Poetry

[Smilla]

This one might sink like a stone, but I thought I'd try a thread for Greecies to discuss our favorite poets and poems. Doesn't have to be confined to the world of arcane modern poetry or stuck back in the ancient times of Beowulf, either. I think everyone from Shakespeare to Carl Sandburg to Langston Hughes could be fun to discuss.

My favorite poet is Robert Frost. Favorite Frost poem: "Leaves Compared With Flowers." I also like "The Gift Outright," which he wrote for Kennedy's inaugural. I have a slew of other modern and postmodern poets I like, too, but I think I'll see what other want to contribute before getting into that.

"Leaves Compared With Flowers"

A tree's leaves may be ever so good,
So may its bar, so may its wood;
But unless you put the right thing to its root
It never will show much flower or fruit.

But I may be one who does not care
Ever to have tree bloom or bear.
Leaves for smooth and bark for rough,
Leaves and bark may be tree enough.

Some giant trees have bloom so small
They might as well have none at all.
Late in life I have come on fern.
Now lichens are due to have their turn.

I bade men tell me which in brief,
Which is fairer, flower or leaf.
They did not have the wit to say,
Leaves by night and flowers by day.

Leaves and bar, leaves and bark,
To lean against and hear in the dark.
Petals I may have once pursued.
Leaves are all my darker mood.

[trifle]

Mary's Oliver's The Summer Day is my absolute fave:

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down --
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

[Martini Girl]

I love this! I have so many, but will start w/ my fave. Ithaca touched my soul from the moment I heard it.... I always keep a copy at my desk.

As you set out for Ithaka
hope the voyage is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope the voyage is a long one.
May there be many a summer morning when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you come into harbors seen for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you are destined for.
But do not hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you are old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

[Deleted]

My personal favorite was published in the New York Times on Jan. 1, 2000 on the op-ed page. I won't write it out here because it's kind of wordy, even if it's not that long, but I'm sure it's published online somewhere by this time: "Prayer (12.31.99)" by Jorie Graham. My literary tastes have changed quite a bit in the past 16 years but it's still held up, imo.

My second favorite, which still gives me chills when I reread it, is "Little Red Riding Hood" by Christina Reihill.

[Martini Girl]

I've always loved Christina Rossetti. My favorite of hers is "I loved you first".....

I loved you first: but afterwards your love
Outsoaring mine, sang such a loftier song
As drowned the friendly cooings of my dove.
Which owes the other most? my love was long,
And yours one moment seemed to wax more strong;
I loved and guessed at you, you construed me
And loved me for what might or might not be –
Nay, weights and measures do us both a wrong.
For verily love knows not ‘mine’ or ‘thine;’
With separate ‘I’ and ‘thou’ free love has done,
For one is both and both are one in love:
Rich love knows nought of ‘thine that is not mine;’
Both have the strength and both the length thereof,
Both of us, of the love which makes us one.

Other favorites are Shakespeare's Sonnets, "Still I Rise" by Maya Angelou, and "Invictus" by William Henley

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.



Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul

[Smilla]

It's never a bad time for Wendell Berry:

"The Peace of Wild Things"

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

[drpopcorn]

I apologize for introducing a piece of doggerel into this thread, but I wanted to see what my fellow Greecies thought about the Calvin Trillin controversy that happened back in April.



Earlier this year, The New Yorker published in their April 4th issue a throwaway little poem from long-time contributor Calvin Trillin, titled, Have They Run Out Of Provinces Yet? The poem received a lot of negative feedback.

Personally, I strongly agree with the general ethic of persons of conscience that anyone looking at a culture not their own, particularly where there is a historical context of racism, must approach such a view with great care and respect. That being said, it seems to me that some critics of this poem have misread its intent, or at least its satiric target. To me it seems the intent of the poem is to satirize, specifically with food, one of the most central and ancient anxiety sources associated mostly with urban (in the older sense) living: FOMO (the Fear Of Missing Out). Trillin could have easily written his poem using Italian food, referencing Tuscany, Venice, Rome, Sicily, etc, or even about ever-evolving trends in art. His poem's complaint, imo, isn't really about China having too many provinces, but about our world's never-ending cascade of changing trends and the vain demands of certain elements of social life to stay on top of it all, combined with a wish that it would all just slow down so that the familiar and comfortable could be enjoyed without worry. Here's an article that sort of speaks to this view.

Nevertheless, I am more than willing to admit that I've got it wrong and need a better understanding of the issues involved. Anyone care to share their take on this?

[americanchai]

Dr. Popcorn, I heard about this from a friend. First of all, Calvin Trillin is probably my favorite journalist/food writer of all time. He has been writing about food (from everywhere) for a really really long time, long before most of his critics were born. I am Chinese (third gen) so I grew up mainly with Cantonese food and I have grown to love lots of different Chinese food from other areas for sure. I think the point of his poem was the trendiness of moving from province to province, trying to be the first to get some ethnic cuisine that nobody else is doing, as you point out. I am kind of ashamed that the critiques seem to be from people who are unfamiliar with his food writing, which is very separate from his political writing and his writing on 8 million other things. I adore him and will defend him to the death.

As for poetry, I'm pretty meh on all of it (she says without investigating much of it).

[Smilla]

Free at Rattle's website, and oh-so-relevant for the week's events: "Villanelle for America 2016."

[Smilla]

Great article in NYT about how poets are responding in droves to the change in American politics and society.