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Read through the most famous quotes by topic #poetry
I am the red wheelbarrow of communism. William Carlos Williams wrote a poem about me. ↗
#misunderstanding #poem #poetry #william-carlos-williams #change
INTO MY OWN One of my wishes is that those dark trees, So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze, Were not, as ’twere, the merest mask of gloom, But stretched away unto the edge of doom. I should not be withheld but that some day Into their vastness I should steal away, Fearless of ever finding open land, Or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand. I do not see why I should e’er turn back, Or those should not set forth upon my track To overtake me, who should miss me here And long to know if still I held them dear. They would not find me changed from him they knew— Only more sure of all I thought was true. ↗
For you she learned to wear a short black slip and red lipstick, how to order a glass of red wine and finish it. She learned to reach out as if to touch your arm and then not touch it, changing the subject. Didn't you think, she'd begin, or Weren't you sorry. . . . To call your best friends by their schoolboy names and give them kisses good-bye, to look away when they say Your wife! So your confidence grows. She doesn't ask what you want because she knows. Isn't that what you think? When actually she was only waiting to be told Take off your dress--- to be stunned, and then do this, never rehearsed, but perfectly obvious: in one motion up, over, and gone, the X of her arms crossing and uncrossing, her face flashing away from you in the fabric so that you couldn't say if she was appearing or disappearing. ↗
Don’t write with a pen. Ink tends to give the impression the words shouldn’t be changed. Write with what gives you the most sensual satisfaction. Write in a hard-covered notebook with green lined pages. Green is easy on the eyes. Blank white pages seems to challenge you to create the world before you start writing. It may be true that you, the modern poet, must make the world as you go, but why be reminded of it before you even have one word on the page? Don’t erase. Cross out rapidly and violently, never with slow consideration if you can help it. Start, as some smarty once said, in the middle of things. Play with syntax. Never want to say anything so strongly that you have to give up the option of finding something better – if you have to say it, you will. Read your poem aloud many times. If you don’t enjoy it every time, something may be wrong. If you ask a question, don’t answer it, or answer a question not asked, or defer. (If you can answer the question, to ask it is to waste time). Maximum sentence length: seventeen words. Minimum: One. Don’t be afraid to take emotional possession of words. If you don’t love a few words enough to own them, you will have to be very clever to write a good poem. ↗
THE FOOL'S PRAYER by: Edward Rowland Sill (1841-1887) HE royal feast was done; the King Sought some new sport to banish care, And to his jester cried: "Sir Fool, Kneel now, and make for us a prayer!" The jester doffed his cap and bells, And stood the mocking court before; They could not see the bitter smile Behind the painted grin he wore. He bowed his head, and bent his knee Upon the Monarch's silken stool; His pleading voice arose: "O Lord, Be merciful to me, a fool! "No pity, Lord, could change the heart From red with wrong to white as wool; The rod must heal the sin: but Lord, Be merciful to me, a fool! "'T is not by guilt the onward sweep Of truth and right, O Lord, we stay; 'T is by our follies that so long We hold the earth from heaven away. "These clumsy feet, still in the mire, Go crushing blossoms without end; These hard, well-meaning hands we thrust Among the heart-strings of a friend. "The ill-timed truth we might have kept-- Who knows how sharp it pierced and stung? The word we had not sense to say-- Who knows how grandly it had rung! "Our faults no tenderness should ask. The chastening stripes must cleanse them all; But for our blunders -- oh, in shame Before the eyes of heaven we fall. "Earth bears no balsam for mistakes; Men crown the knave, and scourge the tool That did his will; but Thou, O Lord, Be merciful to me, a fool!" The room was hushed; in silence rose The King, and sought his gardens cool, And walked apart, and murmured low, "Be merciful to me, a fool! ↗
As the dawn loves the sunlight that must cease Ere dawn again may rise and pass in peace; Must die that she being dead may live again, To be by his new rising nearly slain. So rolls the great wheel of the great world round, And no change in it and no fault is found, And no true life of perdurable breath, And surely no irrevocable death. Day after day night comes that day may break, And day comes back for night’s reiterate sake. Each into each dies, each of each is born: Day past is night, shall night past not be morn? Out of this moonless and faint-hearted night That love yet lives in, shall there not be light? Light strong as love, that love may live in yet? Alas, but how shall foolish hope forget How all these loving things that kill and die Meet not but for a breath’s space and pass by? Night is kissed once of dawn and dies, and day But touches twilight and is rapt away. So may my love and her love meet once more, And meeting be divided as of yore. Yea, surely as the day-star loves the sun And when he hath risen is utterly undone, So is my love of her and hers of me— And its most sweetness bitter as the sea. ↗
And with light lips yet full of their swift smile, And hands that wist not though they dug a grave, Undid the hasps of gold, and drank, and gave, And he drank after, a deep glad kingly draught: And all their life changed in them, for they quaffed Death; if it be death so to drink, and fare As men who change and are what these twain were. And shuddering with eyes full of fear and fire And heart-stung with a serpentine desire He turned and saw the terror in her eyes That yearned upon him shining in such wise As a star midway in the midnight fixed. Their Galahault was the cup, and she that mixed; Nor other hand there needed, nor sweet speech To lure their lips together; each on each Hung with strange eyes and hovered as a bird Wounded, and each mouth trembled for a world; Their heads neared, and their hands were drawn in one, And they saw dark, though still the unsunken sun Far through fine rain shot fire into the south; And their four lips became one burning mouth. ↗
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of being and ideal grace. I love thee to the level of every day's Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light. I love thee freely, as men strive for right. I love thee purely, as they turn from praise. I love thee with the passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death. ↗
#poems #poetry #sonnet #sonnet-xlii #death
When Great Trees Fall When great trees fall, rocks on distant hills shudder, lions hunker down in tall grasses, and even elephants lumber after safety. When great trees fall in forests, small things recoil into silence, their senses eroded beyond fear. When great souls die, the air around us becomes light, rare, sterile. We breathe, briefly. Our eyes, briefly, see with a hurtful clarity. Our memory, suddenly sharpened, examines, gnaws on kind words unsaid, promised walks never taken. Great souls die and our reality, bound to them, takes leave of us. Our souls, dependent upon their nurture, now shrink, wizened. Our minds, formed and informed by their radiance, fall away. We are not so much maddened as reduced to the unutterable ignorance of dark, cold caves. And when great souls die, after a period peace blooms, slowly and always irregularly. Spaces fill with a kind of soothing electric vibration. Our senses, restored, never to be the same, whisper to us. They existed. They existed. We can be. Be and be better. For they existed. ↗
i am a little church(no great cathedral) far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying cities --i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest, i am not sorry when sun and rain make april my life is the life of the reaper and the sower; my prayers are prayers of earth's own clumsily striving (finding and losing and laughing and crying)children whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness around me surges a miracle of unceasing birth and glory and death and resurrection: over my sleeping self float flaming symbols of hope,and i wake to a perfect patience of mountains i am a little church(far from the frantic world with its rapture and anguish)at peace with nature --i do not worry if longer nights grow longest; i am not sorry when silence becomes singing winter by spring,i lift my diminutive spire to merciful Him Whose only now is forever: standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence (welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness) ↗
