Because Poetry Can Be FUN!

Crayon Pirate

There was a single blue line of

crayon drawn across every wall

in the house. What does it 

mean? I said. A pirate needs

the sight of the sea, he said and then

he pulled his eye patch down and

turned and sailed away.

--Brian Andreas

Pablo Neruda

Sonnet XVII

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz, or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off. I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul. I love you as the plant that never blooms but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers; thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance, risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body. I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride; so I love you because I know no other way than this: where I does not exist, nor you, so close that your hand on my chest is my hand, so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Song Selection 2

I don't think it's a secret that I'm a fairly maudlin girl; I tend to thrive on a bit of melancholy -- I don't like to wallow in it, because that's tiresome, but I need a little bit (I think it helps me remember the good things; see here).

For that reason, I'm inordinately fond of Damien Rice. He is dreamy and melancholy and sad and makes you feel good about it. (Seriously, you should check him out.) This is my favorite D.R. song, and it is haunting. I took the lyrics directly from his website, so please forgive the "grammar"

"Accidental Babies"

i held you like a lover
happy hands
and your elbow in the appropriate place
and we ignored our others' happy plans
for that delicate look upon your face
our bodies moved and hardened
hurting parts of your garden
with no room for a pardon
in a place where no one knows what we have done 

do you come
together ever with him?
is he dark enough
enough to see your light?
do you brush your teeth before you kiss?
do you miss my smell?
is he bold enough to take you on?
do you feel like you belong?
does he drive you wild?
or just mildly free?
what about me? 

you held me like a lover
sweaty hands
and my foot in the appropriate place
we used cushions to cover happy glands
and the mild issue of our disgrace
our minds pressed and guarded
while our flesh disregarded
the lack of space for the light-hearted
in the boom that beats our drum 

and i know i make you cry
i know sometimes you wanna die
but do you really feel alive without me?
if so be free
if not leave him for me
before one of us has
accidental babies
for we are ...

Frost-y Poem

I'm pretty sure that no National Poetry Month would be complete without a poem from Robert Frost, so here you go:

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim Because it was grassy and wanted wear, Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I marked the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.

Labysheedy

This poem was written by a woman named Nuala ní Dhomhnaill (NOO-la na GHON-all), and was originally written in Irish. Nuala ní Dhomhnaill is a contemporary poet who writes and publishes in Irish as a quasi-political statement; kind of a reclaiming of both her language and heritage. Generally, she simply writes the poetry, and others translate it. This is one of the rare exceptions: she translated the following poem, and it truly beautiful.

Labysheedy

(The Silken Bed)

I'd make a bed for you

in Labysheedy

in the tall grass

under the wrestling trees

where your skin 

would be silk upon silk

in the darkness

when the moths are coming down.

Skin which glistens

shining over your limbs

like milk being poured 

from jugs at dinnertime;

your hair is a herd of goats

moving over rolling hills,

hills that have cliffs

and two ravines.

And your damp lips

would be as sweet as sugar

at evening and we walking

by the riverside

with honeyed breezes

blowing over the Shannon

and the fuchsias bowing down to you

one by one.

The fuchsias bending low

their solemn heads in obeisance to the beauty

in front of them.

I would pick a pair of flowers

as pendant earrings

to adorn you

like a bride in shining clothes.

O, I'd make a bed for you

in Labysheedy,

in the twilight hour

with evening falling slow

and what a pleasure it would be

to have our limbs entwine

wrestling

while the moths are coming down.

Sonnet CXXX

When I read "Litany" by Billy Collins, I always think of this sonnet by Shakespeare. They have the same idea, I think; specifically, loving someone in kind of a "warts and all" way.

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red:
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound.
I grant I never saw a goddess go:
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare. 

Litany

This is one of my favorite poems (even if Jeremiah does think it is a crap Twinkie...). It is a beautiful tribute by Billy Collin.

Litany

You are the bread and the knife,

The crystal goblet and the wine.

--Jacques Crickillion

You are the bread and the knife,

the crystal goblet and the wine.

