Hail Poetry!

A friend's mother died yesterday.

He asked me to help him find a poem to read at her funeral. I sent him a number of poems from which he can choose. When I had gone through the ones that I already knew I did a little google search and found the poem below.

It is very sad and very moving.


A Tulip in Winter
(for Janice Fitzpatrick)

Your out-of-season hospital tulip still
brightens above its parti-colored foil.

Lacquered in lamplight, its fleshy leafage
could, conceivably, survive this way

a hundred days. A hundred days (imagine
that) to paint out the wallpaper harlequins,

uncane your cane-back rocking chair,
to reclaim your green connection to a place

where flowers such as these are grown
to leave the living less impossibly alone.
( Sherod Santos )

Thanks for another thread in our tapestry of poetry, Jjorge. It is, indeed, very sad and moving. A tulip seem so singular and alone to me... and so frail. How could it last 100 days. If only... The last lines will surely give your friend comfort.

I immediately thought, upon reading your message, that your friend was wise to come to you for poetry help. You have a wonderful knack for finding great poetry and I'm glad your fame has spread beyond a2k. Poetry provides so effective a means of condolence -- it is immediate, emotional and a bridge to thoughts beyond the mundane. It was a sad task but a worthy one.

Piffka

You are very kind.

I feel very good to be able to help him in this way although I don't know how he'll read such a poem (or one of the others) without totally losing his composure. Such poems make me cry just reading them to myself.

A few months ago my friend saw a collection of ten poems I had put together for my son-in-law, and for his father, when his grandmother died. I got the idea to send them, in lieu of flowers, - a sort of 'bouquet of poems'.
He and his dad were very appreciative.

Anyway, I guess that's why my friend asked for help.

The ten poems were:

1. 'Softened by Time's Consumate Plush' (Emily Dickinson #1738)

2. 'Nobody Knows This Little Rose' (Emily Dickinson #35)

3. 'Question' (May Swenson)

4. 'Childhood is the Kingdom Where No One Dies' (Edna St.Vincent Millay)

5. 'For the Anniversary of My death' (W.S. Merwin)

6. 'Home is So Sad' (Philip Larkin)

7. 'Dirge Without Music' (Edna St.Vincent Millay)

8. 'The Layers' (Stanley Kunitz)

9. 'An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow' (Les Murray)

10. 'Death Be Not Proud' (John Donne)

Jjorge -- I know what you mean. Sometimes, tears can happen just reading these poems silently to one's self, especially if they have become meaningful and remind us of someone. Here's a line that might do it, we've most of us done this very thing:

To be grown up is to sit at the table with people who have died,


I am impressed with your wonderful idea of a bouquet of poems. Would you be willing to add the poems themselves or their links? I'll help and find the ESVM poems... I blush to say I didn't know the first one. Thanks for the introduction!


Childhood Is the Kingdom Where Nobody DiesDirge Without Music
I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,--but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the
love, --
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not
approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the
world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

Piffka

Just logged on briefly to check my email. I'd be happy to post all of the remaining poems.

I'll do it later this eve as I am off now to my friend's mother's wake.

These are fabulous. I am nearly overwhelmed by #9. Thanks, Jjorge. I love #3, as well. The Dickinson's are great and... well, they're all good, very, very good.

I hope you don't mind they ended up being printed out of order. I can see that there is a definite progression of thought and it is just a wonderful job you've done. I'm sure others reading this later will long appreciate it. Here are some of my first most-favorite lines:


"Only a Bee will miss it --
Only a Butterfly"
from Emily Dickinson

"Like the beam of a lightless star"
from W.S. Merwin

"Only the smallest children
and such as look out of Paradise come near him
and sit at his feet, with dogs and dusty pigeons."
from Les Murray

Piffka FYI

'An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow' was first posted on another thread (I think by dlowan). I had never heard of Les Murray who is an Aussie poet (I believe) and regretably he seems to be a virtual unknown in this country.

I too was stunned by his extraordinary poem and would like to read more of his work.

I've looked around a bit but can't find any books of his at Borders or Barnes and Noble. As a matter of fact I think I drew a blank from Amazon as well. I may have to find an Aussie book store that does business online.


By the way, I can't adequately tell you how much I enjoy sharing and discussing poems with you. I'm really delighted that we are friends.

Thanks Jjorge, you have quite a list of special ones
haven't you. I've never seen 9 and it IS very
moving, and I can feel what that kind of grief is
that makes people stand back
and come no where near you.
................
Live the life you've imagined.
As you simplify your life,
the laws of the universe will be simpler
Thoreau
..............
The Bear
The bear puts both arms around the tree above her
And draws it down as if it were a lover
And its choke cherries lips to kiss good-bye,
Then lets it snap back upright in the sky.
Her next step rocks a boulder on the wall
(She's making her cross-country in the fall).
Her great weight creaks the barbed-wire in its staples
As she flings over and off down through the maples,
Leaving on one wire moth a lock of hair.
Such is the uncaged progress of the bear.
The world has room to make a bear feel free;
The universe seems cramped to you and me.
Man acts more like the poor bear in a cage
That all day fights a nervous inward rage
His mood rejecting all his mind suggests.
He paces back and forth and never rests
The me-nail click and shuffle of his feet,
The telescope at one end of his beat
And at the other end the microscope,
Two instruments of nearly equal hope,
And in conjunction giving quite a spread.
Or if he rests from scientific tread,
'Tis only to sit back and sway his head
Through ninety odd degrees of arc, it seems,
Between two metaphysical extremes.
He sits back on his fundamental butt
With lifted snout and eyes (if any) shut,
(lie almost looks religious but he's not),
And back and forth he sways from cheek to cheek,
At one extreme agreeing with one Greek
At the other agreeing with another Greek
Which may be thought, but only so to speak.
A baggy figure, equally pathetic
When sedentary and when peripatetic.
R Frost

