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Saffron wrote:

giselle wrote: I read over Dickinson a few times but failed to come up with the 8, so now feeling puzzled ?? Please don't tell me its obvious ...

Remember I said it was kind of a cheat. The "8" in ED's poem is not a true "8", but rather a homophone. Enough said for you to find the 8?

Ugh, it was obvious! Guess I was looking hard for the number eight and not paying attention to the sounds of words, which isn't too smart considering this is poetry.

On Styx and 70s vs 80's , following from Wikipedia ... "Pieces of Eight is the eighth studio album and second concept album by Styx, released September 1, 1978."

Their biggest releases came earlier, like Grand Illusion. But of course they remained popular in the 80's, at least with those who didn't succumb to disco and new wave.

Love The Oven Bird. My ten is a simple poem from A.E. Housman that would be topical right now if not for a very early spring this year.
It also has the most involved arithmetic yet!

II. Loveliest of trees, the cherry now


LOVELIEST of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten, 5
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room, 10
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

Eleven is very challenging! And I almost thought I didn't have an 11 and then remember! This one has lots of numbers - as advertised by the title.


Numbers

Mary Cornish

I like the generosity of numbers.
The way, for example,
they are willing to count
anything or anyone:
two pickles, one door to the room,
eight dancers dressed as swans.

I like the domesticity of addition--
add two cups of milk and stir--
the sense of plenty: six plums
on the ground, three more
falling from the tree.

And multiplication's school
of fish times fish,
whose silver bodies breed
beneath the shadow
of a boat.

Even subtraction is never loss,
just addition somewhere else:
five sparrows take away two,
the two in someone else's
garden now.

There's an amplitude to long division,
as it opens Chinese take-out
box by paper box,
inside every folded cookie
a new fortune.

And I never fail to be surprised
by the gift of an odd remainder,
footloose at the end:
forty-seven divided by eleven equals four,
with three remaining.

Three boys beyond their mothers' call,
two Italians off to the sea,
one sock that isn't anywhere you look.

I agree, Eleven is a bit challenging. Here's my 'eleven' ... found not in the words but in the meter ... does that count?

For Once, Then, Something

Others taught me with having knelt at well-curbs
Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
Deeper down in the well than where the water
Gives me back in a shining surface picture
Me myself in the summer heaven godlike
Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.
Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,
Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,
Something more of the depths--and then I lost it.
Water came to rebuke the too clear water.
One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple
Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom,
Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness?
Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.

Robert Frost

giselle wrote:I agree, Eleven is a bit challenging. Here's my 'eleven' ... found not in the words but in the meter ... does that count?

For Once, Then, Something
Robert Frost

Sure - a creative solution always works for me.

I like "Numbers," and "For Once,Then, Something," is one of my favorite Frosts. I could find only song lyrics by Jack Frost. I think I've heard of him.

Number Eleven

Plane crash in the desert, everybody walked away
Suitcase open to the breeze, light lifting up pretty heavy
So we climbed out, looked around us
Your shirt stuck to your skin
Wreckage shimmered under sky, nothing on the horizon
I know you can keep me warm
Have you ever seen the evening, the way it opens up
Lie down under a wing, we breathed in everything
I know you can keep me warm
The stranger in me shuddered, your eyes were partly closed
My hand deep in the still white sand, the stars dropped down so near
And I hope they never find us, just to disappear
We left it all behind us, now you'll find us here

I like Jack Frost 'Number Eleven', a plane crash in the desert can be a romantic situation, if you crash with the right person. Makes me wonder why he called it 'Number Eleven'?

Poor old Eleven, sandwiched between much more important numbers, ten as the base of our number system and twelve an even dozen and the number of inches in a foot (only Americans care about that now). Does anyone choose 'Eleven' as a favourite number? Nobody I know.

But as Robert Frost demonstrates, Eleven is not forgotten ... hendecasyllabic verse celebrates Eleven ... below another example in Latin and then in English.

Cui dono lepidum novum libellum
arida modo pumice expolitum?
Corneli, tibi: namque tu solebas
meas esse aliquid putare nugas.
Iam tum, cum ausus es unus Italorum
omne aevum tribus explicare cartis...
Doctis, Iuppiter, et laboriosis!
Quare habe tibi quidquid hoc libelli—
qualecumque, quod, o patrona virgo,
plus uno maneat perenne saeclo!

To whom do I dedicate this charming slim volume,
just now polished with dry pumice stone?
For you Cornellius, for you were accustomed to think
that my scribblings were something.
When already at the same time, you alone
dared to unfold the whole age of Italians in three scrolls,
learned, by Jupiter, and weighty!
For that reason have for yourself whatever this little book is,
and whatever you like, oh patron maiden,
let it last a long time, for more than one generation!

I found three poems for twelve and have decide to play my game again of guess which poem my excerpt comes from. Can you guess? This is not too hard. I will give hints if needed. The other 2 twelves were a William Cowper (very nice) and a Thomas Hardy.

It was twelve by the village clock
When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.
He heard the crowing of the cock,
And the barking of the farmer’s dog,
And felt the damp of the river fog,
That rises after the sun goes down.

This one's slightly spooky, which I think is appropriate because somehow Twelve is a spooky number (don't be scared - its only a poem!):

Twelve Tree Barrow

When the moths are flitting, and the fields are still,
'Ware the darkling shadows on the haunted hill,
'Ware the ghosts with axe and spear and flint-headed arrow,
Trooping thro' the summer night,
Trooping when the moon is bright
On the twelve Tree Barrow.

What remembrance of red streams, what furious fray,
Makes the grass grow rich and rank on the mound to-day?
You may see the dead men's bones turned by harrow,
Skulls and thighs of mighty men
Slain in bloody battle then
At the Twelve Tree Barrow.

Draw the curtain closer, bar your windows tight,
Set no foot on yonder hill, tread not there to-night.
Ill for him who dares the spear and flint-headed arrow,
When the warriors wake by night,
Trooping when the moon is white
On the Twelve Tree Barrow.

Cicely Fox Smith

giselle wrote:I like Jack Frost 'Number Eleven', a plane crash in the desert can be a romantic situation, if you crash with the right person. Makes me wonder why he called it 'Number Eleven'?

Speaking of Jack Frost, he's now on the home page of booktalk with an advertisement for a book he wrote called "Why did You Name Me That?" Is that a coincidence or is it because I clicked on his song? Is it on your page too?