Tag Archives: poem

Surprise snow storm!

By Lu Posted in Poetry, poetry wednesday Tagged , , , 4 Replies

Though some forecasts were predicting snow for the Northeastern US, no one was predicting quite this much snow. I left the office around 5:15 and there was a light slush on the ground. I got out of the subway around 6:30 to about 2 inches. It’s still snowing now a few hours later and it’s still accumulating. So much snow! Anyway, it’s late in the day, but I thought I’d throw up a quick Poetry Wednesday to celebrate (?)  this early snow storm. (I’m trying to channel my inner Lorelei Gilmore here, but I really dislike the snow.)

This is an excerpt from the poem “Falling Leaves and Early Snow” by Kenneth Rexroth. You can read the full poem at the Poetry Foundation.

In the afternoon thin blades of cloud
Move over the mountains;
The storm clouds follow them;
Fine rain falls without wind.
The forest is filled with wet resonant silence.
When the rain pauses the clouds
Cling to the cliffs and the waterfalls.
In the evening the wind changes;
Snow falls in the sunset.
We stand in the snowy twilight
And watch the moon rise in a breach of cloud.
Between the black pines lie narrow bands of moonlight,
Glimmering with floating snow.
An owl cries in the sifting darkness.
The moon has a sheen like a glacier.

Poetry Project October – Spooky poems!

By Lu Posted in Poetry, Poetry Project Tagged , , , , , , , 2 Replies

October is here! There’s a chill in the air, though the days are still warm. I have two tiny pumpkins sitting on my table, reminding me that October is here. October happens to be my favorite month. When I was younger, school was still exciting and new, the weather is getting cooler and the leaves are changing. I always loved when the leaves would fall and my great-grandfather would rake them up into a pile and I would dive in with my dog again and again.

Now that I’m older, October is the end of a busy summer. It’s the time when I can finally relax and enjoy the season. I can start to wear tights and bake things and really enjoy stew and all the foods I love best. Sure, I love watermelon and fresh corn on the cob, but give me a hearty stew or a roasted butternut squash soup any day. It’s also one of my favorite times of the year to read, with spooky stories. And let’s not forget the yearly viewing of Hocus Pocus. A completely necessary tradition.

But we’re not here to talk about all those things, we’re here to talk about the best thing about this October: spooky poetry for The Poetry Project. Whether you want to go with a classic Edgar Allen Poe poem or you want to branch out and see what contemporary spooky poetry is like, this is your chance!

There are several great resources for spooky poetry:

Poems tagged “Halloween” at the Poetry Foundation
Poems tagged “Halloween” by the Academy of American Poets
A digital collection of poetry by Edgar Allen Poe

But other than spooky poems, there are also a lot of poems written about October and fall. I hope you’ll read some of those as well. This is a good time to completely immerse yourself in the season. Enjoy the cooler air. Take a poem with you. Then, tell us about it and sign up with the Mr. Linky below. Here’s one to get started:

October by Robert Frost

O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away.
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—
For the grapes’ sake along the wall.


Poetry Project – Pablo Neruda, Sonnet XVII

By Lu Posted in Poetry Tagged , , , , , 9 Replies

Though I have long thought that Neruda’s poems about nature and politics surpass his love poems, this is a poem that will always mean more to me than I can say. It is a poem about a love all-consuming. This poem is from one of Pablo Neruda’s most famous books, at least in the US, called 20 Love Poems and a Song of Despair. The translation was done by WS Merwin, former poet laureate of the US. I am not sure who did this particular translation, since I do not have Merwin’s book in front of me to check against this version, but there are only a few lines that vary from translation to translation.

Sonnet XVII by Pablo Neruda

 

I don’t love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom and carries
hidden within itself the light of those flowers,
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body
lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way because I don’t know any other way of loving

but this, in which there is no I or you,
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.

________________________

Be sure to check out Kelly’s roundup of the Poetry Project participating links. Did you post about poetry in July, but you didn’t have a chance to link to it? Be sure to include it in the August Mr. Linky, which will be available on Wednesday, August 1st. The Poetry Project is an ongoing project to get bloggers reading and blogging about poetry. Want to learn more about the Poetry Project and how you can participate? Check out our introductory post.

