Poems.

Colleges & Universities Yale University
1

<p>Reading the “what words are you living by…” post gave me this idea.</p>

<p>This is my favorite poem, along with two Korean poems and Yeats’s The Second Coming. </p>

<p>My college essay is, in fact, based on this poem. I believe that a lot of seniors, including myself, can’t help being obsessed with perfection (or obsessively envying perfection) at this point of our lives. I hope this poem comfort you all. </p>

<p>“The Poems of our Climate”</p>

<p>I</p>

<p>Clear water in a brilliant bowl,
Pink and white carnations. The light
In the room more like a snowy air,
Reflecting snow. A newly-fallen snow
At the end of winter when afternoons return.
Pink and white carnations - one desires
So much more than that. The day itself
Is simplified: a bowl of white,
Cold, a cold porcelain, low and round,
With nothing more than the carnations there.</p>

<p>II</p>

<p>Say even that this complete simplicity
Stripped one of all one’s torments, concealed
The evilly compounded, vital I
And made it fresh in a world of white,
A world of clear water, brilliant-edged,
Still one would want more, one would need more,
More than a world of white and snowy scents.</p>

<p>III</p>

<p>There would still remain the never-resting mind,
So that one would want to escape, come back
To what had been so long composed.
The imperfect is our paradise.
Note that, in this bitterness, delight,
Since the imperfect is so hot in us,
Lies in flawed words and stubborn sounds.</p>

<pre><code> – Wallace Stevens
</code></pre>

<p>I invite everyone to post their favorite poems and their reasons. Sounds a lot like my Lit class, but then literature is my favorite subject. :)</p>

<p>ps. reading this poem again, I got the shivers for the millionth time. The power and beauty of these words are just amazing.</p>

2

<p>I like Sylvia Plath’s metaphor poems</p>

3

<p>That poem was on my SAT II!! wow, what a coincidence.</p>

4

<p>Ah Ha! Mine too! (october!)
And I have DESPISED it ever since. Sorry to say that SATs can ruin more than college applications.</p>

5

<p>Will Blake is my homey.</p>

6

<p>am i a total nerd if i really liked a lot of the pieces from my SAT II Lit? lol.</p>

7

<p>“El Dorado” by Poe</p>

<p>I actually have a terrible time with poetry. I don’t understand poetry yet . . . but I really like poetic prose (like Bradbury). I think my attitude towards poetry is too cynical for me to be interested in poetry. I can love certain poems and recognize their value and beauty . . . but I will rarely explore poems on my own volition.</p>

8

<p>roses are red
violets are green</p>

<p>i’m not getting into college.</p>

9

<p>^ hahahaha</p>

10

<p>tattooyou, if I were a publisher… I would put that in a book.</p>

11

<p>I love “She walks in beauty” by Byron. But this one is my new favorite:</p>

<p>VIew with a grain of sand
by Wislawa Szymborska</p>

<p>We call it a grain of sand
but it calls itself neither grain nor sand.
It does just fine without a name,
whether general, particular,
permanent, passing,
incorrect or apt.</p>

<p>Our glance, our touch mean nothing to it.
It doesn’t feel itself seen and touched.
And that it fell on the windowsill
is only our experience, not its.
For it it’s no different than falling on anything else
with no assurance that it’s finished falling
or that it’s falling still.</p>

<p>The window has a wonderful view of a lake
but the view doesn’t view itself.
It exists in this world
colorless, shapeless,
soundless, odorless, and painless.</p>

<p>The lake’s floor exists floorlessly
and its shore exists shorelessly.
Its water feels itself neither wet nor dry
and its waves to themselves are neither singular nor plural.
They splash deaf to their own noise
on pebbles neither large nor small.</p>

<p>And all this beneath a sky by nature skyless
in which the sun sets without setting at all
and bides without hiding behind an unminding cloud.
The wind ruffles it, its only reason being
that it blows.</p>

<p>A second passes.
A second second.
A third.
But they’re three seconds only for us.</p>

<p>Time has passed like a courier with urgent news.
But that’s just our simile.
The character’s invented, his haste is make-believe,
his news inhuman.</p>

12

<p>Monsieur, I did “She Walks in Beauty” as part of my forensics piece my sophomore year! It was awesome.</p>

13

<p>Monsieur, i LOVE Wislawa Szymborska. </p>

<p>my favorite of hers:</p>

<p>Notes from a Nonexistent Himalayan Expedition</p>

<p>So these are the Himalayas.
Mountains racing to the moon.
The moment of their start recorded
on the startling, ripped canvas of the sky
Holes punched in a desert of clouds.
Thrust into nothing.
Echo- a white mute.
Quiet.</p>

<p>Yeti, down there we’ve got Wednesday,
bread and alphabets.
Two times two is four.
Rose are ret there,
and violets are blue.</p>

<p>Yeti, crime is not all
we’re up to down there.
Yeti, not every sentence there
means death.</p>

<p>We’ve inherited hope-
the gift of forgetting.
You’ll see how we give
birth among the ruins.</p>

<p>Yeti, we’ve got Shakespeare there.
Yeti, we play solitaire
and violin. At nightfall,
we turn lights on, Yeti.</p>

<p>Up here it’s neither moon nor earth.
Tears freeze.
Oh Yeti, semi-moonman,
turn back, think again!</p>

<p>I called this to the Yeti
inside four walls of avalanche,
stomping my feet for warmth
on the everlasting snow.</p>