BookTalk.org

Grim,
Nice choice of poems. Frost is one of my favorite poets and for sure that is a favorite poem. I always think of this poem in conjunction with Thoreau's line from Walden, "follow your own drummer."

I think the last line -
And that has made all the difference
clues the reading in that it was a worth while and therefore positive choice.

Nice to have you aboard! I hope you will keep posting on the poetry threads.

Saffron

Hiya, this is my first post on this site.

I love that William Carlos Williams poem too. But after I read Kenneth Koch's parody of it, I'll never think of it the same way again.

I'm posting Koch's poem just in case you're not familiar with it:

"Variations On A Theme By William Carlos Williams"

1
I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next summer.
I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to do
and its wooden beams were so inviting.

2
We laughed at the hollyhocks together
and then I sprayed them with lye.
Forgive me. I simply do not know what I am doing.

3
I gave away the money that you had been saving to live on for the
next ten years.
The man who asked for it was shabby
and the firm March wind on the porch was so juicy and cold.

4
Last evening we went dancing and I broke your leg.
Forgive me. I was clumsy and
I wanted you here in the wards, where I am the doctor!

Hello Rose, welcome to Booktalk!

Would you like to tell us a little about yourself by writing an introduction in the "Introduce Yourself" threads?

Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veiled Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine:

I might have come around to posting a Keats poem eventually, because I love a lot of his poems. Interestingly, I would not have thought of "Ode to Melalancholy," so I'm really glad it's one of your favorites--lets me see it again. (Incidentally, the biography John Keats, by Walter Jackson Bate, is one of the best books I've ever read. Keats in life was fully as adimrable as his poems. That he accomplished so much in just a few years before dying at age 26 seems miraculous.)
I like the way Keats incorporates melancholy into kind of an organic process, not the flip side of joy but a sort of ally of it. I like the suggestion that experiencing true melancholy (not by calling up the conventional symbols of it in stanza 1) takes a kind of bold deliberation and discrimination ("whose strenuous tongue/Can burst joys grape against his palate fine.")

DWill

[quote="Grim"]
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I

Here is a poem I first read in college. It was the first poem I considered a favorite. At the time it rang loud and clear in my heart. At 20 I longed to find my way to be of use in the world. The bold is mine. That stanza I took as my own creed.

To Be of Use

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.


Marge Piercy

That really is a great credo poem. It's also one that might cause a twinge to some who have reached the age of 56, naming no names.

Here's another by Robt. Frost that I thought of last week while watching and listening to the ocean waves. The poem has nothing to do with waves or water, but sometimes the mind works that way.

WINDOW TREE

Tree at my window, window tree,
My sash is lowered when night comes on;
But let there never be curtain drawn
Between you and me.

Vague dream-head lifted out of the ground,
And thing next most diffuse to cloud,
Not all your light tongues talking aloud
Could be profound.

But tree, I have seen you taken and tossed,
And if you have seen me when I slept,
You have seen me when I was taken and swept
And all but lost.

That day she put our heads together,
Fate had her imagination about her,
Your head so much concerned with outer,
Mine with inner, weather.

There aren't two other lines that I like better than these last two. This a terrific "relationship" poem, isn't it?

DWill

DWill wrote:That really is a great credo poem. It's also one that might cause a twinge to some who have reached the age of 56, naming no names.
DWill

Will,
At 46 it causes me a twinge or two; remember I said I was 20 when I took it as my own. The Frost poem is a favorite of mine as well -- especially the last two lines. Most relationships seem to be the result of an odd bit of luck. I like luck rather than fate.

Saff

DWill wrote:

Grim wrote:
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

DWill wrote: Is the speaker in the poem still sorry that he couldn't find out where the other path went? Is that why he thinks he'll tell the story "with a sigh?"
DWill

Yes, I definately sense a deep sadness or longing in the pace of this poem for the road he did not take, it is to me as if he is saying that the difference between paths is great and he would not be writing poetry had he not become a poet down the road less travelled.

The cost of his expression is a personal sadness, a temporary dissatisfaction in his path as though he feels that he has missed out on something that is found along the other path.

DWill wrote: But tree, I have seen you taken and tossed,
And if you have seen me when I slept,
You have seen me when I was taken and swept
And all but lost.

That day she put our heads together,
Fate had her imagination about her,
Your head so much concerned with outer,
Mine with inner, weather.

Yes this is a very interesting poem, the tree seems to spark his imagination even though it has only bark to show. He feels that the tree is watching over him in someway.