HI!  As you may know, April is National Poetry Month.  Since we're a pretty literate bunch around here :) we thought it might be fun to get a thread started about poetry.  We'll post some of our favorite poems, chat about some pieces of music that are based on or inspired by poetry....and invite you to share some of your favorites as well.

 SO, to get things started, I'll lob out a favorite of mine from the contemporary American poet Wendell Berry:

Desiderata

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible, without surrender,
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly, and listen to others,
even to the dull and ignorant;
they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons;
they are vexatious to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain or bitter,
for always there will be
greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career
however humble;
it is a real possession in the
changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs,
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you
to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals,
and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself.
Especially do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love,
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment,
it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit
to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Therefore, be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be.
And whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life,
keep peace in your soul.
With all its sham,
drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.

by Max Ehrmann
©1927 by Max Ehrmann, all rights reserved. © renewed 1954 by Bertha Ehrmann.

Many of my favorite poems are ones I discovered in high school or college...just through reading and exploring.  There are some, though, that came to me through music....either poems that inspired a piece of music or, more frequently for me, poems that were set to music.  One of my favorites is a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins that I first found in a very sensitive solo vocal setting by American composer Ned Rorem.  I found the poem beautiful and moving...and it opened up the whole world of Hopkins' poetry, which I had been unfamiliar with.  The poem is "Spring and Fall".

The sprung rhythm of his poems gives them a more modern feel, but Hopkins was actually born in 1844...and he was a Jesuit priest!

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

 There are a lot of great online sources for reading about poets and poetry.  Here's a good one to start with:  www.poets.org which is where I found this poem.

Cheryl

I run into these two poems by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe fairly often.  They were written in 1795 and inspired compositions by Beethoven and Mendelssohn.  I'm into boating so I relate (mostly in my imagination) to these works.

CALM AT SEA

Silence deep rules o'er the waters,

Calmly slumb'ring lies the main,
While the sailor views with trouble

Nought but one vast level plain.

Not a zephyr is in motion!

Silence fearful as the grave!
In the mighty waste of ocean

Sunk to rest is ev'ry wave.

THE PROSPEROUS VOYAGE

THE mist is fast clearing.
And radiant is heaven,
Whilst AEolus loosens
Our anguish-fraught bond.
The zephyrs are sighing,
Alert is the sailor.
Quick! nimbly be plying!
The billows are riven,
The distance approaches;
I see land beyond!

Dan

Poetry comes from all manner of folks.  As much as I enjoy Emerson, Whitman, et al, I want to share the wisdom of one of my favorite philosophers -

Have you ever noticed
Clouds can look like fluffy pillows?
Have you ever counted all the stars up in the sky?
Have you ever watched the birds fly by?

Take a look above you.
Squirrels scurry up an oak tree.
See that yellow circle?
That's the sun who gives us light.
Way up high, I think I see a kite.

I wonder 'bout the world above
Up there.
No matter where you go, it's everywhere.

Now the sun is setting,
Getting ready for tomorrow.
Soon the moon'll be glowing,
Showing off the moonlight.
Take a look above you,
Discover the view.
If you haven't noticed,
Please do.  Please do.  Please do.

- Kermit the Frog

I tend to have eclectic tastes, whether it is food, music or poetry.  But I’ll start with an old, classic combination of love and carpe diem.  This comes from my tattered copy of “The Selected Poetry of Andrew Marvel” edited by Frank Kermode and published by Signet Classics.

To His Coy Mistress

Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime
We would sit down and think which way
To walk and pass our long love's day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, Lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.

But at my back I always hear
Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song: then worms shall try
That long preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust:
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.

Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapt power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

One of my favorite composers is Ralph Vaughn Williams.  His song cycle called “Songs of Travel” uses as its text several poems from a collection of the same name by Robert Lewis Stevenson.  Included in the song cycle is this poem, one that my wife and I particularly enjoy.

"I will make you brooches and toys for your delight"

 
I will make you brooches and toys for your delight
Of bird-song at morning and star-shine at night.
I will make a palace fit for you and me
Of green days in forests and blue days at sea.
 
