...the pastor at my church routinely uses poems or parts of poems for the meditation portion of the service, and I've found myself really grooving on them. Made me wonder what poets/poems you poetry fans (or even non-fans) would recommend I read. I'm looking for anything, really - online, collections from one poet, anthologies. I know this is so open ended and subjective, but I'll sort throught it all myself, I'm just looking for things that speak to a connection with nature, a connection with the inner self, a connection with a greater consciousness. I dunno. I remember being a huge Transcendentalist fan back in high school, but wouldn't really know where to start (though that might give you some sense of what I'm looking for?).

I've put two poems/meditations in my blog here & here, they'll give you some idea of what's currently grabbing my interest and what I'd like to find more of.

So, is that enough of a starting point to get some recommendations?

I don't do much either and I would have to be less lazy and actually track them down to link to them, but I liked Mervyn Peake's poems - the ones scattered throughout the Gormenghast books. The poems in Peter S Beagle's The Last Unicorn are fun too. I memorised this one -

If I danced with my feet
As I dance in my dreaming,
As graceful and gleaming
As Death in disguise -
Oh that would be sweet,
But then would I hunger
To be ten years younger,
Or wedded, or wise?

Jabberwocky is also a fave and I memorised that years ago. The Hunting of the Snark was amusing too.


um. so, I'm not much use I guess, but those are some of my favourites.

That's an awesome poem, Maeve, thank you for sharing that! So, Peake and Beagle, those are poems within novels/short stories? Any particular Peake book, or just find the first one?

And I've never read Jabberwocky or The Hunting of the Snark, but I've heard of both. *goes hunting*

edit to add: The Jabberwocky! Duh, I have read/seen that before and knew there was a reason it was familiar to me and at the same time unmemborable.

This has been my favourite poem for more than ten years. This is how I still think about the life I'm living.


The Sunlight on the Garden

The sunlight on the garden
Hardens and grows cold,
We cannot cage the minute
Within its nets of gold;
When all is told
We cannot beg for pardon.

Our freedom as free lances
Advances towards its end;
The earth compels, upon it
Sonnets and birds descend;
And soon, my friend,
We shall have no time for dances.

The sky was good for flying
Defying the church bells
And every evil iron
Siren and what it tells:
The earth compels,
We are dying, Egypt, dying

And not expecting pardon,
Hardened in heart anew,
But glad to have sat under
Thunder and rain with you,
And grateful too
For sunlight on the garden.

-- Louis MacNeice

oooh, I like that one Babylon!


Sorry JP, I think I just assumed that everyone would know Jabberwocky and Snark were from Lewis Carroll.

I really can't remember, but I think Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast poems may be collected in a poem book, but I could be wrong about that. I only remember that a friend of mine in high school tried to get me to read the Gormenghast books and I just couldn't manage it. but I did love the poems and drawings.

The Last Unicorn is one of my favourite books. I suppose since it has a unicorn in it, it could be considered a "girly" book, but... give it a whirl - it's very poetically written and it's a lovely romantic, magical tale.


This is the poem I remember from Mervyn Peake:

THE VASTEST THINGS ARE THOSE WE MAY NOT LEARN

The vastest things are those we may not learn.
We are not taught to die, nor to be born,
Nor how to burn
With love.
How pitiful is our enforced return
To those small things we are the masters of.


and I found it here

Well, I for one like Robert Frost's poems.
Like this one:

Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes.
(Robert Frost)

This one is by Rainer Maria Rilke (and very meaningful to me):

quote:

Again and again, however we know the landscape of love
and the little churchyard there, with its sorrowing names,
and the frighteningly silent abyss into which the others
fall: again and again the two of us walk out together
under the ancient trees, lie down again and again
among the flowers, face to face with the sky.

One of the things that made me initially stick around here was this love poem thread. (I was actually thinking about posting the above poem there just the other day, but with all the icky aliases running around I didn't feel like bumping that thread now. Who knows what would happen to it.)

Poetry's pretty important to me, although I'm in no way very knowledgeable about it - it's more of a random, intuitive process of stumbling upon things that just kind of speak to me. Anyway, Pablo Neruda has been my one true love for many years now, as well as Federico Garcia Lorca (and some obscure Scandinavians, probably never translated to a language that makes more sense to you guys).

I think there are quite a few pretty good online poetry resources in English. Such as poets.org.

Tis liked my thread!
*beams*

(Sorry. Carry on.)

Too many to mention. I love a lot of John Donne's poetry, Seamus Heaney, e.e.cummings, and so much more. And if I start quoting one, I'll never stop.

I can recommend one collection, though: The Rattle Bag, edited by Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes. It's the kind of book that you can read a page of every day. And you may discover some poets that you like.


Okay, okay. I couldn't resist, so here's a poem by Heaney that I love... The fragile, precious emotion, the precision of the language.


A Call

‘Hold on,’ she said, ‘I’ll just run out and get him.
The weather here’s so good, he took the chance
To do a bit of weeding.’

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXSo I saw him
Down on his hands and knees beside the leek rig,
Touching, inspecting, seperating one
Stalk from the other, gently pulling up
Everything not tapered, frail and leafless,
Pleased to feel each little weed-root break,
But rueful also...

XXXXXXXXXXXXXThen found myself listening to
The amplified grave ticking of hall clocks
Where the phone lay unattended in a calm
Of mirror glass and sunstruck pendulums …

And found myself then thinking: if it were nowadays,
This is how Death would summon Everyman.

Next thing he spoke and I nearly said I loved him.

Thirith, thanks for the recommendations and the great poem.

Glad you liked it, jp.

