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Author
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Topic: Poetry Thoughts
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Pearlty
Knowflake Posts: 1965
From: Ohio
Registered: Jan 2012
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posted July 24, 2013 11:00 AM
  
"One can know poetry if he cannot completely define it. The one essential element which distinguishes it from prose is rhythm. In its primal expressions this is mainly a rhythm of stresses and sounds—of accents and measures, of alliterations and rhymes. Poetry began when man, swaying his body, first sang or moaned to give expression to his joy or sorrow. Its earliest forms are the songs which accompany the simplest emotions. When rowers were in a boat the swinging oars became rhythmic, and the oarsman’s chant naturally followed. When the savage overcame his enemy, he danced his war dance, and sang his war song around his camp-fire at night, tone and words and gestures all fitting into harmony with the movement of his body. So came the chants and songs of work and of triumph. For the dead warrior the moan of lamentation fitted itself to the slower moving to and fro of the mourner, and hence came the elegy. In its first expression this was but inarticulate, half action, half music, dumbly voicing the emotion through the senses; its rhythms were all for the ear and it had little meaning beyond the crude representation of some simple human desire and grief.It became poetry when it put a thrill of exultation in work, of delight in victory, or of grief at loss by death, into some rhythmic form tangible to the senses. There grew up thereafter a body of rhythmic forms—lines, stanzas, accents, rhythms, verbal harmonies. These forms are the outward dress of poetry. Poetry of the Intellect is the second great division of the poetic realm. Beyond it lies still another; for there are spiritual harmonies which the mind alone cannot compass, and which the senses alone cannot interpret. The hand-books know little of spiritual harmonies, and do not go beyond their academic classifications of lyric and epic, and their catalogues of pentameters, hexameters, or alexandrines. But the student can for himself push his observation beyond, and come to the poetry of the higher imagination, where he can be forgetful of the mere form and disdainful of the merely logical relations, where his spirit can as it were see face to face the truth beyond the seeming. This is the poetry of the spirit, and ought to come as a revelation to the searcher."
~Francis Hovey Stoddard
Excerpted from the essay "Study of Poetry"
IP: Logged |
Pearlty
Knowflake Posts: 1965
From: Ohio
Registered: Jan 2012
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posted July 26, 2013 12:45 PM
"I taught myself to live simply and wisely,
to look at the sky and pray to God,
and to wander long before evening
to tire my superfluous worries.
When the burdocks rustle in the ravine
and the yellow-red rowanberry cluster droops
I compose happy verses
about life's decay, decay and beauty."
~Anna AkhmatovaIP: Logged |
Pearlty
Knowflake Posts: 1965
From: Ohio
Registered: Jan 2012
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posted July 30, 2013 11:59 AM
Proverbs and Songs
I
The eye you see is not
an eye because you see it;
it is an eye because it sees you.
II
To talk with someone,
ask a question first,
then -- listen. III
Narcissism
is an ugly fault,
and now it's a boring fault too. IV
But look in your mirror for the other one,
the other one who walks by your side. V
Between living and dreaming
there is a third thing.
Guess it. VI
This Narcissus of ours
can't see his face in the mirror
because he has become the mirror. VII
New century? Still
firing up the same forge?
Is the water still going along in its bed? VIII
Every instant is Still. IX
The sun in Aries. My window
is open to the cool air.
Oh the sound of the water far off!
The evening awakens the river. X
In the old farmhouse
-- a high tower with storks! --
the gregarious sound falls silent,
and in the field where no one is,
water makes a sound among the rocks. XI
Just as before, I'm interested
in water held in;
but now water in living
rock of my chest. XII
When you hear water, does its sound tell you
if it's from a mountain or farm,
city street, formal garden, or orchard? XIII
What I find surprises me:
leaves of the garden balm
smell of lemonwood. XIV
Don't trace out your profile,
forget your side view --
all that is outer stuff. XV
Look for your other half
who walks always next to you
and tends to be what you aren't. XVI
When spring comes,
go to the flowers --
why keep on sucking wax? XVII
In my solitude
I have seen things very clearly
that were not true. XVIII
Water is good, so is thirst;
shadow is good, so is sun;
the honey from the rosemarys
and the honey of the bare fields. XIX
Only one creed stands:
quod elixum est ne asato.