I will make my kitchen, and you shall keep your room,
Where white flows the river and bright blows the broom,
And you shall wash your linen and keep your body white
In rainfall at morning and dewfall at night.
 
And this shall be for music when no one else is near,
The fine song for singing, the rare song to hear!
That only I remember, that only you admire,
Of the broad road that stretches and the roadside fire.
 
 
Kent

As an English major and high school English teacher for more than three decades, I have been immersed in poetry up to my eyeballs--not drowning in rhyme and rhythm, but splashing about like a kid at the "plunge" on the first day of summer vacation. Usually if I want to share a poem with friends and since my memory is faulty, I need to carry it around with me on a scrap of paper.  Not this one, however. I guarantee that any one can remember it. This poem snip is modern poetry, modern thought, modern sentiment, almost even written in modern digital language.  This flipant almost- text-message has much to say about evolution and religion, about contemporary irony and satire.  It's a stark example of less is more and a brazen implied criticism of poetry of yore. Did I just overkill this, did I just spill this couplet?  Wait for it!?.............................................................FLEAS          Adam, Had'em

When Cheryl Dring announced this Poetry forum, first to my mind was "Humor" by Yevgeny Yevtushenko (see below).  Dmitri Shostakovich wrote his Symphony #13 around the poems of Yevtushenko including the symphony's title poem, Babi Yar (http://boppin.com/poets/yy_babiyar.htm).

"Humor" doesn't speak of slapstick comedy but of the irrepressible power of humor to speak the truth against even the most powerful tyranny. Truth dressed in jester's clothing. Freedom of speech!

Humor
Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Tsars, Kings, Emperors,
sovereigns of all the earth,
have commanded many a parade,
but they could not command humor.

When Aesop, the tramp, came visiting
the palaces of eminent personages
ensconced in sleek comfort all day,
they struck him as paupers.

In houses, where hypocrites have
left the smear of their puny feet,
there Hodja-Nasr-ed-Din, with his jests,
swept clean all meanness
like a board of chessmen!

They tried to commission humor-
but humor is not to be bought!

They tried to murder humor,
but humor thumbed his nose at them!

It’s hard to fight humor.
They executed him time and again.
His hacked-off head
was stuck on the point of a pike.

But as soon as the mummer’s pipes
began their quipping tale,
humor defiantly cried:
'I’m back, I’m here! ',
and started to foot a dance.
in an overcoat, shabby and short,
with eyes cast down and a mask of repentance,
he, a political criminal,
now under arrest, walked to his execution.

He appeared to submit in every way,
accepting the life-beyond,
but of a sudden he wriggled out of his coat,
and, waving his hand, did a bolt.

Humor was shoved into cells,
but much good that did.
Humor went straight through
prison bars and walls of stone.

Coughing from the lungs
like any man in the ranks,
he marched singing a popular ditty,
rifle in hand upon the Winter Palace.

He’s accustomed to frowning looks,
but they do him no harm;

and humor at times with humor
glances at himself.

He’s everpresent. Nimble and quick,
he’ll slip through anything, through everyone.
So- glory be to humor.
He- is a valiant man.

(1960)

"Stanzas" by Emily Brontë

Often rebuked, yet always back returning
To those first feelings that were born with me,
And leaving busy chase of wealth and learning
For idle dreams of things which cannot be:

Today, I will seek not the shadowy region;
Its unsustaining vastness waxes drear;
And visions rising, legion after legion,
Bring the unreal world too strangely near.

I'll walk, but not in old heroic traces,
And not in paths of high morality,
And not among the half-distingusihed faces,
The clouded forms of long-past history.

I'll walk where my own nature would be leading:
It vexes me to choose another guide:
Where the grey flocks in ferny glens are feeding;
Where the wild wind blows on the mountain side.

What have those lonely mountains worth revealing?
More glory and more grief than I can tell:
The earth that wakes one human heart to feeling
Can centre both the worlds of heaven and hell.