I sometimes think that many of the people who don't like poetry were introduced to it by people who are idiots. My literature teachers at school weren't very good with poetry, and they focused on the things that are least interesting... or they simply let the pupils run wild with their imagination, so "Twinkle, twinkle, little star" could be interpreted as a traumatic retelling of an experience of parental incest or some other such rubbish. I think it's also my strong dislike of bad teaching of literature that made me want to go into teaching it.

Hi JP -- for spiritual poetry, my vote is Mark Jarman. I think he is amazing, and I'm pretty snobby about poetry. Here are a couple of his from his book "Unholy Sonnets" (he has a bunch of books) and if I'm violating copyright, I'm truly sorry. I just really, really love his work.

#3
Soften the blow, imagined God, and give
Me one good reason for this punishment.
Where does the pressure come from? Is it meant
To kill me in the end or help me live?
My thoughts about you are derivative.
Still, I believe a part of me is bent
To make your grace look like an accident
And keep my soul from being operative.
But if I'm to be bent back like the pole
A horseshoe clangs against and gives a kink to,
Then take me like the grinning iron monger
I saw once twist a bar that made him sink to
His knees. His tongue was like a hot pink coal
As he laughed and said he thought he was stronger.

#23
How long was their grief -- so inconsolable --
With a friend's place empty at the table?
Not long at all. In less than a weekend
All the deadened senses were reawakened
And the blurred world focused to a new vision.
Anyone stricken with real deprivation
Hasn't hit the bottom in three days.
They were spared years of weeping, numbness, haze.
Everything, really. Ask the truly bereft,
The losers of all hope, the loved and left,
Who know the weight of ashes and cold clay.
These were bumping into the dead one not long after
And breaking bread with him in tears and laughter.
They were celebrating by the third day.

I don't get the last one Queen Monk. Is he saying the truly bereft are stricken longer? Or the opposite?
(Confusiion stemming from who 'they' are in the eighth line)


Here's one I really like but probably doesn't quite fit to the topic:

quote:

Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,
Saying that now you are not as you were
When you had changed from the one who was all to me,
But as at first, when our day was fair.

Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then,
Standing as when I drew near to the town
Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,
Even to the original air-blue gown!

Or is it only the breeze in its listlessness
Travelling across the wet mead to me here,
You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness,
Heard no more again far or near?

Thus I; faltering forward,
Leaves around me falling,
Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,
And the woman calling.

Thomas Hardy

The "They" in line eight refers to the apostles after the crucifixion of Christ. Hope that helps.

Not quite on topic but this
is one of my favourites which I try to send to as many people as possible. I'm also very fond of her Rising Damp poem.
EDT: Here it is!
RISING DAMP

'A river can sometimes be diverted but is a very hard thing to lose altogether.'
(Paper to the Auctioneers' Institute, 1907)

At our feet they lie low,
The little fervent underground
Rivers of London

Effra, Graveney, Flacon, Quaggy,
Wandle, Walbrook, Tyburn, Fleet

Whose names are disfigured,
Frayed, effaced.

There are the Magogs that chewed the clay
To the basin that London nestles in.
These are the currents that chiselled the city,
That washed the clothes and turned the mills,
Where children drank and salmon swam
And wells were holy.

They have gone under.
Boxed, like the magician's assistant.
Buried alive in earth.
Forgotten, like the dead.

They return spectrally after heavy rain,
Confounding suburban gardens. They inflitrate
Chronic bronchitis statistics. A silken
Slur haunts dwellings by shrouded
Watercourses, and is taken
For the footing of the dead.

Being of our world, they will return
(Westbourne, caged at Sloane Square,
Will jack from his box),
Will deluge cellars, detonate manholes,
Plant effluent on our faces,
Sink the city.

Effra, Graveney, Falcon, Quaggy,
Wandle, Walbrook, Tyburn, Fleet

It is the other rivers that lie
Lower, that touch us only in dreams
That never surface. We feel their tug
As a dowser's rod bends to the surface below

Phlegethon, Acheron, Lethe, Styx.

one of my favourite pieces of writing ever!


High Flight
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long delirious, burning blue,
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew -
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untresspassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

Pilot Officer Gillespie Magee
No 412 squadron, RCAF
Killed 11 December 1941

The Hill - Rupert Brooke

Breathless, we flung us on the windy hill,
Laughed in the sun and kissed the lovely grass.
You said, "Through glory and ecstasy we pass,
Wind, sun and earth, are old..." And when we die
All's over that is ours; and life burns on
Through other lovers, other lips," said I,
"Heart of my heart, our heaven is now, is won!"
"We are Earth's best, that learnt her lesson here.
Life is our cry. We have kept the faith!" we said;
"We shall go down with unreluctant tread
Rose-crowned into the darkness!..." Proud we were,
And laughed, that had such brave true things to say.
And then you suddenly cried, and turned away.

A book: Les Fleurs du mal (flowers of evil) by Charles Baudelaire.

He might be too dark for you, though.

in that case...

Still I Rise by Maya Angelou
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 back yard.

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.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: adrienne,

"Leda and the Swan"
W.B. Yeats

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.
How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?
A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

...so what if it's a little creepy?

anyway, you really should read John Donne, and, if you liked the Transcendentalists, try reading British romantic literature: Wordsworth (William and/or Dorothy), Coleridge, Blake, Shelley (Percy and/or Mary), Byron, Bronte (yes, Emily wrote poems, too), and (my personal favorite) Keats.

I found this while looking for an avatar to go with my new name.
Stephen Crane
The wayfarer,
Perceiving the pathway to truth,
Was struck with astonishment.
It was thickly grown with weeds.
"Ha," he said,
"I see that none has passed here
In a long time."
Later he saw that each weed
Was a singular knife.
"Well," he mumbled at last,
"Doubtless there are other roads."