• In total there are 16 users online :: 0 registered, 0 hidden and 16 guests (based on users active over the past 60 minutes)
    Most users ever online was 789 on Tue Mar 19, 2024 5:08 am

A Favorite Poem

A platform to express and share your enthusiasm and passion for poetry. What are your treasured poems and poets? Don't hesitate to showcase the poems you've penned yourself!
Forum rules
Do not promote books in this forum. Instead, promote your books in either Authors: Tell us about your FICTION book! or Authors: Tell us about your NON-FICTION book!.

All other Community Rules apply in this and all other forums.
User avatar
realiz

1F - BRONZE CONTRIBUTOR
Amazingly Intelligent
Posts: 626
Joined: Wed Oct 22, 2008 12:31 pm
15
Has thanked: 42 times
Been thanked: 72 times

Unread post

many of Lee's poems capture what we can not say or dare not say, what we can not own for fear of exposing a vulnerability, decorum's sake or fear of being too attached.
These two poems are very good, I am going to read more.
But I know
it is because of the way
my mother's hair falls
when he pulls the pins out.
Easily, like the curtains
when they untie them in the evening.
This paints a beautifully poignant scene.

Immigrant Blues
Not sure if I understand this one completely...Trying to become part of a new culture, having that culture become part of you compared to becoming 'one' with a lover. There is so much more here, but I don't quite know how to put it into words.


I like this:
called "The Child Who'd Rather Play than Study."

Practice until you feel
the language inside you, says the man.
How better to learn and feel the language inside you than play?
If you don't believe you're inside me, you're not,
she answered, at peace with the body's greed,
at peace with the heart's bewilderment.
This is also good...at peace with the heart's bewilderment.[/code]
User avatar
Saffron

1F - BRONZE CONTRIBUTOR
I can has reading?
Posts: 2954
Joined: Tue Apr 01, 2008 8:37 pm
15
Location: Randolph, VT
Has thanked: 474 times
Been thanked: 399 times
United States of America

Unread post

DWill wrote:That is nice. For some reason it reminded me of the "order in disorder" poem we had a while back, though it's not really the same. I think the "favorite poem" thread and "poem of the moment" often overlap. I know that when I think of a favorite poem, it also seems like a poem of the moment, so I might post it there.
Do you mean "Delight In Disorder" by Robert Herrick? I came across this very poem this evening. I picked up a book for a buck today that had a pull out page with 3 poems on it -- "Delight In Disorder" is one, the second is "To Lose One's Faith" by Emily Dickinson and the third is Robert Frost's "Desert Places." It is an interesting grouping and rather poignant to me, as it turns out.
User avatar
Saffron

1F - BRONZE CONTRIBUTOR
I can has reading?
Posts: 2954
Joined: Tue Apr 01, 2008 8:37 pm
15
Location: Randolph, VT
Has thanked: 474 times
Been thanked: 399 times
United States of America

Unread post

I'm sending this poem on a postcard to my daughter -- the small girl in my poem.

I Stop Writing the Poem
by Tess Gallagher

to fold the clothes. No matter who lives
or who dies, I'm still a woman.
I'll always have plenty to do.
I bring the arms of his shirt
together. Nothing can stop
our tenderness. I'll get back
to the poem. I'll get back to being
a woman. But for now
there's a shirt, a giant shirt
in my hands, and somewhere a small girl
standing next to her mother
watching to see how it's done.
User avatar
GentleReader9

1F - BRONZE CONTRIBUTOR
Internet Sage
Posts: 340
Joined: Sun Sep 07, 2008 2:43 pm
15
Location: Eugene, Oregon, USA, Earth.
Been thanked: 7 times

Unread post

Thanks, Saffron,

For posting Li-Young Lee's poems! I had the wonderful good fortune to be able to take a seminar called Ethnic Autobiography that was offered through the Department of Creative Writing at U of Oregon (years ago) in which he was a visiting professor. Please excuse this bit of name-dropping on the grounds that I just want to say he was (and I am sure is still) as remarkable a person as you might suppose from his writing.

He advised us to memorize passages and poems, to write out -- by longhand -- the words of favorite texts over and over, both to memorize them and so that they would "get inside your body." We talked about how you could feel what it felt like to write those words and think them at the speed of writing, in the act of writing, as the person who wrote them had thought them. He was grateful that his father (I believe it was his father) who was a minister, had made him memorize and write out Bible verses and he thought that this much-maligned practice was a way of really making the literary understanding a physical, deep, real part of yourself. I felt a spiritual quality in his appreciation of writing.

He also had this thing about language or thinking that was "far" as opposed to another kind that was "near." I believe he thought both kinds could be really good, but the middle-distance stuff was pedestrian. At the time, with his examples of who he thought was a "far" or "near" writer, you could understand exactly what he meant and it was clear and perfect. Right now, my clarity about it has faded. This was probably close to 15 years ago now. But the impression of his earnest, vibrant and fascinating personality and the beautifully individual quality of his way of speaking truth, of his way of thinking and expressing himself, his personal idiom, if you will, has stuck with me. His were definitely some of the most valuable (because the most sincere, creative and passionately felt) thoughts I heard expressed in person at the University and I took classes there on and off for more than a decade.

