DWill wrote:... And great follow, Saffron. How did you find this?

Just luck

What are the rules of this game? Do the poems have to be linked by an association of exact words, or can I take off with ideas as well? All I can think of, though it's a bit far-fetched, is the idea of talking stones

("At a stone, and sigh
As they pass it by
To some far goal.

Something it says")

which reminds me of William Blake's poem "The Clod & the Pebble"


'Love seeketh not Itself to please,
'Nor for itself hath any care;
'But for another gives its ease,
'And builds a heaven in Hell's despair.'

So sang a little Clod of Clay,
Trodden with the cattle's feet :
But a Pebble of the brook
Warbled out these metres meet :

'Love seeketh only Self to please,
'To bind another to its delight ;
'Joys in another's loss of ease,
'And builds a Hell in Heaven's despite.'

Let me know if I'm off-track!

Very nice! You've got the idea, Rose. So, I wonder, were to next? Anyone?

Hey, that's very good, Rose. The rules are not very rigid here. Our panel of judges tries allow for creativity since this is, after all, a poetry thing. It's perfectly good to link up themes or feelings as well as subjects and phrases. I would say it's even okay to link by opposites, which could be interesting. I always liked that Blake poem. It seems to have both innocence and experience within it.
DWill

Hey, that's very good, Rose. The rules are not very rigid here. Our panel of judges tries allow for creativity since this is, after all, a poetry thing. It's perfectly good to link up themes or feelings as well as subjects and phrases. I would say it's even okay to link by opposites, which could be interesting. I always liked that Blake poem. It seems to have both innocence and experience within it.
DWill

DWill wrote:The rules are not very rigid here. Our panel of judges tries allow for creativity since this is, after all, a poetry thing.

Cool, thanks DWill. Yes, I love William Blake, as you wrote there is a mixture of innocence and experience in his poems. Even in the poems that have absolutely no dark imagery at all, I feel a sense of portending evil.

Here is a poem by June Jordan which starts with a topaz (stone as well as color) city that sings, then moves into a nocturnal reverie in which love (?) attraction (?) is an unexplored, secret possibility, perhaps offered, but primarily felt by the one who loves and tries not to want too openly to be loved back. (?) She will never tell us if I'm right about her meaning.

Toward a City That Sings

Into the topaz the crystalline signals
of Manhattan
the nightplane lowers my body
scintillate with longing to lie positive
beside
the electric waters of your flesh
and
I will never tell you the meaning of this poem:
Just say, "She wrote it and I recognize
the reference." Please
let it go at that. Although
it is all the willingness you lend
the world
as when you picked it up
the garbage scattering the cool
formalities of Madison Avenue
after midnight (where we walked
for miles as though we knew the woods
well enough to ignore the darkness)
although it is all the willingness you lend
the world
that makes me want
to clean up everything
in sight
(myself included)

for your possible discovery

--June Jordan
from a 1980 book called Passion which was "dedicated to Everbody scared as I used to be."

Ok, here's my link in the chain and an extra loop, just for fun.

This is from Riding the A by May Swenson. I don't know that the A train of this poem is Manhattan subway train, but when I hear A train I always think NYC and the poem also has a bit of lust in it.

Wheels
and rails
in their prime
collide,
make love in a glide
of slickness
and friction.
It is an elation
I wish to pro-
long.
The station is reached
too soon.


And here is my loop. If I'd respond to Rose's posting of The Clod & the Pebble I would have picked up the last line with the following quote from Hilda Doolittle.

"Sing and your hell is heaven. Your heaven less hell."

I am glad I waited, nice post GentleReader!

Besides the autumn poets sing,
A few prosaic days
A little this side of the snow
And that side of the haze.

A few incisive mornings,
A few ascetic eves,--
Gone Mr. Bryant's goldenrod,
And Mr. Thomson's sheaves.

Still is the bustle in the brook,
Sealed are the spicy valves;
Mesmeric fingers softly touch
The eyes of many elves.

Perhaps a squirrel may remain,
My sentiments to share.
Grant me, O Lord, a sunny mind,
Thy windy will to bear!

Getting that old winter is a-comin' in feeling from the last posted by Saffron. Think I will prolong the Autumn feeling with a repeat of stanza 3 from Keats' wonderful "To Autumn" , previously shown by Saffron. (Like hit tunes, poems should be replayed.)
TO AUTUMN

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,