Robert Frost ( NPC 1958) https://www.britannica.com/biography/Robert-Frost
Richard Eberhart (NPC 1959-61) https://www.britannica.com/biography/Richard-Eberhart
Louis Untermeyer (NPC 1961-63) https://www.britannica.com/biography/Louis-Untermeyer
Howard Nemerov (NPC 1963-4; NPL 1988-90) https://www.britannica.com/biography/Howard-Nemerov
Reed Whittemore (NPC twice: In 1964–65;1984–85) https://www.britannica.com/biography/Reed-Whittemore
Robert Penn Warren (NPL 1986) https://www.britannica.com/biography/Robert-Penn-Warren
At Woodward's Gardens by Robert Frost
A boy, presuming on his intellect,
Once showed two little monkeys in a cage
A burning-glass they could not understand,
And never could be made to understand.
Words are no good: to say it was a lens
For gathering solar rays would not have helped.
But let him show them how the weapon worked,
He made the sun a pin-point on the nose
Of first one, then the other, till it brought
A look of puzzled dimness to their eyes
That blinking could not seem to blink away.
(April 1936)
https://interestingliterature.com/2017/06/10-of-the-best-robert-frost-poems-everyone-should-read/
Anglo-Saxon Song by Richard Eberhart
I must think of man as a suffering being.
Happiness, the bright boon of warriors, disappears.
I must think; I have felt over-much; love
Drives into the heart the poisonous shaft.
I must hoard all sufferings of men.
O pride of accomplishment, the hero's banner ;
Dare to feel, to sense again illusion.
Ornaments of conquest; peace, hard hearth-stone.
I must not peer into the crooked reach
Where mind crumbles, spills out hot gore, heart!
The dark threat of being born; "the pain
Of living"; inconsequence of mighty death.
Poem
If I could only live at the pitch that is near madness
When everything is as it was in my childhood
Violent, vivid, and of infinite possibility
That the sun and the moon broke over my head.
Then I cast time out of the trees and fields,
Then I stood immaculate in the Ego;
Then I eyed the world with all delight,
Reality was the perfection of my sight.
(Jan. 1938)
Beauty by Louis Untermeyer
Beauty shall not lead me-
No, on no more passionate and never-ending quests.
I am tired of stumbling after her
Through wild, familiar forests and strange morasses-
Tired of breaking my heart and losing my sleep, following
a fitful gleam.
Beauty, you shall fly before me no longer-
Smiling, looking back over your shoulder with beckoning
blushes-
Wanton, trickster, trifler with weak men;
Demanding all and giving nothing in return
But furious dreams and shattering visions.
Beauty, I shall have you-
Not in imagination only, but in the flesh.
You will pursue me with untiring breath, you will press
by my side wherever I go.
Even in the muddy squalor and the thick welter of ugliness,
You shall run to me and put your arms about my hips, and
cling to me;
And, try as I will, you will never be shaken off.
Beauty, I know you now-
And knowing (and loving) you, I will thirst for you no
longer. . .
(June 1916)
Beginner's Guide by Howard Nemerov
They stand in the corner, on a shadowy shelf,
Field Books of This, Beginner's Guides to That,
Remainders of an abdicated self
That wanted knowledge of no matter what.
Of flowers, was it? Every spring he'd tear
From their hiding-places, press and memorize
A dozen pale beginners of the year
That open almost among the melting snows,
And for a month thereafter rule his realm
Of small and few and homey in such minds
As his, until full summer came to whelm
Him under the flood and number of her kinds.
Or birds? At least the flowers would stand still
For amateurs, but these flighty alightings
Would not; and as he still refused to kill
In confirmation of his rarer sightings
The ornithologists were not his dish,
And. he made do with sedentary birds
Who watched his watching as it were their wish
To check with Peterson, pictures and words.
And even so, before he got them straight
As like as not they'd not be there at all.
On the wings and wits God gave 'em they'd migrate;
"Confusing Fall Warblers" were, each Fall, his fall.
The world would not, nor he could not, stand still.
The longest life might be too short a one
more poems: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/howard-nemerov
A Tale of a Poem and a Squash by Reed Whittemore
Let me take this acorn squash, grown in my garden,
And place beside it a poem grown in a hothouse.
You will note the difference at once; the former is jolly
And fat, self-contained, the latter anaemic,
Colorless, tasteless, the clearest evidence
That a poem does not make a squash. But now take the squash,
And shoving its roundness into a lyric book,
Look!
How those covers squinch, being quashed, to elucidate
Something or other
where was I?
Of late
I have been reading too much on this subject.
Art is not life, I am told, and thus in my garden
(Which as a matter of fact has no squashes,
Just toads), I fund myself gathering
Wool mostly, a few old tomatoes of rhymes,
And a mythical rosebud or two in the hope that these items
Will store well against winter, my chosen season,
When nothing from nature is blooming except my
Dog, a few plants on a windowsill, and of course people,
Most of whom,
Like myself,
Are not of the soil, the good earth, and in winter look
More like a poem than a
but, as I say,
This subject unnerves me.
Where,
Where does one go—into war? poverty?—
more poems: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/reed-whittemore
Aspen Leaf in Windless World by Robert Penn Warren
Watch how the aspen leaf, pale and windless, waggles,
While one white cloud loiters motionless over Wyoming,
And think how delicately the heart may flutter
In the windless joy of unworded revelation.
Look how the sea-foam, white, makes its Arabic scrawl
On the unruffled sand of the beach's faint-tilted plane.
Is there a message there for you to decipher?
Or only the joy of its sunlit intricacy?
Is there a sign Truth gives that we recognize?
Can we fix our eyes on the flight of birds for answer?
Can the bloody-armed augurs declare expediency?
What does dew on stretched woolfleece, the grass dry,
mean?
Have you stood on the night-lawn, in blackness of oaks,
and heard
From bough-crotch to bough-crotch, the moon-eyed
tree toad utter,
Again and again, that quavery croak, and asked
If it means there'll be rain? Toward dawn? Or early
tomorrow?
We were not by when Aaron laid down his rod
That suddenly twisted, went scaley, and heaved the
fanged head,
And when Egypt's high magi probed their own lore for
the trick.
Well, the sacred serpent devoured that brood. What,
then,
Would you've made of that? Yes, we wander our world
Of miracles, whispers, high-jinks, and metaphor.
Yes, why is the wind in the cedar the sub-sob of grief?
And the puppy--why is his tongue on your palm so
sweet?
(November 1979) More poems: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/robert-penn-warren; https://www.best-poems.net/robert_penn_warren/index.html
BELOW: A CONTEMPORARY POEM NOT BY A POET LAUREATE! https://www.thesunlightpress.com/2022/04/07/september-clouds/
September Clouds by Maggie Kennedy
Some clouds could
never understand:
floating puffs of moisture,
decorations with no entanglements,
or striated streaks stretched
too thin to take on
another trouble.
Others speak,
sum up a season:
rifts ablaze, valleys solemn,
having absorbed in their
slow migration
salty sweat
stagnant breath
morning dew
morning jitters
cry a river
laugh till it hurts
spit in the ocean
spit in the eye
spilled milk
spilled words
Standing beneath
is to be enfolded
known, accepted,
part of the unnerving blue.
No comments:
Post a Comment