i thank You God for most this amazing

I can't have a poetry website without having e.e. cummings on it. This is a most appropriate poem for a Sunday. The title alone should be enough. My favorite stanza is the third. I don't comprehend it, but that's part of what makes it beautiful. I comprehend so little of the ways of God and yet I find it all so breathtaking.

i thank You God for most this amazing
e.e. cummings

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

And one more poem to wrap up an ode to the greatness of God... Though I will only post my favorite, check out "The Windhover" and "God's Grandeur" by Hopkins as well. Just read it aloud. Don't try to comprehend it. Just let yourself be immersed by the richness of his words

Pied Beauty
Gerard Manley Hopkins

GLORY be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;	5
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:	10
Praise him.

So frustrating! The original format of Hopkins poem is not aligned to the left like this. He uses spacing to create a more beautiful poem. But tragically the blogsite will NOT let me keep it indented (any suggestions?), so you'll just have to Google this to see it as it should be.

Any suggestions of similar poems or opinions of posted poems?

Hey Webster, define poetry, please

Teagan Lynn Comment: Our wise www.dictionary.com proclaims poetry as "the art or work of a poet," but I think the poets define it better. Two poems, both titled "Ars Poetica," make me crave beautiful poetry.

From the first, "Ars Poetica," by Archibald Macleish, I will only pull one stanza:

A poem should not mean
But be.

And the second, "Ars Poetica," by Vicente Huidobro, as translated by David M. Guss

Let poetry be like a key
Opening a thousand doors.
A leaf falls; something flies by;
Let all the eye sees be created
And the soul of the listener tremble.

Invent new worlds and watch your word;
The adjective, when it doesn't give life, kills it.
We are in the age of nerves.
The muscle hangs,
Like a memory, in museums;
But we are not the weaker for it:
True vigor
Resides in the head.

Oh Poets, why sing of roses!
Let them flower in your poems;

For us alone
Do all things live beneath the Sun.

The poet is a little God.

Huidobro, Vicente. "Ars Poetica."
Literature: Reading Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and the Essay.
Comp. Robert DiYanni. McGraw-Hill, 1998.

What do you think defines a poet? At what point does one go from one who writes to a writer?

When I heard the learn'd astronomer

Great example of free verse poetry. It reminded of the line from F. Scott Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby, "I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life."

When I heard the learn'd astronomer
Walt Whitman

When I heard the learn’d astronomer,

When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,

When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,

When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,

How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,

Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,

Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

Conclusion

I have come to the conclusion that this blog remains largely unread. It is likely that few will read these words, but it is personally satisfying. I first started the blog with the belief that I just might have something good and I would like some feedback. Since then, I have been humbled by the works of William Wordsworth, Maya Angelou, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Walt Whitman, Robert Herrick, and many others. I have come to the reality that my work is, though not bad, horribly mediocre. It is merely poetic paragraphs chopped up into aesthetically appealing lines. I am fine with this. I have decided then, to devote this humble blog to the sharing, illegal at that, of poetry of the great poets of the world, giving due credit to the authors and assuring accurate publications. Such poetry has changed my life, may it change yours as well.
The humbled poet

I Am Weary of The Music

I Am Weary of the Music

Valerie Owens

Your fingers pluck at the strings of my heart

Like the musician and his mandolin

Perhaps my heart is out of tune,

For the song you play

Sounds no longer sweetly of blissful adoration

But rather, strange, and off-key,

Like the cacophony of deceit.

The mandolin is played with violent passion

And the cords are pulled ever tighter.

Please untangle your cold hands

from the weakening threads

of my now bleeding heart

I am weary of the music.

Jimi Hendrix

You and I share the close proximity of my car

Jimi Hendrix falls softly from the speakers

The background to our conversation

It is trivial chatter

We talk

about nothing in particular

about anything at all

The banter of youth

My car has been parked

here

in your driveway

an hour now.

Innocently, of course

It’s Friday night

And I laugh at what the neighbors must think

of the parked car

But you don’t flirt like that

So I don’t share the joke

Jimi sings

“I just want to talk to you…”

I smile, and soak my heart in the soft rises and falls of

your voice

I just want to talk to you

The Answer

I have wondered of the taste of your lips

for sometime

And now,

now that the question is satisfied

I find that curiosity has a far sweeter taste than truth

Claire 2

Claire fumbles frantically for a cigarette,
Could it really be only this morning she flinched
this box?
How can it be so empty now?
Two more left.
She fingers the precious cigarette tenderly
And hastily,
she lights up,
hands trembling to do so
Eagerly, she awaits her addiction's claim.
The cruel ember soothes her
The light of the cigarette
is more than she can draw from her drained soul.
She leans against a concrete wall, filthy with graffiti.
Hunger screams loudly
and the cold sucks the life from her weak limbs
Reality claws at the back of her mind
Sometime, but not now,
she will have to feed her thin body
But first, more cigarettes
for there is only one left now
and addiction's hold is violent and unconquerable
And
she must find somewhere to rest where the cold isn't so deep
Tomorrow lurks in the dim shadows
She sighs
The days have become years
and tomorrow seems impossible to handle
But, reality can wait
For now the shaking cigarette is enough.
The ember fades slowly into the night,
and she lets the ashy remains fall at her feet
Claire reaches hastily for the last cigarette
Youth is dark eyed and never ending.

Confessions of an Occasional Insomniac

Night beckons me to linger

in her lovely solitude.

She lures me with her ebony eyes

and soundless movements.

Alone, and blessedly un-obliged,

I revel in her midnight beauty.

Morning comes too quickly,

mocking my foolish weakness

and weary eyes.

Sensibility demands I rest my aching body.

I vow I will. Soon.

But…

When night falls,

I know I shall succumb again to her eternal charm

I shall sacrifice

a thousand years of sleep

and the rich tangle of dreams such sleep owns

If thou,

Oh sweet Night,

Will just but let me linger

a little longer,

just ever so much longer

In the blackness of your splendor