Tag Archives: poet

Of aspirations yet realised: “my dreams, my works, must wait wait till after hell” by Gwendolyn Brooks

21 Wednesday Jan 2015

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The works of Pulitzer Prize winning poet,

Gwendolyn Brooks

are rich in symbolic language-

which she employs with vigorous bounce.

Her poems provoke the reader to reconsider meanings

of pieces previously perused.

Thus is the power of her talent.

 

…

Her writings are of life’s circumstances:

expectations, disappointments, longings,

decisions made- some good, some not so.

Written in a real voice, of a steady hand-

her poems are thoughtful, heartfelt, believable, courageous.

 

…

I have “befriended” works by Gwendolyn Brooks,

which I periodically revisit.

I have made some new acquaintances,

from which is received either

a measure of insight, joy, contemplation or solace.

…

F.  L., thank you for “introducing” me to Gwendolyn Brooks,

all those many years ago.

 

 

…

my dreams, my works, must wait till after hell

by Gwendolyn Brooks

 

I hold my honey and I store my bread

In little jars and cabinets of my will.

I label clearly, and each latch and lid

I bid, Be firm till I return from hell.

I am very hungry. I am incomplete.

And none can tell when I may dine again.

No man can give me any word but Wait,

The puny light. I keep eyes pointed in;

Hoping that, when the devil days of my hurt

Drag out to their last dregs and I resume

On such legs as are left me, in such heart

As I can manage, remember to go home,

My taste will not have turned insensitive

To honey and bread old purity could love.

…

(image from lubbockonline.com):

poet, gwendolyn brooks

Gwendolyn Brooks

(1917 – 2000)

Poet.  Teacher.  Mentor.

Pulitzer Prize Recipient for Poetry, 1950

(Ms. Brooks was the first Black American to receive this honour)

Poet Laureate of Illinois, 1968

Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, 1985

…

And so the the days grow short and the nights grow cold, autumn arrives: as visualised by the poet/author Lucy Maud Montgomery

06 Monday Oct 2014

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An Autumn Evening
by Lucy Maud Montgomery

 

Dark hills against a hollow crocus sky
Scarfed with its crimson pennons, and below
The dome of sunset long, hushed valleys lie
Cradling the twilight, where the lone winds blow
And wake among the harps of leafless trees
Fantastic runes and mournful melodies.

The chilly purple air is threaded through
With silver from the rising moon afar,
And from a gulf of clear, unfathomed blue
In the southwest glimmers a great gold star
Above the darkening druid glens of fir
Where beckoning boughs and elfin voices stir.

And so I wander through the shadows still,
And look and listen with a rapt delight,
Pausing again and yet again at will
To drink the elusive beauty of the night,
Until my soul is filled, as some deep cup,
That with divine enchantment is brimmed up.

 

…

 

 

Lucy Maud Montgomery, 1874  – 1942
Canadian poet and author

 

(image from famouscanadians.org):
an autumn evening, poem, lucy laud montgomery, portrait
…

 

Lucy Maud Montgomery was an only child.  She was raised by her elderly
maternal grandparents.  She embraced the companionship of her imagination
and her writing.

 

She is widely known for her best selling novel
Anne of Green Gables  (1908).

‘The Soldier’ : a poem by Rupert Brooke, written in 1914 during the early months of WW1

26 Friday Sep 2014

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A soldier’s duty.

A soldier’s love of country.

…

The Soldier

by Rupert Brooke

If I should die, think only this of me:

That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

…

(photo by meappropriatestyle):

ceramic poppies, tower of london

To honour the British soldiers who lost their lives in  WWI:

‘Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red’

ceramic poppies art installation, Tower of London UK

…

‘The Soldier’ by Rupert Brook, 1887 – 1915

is the last in a five sonnet sequence,

which he had entitled  ‘1914’.

…

His first collection of poems was published in 1911.

In 1913 he became a fellow at his alma mater King’s College, Cambridge.

At the start of WWI, he was commissioned into the Royal Naval Division.

He died on board ship, in 1915, after developing septicaemia from a

mosquito bite.

…

His poems written during the initial period of the war

have an optimistic perspective, which works written by others

as the war progressed, certainly did not.

…

a ‘Phenomenal Woman’: Dr. Maya Angelou (RIP)

28 Wednesday May 2014

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Poet

Author

Civil Rights Activist

(image from oprah.com):

maya angelou oprahcommaster-class-maya-angelou-2-600x411

Dr.  Maya Angelou, 1928  –  2014

…

Phenomenal woman

by Maya Angelou

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I’m telling lies.
I say,
It’s in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It’s the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can’t touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can’t see.
I say,
It’s in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I’m a woman

Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

Now you understand
Just why my head’s not bowed.
I don’t shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It’s in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
‘Cause I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

…

“Thy friendship fair”

08 Tuesday Apr 2014

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A friendship of many years, is something cherished.

It has weathered the storms of life’s disappointment.

Basked in the shared glow of successes.

Held together for all else in between.

