Somewhere Different Now

Today is William Shakespeare's 450th birthday!  (Well, the day we observe as his birthday.  Nobody is 100% sure of his exact birth date.)  In honor of him and of it still being National Poetry Month, have a sonnet!  This is one of my favorites.

Sonnet 130:  My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
   And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
   As any she belied with false compare.

Also, apparently the Globe is taking Hamlet on tour to literally every country in the world.  I think that's a super cool project, and the production sounds really neat.

Now, because you deserve it, the latest kitten picture:
( click for sleepy kittens! )

Today's poem is by e. e. cummings.  It's one of my favorite poems about romantic love.  I adore cummings's use of unlikely juxtapositions (e.g. "intense fragility").  The words are not complex, but the unusual phrasing means that this is a poem worth reading over more than once.  You really get the sense of how deeply the speaker treasures and is overwhelmed by the subject of the poem.  (Also, as my lovely icon by isiscaughey suggests, to me this poem works beautifully for the Doctor and Rose.)  cummings is also one of those poets who proves that those who can craft powerfully with words can get away with breaking a host of grammatical rules if they have reasons.

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( somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond )

I chose today's poem after reading a fascinating article about the poem inscribed at the base of the Statue of Liberty.  I knew that there was some bit about "give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses," but I couldn't have told you anything more about the context or the author, not even whether these words were specially written for Lady Liberty or a quote from something else.  I've even visited the Statue of Liberty, but that was over ten years ago, and I'd forgotten if I read the poem.  Turns out those familiar lines are from a sonnet written for the statue's pedestal by Emma Lazarus, a Jewish woman who enjoyed a successful writing career in her day, even if her name gets little recognition today.  (Also, Emma Lazarus is a fantastic name.)  I definitely like the whole poem.

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( The New Colossus )

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I am not a patriot, but this is a vision of America I can get behind.  I want to believe in a United States that actively welcomes the downtrodden and oppressed to a chance at a better life.  I want to believe that my country can choose to be a mild-eyed (yet still mighty) Mother of Exiles and not the brazen giant with conquering limbs our foreign policy has often resembled from the mid-twentieth century onwards.  Even 130 years after the poem's composition, this is a powerful and provocative political statement.

I was pondering putting up a poem by Langston Hughes, one of the ones I'm familiar with such as "Dream Deferred" or "Theme for English B."  Instead, I found "Let America Be America Again" while browsing through a selection of his poetry.   This was the first time I've read it , but it really resonated with me. It speaks with the particular historical voice of Hughes, an African-American poet writing in 1938, but it is still far too relevant today.

( Let America Be America Again )

April is National Poetry Month, so I'm going to be posting some poems this month.  I'll aim for at least two a week.  Today's poem is by Mary Oliver, one of my favorite contemporary poets.  It's full of wonder at the natural world, accessible, and touched with a glint of humor.

( "This World" by Mary Oliver )

It's time to share another poem!  This one comes from Wendell Berry, whose work I first learned about in a college course called Religion and the Environment.  When not writing poems, essays, or fiction, Berry is a farmer in his native Kentucky, using sustainable techniques to live his values of living closely with the Earth and treating it well.  I have a collection of his poetry called A Timbered Choir:  The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997.  I've read this book very slowly over nearly three years because I prefer to take it with me outside and savor a poem or two at a time in some quiet place. The poetry is unpretentious but elegantly crafted and heartfelt:  poems to meditate upon more than to dissect.  He writes about nature, humankind's distance from and destruction of the environment, love, the value of good work balanced by a time of rest, God, death, and the connections between all of these topics.  This one, however, I love for the reasons it gives for writing as well as the sense of peace of moving beyond words. 

"1994:  VII"

I would not have been a poet
except that I have been in love
alive in this mortal world,
or an essayist except that I
have been bewildered and afraid,
or a storyteller had I not heard
stories passing to me through the air,
or a writer at all except
I have been wakeful at night
and words have come to me
out of their deep caves
needing to be remembered.
But on the days I am lucky
or blessed, I am silent.
I go into the one body
that two make in making marriage
that for all our trying, all
our deaf-and-dumb of speech,
has no tongue.  Or I give myself
to gravity, light, and air
and am carried back
to solitary work in fields
and woods, where my hands
rest upon a world unnamed,
complete, unanswerable, and final
as our daily bread and meat.
The way of love leads all ways
to life beyond words, silent
and secret.  To serve that triumph
I have done all the rest.

Meme borrowed from isiscaughey :

Post your favorite poem, and pass it on.
Great idea, though I had an insanely hard time picking. I have a whole lot of poems that are important to me for different reasons. In the end, I decided to cheat and post two.

( i thank You God for most this amazing by e.e. cummings )

 

( The Day Millicent Found the World by William Stafford )