http://www.flickr.com/photos/mtsofan/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
“If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the [...]
Category Archives: Poetry
Although I do not hope to turn 0
changing everything carefully 1
We have had quite enough snow and cold already, thankyouverymuch. Today I am longing for spring.
“Spring is like a perhaps hand” by E. E. Cummings
Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere)arranging
a window,into which people look(while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)and
changing everything carefully
spring is like a [...]
Categories: Poetry
If I can’t train her eyes to love. 1
This is a poem by Todd Boss. I found it on this Wisconsin Public Radio page when I was looking for poems to post for the solstice. I am a little tired of rehashing “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” (“the darkest evening of the year”) every year, and I liked that the NPR [...]
The whole world is decorated with love. 1
Today we are going to see Beautiful Star with eight of our friends. This is the last year they are having Beautiful Star at Triad Stage (at least for a while), so, Greensboro people, I recommend that you go if you can. We have been all four years, and we will miss it next year.
In [...]
A List of Praises by Anne Porter 1
Give praise with psalms that tell the trees to sing,
Give praise with Gospel choirs in storefront churches,
Mad with the joy of the Sabbath,
Give praise with the babble of infants, who wake with the sun,
Give praise with children chanting their skip-rope rhymes,
A poetry not in books, a vagrant mischievous poetry
living wild on the Streets through generations [...]
God’s World by Edna St. Vincent Millay 5
O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!
Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!
Thy mists that roll and rise!
Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag
And all but cry with colour! That gaunt crag
To crush! To lift the lean of that black bluff!
World, World, I cannot get thee close enough!
Long have I known a glory [...]
Starfish by Eleanor Lerman 1
This is what life does. It lets you walk up to
the store to buy breakfast and the paper, on a
stiff knee. It lets you choose the way you have
your eggs, your coffee. Then it sits a fisherman
down beside you at the counter who say, Last night,
the channel was full of starfish. And you wonder,
is this [...]
“Death, be not proud” by John Donne 1
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so;
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do [...]
Theme in Yellow by Carl Sandburg 6
I spot the hills
With yellow balls in autumn.
I light the prairie cornfields
Orange and tawny gold clusters
And I am called pumpkins.
On the last of October
When dusk is fallen
Children join hands
And circle round me
Singing ghost songs
And love to the harvest moon;
I am a jack-o’-lantern
With terrible teeth
And the children know
I am fooling.
That you are here. 2
“O Me! O Life!”
by Walt Whitman
O Me! O life!… of the questions of these recurring;
Of the endless trains of the faithless—of cities fill’d with the foolish;
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light—of the objects mean—of the struggle ever renew’d;
Of the poor [...]
Symbolism. 2
The past couple of weeks, the art teacher and I have been talking with our 6th graders about symbolism. First, symbolism in art: Baroque still life paintings. The art teacher and I talked about things that might symbolize ourselves. I chose a book, a cup of coffee, and a mixing bowl with a wooden spoon. [...]
Wage Peace by Judyth Hill 1
Wage peace with your breath.
Breathe in firemen and rubble,
breathe out whole buildings
and flocks of redwing blackbirds.
Breathe in terrorists and breathe out sleeping children
and freshly mown fields.
Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.
Breathe in the fallen
and breathe out lifelong friendships intact.
Wage peace with your listening:
hearing sirens, pray loud.
Remember your tools:
flower seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers.
Make [...]
Those who love each other shall become invincible. 2
When I ordered my National Poetry Month poster (which is now hanging in the hall, thankyouverymuch), I also received a copy of the 2007 poster featuring Walt Whitman. Or, as you Dead Poets Society fans might know him, Uncle Walt. I have no idea if they were just trying to get rid of [...]
Back to the beginning. 1
“You Begin” by Margaret Atwood
You begin this way:
this is your hand,
this is your eye,
that is a fish, blue and flat
on the paper, almost
the shape of an eye.
This is your mouth, this is an O
or a moon, whichever
you like. This is yellow.
Outside the window
is the rain, green
because it is summer, and beyond that
the trees and then [...]
By my Window have I for Scenery. 8
I know that it’s the 4th of July and people won’t really be around today, but I promised my mom I would get her some pictures of the final results of what she and I did yesterday.
Exactly six months later (because they were finished yesterday), we have some window treatments going on in here. [...]
The falling away of everything wrong. 3
I keep telling Mike that being at the pool is going to give me plenty of fodder to write my Great American Novel. There are so many things to observe at the pool, so much of humanity (and flesh) on display. It reminds me that there really is nothing new under the sun. [...]
So as not to be the martyred slaved of time. 2
Sorry for the radio silence. Last week was the Big Bad Testing at school, and there were things that happened, but none of them really germinated into anything that I could phrase in a meaningful way. It was just a long, hard week. On Wednesday, I didn’t even do yoga at church. [...]
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on. 2
“Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota” by James Wright
Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two [...]
Categories: Funny Stuff, General, Poetry