Friday, April 09, 2010

Friday 55 & Da Count-Poetry Month

FRIDAY 55

It would have been brilliant really.
You would have read the words and been so touched
the lump would have caught in your throat.
I would have had the satisfaction
of making you breathless
with my eloquence.
If only I'd had a paper and pen
to retain inspiration
before it evaporated
in the sun.





DA COUNT

I sincerely hope you realize the 55 above is very firmly tongue in cheek. I do love poetry. I like that a gifted poet can take a few lines to express something succinctly and perhaps from a perspective I never considered before. I like the play of rhythms and alliteration without things becoming too sing-songy. I liked it in school even when my classmates were dying of boredom. Then again, I liked diagramming sentences too. I'm strange that way. Just like my musical tastes are rather eclectic, so are my tastes in poetry.. I enjoy Walt Whitman, Pablo Neruda, Sara Teasdale, Ogden Nash, Shel Silverstein,Dorothy Parker, William Butler Yeats, William Carlos Williams, Rabindranath Tagore, and the list goes on....

One of my favorite sites is PoemHunter.com. It's a good place for looking up the poets you already know (pardon the proliferation of pop-ups though) and it allows you to keep a list of your favorite poems. I'm also a big fan of The Writer's Almanac. I look forward to the daily email of a poem and literary history. It feeds my love of poetry AND my love of trivia. How great is that?

Now I ask you to tell me who are your favorite poets and will you share a favorite poem with me? Or perhaps you'd even share one you wrote.


UPDATE 10:52 am: I just went to visit Tim and found a marvelous...well, poem is not the word he uses. Do enjoy.



23 comments:

John (@bookdreamer) said...

A site worth trying for developing poets but not for the faint hearted is http://www.everypoet.com/.

My 55 is here

Mojo said...

Seems we were reading each others' minds this week, M. I could have written this one myself.

And it is brilliant. Really.

Craig said...

I enjoy poetry, too; probably WAY more than your average engineer, altho my actual knowledge of specific poems and poets is fairly thin (you know, the classic old 'I don't know art, but I know what I like when I see it. . .')

I have a thin volome of Poe that I've gotten a lot of enjoyment from. I especially like 'The Bells' (I'm a sucker for allitteration and word-play). My Grandma loved Longfellow; she used to recite 'Paul Revere's Ride' and 'Evangeline' to us. And for local-color reasons, I also enjoy 'Song of Hiawatha'.

What little I've seen of Yeats, I think I'd enjoy getting to know his stuff better. And Kipling; 'If' has long been one of my favorites. I've also liked TS Eliot, altho again, my knowledge of him is more limited than I wish it were. . .

Shel Siverstein, of course. Does Dr. Seuss count as a poet? ;)

In the past, I've occasionally posted a few poems I've liked. (I know you've seen them before, but if someone else might be interested, you know. . .)

And of course (if it wouldn't be construed as mere flattery), I like you poems, too. . . ;)

Craig said...

Oh, and one of the funniest bits I've ever heard was a very rich, thickly-British-accented, baritone-voiced gentleman doing a 'poetic reading' of 'I Am the Walrus'. . .

Goo-goo-g'joob. . .

PattiKen said...

I love this, all the more so because you are channeling my thoughts. I'm trying to remember to carry a notebook around, but I can't seem to remember that either.

Oh, and I love diagramming sentences too. You must have been the other one. Do they even teach that anymore?

Craver Vii said...

I am not naturally wired for poetry, but in August of 2007, I posted something I liked from the Roberto Benigni movie The Tiger and the Snow. In essence, he defines poetry as the art of wordsmithing in such a way that the listener actually feels the same thing that the speaker feels. It is a beautiful thing when that is accomplished.

Buzzard said...

Another poem lost in in space...

I'll take Dr. Seuss any day of the week. But on a more thoughtful note, Frost, Homer, Poe, Dylan, among others.

I have tried my hand at poetry. I have a couple of examples on my website at the alternate page: The Loft

lime said...

john, thanks for your visit and that link. i'm going to enjoy exploring it.

mojo, you are too kind.

craig, my girls are big poe fans. the bells is a great piece. and yes, dr. seuss most definitely counts!

pattiken, none of my kids have heard of diagramming sentences until recently. i did it in 8th grade. my college freshman is doing it for the first time.

craver, oh i like that definition very much. well said.

buzzard, dr. seuss is another favorite. :) thanks for sharing your works. i especially liked the first winter poem.

Suldog said...

I love Ogden Nash. Any poetry that contains jokes, I'm a sucker for. My fave may be what used to be the world's shortest poem...

ON THE ANTIQUITY OF MICROBES

Adam
Had 'em

That was supplanted by one from Muhammad Ali, entitled...

ME

Me!
Whee!

