National Poetry Day

[Barmaid]

Apparently today is National Poetry Day.  

I'm not massively into poetry but have loved "The Highwayman" by Alfred Noye since I was a child.  I won't post it here because it does go one quite a bit, but was the inspiration for Fleetwood Mac's video to "Everywhere".

Do you have a favourite poem?

[ladybirder]

I remember loving this one as well.  

Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night by DylanThomas.

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieve it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

 

 

[jourdain2]

Too many to chose just one!  A particular fondness for 'Futility' (Wilfrid Owen)  and 'The Night Mail (Auden was it?) which I can still recite....  just a bit different. 

I just did my 1st ever performance reading my own poems at a Lit. Festival - shaking with nerves!  

 

[Canary42]

Ultra-conventional I know, but I love this one from Wordsworth, and I could recire it off at one time (no longer, sadly).

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

 

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

 

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

 

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

[jourdain2]

Canary, Daffodils was 'done to death' when I was a kid - but when I re-read it many, many years later (using it as an inspiration for a class art project on the subject of 'Daffodils') I rediscovered it as a lovely poem.  The last verse is integral to understanding the whole.

[ladybirder]

I remember it all Canary, as I read down your last post.  Thank you.

[Tilly2]

I've put this on AB before.

I just love it.

 

The Peace of Wild Things

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.

Wendell Berry

from The Peace of Wild Things And Other Poems (Penguin, 2018)

[Canary42]

////The last verse is integral to understanding the whole.////

Yes, and I just love "They flash upon that inward eye which is the bliss of solitude"  Wow!

[Barmaid]

There are lots of fantastic answers here, but LB gets BA because it reminded me of a recent conversation I had with my mother and we both laughed at it (despite it being a horrid situation at the time).

[Khandro]

When the Barocco.

came over the hill with its cerulean vaults and golden exhortations
Otto in the tower took leave of his fleisch,
attending to the rumble in the near beyond.

Up the staircase of the Dolomites
and along the length of the turquoise river,
streaming in channels of differing hue,
it bounded like a beach ball across the great passes,

the summer pastures,
flattening all that came before it,
down the slopes,
through woodland and paddock,

coming to rest
but a furlong from the thorned hedge
of Otto and his forbears’ village,
and there, sweating dew,

matted with pine needles, grape mash,
insects, rodents, all manner of grasses,
like a vast, lopsided globe,
opalescent, trembling,

a planet unto itself,
very like a planet, there it sat,
a colossus, a visitation,
blocking what remained of the afternoon light

and emitting a kind of tuneful bleating,
two parts piccolo, one, perhaps, trombone.
A most remarkable phenomenon to behold.
The villagers trembled from behind mud walls.

Otto thence convened the Elders.
The alphorn was taken up and blown,
first a necklace of quarter notes, then one long,
and from the forests all around,

like fleas off a hound,
came the Woodwoses from their rustic nests,
a swarm of hairy Calibans,
waving pointed sticks,

chisels, flints, hatchets and cudgels,
and fell upon it,
poking and flailing. You’d have thought
it was just a big piñata.

While from inside came an ominous strange music:
first, a silvery harmonic fuzz,
then some spectral pedal tones
that suggested the tolling of bells,

then an agitated chromaticism, then . . .
then . . . o, dear, then . . . . . .
Like lava from deep in a seething volcano
out burst a geyser of foam,

a foam of stucco and plaster,
covering butcher-yard and meadow, orchard and cow path,
pigs at their acorns,
hares, bears and Hans,

dozing behind the refectory,
churrigueresque, like whipped cream,
suddenly dripping off half-timbered houses,
the town hall and chapel,

their corpses stacked high like cordwood
dead Styrians and Savoyards,
and that doyen among rivers, the Enns,
for no good reason o’erflowing its banks,

and Otto, Otto the pious, spellbound:
ovals, porticos, diagonals, whorls,
staircases, credenzas, putti galore.
Wine ran like squirrels in the forest.

And down from the sky above
fell ribands of damask, of silk, then a fine rain,
more a mist,
coloured purple in patches, or ochre, indigo or gold,

inlaying plain gardens with mother-of-pearl.
Pageants sprouted like mushrooms.
Trompe l’oeil windows opened room upon room,
and in the trees passacaglias

of birdsong. Not a birch
nor gable left unfestooned, the valley
awash in high colour
and upon itself enfolding, trebly enfolding,

until what had been there, there,
and there, earthbound, fixed in repose,
all in now concert reaching heavenward
moved.

August Kleinzahler

[Canary42]

When it comes to Shakespeare, one of my favourites is Romeo with :-

But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?

It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.

Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,

Who is already sick and pale with grief,

.....

See how she leans her cheek upon her hand!

O, that I were a glove upon that hand,

That I might touch that cheek!

