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catherine
10-27-12, 11:37am
I'm just recently getting back into loving poetry. When I was young I really enjoyed it, and then had a very long prosaic stretch where non-fiction was all I read for the most part.

But now, words in straight prose just don't do for me what poetry does.

Let's share our favorite poems!

For me, Mary Oliver is my new favorite poet. I'm going to share both the words of a really awesome poem, and also an AWESOME video that I got on Facebook the other day of a bunch of students reciting this poem.

So, what's YOUR favorite poem? Please share!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_9Fx_hRr54


What I Have Learned So Far

Meditation is old and honorable, so why should I
not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside,
looking into the shining world? Because, properly
attended to, delight, as well as havoc, is suggestion.
Can one be passionate about the just, the
ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit
to no labor in its cause? I don't think so.

All summations have a beginning, all effect has a
story, all kindness begins with the sown seed.
Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of
light is the crossroads of— indolence, or action.

Be ignited, or be gone.

— Mary Oliver
New and Selected Poems, Volume 2
Beacon Press, Boston, 1992 (Web)

rodeosweetheart
10-27-12, 12:38pm
Stevie Smith, "Not Waving but Drowning"

link here for recording:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/poetry/outloud/smith.shtml


Not Waving but Drowning

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

Rogar
10-27-12, 1:42pm
Hard to pick a favorite. Here's a short one by Ted Kooser that I've liked. Kooser is a former national poet laureate.

A Winter Morning

A farmhouse window far back from the highway
speaks to the darkness in a small, sure voice.
Against this stillness, only a kettle's whisper,
and against the starry cold, one small blue ring of flame.

herbgeek
10-27-12, 2:13pm
I'm not much into poetry, but I recite this one every spring (I love Robert Frost):

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leafs a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Sad Eyed Lady
10-27-12, 4:04pm
The following poem is certainly one of my favorites, especially since my fiftieth year has come and gone. I believe I have posted it here before, but probably has been awhile.

My Fiftieth Year
by W.B. Yeats.

My fiftieth year had come and gone,
I sat, a solitary man,
In a crowded London shop,
An open book and empty cup
On the marble table-top.

While on the shop and the street I gazed
My body of a sudden blazed;
And twenty minutes more or less
It seemed, so great my happiness,
That I was blessed and could bless.

Sad Eyed Lady
10-27-12, 4:14pm
Oh, may I do two? I also love this poem, which really is only a portion of the whole poem but this is how I first came across it.

A portion of "Half Hanged Mary" by Margaret Atwood

I was hanged for living alone
for having blue eyes and a sunburned skin,
tattered skirts, few buttons,
a weedy farm in my own name,
and a surefire cure for warts;

Oh yes, and breasts,
and a sweet pear hidden in my body.
Whenever there's talk of demons
these come in handy.

catherine
10-27-12, 4:15pm
These are great!

SadEyedLady, I like the 50th year poem by Yeats... my son recited this poem, again by Mary Oliver, at my 60th birthday (note the reference):

Halleluiah

Everyone should be born into this world happy
and loving everything.
But in truth it rarely works that way.
For myself, I have spent my life clamoring toward it.
Halleluiah, anyway I'm not where I started!

And have you too been trudging like that, sometimes
almost forgetting how wondrous the world is
and how miraculously kind some people can be?
And have you too decided that probably nothing important
is ever easy?
Not, say, for the first sixty years.

Halleluiah, I'm sixty now, and even a little more,
and some days I feel I have wings.

~ Mary Oliver ~

Jilly
10-27-12, 4:25pm
No one will tell you
Just as, in outer space, no one can hear you scream,
No one will tell you
When you drip the golden, molten yolk of your breakfast egg on your shirt.
You are left to find
On your own,
In your own time,
The lesson of the dried scale that adorns your lapel.
Perhaps one could speak more softly.
Gesture more delicately.

Sorry, gently spirits.
I try.
Honestly.
Hampered by love of my companions
And the excitement of shared experiences,
My clothes will bear testament, and suffer souvenirs.
Of time best spent,
Not on laundry,
But in the moment.

catherine
10-27-12, 4:56pm
Jilly, did you write that?