You are the dew on the morning grass

and the burning wheel of the sun.

You are the white apron of the baker,

and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.

However, you are not the wind in the orchard,

the plums on the counter,

or the house of cards.

And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.

There is just no way you are the pine scented air.

It is possible that you are fish under the bridge,

maybe even the pigeon on the general's head,

but you are not even close

to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.

And a quick look in the mirror will show

that you are neither the boots in the corner

nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.

It might interest you to know,

speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,

that I am the sound of rain on the roof. 

I also happen to be the shooting star,

the evening paper blowing down an alley

and the basket of chesnuts on the kitchen table.

I am also the moon in the trees

and the blind woman's tea cup.

But don't worry, I'm not the bread and the knife.

You are still the bread and the knife.

You will always be the bread and the knife, 

not to mention the crystal goblet -- and somehow -- the wine.

Blogging Fail

So, I'm officially 9 poems behind in my Poem-a-Day homage...  I meant to remedy this a couple of days ago, but I was wracked with self-pity, convinced no one reads this, and feeling it was a useless enterprise. I'm not going to lie: I still feel like that, but I also feel I have to finish what I started, so here we go...

Spring...

It has snowed here... all day. I am aching for Spring, and longing for warmer days and less rain. So, perhaps you will forgive me for posting another poem by e.e. cummings, but it's been snowing...

Spring is like a perhaps hand

(which comes carefully

out of Nowhere)arranging

a window, into which people look(while

people stare

arranging and changing placing

carefully there a strange

thing and a known thing here)and

changing everything carefully

"...this quiet is only quiet..."

I signed up to receive a daily poem via email from Poets.org (the fine people who bring us National Poetry Month), and this one came through the other day. It is lovely:

Yellow Bowl

If light pours like water
into the kitchen where I sway
with my tired children,

if the rug beneath us
is woven with tough flowers,
and the yellow bowl on the table

rests with the sweet heft
of fruit, the sun-warmed plums,
if my body curves over the babies,

and if I am singing,
then loneliness has lost its shape,
and this quiet is only quiet.

--Rachel Contreni Flynn

A Haiku

Speaking of my dear friend Jeremiah (who found "Permanently" for me), he wrote this little gem, which I think is brilliant. In fact, I go to Jeremiah for all my Haiku needs. Enjoy!

Does Tide make a spray
that removes pain and regret
and possibly gin?

Because I Can...

Some Yeats, because I love him, and I adore this poem:

When You Are Old

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with a love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

Shakespeare, Anyone?

I really love this sonnet:

Sonnet CXVI

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no! It is an ever-fix'ed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

"Permanently"

This one also talks about the power of language. Thanks to my dear friend, Jeremiah, for sending it to me!

In an essay called "On Reading Poetry," the late Kenneth Koch wrote: "Suppose you want to get an experience into words so that it is permanently there, as it would be in a painting—so that every time you read what you wrote, you reexperienced it. Suppose you want to say something so that it is right and beautiful—even though you may not understand exactly why. Or suppose words excite you—the way stone excites a sculptor—and inspire you to use them in a new way. And that for these or other reasons you like writing because of the way it makes you think or because of what it helps you to understand. These are some of the reasons poets write poetry."

Permanently

One day the Nouns were clustered in the street.
An Adjective walked by, with her dark beauty.
The Nouns were struck, moved, changed.
The next day a Verb drove up, and created the Sentence.

Each Sentence says one thing—for example, "Although it was a dark rainy
day when the Adjective walked by, I shall remember the pure and sweet
expression on her face until the day I perish from the green, effective earth."
Or, "Will you please close the window, Andrew?"
Or, for example, "Thank you, the pink pot of flowers on the window sill
has changed color recently to a light yellow, due to the heat from the
boiler factory which exists nearby."

In the springtime the Sentences and the Nouns lay silently on the grass.
A lonely Conjunction here and there would call, "And! But!"
But the Adjective did not emerge.