Poetry Project: Saw You There by Ander Monson

By Lu Posted in Poetry Tagged , , , , 2 Replies

When this poem showed up in my email last week, It was love at first sight. First sight of the word “Redbox” that is. I find poetry that elevates the mundane into something extraordinary to be my favorite. When a poet can take something as commercial and omnipresent as a Redbox and turn it in to something poetic it makes me weak in the knees. Combine that with Monson’s sometimes antiquated language (“ashen face and hair of flax”) and you get an fascinating and beautiful piece. It’s a poem that begs to be read aloud.

Saw You There by Ander Monson

“Carrie says I should make my connections into a poem.” —Dennis Etzel Jr.

Sawed you there, through you there, girl whom I name
Carrie, shine of sun on bonnet-handle at that Walgreens
on 28th. A Friday night. It looked like you came straight
from fighting something that looked like lightning.

You were all scorched up. Tired look but with a residue
of glow, not in the family way, as they used to say,
and as I still do, since I venerate the old, but filled
to the heart with stars. Looking light years away, the way

you operated that Redbox: how can a girl seem so far
from Earth while at a Redbox? I was the girl in the super-
looking supermarket hat, with ashen face and hair of flax,
heart of gold and such. You didn’t see me staring, not seeing

much of anything. Magician seeking magician’s assistant,
my craigslist ad would say: I will saw through you any day.

National Poetry Month – Yusef Komunyakaa (April 20)

By Lu Posted in Poetry Tagged , , , 4 Replies

It is difficult for me to describe the way I feel reading poetry by Yusef Komunyakaa. Reading his poetry for the first time was like finding something I had been looking for my entire life.

Providence

by Yusef Komunyakaa

I walked away with your face
stolen from a crowded room,
& the sting of required memory
lived beneath my skin. A name
raw on my tongue, in my brain, a glimpse
nestled years later like a red bird
among wet leaves on a dull day.

A face. The tilt of a head. Dark
lipstick. Aletheia. The unknown
marked on a shoulder, night
weather in our heads.
I pushed out of this half-stunned
yes, begging light, beyond the caul’s
shadow, dangling the lifeline of Oh.

I took seven roads to get here
& almost died three times.
How many near misses before
new days slouched into the left corner
pocket, before the hanging fruit
made me kneel? I crossed
five times in the blood to see

the plots against the future -
descendent of a house that knows
all my strong & weak points.
No bounty of love apples glistened
with sweat, a pear-shaped lute
plucked in the valley of the tuber rose
& Madonna lily. Your name untied

every knot in my body, a honey-eating
animal reflected in shop windows
& twinned against this underworld.
out of tide-lull & upwash
a perfect hunger slipped in
tooled by an eye, & This morning
makes us the oldest song in any god’s throat.

We had gone back walking
on our hands. Opened by a kiss,
by fingertips on the Abyssinian
stem & nape, we bloomed
from underneath stone. Moon-pulled
fish skirted the gang-plank,
a dung-scented ark of gopherwood.

Now you are on my skin, in my mouth
& hair as if you were always
unearthed like a necklace of sand dollars
out of black hush. You are a call
& response going back to the first
praise-lament, the old wish

made flesh. The two of us
a third voice, an incantation
sweet-talked & grunted out of The Hawk’s
midnight horn. I have you inside
a hard question, & it won’t let go,
hooked through the gills and strung up
to the western horizon. We are one,

burning with belief till the thing
inside the cage whimpers
& everything crazes out to a flash
of silver. Begged into the fat juice
of promises, our embrace is a naked
wing lifting us into premonition
worked down to a sigh & plea.

National Poetry Month – Stephen Dunn (April 19)

By Lu Posted in Poetry Tagged , , , , 2 Replies
In Love, His Grammar Grew

by Stephen Dunn

In love, his grammar grew
rich with intensifiers, and adverbs fell
madly from the sky like pheasants
for the peasantry, and he, as sated
as they were, lolled under shade trees
until roused by moonlight
and the beautiful fraternal twins
and and but. Oh that was when
he knew he couldn’t resist
a conjunction of any kind.
One said accumulate, the other
was a doubter who loved the wind
and the mind that cleans up after it.
For love,
he wanted to break all the rules,
light a candle behind a sentence
named Sheila, always running on
and wishing to be stopped
by the hard button of a period.
Sometimes, in desperation, he’d look
toward a mannequin or a window dresser
with a penchant for parsing.
But mostly he wanted you, Sheila,
and the adjectives that could precede
and change you: bluesy, fly-by-night,
queen of all that is and might be.

