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Daily 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!
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DWill

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Re: Daily Poem

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Penelope, I feel better now! This is an extended "The world is too much with us" message. Are we now now mostly trying to distract ourselves from what we're bringing upon us? Our destiny the destruction of a world?
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Penelope

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Re: Daily Poem

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DWill:

Penelope, I feel better now!
You being sarcastic DW? I'm sorry!! I'm not going to post anything so miserable again. It is a good poem though.

Yes, of course we must distract ourselves. We can't dwell upon the probabilities. We are helpless anyway.

Here's one to make up for everything.


Penumbrae
By John Updike

The shadows have their seasons, too.
The feathery web the budding maples
cast down upon the sullen lawn

bears but a faint relation to
high summer's umbrageous weight
and tunnellike continuum—

black leached from green, deep pools
wherein a globe of gnats revolves
as airy as an astrolabe.

The thinning shade of autumn is
an inherited Oriental,
red worn to pink, nap worn to thread.

Shadows on snow look blue. The skier,
exultant at the summit, sees his poles
elongate toward the valley: thus

each blade of grass projects another
opposite the sun, and in marshes
the mesh is infinite,

as the winged eclipse an eagle in flight
drags across the desert floor
is infinitesimal.

And shadows on water!—
the beech bough bent to the speckled lake
where silt motes flicker gold,

or the steel dock underslung
with a submarine that trembles,
its ladder stiffened by air.

And loveliest, because least looked-for,
gray on gray, the stripes
the pearl-white winter sun

hung low beneath the leafless wood
draws out from trunk to trunk across the road
like a stairway that does not rise.
Only those become weary of angling who bring nothing to it but the idea of catching fish.

He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world is mad....

Rafael Sabatini
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DWill

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Re: Daily Poem

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Me, sarcastic? We need the bad news about ourselves.

I wondered whether Updike had been thinking of Keats' "To Autumn" when he wrote this. What an English-major thing to say. But the truth is I always found most modern poems less accessible--though this one isn't too hard on me. Keats ends with the gnats, while they're mentioned at the start here. Then there is "The shadows have their season, too" echoing Keats' address to the personified Autumn, "Think not of them, thou hast thy music, too." If Updike is paying homage to the great poem, he does it well, with subtlety. He's bringing in winter, too, though. He's right about the season of shadows, that this is primarily what the leafless months can be said to be famous for.
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Penelope

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bears but a faint relation to
high summer's umbrageous weight
and tunnellike continuum—


I like these lines because they talk of the heavy shadows of summer. We take a walk around our local Shakerley Mere, two or three times a week. It's just about a mile around, but I like doing the same walk so that you can see the seasons changing and at this time of year we appreciate the light and sunshine so much. By summer the pathway has become shaded.

Most people are walking their dogs, but Norman and I walk each other......funny that when we see the same people every time, it is the dogs who make friends with us first.....

I love Keat's 'Ode to Autumn', and how clever of you to see the link. I didn't. Now, I always feel that 'Ode to Autumn' is really talking about 'middle age' - I learned it off by heart when I was in my forties, along with Prufrock. But now, it's winter going on spring - and I'm appreciating the sunny bits and the new shoots??
Only those become weary of angling who bring nothing to it but the idea of catching fish.

He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world is mad....

Rafael Sabatini
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Saffron

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So nice to see poems appearing in this thread. I don't want to be found slacking off, so I will post a little piece of a poem. The poet is May Swenson (May 28, 1913 - Dec. 4, 1989). She is known for the sheer joy for life that she captures in her poems. I am posting the first and second stanza of In Love Made Visible tonight because...well, let me post it first and then explain.

