Hail Poetry!

New Haven
Come on now, cough up an Arabic poem!

D'Artagnan
Causey is interesting. I like Tom Bone.

bree
What a wonderful event. You must have been on cloud nine.

Piffka
Although the Divine Miss Em is my favorite poet, Bishop's 'One Art' is my favorite poem. BTW as long as you're into browsing past festivals take a look at this one that I stumbled across the other day:
http://www.wpi.edu/News/Conf/Bishop/description.html

I watched most of an old special about Robert Frost on a local educational channel last night. It was excellent. Most of us (me included) think of him, if at all, as a crotchety old guy who wrote something about "good fences making good neighbors" and "the road not taken." Of course, there was a lot more to him than that. In this sense he's like Ralph Waldo Emerson, who comes down to us as the author of such gems as "hitch your wagon to a star." The kind of thing one might find on an inspirational greeting card or plaque for the office.

Well, I guess if we even know that much, these dead poets are better remembered than most...

Jjorge -- the divine Ms. M and a different connotation! I apparently listen to written words in my head, because I 'mediately thought you meant EStVM! Ahhh, a gasp of pleasure... then. OH. I do like Emily Dickinson but she doesn't have as much emotion, to me, as the other M.

Is it truly your favorite poem? ...of all times? I will revisit it. I do not have time this day for so much as I'd like, but I will also look at the link (Right now, to do that, I have to "trick" my computer, which is oh so likely to be a trickster itself and freeze up, darn it.)

I forget if there is a LINKS section in Poetry. If not, we should surely put these in there.

MellowG -- Ahhh, but your reader knows that a snowflake must be cold. Did you know that in the Inuit language there are over 30 names for snow? I'm assuming throughout that you are talking of a big flakey flake, but I don't know. You don't want your readers to make assumptions if you're guiding them to a specific (your own) view.

The Future is (usually) within the Probabilities of the Possibilities.

That is how I learned to look at Tactics and Strategies. This can be applied to writing a poem that resonates for others. It is also a craft... a Divine Craft. Pedantic prose, the kind I learned as a technical writer, doesn't have so fine a sieve ... which is why I can write so darn many characters. LOL

Piffka

'The Divine Miss M.' is a name that's been given to Bette Midler, the funny, bawdy, singer and actress. She reportedly got her start singing in gay bath houses*

Later, in her concerts Bette was famous for her good-naturedly suggestive, and often lewd, remarks and lyrics.

I have always enjoyed Bette Midler (on the radio and movies that is, not in gay bath houses!) and you know of course that I am an acolyte of Emily Dickinson.

So, in a silly sort of way it tickles me to refer to the serious reclusive poet as 'The Divine Miss Em' borrowing the nickname of the in-your-face Bette Midler.

Maybe someday a very serious graduate student in women's studies will write a thesis on their commonalities! LOL







*accompanied I believe, by Barry Manilow on the piano -in those days he was not yet a singer





*

I know Bette Midler -- one of my favorites! She has the best rollie eyes looks. Hmmm, maybe it was because EStVM can be bawdy herself that I got it all confused. A nice confusion, I don't mind!

I didn't know about Barry Manilow or the bathhouses. Are they really such things?

Piffka

I guess when you really push me to the wall I have to acknowledge THREE 'most favorite poems'.

On any given day my very favorite, number one, pre-eminent poem could be any of the three.
But on most days it's Bishop's 'One Art'.

The other two are:

'Shelter' by Mark Doty, and 'In Memory of W.B. Yeats' by Auden

It's interesting that none of the three are by ED. However, of my one hundred favorite poems probably thirty or more are by Dickinson. No one else comes close although ESVM is probably second followed by R Frost.

I don't know about bath houses either, except what I read.
I gather that they were the gay equivalent of the saloons of the old west ie. places for drinking socializing and casual sex. I think they have mostly gone out of business because of the AIDS epidemic.

I can say definitely that there is such a thing as Barry Manilow.

Do you keep a list?

<note to self: must keep list of favorite poems... v. good idea>

Will you post them? I mean, the two other favorites but your list too, if you have one. Or perhaps that ought to be a new topic.

I've been meaning to look up a poem by Yeats called Mad Jane, or that has Mad Jane in it. She is the character who was the origin of Millay's poem that starts "Who should I be but a prophet and a liar?"

Piffka

I don't keep a list as such.

What I have done is collect in a three ring binder, copies of my favorites. Sort of my own little personal 'anthology'.

As I keep reading and discover more and more poems that I love it is difficult to keep it up. For example I am reading a lot of poetry by Irish poets nowadays and have yet to add any to my little collection although I will eventually add a number of them.

Similarly, I have not yet added the ESVM poems that I especially like. ...so you see I am WAY behind on my project.

Maybe an interesting and maneageable thing to do for an A2K thread would be a topic such as:

'List Twenty of Your Favorite Poems'

They wouldn't need to be ranked.
I don't rank my favorites except for the three aforementioned ones.