I'm a poet
and I don't know it
but my feet show it
They're longfellows.

Hi Algis -- My mother taught me that poem! She loved Longfellow's work!

She also had a poem, which I've only found in one anthology called Some Little Bug. I can't remember most of it, but it included the lines "Some little bug will get you some day, Some little bug will creep behind you some day" all about how we'll all fall ill to something someday. Good grief, I was terrified of bugs!

Babs -- Thanks for posting those. That one by Robert Frost is particularly fun to read aloud, I've noticed!

{{{{Jjorge}}}} Thanks! I am honored to call you my friend.

Have you been checking for Les Murray online? I'll do that.

Hey, there's lots (47,500 hits!) of Les Murray poetry online. Here's a short bio with a great picture of him:

Les Murray

Here's a quote: ... he celebrates in "The Quality of Sprawl!" - "Sprawl is doing your farming by aeroplane, roughly, /or driving a hitchhiker that extra hundred miles home."

Doesn't he sound like somebody you'd want to pick you up hitchhiking?

Babs

I liked the Thoreau quote. I am a believer in his injunction to 'simplify' and have been trying to implement it in my life.

Thanks too for the Frost poem. It's one that I had never looked closely at. I particularly like the lines:

". . . Such is the uncaged progress of the bear.
The world has room to make a bear feel free;
The universe seems cramped to you and me.
Man acts more like the poor bear in a cage
That all day fights a nervous inward rage
His mood rejecting all his mind suggests.
He paces back and forth and never rests . . ."



Hi Algis!
Better keep your longfellows warm up there in Montreal.




Piffka
Well, I guess I didn't do such a good search did I?
Thanks a lot for the link and info. on Murray. He sounds very interesting and well worht reading. Isn't it fascinating that a poet of his stature can be virtually unknown in this country!

I am definitely going to get my hands on one of his books, probably 'Learning Human'.

Piffka et al

You probably know that April is 'Poetry Month'.
A couple of years ago I started receiving daily poems during April from Knopf.
Below is today's poem. I've left the links and 'subscribe' information intact in case you may wish to use them.
-jjorge


*************************************************
An April poem from a sonnet sequence about the changing seasons included in George Bradley's most recent collection, SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED:




Millrace

Each April's different: this one saw a spate
Of rain increase the run-off from the snow
To make the village millpond overflow
Well-groomed banks and leap an unused gate
Into the race, which had not felt the flood
In fifty years. That's when the mill and wheel,
Back then though insufficiently genteel,
Were leveled and the stream shut up for good,
Or so it seemed. But flood will out, commotion
Run its course. I watched the water boil
Through undergrowth, sluicing astonished soil
Off toward the deep disturbance of our ocean,
And so subside and next day leave no trace
But mud and some erosion in the race.

*************************************************

Excerpted from Some Assembly Required by George Bradley. Copyright© 2001 by George Bradley. Excerpted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

About SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED:
http://info.randomhouse.com/cgi-bin21/DM/y/eKpc0DXKX10Wa0JO20Am

A conversation with George Bradley:
http://info.randomhouse.com/cgi-bin21/DM/y/eKpc0DXKX10Wa0JO30An

Bradley's essay about his working methods:
http://info.randomhouse.com/cgi-bin21/DM/y/eKpc0DXKX10Wa0JO40Ao



To subscribe, forward this message to [[email protected]]. E-mail comments or questions to [email protected]

I think poetry is the culminated component of human culture.

Thanks Jjorge, I think I'll try to get on the mailing list!

Did you know that we've got a Poems of April topic going? This one would have been perfect for that, even mentions "April."

I don't know much about millraces, but the description makes it pretty easy to understand. I love the line "But flood will out, commotion runs its course."

I had not heard of Mary Oliver before today when I bought an anthology and 'met' her for the first time. This lovely poem has me wanting to read more:


Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

-- Mary Oliver

For more on Mary Oliver go to:
http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?45442B7C000C040300

Wow. That is terrific! Thanks, Jjorge for posting this. That "soft animal body" is a great concept, so true. Sorry I haven't been posting for a while... just said goodbye to our own Ossobuco who was visiting.

I did a little bit of searching around about Mary Oliver (she won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry!) and found this poem which seems appropriate because it is early morning here. Is it your nature to be happy?


Morning Poem by Mary Oliver

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches ---
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead ---
if it's all you can do
to keep on trudging ---

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted ---

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.


from Dream Work (1986)