Love Calls Us to the Things of This World
The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,
And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul
Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple
As false dawn.
Outside the open window
The morning air is all awash with angels.
Some are in bed-sheets, some are in blouses,
Some are in smocks: but truly there they are.
Now they are rising together in calm swells
Of halcyon feeling, filling whatever they wear
With the deep joy of their impersonal breathing;
Now they are flying in place, conveying
The terrible speed of their omnipresence, moving
And staying like white water; and now of a sudden
They swoon down into so rapt a quiet
That nobody seems to be there.
The soul shrinks
From all that it is about to remember,
From the punctual rape of every blessed day,
And cries.
"Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry,
Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam
And clear dances done in the sight of heaven."
Yet, as the sun acknowledges
With a warm look the world's hunks and colors,
The soul descends once more in bitter love
To accept the waking body, saying now
In a changed voice as the man yawns and rises,
"Brung them down from their ruddy gallows;
Let there be clean linen for the backs of thieves;
Let lovers go fresh and sweet to be undone,
And the heaviest nuns walk in a pure floating
Of dark habits,
keeping their difficult balance."
- Richard Wilbur
Hey everybody! The poem of the week is coming in at 1:30 in the morning my time, because I am sick of doing homework and I am feeling a little down, so it's poem time! Doing this one has lifted my spirits considerably, I must say. Some things to think about with this poem: the diction is very reminiscent of laundry, especially throughout the first half of the poem; the presence of angels all around us, listening and unseen by the body (though worn by it); hope starting every morning; how love brings the soul into the body every morning....I happen to think that the moments waking up on a soft day are some of the most beautiful, comfortable ones I can think of. So hopefully tomorrow morning or even any morning will be like that in the near future - not cold light or cloud-light but buttery light. Okay - good night! Or good morning because that's when all of you sensible people will be getting this poem!
Sarah
Monday, January 31, 2005
Monday, January 24, 2005
Poem of the Week 1/24/2005: Caedmon
Caedmon
All others talked as if
talk were a dance.
Clodhopper I, with clumsy feet
would break the gliding ring.
Early I learned to
hunch myself
close by the door:
then when the talk began
I'd wipe my
mouth and wend
unnoticed back to the barn
to be with the warm beasts,
dumb among body sounds
of the simple ones.
I'd see by a twist
of lit rush the motes
of gold moving
from shadow to shadow
slow in the wake
of deep untroubled sighs.
The cows
munched or stirred or were still. I
was at home and lonely,
both in good measure. Until
the sudden angel affrighted me -- light effacing
my feeble beam,
a forest of torches, feathers of flame, sparks upflying:
but the cows as before
were calm, and nothing was burning,
nothing but I, as that hand of fire
touched my lips and scorched my tongue
and pulled my voice
into the ring of the dance.
Denise Levertov
hello Everybody! Okay, to start, I have to say that this is one of my favorite poems. As for some background - Caedmon was the first English pastoral poet. My Norton Anthology of Poetry tells me that "Caedmon, an illiterate herdsman...miraculously recieved the gift of religious song.... At feasts where the farmhands took turns singing and playing the harp, Caedmon would withdraw to his bed in the stable whenever the harp was passed his way. One night a man appeared to him in a dream and commanded, 'Caedmon, sing me something.' When Caedmon protested that he didn't know how to sing, the man insisted and told him to sing about the Creation. At this, Caedmon immediately began to sing verses in praise of God the Creator, which he had never heard before [sic]." So that's his story of poetic inspiration.