National Poetry Month – Dylan Thomas (April 18)

By Lu Posted in Poetry Tagged , , , 6 Replies
Do not go gentle into that good night

by Dylan Thomas
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

National Poetry Month – D. Nurkse (April 17)

By Lu Posted in Poetry Tagged , , , 8 Replies

I think I’ve mentioned that I love a short poem. I like long poems, but a very short poem that packs a punch will always steal my heart.

Psalm to Be Read with Closed Eyes

by D. Nurkse

Ignorance will carry me through the last days,
the blistering cities, over briny rivers
swarming with jellyfish, as once my father
carried me from the car up the tacked carpet
to the white bed, and if I woke, I never knew.

_________________________________________________________________

Don’t forget to participate in the Read More/Blog More Poetry Event for April! We’ll be sharing our monthly thoughts on poetry on Tuesday, April 24th. Post a favorite poem, talk about poetry, write a review of a book about poetry. As long as it’s about poetry, it counts!

National Poetry Month – A. R. Ammons (April 16)

By Lu Posted in Poetry Tagged , , , 2 Replies
He Held Radical Light

by A. R. Ammons

He held radical light
as music in his skull: music
turned, as
over ridges immanences of evening light
rise, turned
back over the furrows of his brain
into the dark, shuddered,
shot out again
in long swaying swirls of sound:

reality had little weight in his transcendence
so he
had trouble keeping
his feet on the ground, was
terrified by that
and liked himself, and others, mostly
under roofs:
nevertheless, when the
light churned and changed

his head to music, nothing could keep him
off the mountains, his
head back, mouth working,
wrestling to say, to cut loose
from the high, unimaginable hook:
released, hidden from stars, he ate,
burped, said he was like any one
of us: demanded he
was like any one of us.

National Poetry Month – Jeni Olin (April 10)

By Lu Posted in Poetry Tagged , , , Leave a reply

I love poems that can successfully incorporate things from our every day life, like texting and twitter and blogging and the internet. They can be hard things to include in poetry well, but this poem is an example.

Pillow Talk

by Jeni Olin

As an insomniac compulsively flips a pillow
to cool the cheek, I turn you over again & again
& again in my mind when I need the cold side
of the said affair to rail against
“the ruinous work of nostalgia.”
If life imitates art, then each stillborn
has its own mucus-bright Blue Period.
Sharks keep moving to prevent dying.
People keep moving too, unwittingly staving off
the comfort of stasis, the virility of expiration, blah, blah…
But Death, the great highlighter, makes us all shine
a bit more dearly. I’m a widowchild who needs sunblock
against your blinding legacy. I used to get my cardio up
just by sleeping next to you. In a sane world,
I’d be bumped off to warn the others of a sky
so blue at the end of the working business day
if your veins hadn’t stolen the purest
Pearl Paint blue first. A broken thoroughbred –
I need a passport & vertigo pills to reach you.
Godspeed, galloping into your Misty Blue
OMG I miss you.

National Poetry Month – W. S. Merwin (April 9)

By Lu Posted in Poetry Tagged , , , , 2 Replies
The River of Bees

by W. S. Merwin

In a dream I returned to the river of bees
Five orange trees by the bridge and
Beside two mills my house

Into whose courtyard a blind man followed
The goats and stood singing
Of what was older
Soon it will be fifteen years

He was so old he will have fallen into his eyes

I took my eyes
A long way to the calendars
Room after room asking how shall I live

One of the ends is made of streets
One man processions carry through it
Empty bottles their
Image of hope
It was offered to me by name

Once once and once
In the same city I was born
Asking what shall I say

He will have fallen into his mouth
Men think they are better than grass

I return to his voice rising like a forkful of hay

He was old he is not real nothing is real
Nor the noise of death drawing water

We are the echo of the future

On the door it says what to do to survive
But we are not born to survive
Only to live