D'artagnan

Sounds like an interesting program on Frost. I wish I had seen it.
Here's a Frost poem that is not as well known as many, but which I like a lot:


'Happiness Makes Up In Height What It Lacks In Length'


O stormy, stormy world,
The days you were not swirled
Around with mist and cloud,
Or wrapped as in a shroud,
And the sun's brilliant ball
Was not in part or all
Obscured from mortal view-
Were days so very few
I can but wonder whence
I get the lasting sense
Of so much warmth and light.
If my mistrust is right
It may be altogether
From one day's perfect weather,
When starting clear at dawn
The day swept clearly on
To finish clear at eve.
I verily believe
My fair impression may
Be all from that one day
No shadow crossed but ours
As through its blazing flowers
We went from house to wood
For change of solitude.
(Robert Frost)

Gee. I didn't know Robert Frost was from the Pacific Northwest!

Just kidding, that is a nice poem, and one I don't remember seeing in a book I have that purports to be his anthology. Must look again.

Jjorge - I think that your idea of a looseleaf notebook of poems is an excellent idea. I was unhappy with the copying of poems that I had done, probably because I'd try to put two poems or more on a page. Then I started getting books, but YIKES it is expensive to get the original EStVM's and I hate the paperback anthology that they sell at Barnes & Noble. It has some of the worst typesetting I've seen. I do like a nicely printed copy but know I could do that myself, given enough time. It would be a labor of love.

Robert Frost
That's a good poem, jjorge, thanks.

There's one he read on the film about walking at night. It was touching, because he wrote it after his wife died. If I can find it, I'll post it here...

I found it:

ACQUAINTED WITH THE NIGHT

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain -- and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
O luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

Piffka, since you were wondering a little about ago about whether there's a "Links" thread in Poetry, you might be interested to know that there is one. It's a little hard to find (or maybe it's just that I'm still not finding it very easy to navigate around A2K): it's called "Helpful Links", and it's currently a little more than halfway down the list of threads on the first page of the Poetry forum. jespah and I are the only people who have posted on it so far, so it would be great if you added some of your links, and made it look a little less like an orphan thread.

D'artagnan
Ácquainted with The Night' has long been one of my favorites Frost poems. I didn't know about it's connection to the death of Frost's wife though. That's not merely interesting, it adds to my enjoyment of the poem to know it. Thanks

D'artagnan

P.S.

Your information (about the connection to Frost's wife's death)
makes me see this line in a whole new light:

'...But not to call me back or say good-bye;'

Bree -- I can do better than that! I can ask that it become a featured topic (which all the links topics in each forum are supposed to be) and then it will always be up at the top where we can find it!

D'A and Jjorge -- That is a nice poem... I particularly liked the line "Dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain." I know just how that feels.

D'A -- I was hoping you'd tell me what you thought Tom Bones secret was...?!?

Piffka and jjorge--Yes, knowing that the poem followed his wife's death certainly does lend it poignancy. Reminds me of one Longfellow wrote many years after his wife's death, especially the way both poets note that time's passage means little to how they feel about the loss.

Piffka--Re Tom Bone. I'm not sure there's an easy answer to what his great secret is. He's dead, so he presumably is privy to things we mortals don't know. On the other hand, Causley also wrote some religious poetry, so the secret could have a spiritual dimension...

THE CROSS OF SNOW
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

In the long, sleepless watches of the night,
A gentle face -- the face of one long dead --
Looks at me from the wall, where round its head
The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light.
Here in this room she died; and soul more white
Never through martyrdom of fire was led
To its repose; nor can in books be read
The legend of a life more benedight.
There is a mountain in the distant West
That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines
Displays a cross of snow upon its side.
Such is the cross I wear upon my breast
These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes
And seasons, changeless since the day she died.

Excellent, excellent poem. My mother used to read Longfellow to me as a child to put me to sleep... By the Shores of Gitchee Gumee! I loved listening to the rhythms and I adore the word benignity which is or used to be part of the Roman Catholic catechism. But "benedight" is a new word for me so I looked it up in my big dictionary and it wasn't there! Then I went to Google and found this from a website: Through my extensive internet search I have concluded the word "benedight" has only one other sighted appearance. In his piece "Christmas Eve," Washington Irving uses the word "Benedight" as a name for a fictitious saint who casts evil out of a house the night before Christmas. Since Irving was Longfellow's idol, he most likely learned of the fabricated word when reading his role model's poetry. The blessed and sacred meaning of Irving's expression allows Longfellow to once again emphasize Frances's purity and holiness.

Wow, and I really like Washington Irving, too. I didn't know about that connection. I like Irving so much that I went to his gravesite this past Halloween. There really is a spooky sleepy hollow just below the graveyard. We did not go there!!! His Spanish writings are v. interesting. I'd like to see this story about a Christmas saint, too.

D'A - Thanks so much for finding and posting the poem. Just saying "the long and sleepless watches of the night" tells you of his pain.