Kestrel
10-27-12, 4:59pm
I too am a Mary Oliver fan -- really love "The Journey".

But here's one I'm particularly fond of :)

The Poet Goes to Fenway

By Mary Oliver | October 13, 2007

In the language of baseball
I am 3 and 2,
and not so nimble
as I was once

and the game, at the moment,
is indecisive.
There are many poets
who love baseball

which is, after all,
a metaphor
for many things
that happen when there isn't a game.

The ball gleams forth, and high,
and maybe it's a hit
or maybe the runner is out.
Nothing is certain except the way

the old players hang on
to their smarts, their prowess
as long as they can
while the luminous young

keep showing up,
so swift, so quick,
with such light in their eyes
and such beautiful swings.

-------

I definitely identify with "3 and 2" ...

And LOVE baseball! GO GIANTS!!

Sad Eyed Lady
10-27-12, 5:07pm
These are great!

SadEyedLady, I like the 50th year poem by Yeats... my son recited this poem, again by Mary Oliver, at my 60th birthday (note the reference):

Halleluiah

Everyone should be born into this world happy
and loving everything.
But in truth it rarely works that way.
For myself, I have spent my life clamoring toward it.
Halleluiah, anyway I'm not where I started!

And have you too been trudging like that, sometimes
almost forgetting how wondrous the world is
and how miraculously kind some people can be?
And have you too decided that probably nothing important
is ever easy?
Not, say, for the first sixty years.

Halleluiah, I'm sixty now, and even a little more,
and some days I feel I have wings.

~ Mary Oliver ~

Love this one too!! Thanks for posting it.

bae
10-27-12, 6:34pm
De rerum natura, Titus Lucretius Carus

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.02.0130

Lainey
10-27-12, 6:38pm
Apt for this season. From the book Good Poems edited by Garrison Keillor.

Poem by Sheenagh Pugh

Sometimes things don't go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail,
sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war;
elect an honest man; decide they care
enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best efforts do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.

catherine
10-27-12, 6:46pm
I love these poems.

bae, your entry did send me googling, but I'd rather just ask you, what is your favorite passage? I took 3 years of Latin, but I did have to resort to the translation.

bae
10-27-12, 6:57pm
I love these poems.

bae, your entry did send me googling, but I'd rather just ask you, what is your favorite passage? I took 3 years of Latin, but I did have to resort to the translation.

The whole work is worthy of study, it isn't so much that any one passage stands out as "poetic", but rather the whole text explains an important philosophy, one that informs much later work.

This little tidbit here though, where he stumbles across quantum mechanics, is way ahead of its time:



Denique si semper motu conectitur omnis
et vetere exoritur motus novus ordine certo
nec declinando faciunt primordia motus
principium quoddam, quod fati foedera rumpat,
ex infinito ne causam causa sequatur,
libera per terras unde haec animantibus exstat,
unde est haec, inquam, fatis avolsa voluntas,
per quam progredimur quo ducit quemque voluptas,
declinamus item motus nec tempore certo
nec regione loci certa, sed ubi ipsa tulit mens?

Jilly
10-27-12, 7:05pm
Catherine, yes. I write sincerely bad poetry and love every one of them.

catherine
10-27-12, 7:14pm
Catherine, yes. I write sincerely bad poetry and love every one of them.

That is NOT bad poetry... I loved it. I just love the idea that egg yolk on a shirt is egg yolk on a shirt. And we can all laugh about it. DH was joking with the mailman that he had a breakfast stain low on his shirt and a lunch stain higher up on his shirt and then he turned his shirt inside out for the next day, and all three of us, DH, me, and the mailman stood and laughed.

sunnyjoe
10-27-12, 8:28pm
I love poetry! Here's one of my favorites:

Black Rook in Rainy Weather

On the stiff twig up there
Hunches a wet black rook
Arranging and rearranging its feathers in the rain-
I do not expect a miracle
Or an accident

To set the sight on fire
In my eye, nor seek
Any more in the desultory weather some design,
But let spotted leaves fall as they fall
Without ceremony, or portent.