It's amazing how many stories of poetic beginning I have run into since coming to college; it's not entirely surprising, considering how many poets will write about the birth of poetry, and the development of self within that inspiration. Today in Brit Lit we read Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh, a kunstlerroman, or novel of artistic development. Wordsworth's The Prelude addresses this idea of artistic development, as does Caedmon, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and a slew of other works. It's interesting to look at beginnings, and causality, I guess. It is interesting to me; the idea of interdependency of variables (lifted from Gaddis' The Landscape of History) is crucial in literature - it's one of my favorite things about it, actually: the fact that everything relates to almost anything else, and that a close reading of the text will provide so many different interpretations. And that those contrasting views aren't right or wrong. They simply (or complexly, as it were) are, all at the same time. I am rambling, but it's just because I am excited and invigorated - I just had Brit Lit - my best class by far. So overall I chose this poem (a) because I really like it and (b) because it celebrates poetic expression, beginnings, inspiration, thought and beauty.
Sarah
All others talked as if
talk were a dance.
Clodhopper I, with clumsy feet
would break the gliding ring.
Early I learned to
hunch myself
close by the door:
then when the talk began
I'd wipe my
mouth and wend
unnoticed back to the barn
to be with the warm beasts,
dumb among body sounds
of the simple ones.
I'd see by a twist
of lit rush the motes
of gold moving
from shadow to shadow
slow in the wake
of deep untroubled sighs.
The cows
munched or stirred or were still. I
was at home and lonely,
both in good measure. Until
the sudden angel affrighted me -- light effacing
my feeble beam,
a forest of torches, feathers of flame, sparks upflying:
but the cows as before
were calm, and nothing was burning,
nothing but I, as that hand of fire
touched my lips and scorched my tongue
and pulled my voice
into the ring of the dance.
Denise Levertov
hello Everybody! Okay, to start, I have to say that this is one of my favorite poems. As for some background - Caedmon was the first English pastoral poet. My Norton Anthology of Poetry tells me that "Caedmon, an illiterate herdsman...miraculously recieved the gift of religious song.... At feasts where the farmhands took turns singing and playing the harp, Caedmon would withdraw to his bed in the stable whenever the harp was passed his way. One night a man appeared to him in a dream and commanded, 'Caedmon, sing me something.' When Caedmon protested that he didn't know how to sing, the man insisted and told him to sing about the Creation. At this, Caedmon immediately began to sing verses in praise of God the Creator, which he had never heard before [sic]." So that's his story of poetic inspiration.
It's amazing how many stories of poetic beginning I have run into since coming to college; it's not entirely surprising, considering how many poets will write about the birth of poetry, and the development of self within that inspiration. Today in Brit Lit we read Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh, a kunstlerroman, or novel of artistic development. Wordsworth's The Prelude addresses this idea of artistic development, as does Caedmon, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and a slew of other works. It's interesting to look at beginnings, and causality, I guess. It is interesting to me; the idea of interdependency of variables (lifted from Gaddis' The Landscape of History) is crucial in literature - it's one of my favorite things about it, actually: the fact that everything relates to almost anything else, and that a close reading of the text will provide so many different interpretations. And that those contrasting views aren't right or wrong. They simply (or complexly, as it were) are, all at the same time. I am rambling, but it's just because I am excited and invigorated - I just had Brit Lit - my best class by far. So overall I chose this poem (a) because I really like it and (b) because it celebrates poetic expression, beginnings, inspiration, thought and beauty.
Sarah
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
CHANGE in Poem of the Week!!!
A Blessing
Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more, they begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.
James Wright
I changed this poem of the week after seeing a Martin Luther King Jr. gospel sermon discussing positive thinking, love, and what you can do in the world. So I changed the PotW into something that would give a positive message to the world. If anyone has my original comments on this, I would greatly appreciate your sending them to me! Thank you.
Sarah
Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more, they begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.
James Wright
I changed this poem of the week after seeing a Martin Luther King Jr. gospel sermon discussing positive thinking, love, and what you can do in the world. So I changed the PotW into something that would give a positive message to the world. If anyone has my original comments on this, I would greatly appreciate your sending them to me! Thank you.