…

In time honoured friendship

conversation flows easily and abundantly,

for it is not stifled by

a weighing and measuring of words.

…

A friendship, steady through the years

is a blessed bond.

…

Ralph Waldo Emerson … on the meaning of friendship:

Friendship

by Ralph Waldo Emerson

A ruddy drop of manly blood
The surging sea outweighs,
The world uncertain comes and goes;
The lover rooted stays.
I fancied he was fled,-
And, after many a year,
Glowed unexhausted kindliness,
Like daily sunrise there.
My careful heart was free again,
O friend, my bosom said,
Through thee alone the sky is arched,
Through thee the rose is red;
All things through thee take nobler form,
And look beyond the earth,
The mill-round of our fate appears
A sun-path in thy worth.
Me too thy nobleness had taught
To master my despair;
The fountains of my hidden life
Are through thy friendship fair.

 

…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

ralph waldo emerson beauty

1803 – 1882

Transcendentalist. Essayist. Poet.

…

 

 

December colours

02 Monday Dec 2013

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December 1st

The vineyard country, russet, reddish, carmine-brown in this season. A blue outline of hills above a fertile valley. It’s warm as long as the sun does not set, in the shade cold returns. A strong sauna and then swimming in a pool surrounded by trees. Dark redwoods, transparent pale-leved birches. In their delicate network, a sliver of the moon. I describe this for I have learned to doubt philosophy And the visible world is all that remains.

by Czeslaw Milosz

…

(image from the guardian.com):

Czeslaw-Milosz-, writer

Czeslaw Milosz, 1911 – 2004

Poet.  Essayist.  Recipient- Nobel Prize in Literature (1980)

…

a kind word , a kind deed – a day makes

10 Sunday Nov 2013

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Count That Day Lost
by George Eliot

If you sit down at set of sun
And count the acts that you have done,
And, counting, find
One self-denying deed, one word
That eased the heart of him who heard,
One glance most kind
That fell like sunshine where it went —
Then you may count that day well spent.

But if, through all the livelong day,
You’ve cheered no heart, by yea or nay —
If, through it all
You’ve nothing done that you can trace
That brought the sunshine to one face–
No act most small
That helped some soul and nothing cost —
Then count that day as worse than lost

…
(image from theguardian.com):
George Eliot,  1819 – 1880
(nee Mary Ann Evans)

Funeral Blues by W. H. Auden

16 Wednesday Oct 2013

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Somber.   Lyrical.   Emotive.

Funeral Blues

by W. H. Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

O the valley in the summer where I and my John
Beside the deep river would walk on and on
While the flowers at our feet and the birds up above
Argued so sweetly on reciprocal love,
And I leaned on his shoulder; ‘O Johnny, let’s play’:
But he frowned like thunder and he went away.

O that Friday near Christmas as I well recall
When we went to the Charity Matinee Ball,
The floor was so smooth and the band was so loud
And Johnny so handsome I felt so proud;
‘Squeeze me tighter, dear Johnny, let’s dance till it’s day’:
But he frowned like thunder and he went away.

Shall I ever forget at the Grand Opera
When music poured out of each wonderful star?
Diamonds and pearls they hung dazzling down
Over each silver and golden silk gown;
‘O John I’m in heaven,’ I whispered to say:
But he frowned like thunder and he went away.

O but he was fair as a garden in flower,
As slender and tall as the great Eiffel Tower,
When the waltz throbbed out on the long promenade
O his eyes and his smile they went straight to my heart;
‘O marry me, Johnny, I’ll love and obey’:
But he frowned like thunder and he went away.

O last night I dreamed of you, Johnny, my lover,
You’d the sun on one arm and the moon on the other,
The sea it was blue and the grass it was green,
Every star rattled a round tambourine;
Ten thousand miles deep in a pit there I lay:
But you frowned like thunder and you went away.

…

(image from bbc.co.uk):

W. H. Auden, 1907 – 1973

…

Listen to a brief excerpt, finishing at end of fourth stanza:

I know why the caged bird sings …

11 Friday Oct 2013

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I know why the caged bird sings
A free bird leaps on the back
Of the wind and floats downstream
Till the current ends and dips his wing
In the orange suns rays
And dares to claim the sky.

But a BIRD that stalks down his narrow cage
Can seldom see through his bars of rage
His wings are clipped and his feet are tied
So he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings with a fearful trill
Of things unknown but longed for still
And his tune is heard on the distant hill for
The caged bird sings of freedom.

The free bird thinks of another breeze
And the trade winds soft through
The sighing trees
And the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright
Lawn and he names the sky his own.

But a caged BIRD stands on the grave of dreams
His shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
His wings are clipped and his feet are tied
So he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings with
A fearful trill of things unknown
But longed for still and his
Tune is heard on the distant hill
For the caged bird sings of freedom.

…
(image by glamour.com):
Maya Angelou
Poet.   Author.   Autobiographer.
Recipient:   National Medal of Arts,  2000
                      Presidential Medal of Freedom,  2011