March 12, 2004

  • Waxing Poetical


    Okay, I've been in a poetical kind of mood this week.  Oh yeah!  It can happen to the best of us.  Just because you think that you aren't a poet, that you have no rhythm, doesn't make you safe.  One day, someone will say to you, "That's a very poetic way of seeing things" and all of a sudden you're trapped.  You start looking at things sideways and seeing them from an angle that requires oblique words.  I love that sensation of approaching life from the sideways angle, you see so much that you miss when you tackle it head-on.  It's dawning on me now that maybe this is the I'm in my 40s version of "in the Spring a young man's fancy ..."  I'm not a young man, but I can smell Spring in the damp earth so ripe that it can't contain the fragrance of quickening.  I see it in the fat fronds among Daffodil greens threatening to burst open with the first warm day.  And I hear it in verses whispering on the wind.  There's poetry in this season of my year, this season of my life.


    With such a wild flood of imagery and meaning in my mind, I turn to my favorites for structure, anchor and form.  Not that they are all structured rhymers by any means.  Do you have a favorite poet?  I have a shelf dedicated to the voices I listen to over and over.  e. e. cummings, Erica Jong, Rumi, and W B Yeats speak truths that I absorb only a little at a time.  It takes repeated exposure for me to begin to think maybe I understand a little of their depths. 


    This afternoon, I was reading Yeats' The Wind Among the Reeds.  My all time favorite Yeats poem is contained in that volume, but it isn't the one I stopped on today.


    To My Heart Bidding It Have No Fear


    Be you still, be you still, trembling heart
    Remember the wisdom out of the old days:
           Him who trembles before the flame and the flood,
       And the winds that blow through the starry ways
       Let the starry winds and the flame and the flood
       Cover and hide for he has no part
       With the proud, majestical multitude.


    So many many things that poem could mean to me at different times.  Today, it told me that on the other side of fear, is proud majesty, and I'm just.this.close to tasting what that's like. 

Comments (10)

  • I read so much bad poetry on Xanga that it makes the good ones seem better.  Yours are good enough and far enough between for me to appreciate.

  • it's those tall waves at the beach that give me that feeling: fear and majesty at the same time. i guess it's the same thing for life challenges, huh?

    pablo neruda and e.e. cummings are my best friends.

  • My favorite poet is Cheri_Herald.  e. e. cummings, Erica Jong, Rumi, and W B Yeats....they're okay.  But I'm partial to Cheri.    I can feel you are just.this.close....oh, and I can hear Josh singing, "Someone I am, is waiting for courage...the one I want, the one I will become will catch me..."  Just fall. 

  • Wax on...  wax VERY on!

  • I never can remember if his name is pronounced Yeets or Yates... when you can write like that, I guess it doesn't matter. Wax on!

  • o/

    God Bless - Dale

  • That is a very inspiring poem... I hope you have had a great weekend....

    Tina

  • Thanks, I needed that.

    I've failed, for the last decade, to dive into the words or the great poets. I need to get back to it, thanks for sharing this one.

  • A very lyrical post this was!  I don't know that I can claim to have a favorite poet.  I often think about investing in a volume of poetry containing a single poet's work, but have yet to do so.  There are so many from which to choose.  I'm a great enthusiast of anthologies, from which we can glimpse many viewpoints and many examples of the art and craft of poetry. 

  • Peter McWilliams always spoke straight to my heart.

    I'm so glad spring is in your air. 

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