Sarah
Monday, January 17, 2005
Poem of the Week 1/17/2005: The Second Coming; A Blessing
The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
William Butler Yeats
Hello everybody! Since it is a Monday, technically (about 1:15 am in WA), I thought that I would send out the Poem of the Week! And let you all know that I am back at college safe, sound, and happy as a clam. In the wet wet air. I felt that I couldn't wait until tomorrow to send out the poem, because we just finished a VERY long game of Risk, and I needed something poetic to calm my warring soul. Or some BS like that. Mostly I didn't feel like waiting for tomorrow, because sending the POW out is one of my favorite activities, for some reason. I thought this poem especially appropriate this week in light of Mr Bush's coming second inaguration. I had been thinking of this one for this week for quite some time, and am pleased to finally be able to send it out. I apologise if this offends anybody's political beliefs. If you want to ignore this email or send me a nasty (yet intelligently constructed/thought out) response, I would be more than willing to read it. Not like the poem of the week is some national publication that could actually affect anything. Like I said, I mostly do this to amuse myself and then I hope that others will take a little enjoyment from it. Oh yeah and I think this poem is one of Yeats' more major works, and good to at least read. If nothing else, the gutteral sounds and somewhat chafing imagery could carry it as one of my favorites. So, again, sorry, and next week's, I promise, will be back on the usual politic-free track.
Sarah
************ CHANGE IN POEM OF THE WEEK!!!
A Blessing
Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more, they begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.
James Wright
I changed this poem of the week after seeing a Martin Luther King Jr. gospel sermon discussing positive thinking, love, and what you can do in the world. So I changed the PotW into something that would give a positive message to the world. If anyone has my original comments on this, I would greatly appreciate your sending them to me! Thank you.
Sarah
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
William Butler Yeats
Hello everybody! Since it is a Monday, technically (about 1:15 am in WA), I thought that I would send out the Poem of the Week! And let you all know that I am back at college safe, sound, and happy as a clam. In the wet wet air. I felt that I couldn't wait until tomorrow to send out the poem, because we just finished a VERY long game of Risk, and I needed something poetic to calm my warring soul. Or some BS like that. Mostly I didn't feel like waiting for tomorrow, because sending the POW out is one of my favorite activities, for some reason. I thought this poem especially appropriate this week in light of Mr Bush's coming second inaguration. I had been thinking of this one for this week for quite some time, and am pleased to finally be able to send it out. I apologise if this offends anybody's political beliefs. If you want to ignore this email or send me a nasty (yet intelligently constructed/thought out) response, I would be more than willing to read it. Not like the poem of the week is some national publication that could actually affect anything. Like I said, I mostly do this to amuse myself and then I hope that others will take a little enjoyment from it. Oh yeah and I think this poem is one of Yeats' more major works, and good to at least read. If nothing else, the gutteral sounds and somewhat chafing imagery could carry it as one of my favorites. So, again, sorry, and next week's, I promise, will be back on the usual politic-free track.
Sarah
************ CHANGE IN POEM OF THE WEEK!!!
A Blessing
Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more, they begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.
James Wright
I changed this poem of the week after seeing a Martin Luther King Jr. gospel sermon discussing positive thinking, love, and what you can do in the world. So I changed the PotW into something that would give a positive message to the world. If anyone has my original comments on this, I would greatly appreciate your sending them to me! Thank you.
Sarah
Monday, January 10, 2005
Poem of the Week 1/10/2005: Old Bachelor Brother
Old Bachelor Brother
Here from his prominent but thankfully
uncentral position at the head of the church --
a flanking member of the groom's large party --
he stands and waits to watch the women march
up the wide aisle, just the way they did
at last night's long and leaden-joked rehearsal.
Only this time, it's all changed. There's now a crowd,
of course, and walls of lit stained glass, and Purcell
ringing from the rented organist,
and yet the major difference, the one
that hits his throat as a sort of smoky thirst,
is how, so far away, the church's main
doors are flung back, uncovering a square
of sun that streams into the narthex, so that
the women who materialize there
do so in blinding silhouette,
and these are not the women he has helloed
and kissed, and who have bored, ignored, or teased him,
but girls -- whose high, garlanded hair goes haloed
by the noon-light . . . The years have dropped from them.