Although, I admit, I desire,
Occasionally, some backtalk
From the mute sky, I can't honestly complain:
A certain minor light may still
Lean incandescent

Out of kitchen table or chair
As if a celestial burning took
Possession of the most obtuse objects now and then --
Thus hallowing an interval
Otherwise inconsequent

By bestowing largesse, honor
One might say love. At any rate, I now walk
Wary (for it could happen
Even in this dull, ruinous landscape); sceptical
Yet politic, ignorant

Of whatever angel any choose to flare
Suddenly at my elbow. I only know that a rook
Ordering its black feathers can so shine
As to seize my senses, haul
My eyelids up, and grant

A brief respite from fear
Of total neutrality. With luck,
Trekking stubborn through this season
Of fatigue, I shall
Patch together a content

Of sorts. Miracles occur.
If you care to call those spasmodic
Tricks of radiance
Miracles. The wait's begun again,
The long wait for the angel,

For that rare, random descent.
-- Sylvia Plath

edited to add space after title

catherine
10-27-12, 9:09pm
The whole work is worthy of study, it isn't so much that any one passage stands out as "poetic", but rather the whole text explains an important philosophy, one that informs much later work.

This little tidbit here though, where he stumbles across quantum mechanics, is way ahead of its time:


For undoubtedly it is his own will in each that begins these things, and from the will movements go rippling through the limbs.

This is the part in English that stood out for me.. "As A Man Thinketh" as it were...

puglogic
10-28-12, 1:04am
I have always adored this poem:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM7q_DUk5wU

Tussiemussies
10-28-12, 1:15am
This is my favorite poem which many have probably read in their lifetime. I like to think of this in a spirituall sense... Not on the human plane of love...


Kahlil Gibran on Love

When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams
as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.

But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.

When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart," but rather, "I am in the heart of God."
And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

Tussiemussies
10-28-12, 1:28am
Have enjoyed reading everyone's poem they posted since I love poetry. Thanks...

cdttmm
10-28-12, 9:26am
The Brain -is wider than the Sky -- Emily Dickinson

The Brain - is wider than the Sky-
For - put them side by side-
The one the other will contain
With ease - and You- beside-

The Brain is deeper than the sea-
For - hold them - Blue to Blue -
The one the other will absorb -
As Sponges - Buckets - do -

The Brain is just the weight of God -
For - Heft them - Pound for Pound -
And they will differ - if they do -
As Syllable from Sound-

catherine
10-28-12, 9:32am
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;

Wow, that one line makes me cry. Kahlil Gibran was my mother's favorite. For my high school graduation she gave me a copy of The Prophet crammed with little inspirational clippings she had collected over time. It was one of my very favorite gifts I've ever gotten. I think his poem "On Children" is one of the best "manuals" for parenting I've ever read.

cdttmm, love the Emily Dickinson.. amazing how much a few lines can say.

iris lily
10-28-12, 10:53am
a cat's poem:

Love to eat them mousies
Mousies what I love to eat
Bite they little heads off
Nibble on they tiny feet
—B. Kliban

Gardenarian
10-29-12, 3:41pm
Hard to choose a favorite, but a friend gave me this poem when my beloved dog of 19 years died:

The House Dog's Grave

I've changed my ways a little; I cannot now
Run with you in the evenings along the shore,
Except in a kind of dream; and you, if you dream a moment,
You see me there.

So leave awhile the paw-marks on the front door
Where I used to scratch to go out or in,
And you'd soon open; leave on the kitchen floor
The marks of my drinking-pan.

I cannot lie by your fire as I used to do
On the warm stone,
Nor at the foot of your bed; no, all the night through
I lie alone.

But your kind thought has laid me less than six feet
Outside your window where firelight so often plays,
And where you sit to read--and I fear often grieving for me--
Every night your lamplight lies on my place.

You, man and woman, live so long, it is hard
To think of you ever dying
A little dog would get tired, living so long.
I hope than when you are lying

Under the ground like me your lives will appear
As good and joyful as mine.
No, dear, that's too much hope: you are not so well cared for
As I have been.

And never have known the passionate undivided
Fidelities that I knew.
Your minds are perhaps too active, too many-sided. . . .
But to me you were true.

