know more poetry by heart

If you enjoy poetry, I invite you to check out my first book.

http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/holiday-saloon/4302977

Here’s an example:

Proof

Sepia
dew drops of water;
your reflection inverted
in every one,
your smile hung,
falling broken
on orchid lip
down dusty throat
salted sweet.
Each drunken bee
dizzily floats
on shattered memory
and weaves
to my sweet hive
where we make wine
and talk of you,
and agree
never to speak.
We hum.
Ancient hum
becomes a song;
a tempo drum,
a taste of rum
with a sad
Valentine beat.
I am a vampire,
a mouth
babbling water
through a glass.
You’re only touched
by what you touch:
“The rain did not hang me.”
I burn away in
the daytime sun;
like fogs from fields,
like thoughts burn dreams.
When I wake now I find you gone,
and if proof of you was proof of me
I’ll miss wanting to sleep.

1/30/06

©2006

This book includes love poetry, poetry about difficult relationships, OCD, depression, and self-doubt.

The download is FREE now. Please check it out, and please enjoy.

poetry is beautiful, so why not? :)

I just got a bunch of cheers on this goal and realized that I haven’t done anything toward accomplishing it. Hmmm…need to go hit the poetry shelf of my library. For now I will share the first poem I ever memorized and still love to this day:

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold
Her early leaf’s a flower
But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf
So Eden sank to grief
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay.

-Robert Frost

i’m working on lady of shalott right now. i plan on doing some whitman after this.

I have to rehearse a few poems a bit, but it’s nice to every now and then just recite a poem all by myself. If anyone knows any more lovely poems – I’m open for suggestions! =)

I wonder, how many poems do I need to memorize? Oh well, here is one to start. A beautiful poem by one of my all-time favourite poets (ie. Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird; perhaps that one will be next). But for now…

Of Mere Being
by Wallace Stevens

The palm at the end of the mind,
Beyond the last thought, rises
In the bronze decor,

A gold-feathered bird
Sings in the palm, without human meaning,
Without human feeling, a foreign song.

You know then that it is not the reason
That makes us happy or unhappy.
The bird sings. Its feathers shine.

The palm stands on the edge of space.
The wind moves slowly in the branches.
The bird’s fire-fangled feathers dangle down.

I want to have a beautiful phrase coming up in my mind for almost any occasion.. Sometimes romantic, sometimes funny, sometimes scary, but always meaningful.

I used to memorize poetry all the time. Now, for some reason, it seems so much harder to do. One of my professors told us memorizing poetry is exercising your brain, so I’m going to attempt one poem per week for now. (baby steps!)

If you can keep your head when others all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master,
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And-which is more-you’ll be a Man, my son! (Women, my daughter!)

There’s a Langston Hughes poem, Weary Blues, that I carry a piece of around in my head. I love the rhythm of it.
And far into the night, he crooned that tune.
The sun went out and so did the moon.
The singer stopped playing and went to bed
while the Weary Blues echoed through his head.
He slept like a rock or a man that’s dead.

It’s fun to roll a piece of poetry around in your head while standing in line, riding the subway, or sitting at a stop light.