Thanks very much for the links all; I shall read happily today.
Here’s one that speaks to me:
John Milton: On His Blindness
WHEN I consider how my light is spent
E’re half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide,
Lodg’d with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present 5
My true account, least he returning chide,
Doth God exact day-labour, light deny’d,
I fondly ask; But patience to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts, who best 10
Bear his milde yoak, they serve him best, his State
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o’re Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and waite.
I love T. S. Eliot, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Dylan Thomas. I think my favourite love poems are somewhere i have never traveled and The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter. “I desired my dust to be mingled with yours”. :shiver:
I have most of my favourite poetry memorised for safe-keeping. Uh… the abovementioned River-Merchant’s Wife, somewhere i have never traveled, The Journey of the Magi, A Song for Simeon, Burnt Norton and East Coker, T. S. Eliot, Ulysses, Tennyson, To His Coy Mistress, A Hymne to God the Father, John Donne. The Conversation of Prayers About To Be Said, And Death Shall Have No Dominion, Dylan Thomas. God’s Grandeur and Pied Beauty. I used to have Kipling’s If memorised, but I think I’ve forgotten it. A bunch of Emily Dickinson.
Eliot’s probably my favourite, for his images, rhythm, and precision. ‘Grant Israel’s consolation, to one who has eighty years, and no tomorrow’. ‘Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown-edged/ And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight/ and the lotos rose, quietly, quietly’.
Like Service (mentioned above by OtakuLoki) he was a people’s poet, but in a different way from Service. I never could get past Service’s (imho) clunky form.
It is good. Very, very good. And I really like how we uses the title of the poem. “Aubade.” Its formal definition is "a song or instrumental composition concerning, accompanying, or evoking daybreak. " and/ or ""a poem or song of or about lovers separating at dawn " (grace a dictionary.com ) Yet the poem is hardly romantic (at least upon its first impression/ run through, I think).
Juxtapose that with Rothko’s painting of the same name. It caught my eye at the Phillips Collection today (people should go see the Modigliani exhibition!). It’s one of his earlier works, not at all like the transcendental-ly wall painitings he is more famous for. Anyway, I can’t find a picture of it online, but it’s small, and iceblue, with white circular markings. A happily sad painting, I would say.
I love how these artists bend words to their meanings (or is it the other way around?)
LemonFoil, if you’re interested in the interweaving of visual and literary arts, one of my all-time favorite poems (can’t believe I didn’t cite it earlier) is W.H. Auden’s Musee des Beaux Arts.
I read this one to every single class I ever taught.
That is, I hope you know, a highly debatable point!
(I have a lot of respect for Bloom, but in many ways he’s a blowhard who is just a tad too self-righteous in his opining, and often takes things to extremes that are unjustified. He’s one accademic I love to hate).
Heh – opened this thread to bring up GMH and Dylan Thomas, among other poets that I’ve loved.
The first poem that I ever had to memorize was a bit from Virgil’s Aeneid in sixth grade. We recited that thing en masse so many times that the first two lines are burned into my memory for all time. It took me a few tries to google it up, but I knew exactly what it sounded like.
Eadem me ad fata vocasses! / Idem ambas ferro dolor atque eadem hora tulisset.
Anyway, some favorite poems:
[ul]
[li]Yeats: "The Hosting of the Sidhe"Away, come away: / Empty your heart of its mortal dream [/li][li]Yeats: “The Second Coming” [/li][li]GMH: “The Windhover” ← This captures the dizzying ecstasy of flight.[/li][li]GMH: “Spring and Fall” ← Read it a few times. A spare, elegant poem about the loss of innocence that comes to everyone.[/li][li]Auden: “Lay your sleeping head, my love”Lay your sleeping head, my love, / Human on my faithless arm; ← The best opening of any poem that I’ve ever read. There’s something about the second line that is searing in the purity of its emotion, all the more intense for the heartbreaking fragility acknowledged. It’s right.[/li][/ul]
) Yet the poem is hardly romantic (at least upon its first impression/ run through, I think).