I assume you’re all familiar with the Favorite Poem Project that was founded by Robert Pinsky when he was US Poet Laureate in 1997. Eighteen thousand people responded, from all across the country, and videos are available online. It’s incredibly moving to listen and watch as people read the poems and say why they chose them, and always reminds me of the place of poetry in our ongoing lives. This statement on the Project home page describes my own sense of poems: “Poetry is a vocal art, an art meant to be heard in the reader’s voice—whether actually read aloud or in the inner voice of the imagination. The experience, in both ways, is bodily. As with conversation and song and many other uses of language, understanding is rooted in sound.” Pinsky describes why he shaped the project as he did: “When you say a poem aloud by William Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson or Langston Hughes, or even imagine saying it aloud, your voice becomes the artist’s medium. It is a form of collaboration, or mutual possession.”
I’ve often thought about what poems I might choose to submit, and of course it’s a wide, various, fluid group. I chose two to post here, an old favorite and a newer one. I first read “To Earthward” as a teenager, then memorized it as I circled my tiny bedroom. I was just discovering the pleasures of touch, the overwhelming sensations and emotions, the intensity, but I could even then, imagine a little–thanks to the poem–what it would mean to lose them. And of course Frost was imagining the future too–he was just forty when he wrote it. I was also writing poems myself, so I noticed the beautiful rhythms and word sounds and rhymes (honeysuckle/ knuckle!) I heard the speed and lightness of the first line, and later the slowing down of “Now no joy but lacks salt”–six monosyllabic words, six stresses. I felt the poem not just in my ears, but in my whole body–and I still do.
I discovered Alice Oswald’s poems much more recently, and find them literally breathtaking–sometimes I realize I’m holding my breath as I read. Her imagery is vivid and unexpected, and in “Swan” I don’t know what I’m seeing until it’s too late, I can’t close my eyes. She’s made something horrifying and sad into something beautiful–that’s a work of art. But she shows us the beauty and sadness first, the imagined, long before she ever offers a glimpse of how the encounter began. I think almost any other poet would have begun with finding the swan and them perhaps moved to the transcendental, so it’s a moment of real genius to me that she doesn’t.
So here’s your assignment: choose a favorite (two if they’re short), post them in Comments (just click on Favorite Poems in red on the right and scroll down), along with a brief statement of why you’re choosing them, and plan to read them at this week’s Fridays at 4 (eastern time) discussion.
TO EARTHWARD
Robert Frost
Love at the lips was touch
As sweet as I could bear;
And once that seemed too much;
I lived on air
That crossed me from sweet things,
The flow of—was it musk
From hidden grapevine springs
Downhill at dusk?
I had the swirl and ache
From sprays of honeysuckle
That when they’re gathered shake
Dew on the knuckle.
I craved strong sweets, but those
Seemed strong when I was young;
The petal of the rose
It was that stung.
Now no joy but lacks salt,
That is not dashed with pain
And weariness and fault;
I crave the stain
Of tears, the aftermark
Of almost too much love,
The sweet of bitter bark
And burning clove.
When stiff and sore and scarred
I take away my hand
From leaning on it hard
In grass and sand,
The hurt is not enough:
I long for weight and strength
To feel the earth as rough
To all my length.
*
SWAN
Alice Oswald
A rotted swan
is hurrying away from the plane-crash mess of her wings
one here
one there
getting panicky up out of her clothes and mid-splash
looking down again at what a horrible plastic
mould of herself split-second
climbing out of her own cockpit
and lifting away again and bending back for another look thinking
strange
strange
what are those two -white clips that connected my strength
to its floatings
and lifting away again and bending back for another look
at the clean china serving-dish of a breast bone
and how thickly the symmetrical quill-points
were threaded in backwards through the leather underdress
of the heart saying
strange
strange
it’s not as if such fastenings could ever contain
the regular yearning wing-beat of my evenings
and that surely can’t be my own black feet
lying poised in their slippers
what a waste of detail
what a heaviness inside each feather
and leaving her life and all its tools
with their rusty juices trickling back to the river
she is lifting away she is taking a last look thinking
quick
quick
say something to the
frozen cloud of the head
before it thaws
whose one dead eye
is a growing cone of twilight
in the middle of winter
it is snowing there
and the bride has just set out
to walk to her wedding
but how can she reach
the little black-lit church
it is so cold
the bells like iron angels
hung from one note
keep ringing and ringing
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My favorite poems are continually changing, but I always circle back to those that impart a kind of truth. I feel less alone in reading them. I feel there is–someone in the world–who understands.