Don't roast what's already boiled. XX
Sing on, sing on, sing on,
the cricket in his cage
near his darling tomato. XXI
Form your letters slowly and well:
making things well
is more important than making them. XXII
All the same...
Ah yes! All the same,
moving the legs fast is important,
as the snail said to the greyhound. XXIII
There are really men of action now!
The marsh was dreaming
of its mosquitoes. XXIV
Wake up, you poets:
let echoes end,
and voices begin. XXV
But don't hunt for dissonance;
because, in the end, there is no dissonance.
When the sound is heard people dance. XXVI
What the poet is searching for
is not the fundamental I
but the deep you. XXVII
The eyes you're longing for --
listen now --
the eyes you see yourself in
are eyes because they see you. XXVIII
Beyond living and dreaming
there is something more important:
waking up. XXIX
Now someone has come up with this!
Cogito ergo non sum.
What an exaggeration! XXX
I thought my fire was out,
and stirred the ashes...
I burnt my fingers. XXXI
Pay attention now:
a heart that's all by itself
is not a heart. XXXII
I've caught a glimpse of him in dreams:
expert hunter of himself,
every minute in ambush. XXXIII
He caught his bad man:
the one who on sunny days
walks with head down. XXXIV
If a poem becomes common,
passed around, hand to hand, it's OK:
gold is chosen for coins. XXXV
If it's good to live,
then it's better to be asleep dreaming,
and best of all,
mother, is to awake. XXXVI
Sunlight is good for waking,
but I prefer bells --
the best thing about morning. XXXVII
Among the figs I am soft.
Among the rocks I am hard.
That's bad! XXXVIII
When I am alone
how close my friends are;
when I am with them
how distant they are! XXXIX
Now, poet, your prophecy?
“Tomorrow what is dumb will speak,
the human heart and the stone.” XL
But art?
It is pure and intense play,
so it is like pure and intense life,
so it is like pure and intense fire.
You'll see the coal burning. ~ Antonio Machado IP: Logged |
mirage29
Knowflake Posts: 15191
From: us
Registered: May 2012
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posted July 31, 2013 04:02 AM
"Meaning precedes explanation." ---Evangelous Christos
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Pearlty
Knowflake Posts: 1965
From: Ohio
Registered: Jan 2012
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posted August 01, 2013 09:45 AM
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Pearlty
Knowflake Posts: 1965
From: Ohio
Registered: Jan 2012
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posted August 06, 2013 10:19 AM
"Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself."
~Henry Miller IP: Logged |
Pearlty
Knowflake Posts: 1965
From: Ohio
Registered: Jan 2012
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posted August 06, 2013 10:32 AM
"The golden birds which flit through the umbrage of his poems!" Whence came those golden birds of Rimbaud's? And whither do they fly? They are neither doves or vultures; they inhabit the airs. They are private messengers hatched in darkness and released in the light of illumination. They bare no resemblance to the creatures of the air, neither are they angels. They are the rare birds of the spirit, birds of passage who flit from sun to sun. They are not imprisoned in the poems, they are liberated there. They rise with the wings of ecstasy and vanish in the flame.Conditioned to ecstasy, the poet is like a gorgeous unknown bird mired in the ashes of thought. If he succeeds in freeing himself, it is to make a sacrificial flight to the sun. His dreams of a regenerate world are but the reverberations of his own fevered pulse beats. He imagines the world will follow him, but in the blue he finds himself alone. Alone but surrounded by his creations; sustained, therefore, to meet the supreme sacrifice. The impossible has been achieved; the dialogue of author with author is consummated. And now forever through the ages the song expands, warming all hearts, penetrating all minds. At the periphery the world is dying away; at the center it glows like a live coal. In the great solar heart of the universe the golden birds are gathered in unison. There it is forever dawn, forever peace, harmony and communion. Man does not look to the sun in vain; he demands light and warmth not for the corpse which he will one day discard but for his inner being. His greatest desire is to burn with ecstasy, to commerge his little flame with the central fire of the universe. If he accords the angels wings so that they may come to him with messages of peace, harmony and radiance from worlds beyond, it is only to nourish his own dreams of flight, to sustain his own belief that he will one day reach beyond himself, and on wings of gold. One creation matches another; in essence they are all alike. The brotherhood of man consists not in thinking alike, nor in acting alike, but in aspiring to praise creation. The song of creation springs from the ruins of earthly endeavor. The outer man dies away in order to reveal the golden bird which is winging its way toward divinity.”
