<p>garland: I met Seamus Heany on many occasions. In Setauket. He even wrote a poem about fireflies in Setauket.</p>
<p>“Circus Animals Desertion” garland, are you sure this is not just another pose? “the rag and bone shop of the heart” good stuff, even if it is a pose.</p>
<p>Mondays and Tuesdays are so hectic for me I’m limiting my posts to poems I don’t have to go anywhere or do anything to find. I loved this very early Yeats when I was young and memorized it.</p>
<p>Who will go with Fergus now
And pierce the deep wood’s woven shade
And dance upon the level shore?</p>
<p>Young man pick up your tender brow
And lift your tender eyelids maid,
And brood on hopes and fear no more.</p>
<p>For Fergus rules the brazen cars
And the white breast of the dim sea
And all dishevelled wandering stars.</p>
<p>M-mom, as i said on another thread, when I was a college student, I met Heaney, and babysat his kids in his home in Dublin. Very cool experience!</p>
<p>(Yeats poem–Maybe it’s a pose. It came very late in his career, and I am willing to vouchsafe his sincerity–in fact, I’ll stake my poetic license on it. :)).</p>
<p>Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what Ive tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.</p>
<p>And one of my own, that CC parents might identify with:</p>
<pre><code> Extraction
</code></pre>
<p>With his wisdom teeth yanked
from their bone cradles,
my son comes home woozy,
hands me four teeth in an envelope
as keepsakes. Their roots curl
like tiny fingers. Cherishing this chance
to nurse my youngest child
weeks before he leaves for college,
I fill the stock pot to the brim
just as his friends amble in
unannounced. They bear sympathy
and dinner – canned tomato soup
and a sourdough loaf too tough
for him to chew. He clutches ice
to his stubbled cheek, tries
not to grin around the bloody gauze
in his empty sockets. As I retreat
upstairs, I hear their masculine laughter,
the clumsy clatter of pots and jibes,
how each kitchen chair complains
mildly as six feet of boy sprawls
onto it. I think of them gathered
at our table – their separate lives
together – notice the beginning
of my own dull ache.</p>
<p>My fifth grade daughter is currently memorizing this poem for school, so I have to share it. Besides, I’ve always liked it!</p>
<p>“Daffodils”
by William Wordsworth</p>
<p>I wandered lonely as a Cloud
That floats on high o’er Vales and Hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.</p>
<p>Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.</p>
<p>The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:-
A poet could not but be gay
In such a jocund company:
I gazed-and gazed-but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:</p>
<p>For oft when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude,
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the Daffodils.</p>
<p>Sentinal, guard the gate! Secure the chamber!
Time is of the essence in the reactionary zeal.
However time does not proceed but pauses, then retreats.
Sound-bite, spin the evening news
in one dimension, perhaps two, the feed they desire to hear.</p>
<p>And today’s #1 issue is in the balance, but whose philosophies?
Logic is mocked. Gravity defied. Aqua vitae flows towards it source.
Theory and reality can be cast aside, the agenda rules.
Hip hip hooray for their sacrifice.</p>
<p>Thanks, garland for the interpretation help. I would never have gotten that. I lean towards the more “accessible”, I guess. And knowing the poet’s name is a good start (Keats vs. Yeats----hahaha what a doofus I am!). I’ll just fade back and read quietly now. :D</p>
<p>Confession. One I hope loses me no cyber-friends.</p>
<p>I don’t like poetry. Many don’t like poetry because it’s too difficult. But that’s not my problem.</p>
<p>I like long poetry. I love “Paradise Lost” - all those fallen angels turning into devils as they float like leaves on a lake. I like the Iliad even though I can’t read it in Greek.</p>
<p>But modern poetry just seems to me like cheating. For the same reason as short stories seem like cheating. Their brevity gives them instant poignancy. If it’s a good poem I am just by default going to feel some loss at its end.</p>
<p>Cheating. I want tweaking at my heartstrings to be a hard fought battle. With lots of blood. And lots of language. No fair causing a catch in my throat with so few lines.</p>
<p>Can you see why I could never join a book club?</p>
<p>Alumother – Nothing wrong with liking only long narrative poetry. But not all poetry tweaks the heart strings. Some of it tweaks the ear like music. Some of it tweaks the mind like philosophy. Some of the very best does all three.</p>