You were never masters, but friends. I was your friend.
I loved you well, and was loved. Deep love endures
To the end and far past the end. If this is my end,
I am not lonely. I am not afraid. I am still yours.


Robinson Jeffers, 1941

puglogic
10-29-12, 11:23pm
This is a Rumi that I can recite by heart, I've read it so many times.

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

puglogic
10-29-12, 11:24pm
Gardenarian, that's beautiful.

Jilly
10-29-12, 11:27pm
Puglogic, I know that by heart as well. It is one of my favorites. I have a copy handwritten above my desk here at home and on a purple index card that I carry to my jobs.

puglogic
10-29-12, 11:37pm
Puglogic, I know that by heart as well. It is one of my favorites. I have a copy handwritten above my desk here at home and on a purple index card that I carry to my jobs.

That's amazing, Jilly. I don't know anyone else in my life who's familiar with it; my husband tells me he doesn't even understand it. I think it's really helped me all through my life to face whatever emotion comes knocking, and turn it into something good, or at least something strengthening.

Tussiemussies
10-29-12, 11:55pm
Wow, that one line makes me cry. Kahlil Gibran was my mother's favorite. For my high school graduation she gave me a copy of The Prophet crammed with little inspirational clippings she had collected over time. It was one of my very favorite gifts I've ever gotten. I think his poem "On Children" is one of the best "manuals" for parenting I've ever read.

cdttmm, love the Emily Dickinson.. amazing how much a few lines can say.

That is a wonderful line Catherine. Nice that he was your Mother'suse favorite...I love all his work too.

Cypress
10-31-12, 10:59am
When I think of this song by Bob Dylan, the word brilliant comes to mind. I have a CD of Dylan singing this live in England 1966. To this day, I cannot hear this without getting chills. The flow of the words, the sound of his off-key voice with the soul of music in flow. I swear I can hear the muse of Musica aloft. He's not everyone's cup of tea, but is there a contemporary artist who can match his lyrical gift.


"Visions Of Johanna"

Ain't it just like the night to play tricks when you're tryin' to be so quiet ? We sit here stranded, though we're all doin our best to deny it. And Louise holds a handfull of rain, tempting you to defy it. Lights flicker from the opposite loft. In this room the heat pipes just cough. The country music station plays soft. But there's nothing really nothing to turn off Just Louise and her lover so entwined And these visions of Johanna that conquer my mind.

In the empty lot where the ladies play blindman's bluff with the key chain. And the all-night girls they whisper of escapades out on the D-train. We can hear the night watchman click his flashlight Ask himself if it's him or them that's really insane. Louise she's all right she's just near. She's delicate and seems like the mirror. But she just makes it all too concise and too clear That Johanna's not here The ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face. Where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place.

Now, little boy lost, he takes himself so seriously. He brags of his misery, he likes to live dangerously And when bringing her name up He speaks of a farewell kiss to me. He's sure got a lotta gall to be so useless and all Muttering small talk at the wall while I'm in the hall. Oh, how can I explain ? It's so hard to get on And these visions of Johanna they kept me up past the dawn.

Inside the museums, Infinity goes up on trial Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while But Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues You can tell by the way she smiles See the primitive wallflower freeze When the jelly-faced women all sneeze Hear the one with the mustache say, "Jeeze I can't find my knees". Oh, jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mule But these visions of Johanna, they make it all seem so cruel.

The peddler now speaks to the countess who's pretending to care for him Saying, "Name me someone that's not a parasite and I'll go out and say a prayer for him" But like Louise always says "Ya can't look at much, can ya man " As she, herself prepares for him And Madonna, she still has not showed We see this empty cage now corrode Where her cape of the stage once had flowed The fiddler, he now steps to the road He writes ev'rything's been returned which was owed On the back of the fish truck that loads While my conscience explodes The harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain And these visions of Johanna are now all that remain.

CathyA
10-31-12, 11:26am
I am overwhelmed at what you all have posted. I guess I thought it was going to be stuff like "Roses are red............" Forgive me. This is just incredible stuff.
And Jilly.......your poem was WONDERFUL!! I would love to read more of yours!

