One man's view of poetry

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  • July 14, 2017 at 11:08 pm #70959
    wv
    Participant

    link:https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/10/books/review/understanding-poetry-is-more-straightforward-than-you-think.html

    “…I don’t know what writers of stories, novels and essays eventually discover for themselves, but I can say that sooner or later poets figure out that there are no new ideas, only the same old ones — and that nobody who loves poetry reads it to be impressed, but to experience and feel and understand in ways only poetry can conjure…”

    July 15, 2017 at 12:49 am #70965
    zn
    Moderator

    from the wiki: “Adlestrop” is a poem by Edward Thomas. It is based on a rail trip Thomas took in 1914, during which his train briefly stopped at the now-defunct station in the Gloucestershire village of Adlestrop. Thomas wrote the poem much later, after he had enlisted. He was killed in 1917, just before the poem was due to be printed.

    —

    Adlestrop (1917)

    By Edward Thomas

    Yes. I remember Adlestrop—
    The name, because one afternoon
    Of heat the express-train drew up there
    Unwontedly. It was late June.

    The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
    No one left and no one came
    On the bare platform. What I saw
    Was Adlestrop—only the name

    And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
    And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
    No whit less still and lonely fair
    Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

    And for that minute a blackbird sang
    Close by, and round him, mistier,
    Farther and farther, all the birds
    Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

    July 15, 2017 at 9:05 am #70976
    wv
    Participant

    Ive posted this before. It is, quite possibly, my favorite poem. Dunno why.
    Its not a famous poem, or a well-known poet.

    w
    v
    ===================================
    Happiness
    Michael Van Walleghen

    Weep for what little things could make them glad.
    —Robert Frost, “Directive”

    Melvin,
    the large collie
    who lives in the red house
    at the end of my daily run
    is happy,
    happy to see me
    even now,
    in February—
    a month of low skies
    and slowly melting snow.

    His yard
    has turned almost
    entirely to mud—
    but so what?

    Today,
    as if to please me,

    he has torn apart
    and scattered
    everywhere
    a yellow plastic bucket
    the color of forsythia
    or daffodils . . .

    And now,
    in a transport
    of cross-eyed
    muddy ecstasy,
    he has placed
    his filthy two front paws
    together
    on the top pipe
    of his sagging cyclone fence—

    drooling a little,
    his tail
    wagging furiously,
    until finally,
    as if I were God’s angel himself—

    fulgent,
    blinding,
    aflame
    with news of the Resurrection,
    I give him a biscuit
    instead.

    Which is fine with Melvin—
    who is wise,
    by whole epochs
    of evolution,
    beyond his years.

    Take
    what you can get,
    that’s his motto . . .

    And really,
    apropos of bliss,
    happiness
    and the true rapture,
    what saint
    could tell us half as much?

    Even as he drops
    back down
    into the cold
    dog-shit muck
    he’ll have to live in
    every day
    for weeks on end perhaps
    unless it freezes . . .

    whining now,
    dancing
    nervously
    as I turn away
    again,
    to leave him there

    the same today
    as yesterday—

    one of the truly wretched
    of this earth
    whose happiness

    is almost more
    than I can bear.

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