Wish I'd written that.

Cricket said...

Cape Ann In Dreamlight


I dream a sea awash in ships:
Irish leather-skins,
Wooden dories,
Yankee whalers.
A transatlantic coffin ship,
Irish leather skins
Packed in human humidity,
And rats,
Within.

Bright white and blue
Gloucester trawler’s huffing funnel,
Smiling crew.
Hanging metal nets
Shine, anticipating.
Leather skins stand at the rail,
Set in sepia tone,
Eternally waving goodbye.

Ghost-driven, rust -eaten,
Trawler risen from the deep,
Her crew, no longer smiling, sleep
A deep, amniotic sleep
Unknown to air-dwellers.

I dream a sea awash in ships;
Crossing, passing, intersecting,
Leaving foamy traces in their wakes.

I am sand and sea-foam.
I once clung to pilings
In stinking Queenstown harbor.
A passing wave caught me,
And carried me to America,
Depositing me on the shore,
A seed asleep in the sand.

It is said that nothing will grow in sand
But I did.
And though it is said that we are dust
And to dust we shall return,
I am sand and sea-foam.
I will return to the sand.

Lulda Casadaga said...

I always hate it when I have a great idea or artistic rendearing and no paper or pen to mark it!
Have a great weekend lime and keep a pen and pad at hand!! :D

secret agent woman said...

Sometimes those ideas just want to slip away. It's like trying to grab a fistful of water.

S said...

That is just awesome lime.

My favorite poem is The Song of Wandering Aengus by WB Yeats.

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

I have loved this poem since I was 19, the older I get, the more I love it.

lime said...

suldog, i had you completely pegged as a fan of ogden nash!

cricket, what a breathtaking piece! thanks so much for sharing that with me. i can see why it sings to your new england soul.

lulda, glad i'm not the only one.

secret agent woman, they can be elusive, for sure.

susie, i enjoy that one each time you've shared it with me. it's lovely. :)

Cricket said...

Lime - Thank you. I'm so glad you liked it. I'm comfortable with my essays. My poems, not so much. You did ask, though ;-) Have a great weekend.

Akelamalu said...

You always manage to say so much in just 55 words. :)

g-man said...

I'll take your tongue in cheek anyday Trini!
Thanks for submitting your little ditty...Much Obliged.
I'm always pleased with your 55!
As for poetry?
Hmmmmmmmmmmm...
Hows about...Any number of 55ers?
They Rock My Boat!
Have a Kick Ass Week-End...G

Michelle H. said...

Nice poem. I'm not big on reading a lot of poetry, although I did spend my angsty teenage years attempting to write some and now and again I'll post something silly on my blog. The only one that comes to mind is Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven."

Brian Miller said...

hahaha. i hate it when that happens. usually i keep my notebook with me but every once in a while i forget and have to try and remember and it just doesnt work. nice 55.

mine is up!

Jocelyn said...

Many of the best things I've written have never been put down on paper. They flit through while I run. But, man, I'm a genius when I run.

Here's a poem off the NPR site, and it makes me laugh:

Totally like whatever, you know?



In case you hadn't noticed,
it has somehow become uncool
to sound like you know what you're talking about?
Or believe strongly in what you're saying?
Invisible question marks and parenthetical (you know?)'s
have been attaching themselves to the ends of our sentences?
Even when those sentences aren't, like, questions? You know?




Declarative sentences -- so-called
because they used to, like, DECLARE things to be true
as opposed to other things which were, like, not -
have been infected by a totally hip
and tragically cool interrogative tone? You know?
Like, don't think I'm uncool just because I've noticed this;
this is just like the word on the street, you know?
It's like what I've heard?
I have nothing personally invested in my own opinions, okay?
I'm just inviting you to join me in my uncertainty?




What has happened to our conviction?
Where are the limbs out on which we once walked?
Have they been, like, chopped down
with the rest of the rain forest?
Or do we have, like, nothing to say?
Has society become so, like, totally...
I mean absolutely... You know?
That we've just gotten to the point where it's just, like...
whatever!




And so actually our disarticulation... ness
is just a clever sort of... thing
to disguise the fact that we've become
the most aggressively inarticulate generation
to come along since...
you know, a long, long time ago!




I entreat you, I implore you, I exhort you,
I challenge you: To speak with conviction.
To say what you believe in a manner that bespeaks
the determination with which you believe it.
Because contrary to the wisdom of the bumper sticker,
it is not enough these days to simply QUESTION AUTHORITY.
You have to speak with it, too.




© Taylor Mali 2005

Dave said...

I liked your littlepoem Michelle. - Dave

Craig said...

I forgot to mention Jabberwocky. . .

~Tim said...

Thanks so much for the link to my not so much a poem.

I really like your 55 today.