I like the one by Robert Frost "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening". Its very simple, but really draws me into the feeling of being in the dark woods during winter, and knowing it probably also is talking about death.
I also really like a German poem by Herrmann Hesse, "Im Grase liegend"......which in English means "Lying in Grass". Here is the translated version:

Lying in Grass

Is this everything now, the quick delusions of flowers,
And the down colors of the bright summer meadow,
The soft blue spread of heaven, the bees' song,
Is this everything only a god's
Groaning dream,
The cry of unconscious powers for deliverance?
The distant line of the mountain,
That beautifully and courageously rests in the blue,
Is this too only a convulsion,
Only the wild strain of fermenting nature,
Only grief, only agony, only meaningless fumbling,
No! Leave me alone, you impure dream
Of the world in suffering!
The dance of tiny insects cradles you in an evening radiance,
The bird's cry cradles you,
A breath of wind cools my forehead
With consolation.
Leave me alone, you unendurably old human grief!
Let it all be pain,
Let it all be suffering, let it be wretched--
But not this one sweet hour in the summer,
And not the fragrance of the red clover,
And not the deep tender pleasure
In my soul.

leslieann
10-31-12, 12:57pm
This thread has been wonderful to read. I love 'em all, including Iris Lily's Kliban verse...I also know the Guest House; have shared it far and wide but somehow it doesn't resonate with everyone! I wonder how Mary Oliver can write the way that she does. And Jilly, I loved your poem. I think what I love about poetry is the twist, where we move from an everyday sensory experience to a sudden shift that often feels transcendent. It takes me by surprise, right in the chest. Poetry isn't a head experience, at least not for me at this stage of my life. I used to try to "understand" with my mind...now I just soak it in and experience my responses. I hope people will keep posting.

Gardenarian
10-31-12, 2:32pm
"Leave me alone, you unendurably old human grief!"
Thanks CathyA, I love that and had never read it before.

Kat
10-31-12, 2:55pm
I love poetry and have really enjoyed reading the poems you all have shared. Especially the poem you wrote, Jilly. :)

I am a fan of Mary Oliver, too. "Why I Wake Early" is probably my favorite of hers:

Why I Wake Early



Hello, sun in my face.

Hello, you who made the morning

and spread it over the fields

and into the faces of the tulips

and the nodding morning glories,

and into the windows of, even, the

miserable and the crotchety –



best preacher that ever was,

dear star, that just happens

to be where you are in the universe

to keep us from ever-darkness,

to ease us with warm touching,

to hold us in the great hands of light –

good morning, good morning, good morning.



Watch, now, how I start the day

in happiness, in kindness.



~ Mary Oliver ~



(Why I Wake Early, 2004)

I think, though, that my all-time favorite poem is this one:

This Is To Be My Symphony

by William Henry Channing

"To live content with small means;
to seek elegance rather than luxury,
and refinement rather than fashion;
to be worthy, not respectable,
and wealthy, not rich;

to study hard, think quietly,
talk gently, act frankly;
to listen to stars and birds,
to babes and sages, with open heart;
to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely,
await occasions, hurry never.

In a word, to let the spiritual,
unbidden and unconscious,
grow up through the common.

This is to be my symphony."

It really summarizes well the kind of life I want to live, the kind of person I want to be.

MaryHu
11-1-12, 11:07am
Here's one of the few poems I know by heart. I bet it will get censored!

Nympho-maniacal Jill
used a stick of dynamite for a thrill
they found her v**ina in North Carolina
and bits of her t*ts in Brazil! :0!

I love limericks! :laff: :|(

CathyA
11-1-12, 11:40am
LOL Mary.........well, that broke up the seriousness/heaviness of some of these poems. hahaha

Gardenarian
11-1-12, 2:53pm
Kat - "This is to be My Symphony" - love it. Thank you!

Jilly
11-1-12, 4:49pm
Here's one of the few poems I know by heart. I bet it will get censored!

Nympho-maniacal Jill
used a stick of dynamite for a thrill
they found her v**ina in North Carolina
and bits of her t*ts in Brazil! :0!

I love limericks! :laff: :|(

Was not me. Just saying.

CathyA
11-1-12, 7:42pm
LOLOLOL Jilly! I thought of you when I read that limerick! :laff: