;) awesome.
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;) awesome.
Thank you. . . the university really TRIED to brainwash me into being a Romantic! :brow:Quote:
Originally Posted by Reason is a cow
Edits: Poem Deleted. Didn't think about the rule while posting:
The same person can't post within five days.
Ooh, can I post one? I don't think I ever have.
Poetry
By Marianne Moore
I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all
this fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one
discovers in
it after all, a place for the genuine.
Hands that can grasp, eyes
that can dilate, hair that can rise
if it must, these things are important not because a
high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because
they are
useful. When they become so derivative as to become
unintelligible,
the same thing may be said for all of us, that we
do not admire what
we cannot understand: the bat
holding on upside down or in quest of something to
eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless wolf
under
a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse that
feels a
flea, the base-
ball fan, the statistician--
nor is it valid
to discriminate against 'business documents and
school-books'; all these phenomena are important. One must
make a distinction
however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the
result is not poetry,
nor till the poets among us can be
'literalists of
the imagination'--above
insolence and triviality and can present
for inspection, 'imaginary gardens with real toads in them', shall
we have
it. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,
the raw material of poetry in
all its rawness and
that which is on the other hand
genuine, you are interested in poetry.
Oh I lve this poem Psyche. Great choice. I love these lines:
Quote:
the same thing may be said for all of us, that we
do not admire what
we cannot understand: the bat
holding on upside down or in quest of something to
eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless wolf
under
a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse that
feels a
flea, the base-
ball fan, the statistician--
My first posting on this thread:
I'm not a great Plath fan, but I love this one
Quote:
Mirror
I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see, I swallow immediately.
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike
I am not cruel, only truthful –
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me.
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.
Sylvia Plath
This is one of my favorite things by Plath.
I especially like the closing lines:
In my reading, not only do these lines represent the passage of time and the tragedy of aging, but they make the woman complicit in her own aging by the drowning of the young girl of her youth. The poem, in some respects, warns others of the peril they face by allowing the "terrible fish" of the old woman to rise unchallenged and drowning the image of their youth. The mirror/lake must tell the truth - it cannot hide age, but allowing youth to "drown" creates a permanent state that is not only physical, but mental as well.Quote:
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.
Ever since reading this poem for the first time I have made it a point not to drown my "young girl" by mooning beside a lake, or by suppressing her thoughts. Instead I seek each day to make her live, at least for a moment, whether by the twinkle in my eye, or a laugh at the beauty of the morning. My mirror/lake may show the rise of the "terrible fish" of age, but it also reveals the young girl and the old woman meeting and having a cup of tea.
I think that Plath was warning us about the death of youth, of joy, and of naivite, all through the construct of a mirror/lake that is objective in a way that other human beings can never be ("I have no preconceptions/ Whatever I see, I swallow immediately.")
Where the Mind is Without Fear -- Rabindranath Tagore
This poem is from Tagore's book named Gitanjali (Offering of Songs)
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
Lovely poem Madhuri, full of longing and hope
It was written during Indian freedom struggle, that is why it portrays the hope Tagore had and the land he wanted after freedom.
And yet it is relevant in today's society as well . . . it should be the goal of every country to achieve that kind of "heaven of freedom" (I'm going to stop there before this heads into the taboo realm of politics!:D)
I especially like the lines: "Where the world has not been broken up into fragments/
By narrow domestic walls" - I think that can apply to a country being isolated from the world, but it also applies on the level of the individual. That feeling of isolation, of a fragmentary world seems to be a part of modern existence that we are constantly trying to overcome.
In some way or the other in today's times as well, we are forever wanting to gain freedom from the boundaries set by others, or our surroundings, forever trying to create that heaven of freedom.
The idea behind posting it was not politics, but as Hayacinth rightly interpreted, its relevance in our lives.
1909
The lady's dress was
Of purple corded silk
And her gold-broidered tunic
Was formed of two panels
Fitted at the shoulder
Her eyes danced like angels
She laughed she laughed
Her face showed France's colors
Blue eyes white teeth and lips of scarlet
Her face showed France's colors
Her dress was scooped low front and back
Her hair was waved a la Recamier
And O the fair bare arms she had
Will midnight never toll the hour
The lady clad in the purple corded silk
And the gold-broidered tunic
Scooped low front and back
Tossed her curls
Her gold bandeau
And trailed wee buckled shoes
She was so beautiful
You wouldn't have dared love her
I used to love dreadful women in crowded slums
Where each day a few new creatures were born
Iron was their blood and flame their brain
I loved I loved the clever tribe of machines
Luxury and beauty are only their spume
That woman was so beautiful
She frightened me
~Guillaume Apollinaire
(translated by Anne Hyde Greet)
That was lovely. . . I haven't read Apollinaire in a long time, and this has spurred me on to pulling him out and reading him again. Thank you.
I really enjoy the juxtaposition of ethereal woman (purple silk, bare arms and wavy hair) and the terrestrial one (iron, flame, machine). While one would imagine from the speaker's description that the lady in silk would be the object of desire, the expectation is dashed, and the "dreadful" women of earthiness, of industry and its slums, are the chosen. They are loved, and they remain, while "Luxury and beauty are only their spume" to be discarded and feared.
I also enjoyed reading the Apollinaire again. I was wondering, Genoveva (or anyone else for that matter), do you have it in the original french and could post that? I've read it before in translation, but always wondered what the original sounds like.