As the Adjective is lost in the sentence,
So I am lost in your eyes, ears, nose, and throat—
You have enchanted me with a single kiss
Which can never be undone
Until the destruction of language.

--Kenneth Koch

Words are Fun

So, by my reckoning, I owe you 5 poems...sorry about that (computer issues; you know how it is). Thus: Poem #1, offered for fun, and to illustrate the wonder of language...

Jabberwocky

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogroves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought--
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogroves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

--Lewis Carroll

I actually dislike Lewis Carroll quite a lot, but "mimsy" is fun to say, and "Callooh! Callay!" sometimes just hits the spot.

And Now: Some Self-Indulgence

As if this blog isn't already pure self-indulgence, but I'm feeling sort of sassy, so you get something I wrote...

Song Selection

Music has always spoken to the human condition because it is poetry to a tune. I like this song because it is simple and heartbreaking. It also tells a vivid story -- one you have no trouble "seeing" when you hear it:

Sometime Around Midnight

And it starts, sometime around midnight.
Or at least that’s when you lose yourself
for a minute or two --
As you stand under the bar lights,
And the band plays some song
about forgetting yourself for a while.
And the piano’s this melancholy soundtrack to her smile.
And that white dress she’s wearing
you haven’t seen her for a while.

But you know that she’s watching:
She’s laughing, she’s turning,
She’s holding her tonic like a cross.
The room’s suddenly spinning,
She walks up and asks how you are.
So you can smell her perfume.
You can see her lying naked in your arms.

So there’s a change in your emotions.
And all these memories come rushing
like feral waves to your mind,
Of the curl of your bodies,
like two perfect circles entwined.
And you feel hopeless and homeless
and lost in the haze of the wine.

Then she leaves with someone you don’t know.
But she makes sure you saw her --
She looks right at you and bolts.
As she walks out the door,
your blood boiling
your stomach in ropes.
Oh and when your friends say,
“What is it? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Then you walk under the streetlights.
And you’re too drunk to notice
that everyone is staring at you.
You just don’t care what you look like,
the world is falling around you.

You just have to see her.
You just have to see her.
You just have to see her.
You just have to see her.
You just have to see her.
You know that she’ll break you in two.

--The Airborne Toxic Event

ee cummings

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

For more information about ee cummings (and more of his poems),
visit his page on poets.org here.

Weekend Poetry

Today is another two-fer because I missed yesterday. So, two of a similar theme from Sara Teasdale:

After Love

There is no magic anymore,

We meet as other people do,

You work no miracle for me

Nor I for you.

You were the wind and I the sea --

There is no splendor anymore,

I have grown listless as the pool

Beside the shore.

But though the pool is safe from storm

And from the tide has found surcease,

It grows more bitter than the sea

For all its peace.

After Parting

Oh, I have sown my love so wide

That he will find it everywhere;

It will awake him in the night,

It will enfold him in the air.

I set my shadow in his sight

And I have winged it with desire,

That it may be a cloud by day,

And in the night a shaft of fire.

I actually really like both of these poems, because they are deceptively simple. There is a lot going on. I like the first one because the line lengths -- and the way they read -- make this poem sound as listless to me as the "pool" Teasdale describes. And the second poem sounds like a terribly elegant homage to stalking, really. It's sort of like reminding the erstwhile lover that he can run but cannot hide... If not for the title, it would be a really touching love poem.

Sara Teasdale was born in 1884 in St. Louis, MO. She was a sickly child, and by all accounts, unhappy in her life. Whether due to illness or unhappiness, she committed suicide in 1933. Sara Teasdale won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1918.

"The Primer"

I don't know anything about this author, but the poem is poignant and lovely....

The Primer

She said, I love you.

He said, Nothing. 


(As if there were just one 
of each word and the one 
who used it, used it up). 


In the history of language
the first obscenity was silence.

 

--Christina Davis

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Today's poem is actually a two-fer from Ms. Millay:

Love is not all; it is not meat nor drink

Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain,

Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink

and rise and sink and rise and sink again;

Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath,

Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;

Yet many a man is making friends with death

Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.

