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Poem of the moment

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!
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Saffron

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Hello! I've been a bit scarce of late, my computer is down indefinitely, so I have to get my 2 cent in while I can! I'm on my daughter's laptop pirating my neighbors wireless. Don't tell!
DWill wrote:. . . I was remiss and didn't note that Robert Burn's birthday was yesterday, Jan. 25.
It just so happens I went to a Scottish tea at the Strathmore Music Center last week that was held to mark the birthday of Robert Burns.
I learned the poem as I remember the performer reading it, and today I can still inflict on an unlucky person a recital in an alarming Scots brogue.
I volunteer to be that unlucky soul. I have a birthday coming up, it would make a swell birthday gift.
While walking in Barre, VT one day, I came upon a statue of Burns on a square. No idea why it was there.
I found this on the Vermont Historical Society webpage --

Why a Burns Sculpture in Barre?

Beginning in 1880, Scottish granite workers arrived in Barre as the town’s granite industry burgeoned. By the turn of the century, Scots accounted for twenty-percent of Barre’s population. The Burns Club of Barre, founded in 1890, was a natural outgrowth of this influx.

On January 25, 1897, members of the Burns Club met and decided a commemorative statue should be erected in Barre in celebration of the 100th anniversary of Burns’ death. The statue was conceived and modeled by J. Massey Rhind. James B. King of Milford, N.H. modeled the four panels. Samuel Novelli carved the statue, and Elia Corti, considered one of the finest sculptors in Barre, carved the panels. In 1901, Novelli and Corti joined together to form a carving studio noted for its fine sculpture.

The unveiling ceremony was a dramatic affair on July 24, 1899. Miss Florence Inglis, dressed and crowned as the Scottish Muse, drew a cord and presented the statue to more than 10,000 people in attendance. The Burns monument, dedicated to the poet from Scotland, thus became the first civic monument in Barre.

The monument itself stands 22 feet and 4 inches above the foundation, and the statue is 9 feet 4 inches in height. The high- and low-relief panels on the sides, demonstrating the artists’ exemplary sculpting skills, depict scenes from three of Burns’ famous poems, “The Cotter’s Saturday Night,” “To a Mountain Day,” and “Tam O’Shanter’s Ride.” The fourth panel shows Burns’s cottage in Ayr, Scotland. According to a publicity pamphlet from the 1890s, the sculpture “is considered one of the world’s art treasures.”

The statue of Burns shows the poet returning from his day’s toil, dressed in the garb of a ploughman, sleeves rolled up, bareheaded, his coat on his arm, eyes on the ground and seemingly in thoughtful meditation.
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DWill

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You never cease to amaze me! I'm still, mentally, in a pre-internet frame myself. I had forgotten, but now I do remember the scenes carved in relief on the sides. I had wondered about the origin of the statue because Barre seems most known for its Italian stonecutters. The cemetery there, by the way, is a kick, with all the stonecutters around to do special things to the markers. One marker is a large headboard from a bed, for man and wife.
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I am jumping threads a bit. This should really be posted on the 500 poems thread but, if I did it would be a plot spoiler. I looked ahead and this one hit the spot.


In a Dark Time

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deeping shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood --
A lord of nature weeping to a tree.
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

What's madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.
That place among the rocks -- is it a cave.
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

Theodore Roethke
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Thank you Saffron.....you have just posted my absolutely favorite poet. And my favorite poem by him is "The Small".
Gods and spirits are parasitic--Pascal Boyer

Religion is the only force in the world that lets a person have his prejudice or hatred and feel good about it --S C Hitchcock

Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it. --André Gide

Reading is a majority skill but a minority art. --Julian Barnes
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I'm not really sure where this poem belongs, but I will post it here. It is a love poem and it is Valentine's Day inspired.

I'm not sure who the poet is :wink: , but it was written for Sara.

You are the confectionery
Dishing out your high caloric love
On the tongue perfection
Melting into all the words
So much sweeter tasted than heard.


I know, I know in the first line it should be confectioner. However the poet explained to me that confectionery sounded better and was more interesting.

Happy Valentine's Day to everyone! <3 (one of my daughter's always puts <3 with her signature and for the longest time I couldn't figure out why she was sending me a fox or maybe mouse face :lol: )
xo

Edit: Poet is reconsidering that last word in line one. If confectioner is used it creates a rhyme with the last word in the poem, heard. Hmmmm.
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I thought of this poem after we read the two Dickinson poems, which we labeled as "statement" poems and therefore not among ED's better ones. But the great thing about poetry is that it can do anything, even make statements. It's all in the handling. I like this William Stafford poem for the way it makes a statement. I once heard someone criticize the line "and the river there meant something" as vague, but to me it's just right. It's the "meant" that carries the weight; to specify the "something" would be artificial and unconvincing.

One other thing. Do you have a person in mind who is your image of what a poet is, someone you've seen read his/her work or have seen pictures of? William Stafford is that person for me. He came to Colo. State to a Northwest Poets conference in about 1973. I can't define what it was about him; he was a smallish man, kinda weather-beaten, softspoken and gentle. He writes a lot about the outdoors, like Gary Snyder. I wonder now whether he is still living.

At Cove on the Crooked River

At cove at our camp in the open canyon
it was the kind of place where you might look out
some evening and see trouble walking away.

And the river there meant something
always coming from snow and flashing around boulders
at shadow-fish lurking below the mesa.

We stood with wet towels over our heads for shade,
looking past the Indian picture rock and the kind of trees
that act out whatever has happened to them.

Oh civilization, I want to carve you like this,
decisively outward the way evening comes
over that kind of twist in the scenery

When people cramp into their station wagons
and roll up the windows and drive away.
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...and then I saw this Stafford poem again and had to post it, too.

Near

Talking along in this not quite prose way
we all know it is not quite prose we speak,
and it is time to notice this intolerable snow
innumerably touching, before we sink.

It is time to notice, I say, the freezing snow
hisitating toward us from others' grey heaven;
listen--it is falling not quite silently
and under it still you and I are walking.

Maybe there are trumpets in the houses we pass
and a redbird watching from an evergreen--
but nothing will happen until we pause
to flame what we know, before any signal's given.
Last edited by DWill on Sat Feb 20, 2010 11:38 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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I adore the phrase "flashing around boulders". Thank you for sharing. I'll have to give more thought to your "poet" question. You sould very lucky to have experienced this poet in person.
Gods and spirits are parasitic--Pascal Boyer

Religion is the only force in the world that lets a person have his prejudice or hatred and feel good about it --S C Hitchcock

Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it. --André Gide

Reading is a majority skill but a minority art. --Julian Barnes
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DWill wrote: One other thing. Do you have a person in mind who is your image of what a poet is, someone you've seen read his/her work or have seen pictures of?
Sharon Olds. I saw her read at the 2008 Dodge Poetry Festival. She is a bit scattered and right on the mark in the same moment. She is appologetic on the podium and bold in her poetry.
William Stafford is that person for me. He came to Colo. State to a Northwest Poets conference in about 1973.
I think you need to go to the 2010 Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival! It is October 7 - 10, 2010.
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Saffron

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Lucille Clifton died 2/13/2010


POEM
“oh antic God”

by Lucille Clifton
oh antic God
return to me
my mother in her thirties
leaned across the front porch
the huge pillow of her breasts
pressing against the rail
summoning me in for bed.

I am almost the dead woman’s age times two.

I can barely recall her song
the scent of her hands
though her wild hair scratches my dreams
at night. return to me, oh Lord of then
and now, my mother’s calling,
her young voice humming my name.
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