The Peace of Wild Things
by Wendell Berry
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.
Sentence
by Tadeusz Dabrowski
It’s as if you’d woken in a locked cell and found
in your pocket a slip of paper, and on it a single sentence
in a language you don’t know.
And you’d be sure this sentence was the key to your
life. Also to this cell.
And you’d spend years trying to decipher the sentence,
until finally you’d understand it. But after a while
you’d realize you got it wrong, and the sentence meant
something else entirely. And so you’d have two sentences.
Then three, and four, and ten, until you’d created a new language.
And in that language you’d write the novel of your life.
And once you’d reached old age you’d notice the door of the cell
was open. You’d go out into the world. You’d walk the length and breadth of it,
until in the shade of a massive tree you’d yearn
for that one single sentence in a language you don’t know.
(translated from the Polish, by Antonia Lloyd-Jones)
This is a poem in translation which I first encountered as a sophomore at Reed College. Lines of this translation of Cavalcanti’s (Dante’s great friend’s) canzone on love (Pound translated it twice, this was his first translation, the one I prefer, probably because it is the one I encountered first; the second appears in the Cantos) were a source of courage to me very often when I needed to enter a courtroom and speak as the mouthpiece for some client, however wretched, and they came as comfort to me later after occasions when I felt forced to advocate into the face of administrative indifference, reduced to using every awful trick in the book, when I was moved by love for my little son, suffering and working his way out of autism.
Donna mi Prego
(Dedicace—To Thomas Campion his ghost, and
to the ghost of Henry Lawes, as prayer
for the revival of music)
Because a lady asks me, I would tell
Of an affect that comes often and is fell
And is so overweening: Love by name
E’en its deniers can now hear the truth,
I for the nonce to them that know it call,
Having no hope at all
that man who is base in heart
Can bear his part of wit
into the light of it,
And save they know’t aright from nature’s source
I have no will to prove Love’s course
or say
Where he takes rest; who maketh him to be;
Or what his active virtu is, or what his force;
Nay, nor his very essence or his mode;
What his placation; why he is in verb,
Or if a man have might
To show him visible to men’s sight.
In memory’s locus taketh he his state
Formed there in manner as a mist of light
Upon a dusk that is come from Mars and stays.
Love is created, hath a sensate name,
His modus takes from soul, from heart his will;
From form seen doth he start, that, understood,
Taketh in latent intellect—
As in a subject ready—
place and abode,
Yet in that place it ever is unstill,
Spreading it rays, it tendeth never down
By quality, but is its own effect unendingly
Not to delight, but in an ardour of thought
That the base likeness of it kindleth not.
It is not virtu, but perfection’s source
Lying within perfection postulate
Not by the reason, but ‘tis felt, I say.
Beyond salvation, holdeth its judging force
Maintains intension reason’s peer and mate;
Poor in discernment, being thus weakness’ friend,
Often his power meeteth with death in the end
Be he withstayed
or from true course
bewrayed
E’en though he meet not with hate
or villeiny
Save that perfection fails, be it but a little;
Nor can man say he hath his life by chance
Or that he hath not stablished seigniory
Or loseth power, e’en lost to memory.
He comes to be and is when will’s so great
It twists itself from out all natural measure;
Leisure’s adornment put he then never on,
Never thereafter, but moves changing state,
Moves changing colour, or to laugh or weep
Or wries the face with fear and little stays,
Yea, resteth little
yet is found the most
Where folk of worth be host.
And his strange property sets sighs not move
And wills man look into unformed space
Rousing there thirst
that breaketh into flame.