[ladybirder]

Wow BM, thank you so much for BA.  That was so unexpected.

[Barmaid]

LB - my pleasure.  You never know whether something you say might touch someone in whatever way.  Your post did - so thank you.

[Atheist]

jourdain. I hope you did well with your poem.

[david small]

Thomas Hood.
With fingers weary and worn,    With eyelids heavy and red, A woman sat in unwomanly rags,    Plying her needle and thread—       Stitch! stitch! stitch! In poverty, hunger, and dirt,    And still with a voice of dolorous pitch She sang the “Song of the Shirt.”    “Work! work! work! While the cock is crowing aloof!    And work—work—work, Till the stars shine through the roof! It’s O! to be a slave    Along with the barbarous Turk, Where woman has never a soul to save,    If this is Christian work!    “Work—work—work, Till the brain begins to swim;    Work—work—work, Till the eyes are heavy and dim! Seam, and gusset, and band,    Band, and gusset, and seam, Till over the buttons I fall asleep,    And sew them on in a dream!    “O, men, with sisters dear!    O, men, with mothers and wives! It is not linen you’re wearing out,    But human creatures’ lives!       Stitch—stitch—stitch,    In poverty, hunger and dirt, Sewing at once, with a double thread,    A Shroud as well as a Shirt.    “But why do I talk of death?    That phantom of grisly bone, I hardly fear his terrible shape,    It seems so like my own— It seems so like my own,    Because of the fasts I keep; Oh, God! that bread should be so dear.    And flesh and blood so cheap!    “Work—work—work!    My labour never flags; And what are its wages? A bed of straw,    A crust of bread—and rags. That shattered roof—this naked floor—    A table—a broken chair— And a wall so blank, my shadow I thank    For sometimes falling there!    “Work—work—work!    From weary chime to chime, Work—work—work,    As prisoners work for crime! Band, and gusset, and seam,    Seam, and gusset, and band, Till the heart is sick, and the brain benumbed,    As well as the weary hand.    “Work—work—work, In the dull December light,    And work—work—work, When the weather is warm and bright— While underneath the eaves    The brooding swallows cling As if to show me their sunny backs    And twit me with the spring.    “O! but to breathe the breath Of the cowslip and primrose sweet—    With the sky above my head, And the grass beneath my feet; For only one short hour    To feel as I used to feel, Before I knew the woes of want    And the walk that costs a meal!    “O! but for one short hour!    A respite however brief! No blessed leisure for Love or hope,    But only time for grief! A little weeping would ease my heart,    But in their briny bed My tears must stop, for every drop    Hinders needle and thread!” With fingers weary and worn,    With eyelids heavy and red, A woman sat in unwomanly rags,    Plying her needle and thread—       Stitch! stitch! stitch!    In poverty, hunger, and dirt, And still with a voice of dolorous pitch,— Would that its tone could reach the Rich!—    She sang this “Song of the Shirt!”

[elliemay1]

I have always loved The Daffodils too. It's my favourite spring flower and I can so easily visualise Wordsworth's scene. I particularly love the last verse, 'When oft upon my couch I lie ...'

[douglas9401]

More of a limericks man meself, I remember Cargoes from school though.

[jourdain2]

Thank you Atheist. It seemed to go well - I really was shaking with nerves - audience of 50 all poets/associates or arts-council bods. One of mine is in the 2024 anthology - and merited a reference in the editorial.  Everyone was applauded, of course - but I followed a chap who apologised for missing last year because he had been at the (somewhere posh down south's) festival - but that his boods were on sale on a table at the back!   :)  Despite all that, the applause seemed warm and I had several positive comments.  Thank you for asking. x

[jourdain2]

GRRRRRRRR!!  'Books'  (I refuse to comment on his 'boods').

[Matakari]

One of my favourites is the scene in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night where Orsino, Duke of Illyria, speaks of music and his passion for Olivia.

ORSINO 
 If music be the food of love, play on.
 Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
 The appetite may sicken and so die.
 That strain again! It had a dying fall.
 O, it came o’er my ear like the sweet sound
 That breathes upon a bank of violets,
 Stealing and giving odor. Enough; no more.
 ’Tis not so sweet now as it was before.
 O spirit of love, how quick and fresh art thou,
 That, notwithstanding thy capacity
 Receiveth as the sea, naught enters there,
 Of what validity and pitch soe’er,
 But falls into abatement and low price
 Even in a minute. So full of shapes is fancy
 That it alone is high fantastical.

 

[jourdain2]

david small - if you are a performer going the rounds in E. Yorkshire - then I know you!

The Song of the Shirt - a friend is reviving these 'story poems' and thisis one of his favourites.  He plays guitar as well as singing and reciting. These narrative poems were so influential and gave so much insight into lives.