Poems for August 6

Poems for August 6
“A poet’s function . . . is not to experience the poetic state: that is a private affair. His function is to create it in others.” Paul Valéry
Kim Addonizio puts it this way: “Poetry is not a means to an end, but a continuing engagement with being alive."

What sort of “poetic state” do these poems produce in you? How do they heighten the engagement with being alive?
Best wishes,
Kitty

Tree Marriage – William Meredith
Waiting – W.S. Merwin
Creek by Kwame Dawes
Serenade -- Virginia Konchan
it may not always be so; and i say by E.E. Cummings
Gulls by Wm Carlos Williams

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Wonderful discussion... about connections, expectations, stages of growth that allow us to transform, accept, transcend.... with so many different "takes" and shared experiences.
Note: the Cummings is a rhymed sonnet -- One person thought it was "disingenuous" --
He has worked the form, without being trite, and gone to
a depth of love few can achieve.
That one bird... Terribly afar can be both acceptance of loss, opening to
the what is next, and feeling what was draw further away -- I think of the
French "terrible" -- as not horrific, but intensely great, almost God-like.