None can imagine love
That knows not love;
Love doth not move, but draweth all to him;
Nor doth he turn
for a whim
to find delight
Nor seek out, surely,
great knowledge or slight.
Look drawn from like,
delight maketh certain in seeming
Nor can in covert cower,
beauty so near,
Not yet wild-cruel as darts,
So hath man craft from fear
in such his desire
To follow a noble spirit,
edge, that is, and point to the dart,
Though from her face indiscernible;
He, caught, falleth
plumb on to the spike of the targe.
Who well proceedth, form not seeth,
following his own emanation.
There, beyond colour, essence set apart,
In midst of darkness light light giveth forth
Beyond all falsity, worthy of faith, alone
That in him solely is compassion born.
Safe may’st thou go my canzon whither thee pleaseth
Thou are so fair attired that every man and each
Shall praise thy speech
So he have sense or glow with reason’s fire,
To stand with other
hast thou no desire.
By Guido Cavalcanti, a friend of Dante
Tr. Ezra Pound
As to the “envoi” by which Cavalcanti sends off his song into the world, it makes me laugh to remember a judge who offered me a useless compliment from the bench, “Miss White, that may be the most eloquent argument I have heard in this courtroom. (Little pause for dramatic effect, to let that land). You will be overruled.”
from Martha:
Fern Hill
Dylan Thomas – 1914-1953
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.
And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.
All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.
And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.
And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace,
Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.
Sorry to come late on this … I’ve been thinking about various sonically-oriented contemporary poems, but since Mary Jane posted something from a much earlier period, I realize I want to share this one, that I so loved to read aloud and teach, talking about the power of couplet craft and voice within it. It has never ceased to slay me emotionally, especially given certain factors of social and theological context.
Before the Birth of One of Her Children
BY ANNE BRADSTREET
All things within this fading world hath end,
Adversity doth still our joyes attend;
No ties so strong, no friends so dear and sweet,
But with death’s parting blow is sure to meet.
The sentence past is most irrevocable,
A common thing, yet oh inevitable.
How soon, my Dear, death may my steps attend,
How soon’t may be thy Lot to lose thy friend,
We are both ignorant, yet love bids me
These farewell lines to recommend to thee,
That when that knot’s untied that made us one,
I may seem thine, who in effect am none.
And if I see not half my dayes that’s due,
What nature would, God grant to yours and you;
The many faults that well you know I have
Let be interr’d in my oblivious grave;
If any worth or virtue were in me,
Let that live freshly in thy memory
And when thou feel’st no grief, as I no harms,
Yet love thy dead, who long lay in thine arms.
And when thy loss shall be repaid with gains
Look to my little babes, my dear remains.
And if thou love thyself, or loved’st me,
These o protect from step Dames injury.
And if chance to thine eyes shall bring this verse,
With some sad sighs honour my absent Herse;
And kiss this paper for thy loves dear sake,
Who with salt tears this last Farewel did take.
I’m coming way, way up in time and give you my favorite poem du jour. I’m very clear on why this is a favorite right now–and that is because it suits the mood of the times. I feel the frustration. I want to peek out of the pocket of some goddess of middle-aged women who gets so angry at the everyday struggles we’re going through that she flings her purse with us in it across the mall (and, oh, the irony of Forever 21) and yet we are protected by the purse, the walls, the company of each other, the whole flock of us. So this is Magpies Recognize Themselves in the Mirror from Kelly Russell Agodon’s Dialogues with Rising Tides.
Magpies Recognize Themselves in the Mirror
The evening sounds like a murder
of magpies and we’re replacing our cabinet knobs
because we can’t change the world be we can
change our hardware. America breaks my heart
some days and some days it breaks itself in two.
I watched a woman having a breakdown
in the mall today, and when the security guard
tried to help her, what I felt was all of us
peeking from her purse as she threw it
across the floor into Forever 21. and yes,
the wall felt like another way to hold us
and when she finally stopped crying
I heard her say to the fluorescent lighting
Some days the sky is too bright. And like that
we were her flock in our black coats
and white sweaters, some of us reaching
our wings to her and some of us flying away.