I came to find out that Emily Dickinson was virtually unknown as a poet during her lifetime. Good thing she never submitted poems to that poet with the crinkly nose!
Xion,
My father told me my poetry reminds him of Emily Dickinson. I don’t particularly enjoy her poems myself, so I couldn’t decide whether to be pleased with his assessment or not.
litoralise wrote - “Sorry for all the posting, but I rarely have an opportunity to read the blog and can’t help myself from sharing poetry during one of the few times I’m “here!”
Litoralise - I recently recommended your poem (from your bio above) to Harrison. I can’t remember where I posted that and I don’t know if you seen that, but I’m glad you’re here and shared all of these with us!
VS, Wow, how wonderful of you to recommend my humble poem! Thanks for telling me.
Pauline, glad you enjoyed the poems.
(For some reason, some of them wouldn’t post until the next day, which is why there is some repetition as I was trying to get them to post.)
One more:
Fire and Ice, by Robert Frost
Some say the world will end in fire
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Litoralise - Your poem can hardly be described as “humble”. It really is beautiful. I’ve returned to your bio several times to reread it!
And I really like the Frost poem above too!
VS
I am so touched by your words about my poem. Wow. That really made my day!
I read your bio as well. Looks like we have more in common than a love for poetry. I think you would enjoy this poem (another of my favorites):
Unnamed, by Marilyn Pfister-Friberg
not hiding
but hidden
unashamed
bearer of shame,
small orb of man
and of woman
wrapped in innocence.
inside warm,
outside clammy hands wring.
simplicity matures into fingers and toes
while scheming plans an end
to the secret
so alive and growing larger
than yesterday’s mistake.
implanted in the safest place
(only one way in or out)
so soon most dangerous.
it becomes the padded cell
to wait that gory moment
when the alpha of life
and its omega
face each other unintroduced.
Litoralise - I’m just getting back to this thread to check in; I can’t keep up with all the threads on this blog some days!
The poem above is incredible! I’ve not seen it before, so thank you so much for sharing it!