He was wonderful -- although he didn't believe Jesus was a pacifist and tried to engage a debate about it, which I resisted entering into although I knew it was my writing about my grandfather which had caused him to bring it up. I don't think it's something to fight about. :D
"Where can I find a man who has forgotten the words so that I can talk with him?"
-- Chuang-Tzu (c. 200 B.C.E.)
as quoted by Robert A. Burton
User avatar
Saffron

1F - BRONZE CONTRIBUTOR
I can has reading?
Posts: 2954
Joined: Tue Apr 01, 2008 8:37 pm
15
Location: Randolph, VT
Has thanked: 474 times
Been thanked: 399 times
United States of America

Unread post

Nice to see you back on BT, you've been missed. Thank you ever so much, for writing about your experience with Li-Young Lee. He is one of my very favorite poets.
User avatar
DWill

1H - GOLD CONTRIBUTOR
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 6966
Joined: Thu Jan 31, 2008 8:05 am
16
Location: Luray, Virginia
Has thanked: 2262 times
Been thanked: 2470 times

Unread post

Saffron wrote:
DWill wrote:That is nice. For some reason it reminded me of the "order in disorder" poem we had a while back, though it's not really the same. I think the "favorite poem" thread and "poem of the moment" often overlap. I know that when I think of a favorite poem, it also seems like a poem of the moment, so I might post it there.
Do you mean "Delight In Disorder" by Robert Herrick? I came across this very poem this evening. I picked up a book for a buck today that had a pull out page with 3 poems on it -- "Delight In Disorder" is one, the second is "To Lose One's Faith" by Emily Dickinson and the third is Robert Frost's "Desert Places." It is an interesting grouping and rather poignant to me, as it turns out.
Your're right of course, it was "Delight in Disorder."
User avatar
Saffron

1F - BRONZE CONTRIBUTOR
I can has reading?
Posts: 2954
Joined: Tue Apr 01, 2008 8:37 pm
15
Location: Randolph, VT
Has thanked: 474 times
Been thanked: 399 times
United States of America

Delight in Disorder

Unread post

Now that we've mentioned the poem "Delight in Disorder" so many times, I think we should have it!


DELIGHT IN DISORDER.
by Robert Herrick


A sweet disorder in the dress
Kindles in clothes a wantonness :
A lawn about the shoulders thrown
Into a fine distraction :
An erring lace which here and there
Enthrals the crimson stomacher :
A cuff neglectful, and thereby
Ribbons to flow confusedly :
A winning wave (deserving note)
In the tempestuous petticoat :
A careless shoe-string, in whose tie
I see a wild civility :
Do more bewitch me than when art
Is too precise in every part.
User avatar
Saffron

1F - BRONZE CONTRIBUTOR
I can has reading?
Posts: 2954
Joined: Tue Apr 01, 2008 8:37 pm
15
Location: Randolph, VT
Has thanked: 474 times
Been thanked: 399 times
United States of America

Unread post

Separation

Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.

-- W.S. Merwin
User avatar
Gem
Creative Writing Student
Posts: 32
Joined: Wed Jan 28, 2009 6:15 pm
15
Location: Wales
Been thanked: 1 time

In my craft or sullen art by Dylan Thomas

Unread post

In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms,
I labour by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.

Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art

I have so many poems that I like, but here is one picked out of the blue. I tend to like poems that are quite sensual like keats, but I find Dylan Thomas good becuase of the musical lyrical sounds of the words of his poetry. I love the line "I labour by singing light" as it reminds me of the hissing of tilly lamps that I would see being used by fishermen when I was young.
User avatar
Saffron

1F - BRONZE CONTRIBUTOR
I can has reading?
Posts: 2954
Joined: Tue Apr 01, 2008 8:37 pm
15
Location: Randolph, VT
Has thanked: 474 times
Been thanked: 399 times
United States of America

Re: In my craft or sullen art by Dylan Thomas

Unread post

Gem wrote: I love the line "I labour by singing light" as it reminds me of the hissing of tilly lamps that I would see being used by fishermen when I was young.
Thanks, Gem, for getting my Saturday off to a great start. When ever I see that someone has posted a favorite poem, I feel so existed, like unwrapping a gift; I can't wait to see what's inside. I also tend toward sensuous poems. What a sensation it is to read the words "singing light". I also get smell with it too, the scent of burning fuel.

I meant to write what I liked about the W. S. Merwin poem. I like that absence has substance in his poem -- it is something rather than a hole. To me, missing someone has weight.
Last edited by Saffron on Sat Mar 28, 2009 7:54 am, edited 1 time in total.
Post Reply

Return to “A Passion for Poetry”