In love are we made visible
As in a magic bath
are unpeeled
to the sharp pit
so long concealed

With love's alertness
we recognize
the soundless whimper
of the soul
behind the eyes
A shaft opens
and the timid thing
at last leaps to surface
with full-spread wing


The language is lovely and sentiment expressed is bang on. The reason I thought to post this bit is that a newly made and already much loved friend is changing jobs to a job that will require a long commute. It has been awhile since I've made a new friend that clicked so well so fast - she saw me and I was visible. It has been a pleasure getting to know her. I am sure we will keep in touch, but the proximity of working in the same building will be greatly missed.
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Saffron

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On the 28th of February, even thought I am quite a fan of winter, I woke of with thoughts of warm days on my mind. I have a few poetry websites I check in on and this was on the Poem-A-Day site. How suitable to my morning waking.

On the Grasshopper and Cricket
John Keats, 1795 - 1821

The poetry of earth is never dead:
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
That is the Grasshopper’s—he takes the lead
In summer luxury,—he has never done
With his delights; for when tired out with fun
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:
On a lone winter evening, when the frost
Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The Cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever,
And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,
The Grasshopper’s among some grassy hills.
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DWill

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I love that one. "The poetry of earth is ceasing never." This poem is considered an example of JK's juvenile work, but who cares. Another of his very early ones gets us back to winter, though we now can be thankful it's not still December. I remember a prof saying that a critic ridiculed Keats in general, and attacked the ungrammaticalness of "The feel of not to feel it," which is my favorite part of the poem.

In drear nighted December
John Keats, 1795 - 1821

In drear nighted December,
Too happy, happy tree,
Thy branches ne’er remember
Their green felicity—
The north cannot undo them
With a sleety whistle through them
Nor frozen thawings glue them
From budding at the prime.

In drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy brook,
Thy bubblings ne’er remember
Apollo’s summer look;
But with a sweet forgetting,
They stay their crystal fretting,
Never, never petting
About the frozen time.

Ah! would ‘twere so with many
A gentle girl and boy—
But were there ever any
Writh’d not of passed joy?
The feel of not to feel it,
When there is none to heal it
Nor numbed sense to steel it,
Was never said in rhyme.
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Re: Daily Poem

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Oh Saffron, I do feel for you and hope you don't miss your friend too much.

I remember when I left a place of work - they were closing down our office, so we were all being dispersed. It was distressing because, although I knew we women would stay in touch, I really knew the men would not be able to stay because.....well...it wouldn't be proper. :(
Only those become weary of angling who bring nothing to it but the idea of catching fish.

He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world is mad....

Rafael Sabatini
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Saffron

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I have recently discovered that a few of my books of poetry had gotten wet at some point in the past year or so. I don't know if it was a plant placed on the shelf near by that leaked, or maybe it happened during a fury of rearranging my living space, or an open window during a summer rain. One night last week when I woke at 2am I pulled Mary Oliver's Why I Wake Early off the shelve for comfort; it seemed the right book. I opened it and got a nose full of mold spores. The pages were rippled with dark dusty smudges on the pages. When I took off the dust cover I realized the actual cover had begun to decompose. I tore off the covers and wiped off as much of the dusty mold as I could. I've been reading through it all week, reluctant to toss the book, as I know I should - it's a hazard to one so afflicted with allergies as I am. While reading this morning I found the perfect poem for a Sunday. I have mixed feelings about Mary Oliver's poetry. What I love and does resonant with me is her careful study and observation of nature that shows up in her poetry.

Mindful
by Mary Oliver

Every day
I see or hear
something
that more or less

kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle

in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for -
to look, to listen,

to lose myself
inside this soft world -
to instruct myself
over and over

in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant -
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help

but grow wise
with such teachings
as these -
the untrimmable light

of the world,
the ocean's shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?
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DWill

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Re: Daily Poem

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Penelope wrote:Oh Saffron, I do feel for you and hope you don't miss your friend too much.

I remember when I left a place of work - they were closing down our office, so we were all being dispersed. It was distressing because, although I knew we women would stay in touch, I really knew the men would not be able to stay because.....well...it wouldn't be proper. :(
That is too bad, about the men. What's going on there, do you think?
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