A Favorite Poem

Saffron · Posted: Tue Aug 19, 2008 5:54 am Post subject:

Grim,
Nice choice of poems. Frost is one of my favorite poets and for sure that is a favorite poem. I always think of this poem in conjunction with Thoreau's line from Walden, "follow your own drummer."

I think the last line -
And that has made all the difference
clues the reading in that it was a worth while and therefore positive choice.

Nice to have you aboard! I hope you will keep posting on the poetry threads.

Saffron

Rose Kolarich · Posted: Thu Aug 21, 2008 5:13 am Post subject:

Hiya, this is my first post on this site.

I love that William Carlos Williams poem too. But after I read Kenneth Koch's parody of it, I'll never think of it the same way again.

I'm posting Koch's poem just in case you're not familiar with it:

"Variations On A Theme By William Carlos Williams"

1
I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next summer.
I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to do
and its wooden beams were so inviting.

2
We laughed at the hollyhocks together
and then I sprayed them with lye.
Forgive me. I simply do not know what I am doing.

3
I gave away the money that you had been saving to live on for the
next ten years.
The man who asked for it was shabby
and the firm March wind on the porch was so juicy and cold.

4
Last evening we went dancing and I broke your leg.
Forgive me. I was clumsy and
I wanted you here in the wards, where I am the doctor!

Ophelia · Posted: Thu Aug 21, 2008 7:10 am Post subject:

Hello Rose, welcome to Booktalk! Smile

Would you like to tell us a little about yourself by writing an introduction in the "Introduce Yourself" threads?

DWill · Posted: Sat Aug 23, 2008 4:44 pm Post subject:

DWill · Posted: Sat Aug 23, 2008 4:54 pm Post subject: Re: The Road Not Taken

Saffron · Posted: Sun Aug 24, 2008 2:48 pm Post subject:

Here is a poem I first read in college. It was the first poem I considered a favorite. At the time it rang loud and clear in my heart. At 20 I longed to find my way to be of use in the world. The bold is mine. That stanza I took as my own creed.

To Be of Use

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

Marge Piercy

DWill · Posted: Mon Aug 25, 2008 7:33 am Post subject:

That really is a great credo poem. It's also one that might cause a twinge to some who have reached the age of 56, naming no names.

Here's another by Robt. Frost that I thought of last week while watching and listening to the ocean waves. The poem has nothing to do with waves or water, but sometimes the mind works that way.

WINDOW TREE

Tree at my window, window tree,
My sash is lowered when night comes on;
But let there never be curtain drawn
Between you and me.

Vague dream-head lifted out of the ground,
And thing next most diffuse to cloud,
Not all your light tongues talking aloud
Could be profound.

But tree, I have seen you taken and tossed,
And if you have seen me when I slept,
You have seen me when I was taken and swept
And all but lost.

That day she put our heads together,
Fate had her imagination about her,
Your head so much concerned with outer,
Mine with inner, weather.

There aren't two other lines that I like better than these last two. This a terrific "relationship" poem, isn't it?

DWill

Saffron · Posted: Mon Aug 25, 2008 9:08 am Post subject:

Grim · Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 10:15 pm Post subject: Re: The Road Not Taken

[quote="DWill"]

Grim · Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 10:23 pm Post subject:

Saffron · Posted: Sat Sep 27, 2008 11:25 am Post subject:

I Go Back to May 1937
by Sharon Olds

I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,
I see my father strolling out
under the ochre sandstone arch, the
red tiles glinting like bent
plates of blood behind his head, I
see my mother with a few light books at her hip
standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks,
the wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its
sword-tips aglow in the May air,
they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,
they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are
innocent, they would never hurt anybody.
I want to go up to them and say Stop,
don’t do it—she’s the wrong woman,
he’s the wrong man, you are going to do things
you cannot imagine you would ever do,
you are going to do bad things to children,
you are going to suffer in ways you have not heard of,
you are going to want to die. I want to go
up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it,
her hungry pretty face turning to me,
her pitiful beautiful untouched body,
his arrogant handsome face turning to me,
his pitiful beautiful untouched body,
but I don’t do it. I want to live. I
take them up like the male and female
paper dolls and bang them together
at the hips, like chips of flint, as if to
strike sparks from them, I say
Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.

GentleReader9 · Posted: Sat Sep 27, 2008 2:34 pm Post subject:

Oh, Saffron!

What a poem. Thank you for sharing it. I hadn't read it before. All I can say is too bad Sharon Olds wasn't around when I was about to get married at 19 to tell me all that. (Like I would have listened...) Wink

Saffron · Posted: Wed Oct 01, 2008 9:41 pm Post subject:

I heard Jane Hirshfield read this at the 2008 Dodge Poetry Festival.

"For What Binds Us"
Jane Hirshfield

There are names for what binds us:
strong forces, weak forces.
Look around, you can see them:
the skin that forms in a half-empty cup,
nails rusting into the places they join,
joints dovetailed on their own weight.
The way things stay so solidly
wherever they've been set down --
and gravity, scientists say, is weak.

And see how the flesh grows back
across a wound, with a great vehemence,
more strong
than the simple, untested surface before.
There's a name for it on horses,
when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,

as all flesh,
is proud of its wounds, wears them
as honors given out after battle,
small triumphs pinned to the chest --

And when two people have loved each other
see how it is like a
scar between their bodies,
stronger, darker, and proud;
how the black cord makes of them a single fabric
that nothing can tear or mend.

GentleReader9 · Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2008 7:20 pm Post subject:

Saffron,

I'm sorry if I missed the answer to this recently, but it seems as if maybe you write poetry yourself (?) only I don't remember seeing it. Is there any poetry by you here? If so, where is it posted? I want to give you this poem which I wrote and put up on a creative contributions board in the volunteer office where I work to encourage volunteers to put their work up, too.

Sometimes the Words Are Blocks

Sometimes the words are blocks
You cannot force your heart to birth
Through oval openings; they stick
Fast, corner-first in the tri-foliar valves
While every beat creates contusions
In discreet, unmentioned places
Felt from the inside, yet far beyond expression.

So your heart teaches a speech.
It whispers:
just to you, just to you, just to you
It whispers with your blood
Around the edges of the words too sharp,
Too hard to speak, stuck like ice crystals
In a snowbank smothering your throat.

You think to melt them with your anger,
But that heat comes and goes too quickly,
Leaving only solid freeze.

There is a legend breathed by Spring against the panes
That Love will softly round the corners
So sense can flow again inside your veins.
For now you hear this silently and wait in faith.

(by GentleReader9's alter ego)

Saffron · Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2008 7:32 pm Post subject:


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