My favorite poem. What 's yours?

[jufa]

First the warning the weather was turning came.

I smiled and sat back quietly in my recline.

I have the luxury to come and go at leisure to me

To dream of days when I loved in the abandonment

Of youth, and never ending days of vigor

I look out and see the trees bare

No grass to color the landscape, no flowers ascent the world

Then she appeared upon the back of my eyelids

And summer was there, and the noise of outdoors rung

In the melody of the voice of my heart

As I reached for her to touch

But she was not there

She was not there

She was not not there

She was not there

O! my love, why could I not tell you when

You were here

When we rumped an played, and kissed, and laughed

When even baby talk became you that

I am the soil God has planted you in as the flower of my life

One day I well see you again because I shall return to you

My First LoveI shall! I shall! I shall! I must

jufa

[noman]

These words were written by Joseph Campbell, who was born on March 26, 1904:

The modern hero, the modern individual who dares to heed the call

and seek the mansion of that presence with whom it is our whole destiny to be atoned

cannot, indeed must not, wait for his community to cast off its slough

of pride, fear, rationalized avarice, and sanctified misunderstanding.

“Live,” Nietzsche says, “as though the day were here.”

It is not society that is to guide and save the creative hero, but precisely the reverse.

And so every one of us shares the supreme ordeal – carries the cross of the redeemer

not in the bright moments of his tribe’s great victories,

but in the silences of his personal despair.

[boringguy]

Let's stop reading about God --
We will never understand Him

Jump to your feet, wave your fists
Threaten and worn the whole Universe

That your heart can no longer live
without real love.



Hafiz
________
as you be see

[Adrienne]

I can't decide on my favorite poem; I see many here that vie well for the title. Mary Oliver is currently my favorite poet. But I suppose the poem that comes back to me over and over is a haiku that my Eastern Religions professor made up on the spot after I asked him if he had one to share with the class.

A high craggy rock
A bird flies overhead
Where is my soul's home?

- David Angell

[Lachance75]

Hello All,

It is very difficult to select "favorite" poems - there are so many great poets and poems.

I have always felt a special natural and immediate connection to Emily Dickinson's work as I have not experienced with other poets, and so here are several of her shorter poems I enjoy and perhaps you will too:

1455

Opinion is a flitting thing,
But Truth, outlasts the Sun-
If then we cannot own them both-
Possess the oldest one-

680

Each Life Converges to some Centre—
Expressed—or still—
Exists in every Human Nature
A Goal—

Embodied scarcely to itself—it may be—
Too fair
For Credibility's presumption
To mar—

Adored with caution—as a Brittle Heaven—
To reach
Were hopeless, as the Rainbow's Raiment
To touch—

Yet persevered toward—sure—for the Distance—
How high—
Unto the Saints' slow diligence—
The Sky—

Ungained—it may be—by a Life's low Venture—
But then—
Eternity enable the endeavoring
Again.


642

Me from Myself—to banish—
Had I Art—
Impregnable my Fortress
Unto All Heart—
But since Myself—assault Me—
How have I peace
Except by subjugating
Consciousness?

And since We're mutual Monarch
How this be
Except by Abdication—
Me—of Me?

536

The Heart asks Pleasure—first—
And then—Excuse from Pain—
And then—those little Adonynes
That deaden suffering—

And then—to go to sleep—
And then—if it should be
The will of its Inquisitor
The privilege to die—

1129

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant—
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind—

613

They shut me up in Prose—
As when a little Girl
They put me in the Closet—
Because they liked me "still"—

Still! Could themselves have peeped—
And seen my Brain—go round—
They might as wise have lodged a Bird
For Treason—in the Pound—

Himself has but to will
And easy as a Star
Abolish his Captivity—
And laugh—No more have I—

883

The Poets light but Lamps —
Themselves — go out —
The Wicks they stimulate —
If vital Light

Inhere as do the Suns —
Each Age a Lens
Disseminating their
Circumference —

[deus_ex_machina]

Well, I loved the poem because I was able to relate to it. I am an Asian American and in my culture I was taught not to follow my bliss. Like most Ansian Americans, we are pressured to either become doctors or lawyers. And when I first read it, it struck me. That money was maya.

I have one or two favorites.

i carry your heart with me


i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

ee cummings

Barter
Life has loveliness to sell,
All beautiful and splendid things,
Blue waves whitened on a cliff,
Soaring fire that sways and sings,
And children's faces looking up
Holding wonder like a cup.

Life has loveliness to sell,
Music like a curve of gold,
Scent of pine trees in the rain,
Eyes that love you, arms that hold,
And for your spirit's still delight,
Holy thoughts that star the night.

Spend all you have for loveliness,
Buy it and never count the cost;
For one white singing hour of peace
Count many a year of strife well lost,
And for a breath of ecstasy
Give all you have been, or could be.
-Sara Teasdale

[boringguy]

Hi all,

A friend sent me this the other day and I like it. It reminds me of the Chief Seattle letter, however I suppose this is as good a thread as any to post it in.




Oh, what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it was made personal, merely personal feeling. This is what is the matter with us; we are bleeding at the roots because we are cut off from the earth and sun and stars. Love has become a grinning mockery because, poor blossom, we plucked it from its stem on the Tree of Life and expect it to keep on blooming in our civilized vase on the table.

D.H. Lawrence



bg
____________________
just dance and the world might just dance with you

[Clemsy]

BG, that is a keeper. Thanks for sharing it.

[boringguy]

Hi Clemsy,

I'm glad you liked it as well. Its always a privilage to be a participant, especially around here.


bg
___________________
just dance and the world might just dance with you

[Clemsy]

BG, coincidentally, my seniors recently finished an analysis of Genesis 1 through 3. That quote fits too perfectly. It's hanging on my classroom door right above my current sig.

Thanks again.

Clemsy

[Andreas]

Check this one out. A beauty?

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
connection to the starry dynamo in the machin-
ery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat
up smoking in the supernatural darkness of
cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and
saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tene-
ment roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes
hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy
among the scholars of war,

The rest here.

http://sprayberry.tripod.com/poems/howl.txt

[Robert G.]

Vissi, thank you, somehow I did not know this poem


I made my song a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies
From heel to throat;
But the fools caught it,
Wore it in the world’s eyes
As though they’d wrought it.
Song, let them take it,
For there’s more enterprise
In walking naked.

“A Coat”
William Butler Yeats

[S_Watson]

Among my favourites is the poetry of Beavis in this six minute episode titled, "Buttniks":

http://flimmr.passagen.se/movie/beavis_ ... iks.action

Every time I order a cappucinno I think of this cartoon.

[cgiangra]

Here's my favorite:

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee..."

John Donne
Meditation 17
Devotions upon Emergent Occasions

[CarmelaBear]

"Happiness" by A. A. Milne

John had
Great Big
Waterproof
Boots on;
John had a
Great Big
Waterproof
Hat;
John had a
Great Big
Waterproof
Mackintosh---
And that
(Said John)
Is
That.

~