Poem of the moment

Saffron · Sat Aug 16, 2008 7:49 pm

I wonder if anticipation of sadness is worse than the thing itself... Here is the poem that captures my right now, as I anticipate all three daughters going off to school in the next 10 days.

Separation

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

-- W.S. Merwin

This is also one of my favorite poems.

Saffron · Tue Aug 26, 2008 9:23 pm

I've been wanting to post a Langston Hughes poem for sometime. This one fits to a T just now.

Dreams
by Langston Hughes

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

Saffron · Sat Aug 30, 2008 10:55 pm

A Poem for My Sister

Eighteen is not the time
---to be silent.
Even the young monks
take to the streets rioting.
To live a life of contemplation
one must live a life to
---contemplate.

K. Grandfield

Grim · Sun Aug 31, 2008 10:29 pm

Hello great introducing Langston Hughes to the posts, mayhaps you have come across James Baldwin? Here is one of my more favoured Hughes Poems.

Langston Hughes

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.

Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed--

I, too, am America.

Saffron · Mon Sep 01, 2008 5:24 am

This poem really belongs on the Favorite Poem thread, but for the sake of continuity, I'll post it here. So, Grim, here's my favorite Langston Hughes-

Dream Variations
by Langston Hughes

To fling my arms wide
In some place of the sun,
To whirl and to dance
Till the white day is done.
Then rest at cool evening
Beneath a tall tree
While night comes on gently,
Dark like me--
That is my dream!

To fling my arms wide
In the face of the sun,
Dance! Whirl! Whirl!
Till the quick day is done.
Rest at pale evening . . .
A tall, slim tree . . .
Night coming tenderly
Black like me.

Saffron · Mon Sep 01, 2008 5:33 am

Autumn has traditionally been my favorite season of the year. With major life changes to face, this one may give some trouble. Thankfully, I am still finding the change in the air and the crisp mornings exhilarating. Here is my poem of the moment (and this is not one you'll find online)

from A Dakota Wheat-Field

Like liquid gold the wheat-field lies,
A marvel of yellow and russet and green,
That ripples and runs, that floats and flies,
With the subtle shadows, the change,
the sheen,
That play in the golden hair of a girl, --
A ripple of amber -- a flare
Of light sweeping after -- a curl
In the hollows like a swirling feet
Of fairy waltzers, the colors run
To the western sun
Through the deeps of
the ripening wheat.

Penelope · Tue Sep 02, 2008 11:06 am

ROASTBEEF
In the inside there is sleeping, in the outside there is reddening, in the morning there is meaning, in the evening there is feeling. In the evening there is feeling. In feeling anything is resting, in feeling anything is mounting, in feeling there is resignation, in feeling there is recognition, in feeling there is recurrence and entirely mistaken there is pinching. All the standards have steamers and all the curtains have bed linen and all the yellow has discrimination and all the circle has circling. This makes sand.

Gertrude Stein

Saffron · Wed Sep 03, 2008 6:21 am

Here's the first stanza of To Autumn is a poem written by English Romantic poet John Keats in 1819

1
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

DWill · Wed Sep 03, 2008 7:04 pm

III
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river swallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Who wrote the wheat-field poem, Saffron?
DWill

Saffron · Wed Sep 03, 2008 8:38 pm


	DWill wrote: Who wrote the wheat-field poem, Saffron? DWill

I wish I could say it was me. The poem from A Dakota Wheat-field was written by Hamlin Garland. I pulled it from a favorite book of mine (well, really it is a book I gave to my daughter, so, technically it's not mine). The book is Celebrate America in Poetry and Art, ed Nora Panzer. It is a book published by the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. The pairings of paintings and poems work very well.

So, DWill, what made you post the sad part of the Yeats poem?

Saffron · Wed Sep 03, 2008 8:56 pm

I want to revisit the Hamlin Garland poem. All the bolds are mine. In fact, my plan is to take the poem apart in order to show what I love about it. I'll just start by saying I love the rhythms in this poem.

from A Dakota Wheat-Field

Like liquid gold the wheat-field lies,
A marvel of yellow and russet and green,

I find the long "e" sounds that repeat (assonance) very pleasing.

That ripples and runs, that floats and flies,

In this line it is the alliteration of the "r" and the "f". Somehow the sounds of "r" and "f" give a sense of movement, especially the movement of air or something being moved by air.

With the subtle shadows, the change,
the sheen,

Again, it is the alliteration.

That play in the golden hair of a girl, --
A ripple of amber -- a flare
Of light sweeping after -- a curl

In these three lines the repetition of the "r" sound and the location of the rhythms give them an interesting movement - kind of the way sunlight moves around due to the movement of clouds or just the way an object in motion will catch the light.

In the hollows like a swirling feet
Of fairy waltzers, the colors run
To the western sun
Through the deeps of
the ripening wheat.

And the poem winds up by winding down; literally the lines get shorter and shorter. The rhyme of the first and last lines of stanza pull the poem, as well as the day, to a close.

DWill · Wed Sep 03, 2008 9:01 pm

It never occurred to me that the stanza was sad! There is the mournful choir of gnats, true, but overall this last living season is musical and beautiful. Keats implies that spring is overrated and too easy to sing the praises of.

DWill

Saffron · Wed Sep 03, 2008 9:21 pm

DW
It is interesting that I picked up sadness in the Keats poem and maybe telling. For sure there is a touch of it, but on several more readings the poem seemed much less sad. I went hunting for more info on the poem. I did find this little tidbit.


	Quote: It was written in Winchester on 19 September 1819 and first published in 1820. Keats described the feeling behind its composition in a letter to his friend Reynolds, 'Somehow a stubble plain looks warm - in the same way that some pictures look warm - this struck me so much in my sunday's [sic] walk that I composed upon it.'

Saffron · Sat Sep 06, 2008 3:26 pm

This poem fits both as my poem of the moment and as a favorite.

The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens

- William Carlos Williams

Grim · Sat Sep 06, 2008 8:21 pm

thank you for the very vivid imagery

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