It may well be that in a difficult hour,

Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,

Or nagged by want past resolution's power,

I might be driven to sell your love for peace,

Or trade the memory of this night for food.

It well may be. I do not think I would.

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

Edna St. Vincent Millay was born February 22, 1892 in Maine. Encouraged by her mother, Millay began writing poetry at a very young age, and much of her early poetry was published in St. Nicholas, a popular children's magazine. However, she won immediate acclaim and attention with her poem, "Renascence," published in the anthology The Lyric Year, in 1912 when Millay was 20. It became the title poem for her first collection, published in 1917 (the same year she graduated from Vassar College), Renascence and Other Poems. This collection immediately established her as a force on the New York literary scene. Her further collections, along with her prose works, plays, short stories and essays, made her one of America's most celebrated poets.

Between 1917, when her first collection was published, and 1920, when her second was published, Edna St. Vincent Millay published 77 poems, 39 of which were sonnets (2 of those appear above). She also wrote and directed a play, published 8 prose pieces under a pseudonym, and wrote her second book. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923 for A Few Figs from Thistles and for 8 sonnets and "The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver." Millay's volume of work alone is noteworthy; however, the work she was producing was stunning. Her command of the sonnet is something which has been commented on by several other, award-winning, poets: "She wrote some of the best sonnets of the century. She knew that this form was durable. She put into it her own immaculate perfections" (emphasis added -- Richard Eberhart). Her verse "stings the page".

"Undine"

The professor of a poetry writing class that I took said that great poetry should have "geography and furniture. If you fix your poem in a place, and give readers something solid to look to, you can successfully write about even the most abstract subjects." For my money, I think he was right.

The master of "geography and furniture" (in my opinion) is Seamus Heaney, an Irish contemporary poet and winner of the Noble Prize for Literature in 1995. His mastery of language is such that he can write a poem using a skunk as a simile for his wife, and having it turn out to be a love poem (a really sweet one, too).

I offer the following poem, though, as a great example of an "abstract" subject being made quite solid. An undine (UN-deen) is a water-sprite who cannot get soul unless they can get a human man to marry them...

Undine

He slashed the briars, shoveled up grey silt

To give me right of way in my own drains

And I ran quick for him, cleaned out my rust.

He halted, saw me finally disrobed,

Running clear, with apparent unconcern.

Then he walked by me. I rippled and I churned

Where ditches intersected near the river

Until he dug a spade deep in my flank

And took me to him. I swallowed his trench

Gratefully, dispersing myself for love

Down in his roots, climbing his brassy grain ---

But once he know my welcome, I alone

Could give him subtle increase and reflection.

He explored me so completely, each limb

Lost its cold freedom. Human, warmed to him.

There are so many things that could be said about this poem! Heaney takes the myth of the undine (something relatively abstract), and plunks it right down into the description of a farmer clearing out his ditch, offering both geography and furniture. Besides that, the words he uses are everyday -- common; yet, with skillful manipulation of metaphor, Heaney gives us the myth, gives us the personality of the water-sprite living in the ditch, gives us the outcome, and never uses a word that anyone would have to look up to understand! This is an entirely different point, but I LOVE that Heaney will stop one sentence and begin another within a single line of poetry. Few poets do that, and it is difficult to do it well; Heaney does it brilliantly. Each new sentence offers yet another metaphor and kind of moves the plot along, if you will, which is amazing. Seamus Heaney is kind of my poetic hero (in case you weren't getting that), and entirely worth looking into and reading.

National Poetry Month

I absolutely LOVE National Poetry Month, and couldn't wait to celebrate it here, on my blog dedicated to word nerdery. National Poetry Month was started in 1996 by the Academy of American Poets, and has been celebrated every April since. Activities have included poetry readings, open mic events, the "Favorite Poem Project", the "Poem in Your Pocket" Day, and bloggers sharing their favorites. The goals of National Poetry Month, as stated by the Academy can be seen here (along with further information about NPM): poets.org.

I will be posting daily poems here, and hope you will enjoy!