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Friday poem
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“Lesson” by by Robin Robertson
The green leaf opens and the leaf falls,
each breath is a flame
that gives in to fire;
and grief is the price
we pay for love,
and the death of love
the fee of all desire.
(From The Atlantic Monthly, June 2008)
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Topic: WorldMagBlog |  |
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Keywords: literature, poetry |  |
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I don’t like HSK’s poetry corner; I don’t get poetry.
I like this poem.
But Bob, you don’t have to get poetry to understand it. You just enjoy the beauty of the words!
I like this poem … but I’m still not entirely sure what it means. Gotta think on that a little more.
Is there a reason we usually get a recently-written poem? I should post one of my own!
No really: I suggest some older poetry on here, maybe some Renaissance poetry and sonnets?
Kimberly post all the poetry you want but please no Dante! In my world views class this year I had to do a study on Dante’s Divine Comedy, and to sum it up in one word terms - Terrible.
Which translation, Jane?
I recently re-read Dante in the Esolen translation and loved it. So I’m curious where your reaction stems from ….
It was the Dorothy Sayers translation. Perhaps my aversion to the trilogy was because of the short time that I had to study it. The course required that Inferno, Paradacio, and Purgatorio be read and essays given on all three within three weeks.
I haven’t read the Sayers translation (although I’ve been enjoying her Wimsey!)
I suggest Esolen: he writes a blank verse translation, which gives a poetry feel without the annoying terza rima in English. I read Ciardi my first time through and found it OK. Reading Esolen felt like reading it for the first time.
Of course, when you read it outside of class, you get to spend all the time you want on it.
Thanks for the advice.
Out of curiosity, Jane: where are you studying?
Because I feel like posting a poem:
The Second Coming by W.B. Yeats:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Kimberly #9 I am a home-schooled high school student. The course is a western world views course put out by Sunlight Curriculum.
Good for you, Jane. I was homeschooled too.
I enjoyed it, even though I still have to explain that no, my mother doesn’t teach me lessons like in traditional schools, and no, I wasn’t allowed to go to school in my PJs, and no, I couldn’t sleep in till 10.
Dittos Kimberly
As long as we’re talking poetry and Dante. Sayers is most useful for her notes at the back — these are priceless. For poetry, the Pinsky translation of Inferno is rather nice for the way he alludes to the Italian terza rima style.
And this poem, today? Mighty nice. The theme of transience is awfully hard to pull off — it can be so common, or so mawkish. This was very concrete. I’m going to have to look this poet up.