help, a dire request!
Sep. 17th, 2007 10:45 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
nattyleedread.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
greatpoetryI am about to embark on creating a newsletter for the new Poetry Center at my university, something that I am very excited about and also very invested in.
For the first issue, I'd like to include a poem about any of these things: new beginnings, the importance/beauty/wonder of poetry, celebration, finding a personal voice, the creative/human spirit, and/or anything else in this general vein. Basically, I want to invite the readers of the newsletter to engage with the Center and with Poetry, and to see this as a joyful, bountiful process.
Any and all suggestions for poems would be highly appreciated! Thank you so very much to anyone that takes time to help me.
As always, here's the poem. Someone else posted some James Wright earlier, so here's one that gets me everytime :).
A BLESSING
Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.
-James Wright
For the first issue, I'd like to include a poem about any of these things: new beginnings, the importance/beauty/wonder of poetry, celebration, finding a personal voice, the creative/human spirit, and/or anything else in this general vein. Basically, I want to invite the readers of the newsletter to engage with the Center and with Poetry, and to see this as a joyful, bountiful process.
Any and all suggestions for poems would be highly appreciated! Thank you so very much to anyone that takes time to help me.
As always, here's the poem. Someone else posted some James Wright earlier, so here's one that gets me everytime :).
A BLESSING
Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.
-James Wright
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-09-18 02:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-18 02:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-18 02:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-18 02:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-18 03:15 am (UTC)Self Portrait
It doesn't interest me if there is one God
Or many gods.
I want to know if you belong -- or feel abandoned;
If you know despair
Or can see it in others.
I want to know
If you are prepared to live in the world
With its harsh need to change you;
If you can look back with firm eyes
Saying "this is where I stand."
I want to know if you know how to melt
Into that fierce heat of living
Falling toward the center of your longing.
I want to know if you are willing
To live day by day
With the consequence of love
And the bitter unwanted passion
Of your sure defeat.
I have been told
In that fierce embrace
Even the gods
Speak of God.
~ David Whyte ~
no subject
Date: 2007-09-18 05:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-18 12:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-18 03:23 am (UTC)Look: no one ever promised for sure
that we would sing. We have decided
to moan. In a strange dance that
we don't understand till we do it, we
have to carry on.
Just as in sleep you have to dream
the exact dream to round out your life,
so we have to live that dream into stories
and hold them close at you, close at the
edge we share, to be right.
We find it an awful thing to meet people,
serious or not, who have turned into vacant
effective people, so far lost that they
won't believe their own feelings
enough to follow them out.
The authentic is a line from one thing
along to the next; it interests us.
strangely, it relates to what works,
but is not quite the same. It never
swerves for revenge,
Or profit, or fame: it holds
together something more than the world,
this line. And we are your wavery
efforts at following it. Are you coming?
Good: now it is time.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-18 12:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-18 04:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-18 04:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-18 11:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-18 12:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-18 12:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-18 12:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-18 11:32 pm (UTC)"Poem for People who are understandably too busy for Poetry" --sorry, you'll have to look the author up!