~Henry Miller IP: Logged |
Pearlty
Knowflake Posts: 1965
From: Ohio
Registered: Jan 2012
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posted September 01, 2013 11:05 AM
All people dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their mind, wake in the morning to find that it was vanity. But the dreamers of the day are dangerous people, for they dream their dreams with open eyes, and make them come true.
~D.H. Lawrence* Dreams are the bright creatures of poem and legend, who sport on earth in the night season, and melt away in the first beam of the sun, which lights grim care and stern reality on their daily pilgrimage through the world.
~Charles Dickens IP: Logged |
Pearlty
Knowflake Posts: 1965
From: Ohio
Registered: Jan 2012
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posted September 08, 2013 12:34 PM
Love isKnowing
&
Growing
&
Showing
&
Sewing
&
Hoeing
&
Glowing
&
Flowing
&
Bestowing Love is two people rhyming.
~Peter McWilliams
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Pearlty
Knowflake Posts: 1965
From: Ohio
Registered: Jan 2012
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posted September 11, 2013 09:28 PM
Poetry is to philosophy what the Sabbath is to the rest of the week.~J.C.& A.W. HareIP: Logged |
Pearlty
Knowflake Posts: 1965
From: Ohio
Registered: Jan 2012
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posted September 15, 2013 12:31 PM
Do not judge the poet's life to be sad because of his plaintive verses and confessions of despair. Because he was able to cast off his sorrows into these writings,therefore went he onward free and serene to new experiences.
~EmersonIP: Logged |
Pearlty
Knowflake Posts: 1965
From: Ohio
Registered: Jan 2012
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posted September 19, 2013 10:41 AM
"Authors who have thus drawn off the spirits of their thoughts should lie still for some time, till their minds have gathered fresh strength, and, by reading, reflecting, and conversation, laid in a new stock of elegancies, sentiments, and images of nature."
"There is nothing that makes its way more directly into the soul than beauty."
~Joseph Addison IP: Logged |
Pearlty
Knowflake Posts: 1965
From: Ohio
Registered: Jan 2012
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posted October 13, 2013 01:17 PM
IT came to him in rainbow dreams,
Blent with the wisdom of the sages,
Of spirit and of passion born;
In words as lucent as the morn
He prisoned it, and now it gleams
A jewel shining through the ages.
~L.M. Montgomery
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Libcap
Knowflake Posts: 133
From: NYC
Registered: Aug 2013
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posted October 21, 2013 08:00 PM
'The word the word above all is truly magic not only for its meaning but for its artful manipulation.'IP: Logged |
Pearlty
Knowflake Posts: 1965
From: Ohio
Registered: Jan 2012
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posted October 25, 2013 06:04 PM
^^  ^^IP: Logged |
Randall
Webmaster Posts: 184843
From: I hold a Juris Doctorate (J.D.) and a Legum Magister (LL.M.)!
Registered: Apr 2009
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posted October 28, 2013 11:53 AM
Love this thread.IP: Logged |
Pearlty
Knowflake Posts: 1965
From: Ohio
Registered: Jan 2012
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posted October 28, 2013 02:31 PM
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Pearlty
Knowflake Posts: 1965
From: Ohio
Registered: Jan 2012
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posted October 30, 2013 10:01 AM
“The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.”
"I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.”
“it's no use trying to pretend that mostpeople and ourselves are alike. Mostpeople have less in common with ourselves than thesquarerootofminusone. You and I are human beings; mostpeople are snobs.”
“may I be I is the only prayer-not may I be great or good or beautiful or wise or strong.”
~ E.E. Cummings IP: Logged |
Pearlty
Knowflake Posts: 1965
From: Ohio
Registered: Jan 2012
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posted November 08, 2013 07:55 AM
"Inspiration is not the exclusive privilege of poets or artists. There is, there has been, there will always be a certain group of people whom inspiration visits. It's made up of all those who've consciously chosen their calling and do their job with love and imagination…Difficulties and setbacks never quell their curiosity. A swarm of new questions emerges from every problem that they solve. Whatever inspiration is, it's born from a continuous "I don't know."...That is why I value that little phrase "I don't know" so highly. It's small, but it flies on mighty wings. It expands our lives to include spaces within us as well as the outer expanses in which our tiny Earth hangs suspended...Poets, if they're genuine, must always keep repeating "I don't know".
~ Wisława SzymborskaIP: Logged |
Pearlty
Knowflake Posts: 1965
From: Ohio
Registered: Jan 2012
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posted November 16, 2013 01:31 PM
For a moment, sometimes, we see
--not with our eyes but with our thoughts--
time resting in a pause.
The world half-opens and we glimpse
the immaculate kingdom,
the pure forms, presences
unmoving, floating
on the hour, a river stopped:
truth, beauty, numbers, ideas
--and goodness, a word buried
in our century.A moment without weight or duration,
a moment outside the moment:
thought sees, our eyes think.
Triangles, cubes, the sphere, the pyramid
and the other geometrical figures
thought and drawn by mortal eyes
but which have been here since the beginning,
are, still legible, the world, its secret writing,
the reason and the origin of the turning of things,
the axis of the changes, the unsupported pivot
that rests on itself, a reality without a shadow. The poem, the piece of music, the theorem,
unpolluted presences born from the void,
are delicate structures
built over an abyss:
infinities fit into their finite forms,
and chaos too is ruled by their hidden symmetry. Because we know it, we are not an accident:
chance, redeemed, returns to order.
Tied to the earth and to time,
a light and weightless ether,
thought supports the worlds and their weight,
whirlwinds of suns turned
into a handful of signs
on a random piece of paper. Wheeling swarms
of transparent evidence
where the eyes of understanding
drink a water simple as water. The universe rhymes with itself,
it unfolds and is two and is many
without ceasing to be one. Motion, a river that runs endlessly
with open eyes through the countries of vertigo
--there is no above nor below, what is near is far--
returns to itself
--without returning, now turned
into a fountain of stillness. Tree of blood, man feels, thinks, flowers,
and bears strange fruits: words.
What is thought and what is felt entwine,
we touch ideas: they are bodies and they are numbers. And while I say what I say
time and space fall dizzyingly,
restlessly. They fall in themselves.
Man and the galaxy return to silence. Does it matter? Yes--but it doesn't matter:
we know that silence is music and that
we are a chord in this concert.
~ Ocatvio Paz
excerpted from poem.. Response and Reconciliation IP: Logged |
Pearlty
Knowflake Posts: 1965
From: Ohio
Registered: Jan 2012
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posted November 21, 2013 09:56 AM
"Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home."* "Eccentricity is not, as some would believe, a form of madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride, and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd." * "As for the usefulness of poetry, its uses are many. It is the deification of reality. It should make our days holy to us. The poet should speak to all men, for a moment, of that other life of theirs that they have smothered and forgotten." * "Poetry ennobles the heart and the eyes, and unveils the meaning of all things upon which the heart and the eyes dwell. It discovers the secret rays of the universe, and restores to us forgotten paradises." ~Edith Sitwell
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Pearlty
Knowflake Posts: 1965
From: Ohio
Registered: Jan 2012
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posted December 31, 2013 08:29 AM
"There is something in the very season of the year that gives a charm to the festivity of Christmas. At other times we derive a great portion of our pleasures from the mere beauties of nature. Our feelings sally forth and dissipate themselves over the sunny landscape, and we "live abroad and everywhere." The song of the bird, the murmur of the stream, the breathing fragrance of spring, the soft voluptuousness of summer, the golden pomp of autumn; earth with its mantle of refreshing green, and heaven with its deep delicious blue and its cloudy magnificence, all fill us with mute but exquisite delight, and we revel in the luxury of mere sensation. But in the depth of winter, when nature lies despoiled of every charm, and wrapped in her shroud of sheeted snow, we turn for our gratifications to moral sources. The dreariness and desolation of the landscape, the short gloomy days and darksome nights, while they circumscribe our wanderings, shut in our feelings also from rambling abroad, and make us more keenly disposed for the pleasures of the social circle. Our thoughts are more concentrated; our friendly sympathies more aroused. we feel more sensibly the charm of each other's society, and are brought more closely together by dependence on each other for enjoyment. Heart calleth unto heart; and we draw our pleasures from the deep wells of living kindness, which lie in the quiet recesses of our bosoms: and which when resorted to, furnish forth the pure element of domestic felicity.The pitchy gloom without makes the heart dilate on entering the room filled with the glow and warmth of the evening fire. The ruddy blaze diffuses an artificial summer and sunshine through the room, and lights up each countenance into a kindlier welcome. Where does the honest face of hospitality expand into a broader and more cordial smile-where is the shy glance of love more sweetly eloquent-than by the winter fireside? and as the hollow blast of wintry wind rushes through the hall, claps the distant door, whistles about the casement, and rumbles down the chimney, what can be more grateful than that feeling of sober and sheltered security with which we look around upon the comfortable chamber and the scene of domestic hilarity?"
~Irving IP: Logged |
Pearlty
Knowflake Posts: 1965
From: Ohio
Registered: Jan 2012
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posted January 10, 2014 09:19 AM
A writer - and, I believe, generally all persons - must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.* Personally, I am a hedonistic reader; I have never read a book merely because it was ancient. I read books for the aesthetic emotions they offer me, and I ignore the commentaries and criticism. * Truly fine poetry must be read aloud. A good poem does not allow itself to be read in a low voice or silently. If we can read it silently, it is not a valid poem: a poem demands pronunciation. Poetry always remembers that it was an oral art before it was a written art. It remembers that it was first song. *
It means much to have loved, to have been happy, to have laid my hand on the living Garden, even for a day. * There is nothing in the world that is not mysterious, but the mystery is more evident in certain things than in others: in the sea, in the eyes of the elders, in the color yellow, and in music. * In a way, youthfulness seems closer to me today than when I was a young man. I no longer regard happiness as unattainable; once, long ago, I did. Now I know that it may occur at any moment but that it should never be sought after. As to failure or fame, they are quite irrelevant and I never bother about them. What I'm out for now is peace, the enjoyment of thinking and of friendship, and, though it may be too ambitious, a sense of loving and of being loved. ~ Jorge Luis Borges
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mirage29
Knowflake Posts: 15191
From: us
Registered: May 2012
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posted January 10, 2014 09:55 PM
  IP: Logged |
Pearlty
Knowflake Posts: 1965
From: Ohio
Registered: Jan 2012
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posted January 11, 2014 11:54 AM
Mirage.. IP: Logged | |
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