One by one they're bodied forth, edged with flame,
as new as flame, destined to part the sea
of faces on each side, and approaching him
in all their passionate anonymity.
Brad Leithauser [1990]
Well, I chose this poem because I was at my cousin's wedding this weekend, so I have been thinking about weddings and marriage a lot. Going to the wedding helped me renew my faith in the institution of marriage just a little bit. I guess I have seen so many endings of marriages that I forget the promise a beginning holds, and that two people actually love each other enough to want to live their whole lives together and get old and die together. To me, that desire redeems marriage somewhat; the mere fact that they will promise to do that just makes me feel better or something. About marriage. Because so many of them break up or are sour or dead, and gay people can't even get married at all. At any rate, I think the poem's wedding helps the bachelor brother find hope again, too. Or freshness or renewal. So - just some things to think about. Good night!
Sarah
Here from his prominent but thankfully
uncentral position at the head of the church --
a flanking member of the groom's large party --
he stands and waits to watch the women march
up the wide aisle, just the way they did
at last night's long and leaden-joked rehearsal.
Only this time, it's all changed. There's now a crowd,
of course, and walls of lit stained glass, and Purcell
ringing from the rented organist,
and yet the major difference, the one
that hits his throat as a sort of smoky thirst,
is how, so far away, the church's main
doors are flung back, uncovering a square
of sun that streams into the narthex, so that
the women who materialize there
do so in blinding silhouette,
and these are not the women he has helloed
and kissed, and who have bored, ignored, or teased him,
but girls -- whose high, garlanded hair goes haloed
by the noon-light . . . The years have dropped from them.
One by one they're bodied forth, edged with flame,
as new as flame, destined to part the sea
of faces on each side, and approaching him
in all their passionate anonymity.
Brad Leithauser [1990]
Well, I chose this poem because I was at my cousin's wedding this weekend, so I have been thinking about weddings and marriage a lot. Going to the wedding helped me renew my faith in the institution of marriage just a little bit. I guess I have seen so many endings of marriages that I forget the promise a beginning holds, and that two people actually love each other enough to want to live their whole lives together and get old and die together. To me, that desire redeems marriage somewhat; the mere fact that they will promise to do that just makes me feel better or something. About marriage. Because so many of them break up or are sour or dead, and gay people can't even get married at all. At any rate, I think the poem's wedding helps the bachelor brother find hope again, too. Or freshness or renewal. So - just some things to think about. Good night!
Sarah
Monday, January 03, 2005
Poem of the Week 1/3/2005: The Dark Forest
The Dark Forest
Dark is the forest and deep, and overhead
Hang stars like seeds of light
In vain, though not since they were sown was bred
Anything more bright.
And evermore mighty multitudes ride
About, nor enter in;
Of the other multitudes that dwell inside
Never yet was one seen.
The forest foxglove is purple, the marguerite
Outside is gold and white,
Nor can those that pluck either blossom greet
The others, day or night.
Edward Thomas
Hello! I have been thinking about putting this poem up for a while now, so here it is! I don't really have
anything to say about it - I am not sure how deeply I understand it, but sometimes you don't have to be
so cerebral about things; sometimes they can just wash over you. I hope that this poem can do that or
you, and I hope that you enjoy it!
Sarah
Dark is the forest and deep, and overhead
Hang stars like seeds of light
In vain, though not since they were sown was bred
Anything more bright.
And evermore mighty multitudes ride
About, nor enter in;
Of the other multitudes that dwell inside
Never yet was one seen.
The forest foxglove is purple, the marguerite
Outside is gold and white,
Nor can those that pluck either blossom greet
The others, day or night.
Edward Thomas
Hello! I have been thinking about putting this poem up for a while now, so here it is! I don't really have
anything to say about it - I am not sure how deeply I understand it, but sometimes you don't have to be
so cerebral about things; sometimes they can just wash over you. I hope that this poem can do that or
you, and I hope that you enjoy it!
Sarah
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