STYLETHREAD -- LET'S TALK SHOP!

I don't know how I missed this. I really like all of those. I;m adding them to a Word document that I save poems I like in. I think my favorite is this e.e. cummings poem...


since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
-the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says
we are for each other: then
laugh leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis


Ok, and this one too...


i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
not fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)


I'm so sappy.

Pretty much anything by Khalil Gibran is my favorite but these are his words on marraige

Then Almitra spoke again and said, "And what of Marriage, master?"

And he answered saying:

You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.

You shall be together when white wings of death scatter your days.

Aye, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.

But let there be spaces in your togetherness,

And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

Love one another but make not a bond of love:

Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.

Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.

Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,

Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.

For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.

And stand together, yet not too near together:

For the pillars of the temple stand apart,

And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.

*A Dreamers Intoxication*  By CA

I walk through a wasteland

of wishes and contented contemplation

Colors cast over me in waves....

translucent and light..

They wet my eyes

Peace is falling.

I do not love her...

but I miss her smile

The future and past

lay in haze.

Todays whisp by in this fearless fog.

My life is graphite dust,

rubbed into a page.

To be erased and rubbed again

I sink further contented.

But unsure why...

 

I don't read a ton of poetry, but I do have some favorites.  This is my "luv" poem pick.

---

When I have fears that I may cease to be - John Keats

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love;--then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

---

This one is my favorite (I've written it inside my Bible):

Adam's Curse -- William Butler Yeats

We sat together at one summer's end,

That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,

And you and I, and talked of poetry.

I said, 'A line will take us hours maybe;

Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought,

Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.

Better go down upon your marrow-bones

And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones

Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;

For to articulate sweet sounds together

Is to work harder than all these, and yet

Be thought an idler by the noisy set

Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen

The martyrs call the world.'             

And thereupon

That beautiful mild woman for whose sake

There's many a one shall find out all heartache

On finding that her voice is sweet and low

Replied: 'To be born woman is to know--

Although they do not talk of it at school--

That we must labour to be beautiful.'

I said, 'It's certain there is no fine thing

Since Adam's fall but needs much labouring.

There have been lovers who thought love should be

So much compounded of high courtesy

That they would sigh and quote with learned looks

Precedents out of beautiful old books;

Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.'

We sat grown quiet at the name of love;

We saw the last embers of daylight die,

And in the trembling blue-green of the sky

A moon, worn as if it had been a shell

Washed by time's waters as they rose and fell

About the stars and broke in days and years.

I had a thought for no one's but your ears:

That you were beautiful, and that I strove

To love you in the old high way of love;

That it had all seemed happy, and yet we'd grown

As weary-hearted as that hollow moon. 

-- Edited by Eurodaisy at 11:48, 2005-12-05

maddie - ee's "i carry your heart" has long been my favorite poem -- it was read during our wedding ceremony. i love the other poem that you posted as well (although it always reminds me of an ex-boyfriend...). another favorite of mine by ee cummings -

somehwere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

i love poetry. most of my favorite poems are by pablo neruda - so passionate. this one particulary:

I do not love you as if you were a salt rose, or topaz
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
So I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

What a great thread! I love that Hughes poem!

I was browsing through a used book store a couple of years ago and found a wonderful book of poems called "Inventing Difficulty" by a young poet named Jessica Greenbaum. I read this poem in the store and had to buy the book- it's since become one of my favorite poems:

DRIVING FRIDAY NIGHT

The mind also travels. Through the darkness-
We have left later than planned
And are silent, dizzy, a little sick,
The week still running the body like a classroom
Taken over by its kids-

Rituals of travel get lost
In the haze of exhaustion and the mind's
Private racket. We are hypnotized, as by laundry,
By the questions tumbling over
And over,

By the possibility of seeing the moment they are answered.
As most do, this drive ends in stillness-
A huge matched set against the mountain-
Punctuated by the long-gone city's analog
In stars,

And the invisibility of the trees, which we know have changed
Color, which we know are surrounding us
In a drama we are left all night to imagine.
We wake up
Through a hint of amnesia

And find we are caught between two monarch
Wings, the flashing yellow, orange and black
Of the woods, which stretches beyond (I'm afraid)
Our own imagination, to this question:
Did God consider what we would love

Or have we grown to love God's imagination
Because it is what we have? The cold-blooded
Salamander zig-zags through the leaves,
The lake's palette seems to hold
All paintings in one

Reflection,
While the sun's first self-image
Is quite humble, more like a glowing gumball
Then the monarch who had ordered
All these changes. Loving

You has been a lesson in aesthetic evolution,
One example of the way
We design the world through love,
Becoming native to what we find beautiful,
As it becomes native to us.

I am thinking of your face,
The skyline I see from the twentieth floor,
And those trees! They become their own definition
Of what we are meant for, and this planet
Becomes the right place.

-- Edited by rosey at 17:58, 2005-12-11