My favorite poem. What 's yours?
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Ooh, thank you for the link, Carmela! I can't wait to check it out. (:
For me, one of my favorite poems is by Emily Dickinson:
“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -
And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -
I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.
For me, one of my favorite poems is by Emily Dickinson:
“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -
And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -
I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.
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Hey everyone. I thought you might enjoy these from one of my favorite poets.
( From "A Coney Island of the Mind"; 1958 ):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Ferlinghetti
( From "A Coney Island of the Mind"; 1958 ):
I Am Waiting
By Lawrence Ferlinghetti
I am waiting for my case to come up
and I am waiting
for a rebirth of wonder
and I am waiting for someone
to really discover America
and wail
and I am waiting
for the discovery
of a new symbolic western frontier
and I am waiting
for the American Eagle
to really spread its wings
and straighten up and fly right
and I am waiting
for the Age of Anxiety
to drop dead
and I am waiting
for the war to be fought
which will make the world safe
for anarchy
and I am waiting
for the final withering away
of all governments
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for the Second Coming
and I am waiting
for a religious revival
to sweep thru the state of Arizona
and I am waiting
for the Grapes of Wrath to be stored
and I am waiting
for them to prove
that God is really American
and I am waiting
to see God on television
piped onto church altars
if only they can find
the right channel
to tune in on
and I am waiting
for the Last Supper to be served again
with a strange new appetizer
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for my number to be called
and I am waiting
for the Salvation Army to take over
and I am waiting
for the meek to be blessed
and inherit the earth
without taxes
and I am waiting
for forests and animals
to reclaim the earth as theirs
and I am waiting
for a way to be devised
to destroy all nationalisms
without killing anybody
and I am waiting
for linnets and planets to fall like rain
and I am waiting for lovers and weepers
to lie down together again
in a new rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for the Great Divide to be crossed
and I am anxiously waiting
for the secret of eternal life to be discovered
by an obscure general practitioner
and I am waiting
for the storms of life
to be over
and I am waiting
to set sail for happiness
and I am waiting
for a reconstructed Mayflower
to reach America
with its picture story and tv rights
sold in advance to the natives
and I am waiting
for the lost music to sound again
in the Lost Continent
in a new rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for the day
that maketh all things clear
and I am awaiting retribution
for what America did
to Tom Sawyer
and I am waiting
for Alice in Wonderland
to retransmit to me
her total dream of innocence
and I am waiting
for Childe Roland to come
to the final darkest tower
and I am waiting
for Aphrodite
to grow live arms
at a final disarmament conference
in a new rebirth of wonder
I am waiting
to get some intimations
of immortality
by recollecting my early childhood
and I am waiting
for the green mornings to come again
youth’s dumb green fields come back again
and I am waiting
for some strains of unpremeditated art
to shake my typewriter
and I am waiting to write
the great indelible poem
and I am waiting
for the last long careless rapture
and I am perpetually waiting
for the fleeing lovers on the Grecian Urn
to catch each other up at last
and embrace
and I am awaiting
perpetually and forever
a renaissance of wonder
The World Is a Beautiful Place
by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don’t mind happiness
not always being
so very much fun
if you don’t mind a touch of hell
now and then
just when everything is fine
because even in heaven
they don’t sing
all the time
The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don’t mind some people dying
all the time
or maybe only starving
some of the time
which isn’t half bad
if it isn’t you
Oh the world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don’t much mind
a few dead minds
in the higher places
or a bomb or two
now and then
in your upturned faces
or such other improprieties
as our Name Brand society
is prey to
with its men of distinction
and its men of extinction
and its priests
and other patrolmen
and its various segregations
and congressional investigations
and other constipations
that our fool flesh
is heir to
Yes the world is the best place of all
for a lot of such things as
making the fun scene
and making the love scene
and making the sad scene
and singing low songs and having inspirations
and walking around
looking at everything
and smelling flowers
and goosing statues
and even thinking
and kissing people and
making babies and wearing pants
and waving hats and
dancing
and going swimming in rivers
on picnics
in the middle of the summer
and just generally
‘living it up’
Yes
but then right in the middle of it
comes the smiling
mortician
Sometime During Eternity . . .
By Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Sometime during eternity
some guys show up
and one of them
who shows up real late
is a kind of carpenter
from some square-type place
like Galilee
and he starts wailing
and claiming he is hip
to who made heaven
and earth
and that the cat
who really laid it on us
is his Dad
And moreover
he adds
It’s all writ down
on some scroll-type parchments
which some henchmen
leave lying around the Dead Sea somewheres
a long time ago
and which you won’t even find
for a coupla thousand years or so
or at least for
nineteen hundred and fortyseven
of them
to be exact
and even then
nobody really believes them
or me
for that matter
You’re hot
they tell him
And they cool him
They stretch him on the Tree to cool
And everybody after that
is always making models
of this Tree
with Him hung up
and always crooning His name
and calling Him to come down
and sit in
on their combo
as if he is the king cat
who’s got to blow
or they can’t quite make it
Only he don’t come down
from His Tree
Him just hang there
on His Tree
looking real Petered out
and real cool
and also
according to a roundup
of late world news
from the usual unreliable sources
real dead
Constantly Risking Absurdity (#15)
By Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Constantly risking absurdity
and death
whenever he performs
above the heads
of his audience
the poet like an acrobat
climbs on rime
to a high wire of his own making
and balancing on eyebeams
above a sea of faces
paces his way
to the other side of day
performing entrechats
and sleight-of-foot tricks
and other high theatrics
and all without mistaking
any thing
for what it may not be
For he's the super realist
who must perforce perceive
taut truth
before the taking of each stance or step
in his supposed advance
toward that still higher perch
where Beauty stands and waits
with gravity
to start her death-defying leap
And he
a little charleychaplin man
who may or may not catch
her fair eternal form
spreadeagled in the empty air
of existence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Ferlinghetti
“ If you would be a poet, create works capable of answering the challenge of
apocalyptic times, even if this meaning sounds apocalyptic.
You are Whitman, you are Poe, you are Mark Twain, you are Emily Dickinson and Edna St. Vincent Millay, you are Neruda and Mayakovsky and Pasolini, you are an American or a non-American, you can conquer the conquerors with words....
”
—Lawrence Ferlinghetti. From Poetry as Insurgent Art .
What do I know? - Michael de Montaigne
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Dreams of a Crazy Man
If all the dreams of a crazy man seem far away
then I say to listen to the wind
as it begins to tell you of life and what it means
to be a crazy man
to understand a dream.
If to love me will make you cry
and if you don't know the reason why
just whistle through the storm
it will be warm
the clouds can't hide the sun forever
be happy child
don't worry 'bout the weather.
Night is night and the day is bright
in-between may seem to last forever
well forever it may be
though to me it's almost morning
and morning comes only once a day.
If all the dreams of a crazy man seem far away
then I say to listen to the wind
as it begins to tell you of life and what it means
to be a crazy man
to understand a dream.
If to love me will make you cry
and if you don't know the reason why
just whistle through the storm
it will be warm
the clouds can't hide the sun forever
be happy child
don't worry 'bout the weather.
Night is night and the day is bright
in-between may seem to last forever
well forever it may be
though to me it's almost morning
and morning comes only once a day.
Dreams of a Crazy Man
If all the dreams of a crazy man seem far away
then I say to listen to the wind
as it begins to tell you of life and what it means
to be a crazy man
to understand a dream.
If to love me will make you cry
and if you don't know the reason why
just whistle through the storm
it will be warm
the clouds can't hide the sun forever
be happy child
don't worry 'bout the weather.
Night is night and the day is bright
in-between may seem to last forever
well forever it may be
though to me it's almost morning
and morning comes only once a day.
If all the dreams of a crazy man seem far away
then I say to listen to the wind
as it begins to tell you of life and what it means
to be a crazy man
to understand a dream.
If to love me will make you cry
and if you don't know the reason why
just whistle through the storm
it will be warm
the clouds can't hide the sun forever
be happy child
don't worry 'bout the weather.
Night is night and the day is bright
in-between may seem to last forever
well forever it may be
though to me it's almost morning
and morning comes only once a day.
Dreams of a Crazy Man
If all the dreams of a crazy man seem far away
then I say to listen to the wind
as it begins to tell you of life and what it means
to be a crazy man
to understand a dream.
If to love me will make you cry
and if you don't know the reason why
just whistle through the storm
it will be warm
the clouds can't hide the sun forever
be happy child
don't worry 'bout the weather.
Night is night and the day is bright
in-between may seem to last forever
well forever it may be
though to me it's almost morning
and morning comes only once a day.
If all the dreams of a crazy man seem far away
then I say to listen to the wind
as it begins to tell you of life and what it means
to be a crazy man
to understand a dream.
If to love me will make you cry
and if you don't know the reason why
just whistle through the storm
it will be warm
the clouds can't hide the sun forever
be happy child
don't worry 'bout the weather.
Night is night and the day is bright
in-between may seem to last forever
well forever it may be
though to me it's almost morning
and morning comes only once a day.
Dreams of a Crazy Man
If all the dreams of a crazy man seem far away
then I say to listen to the wind
as it begins to tell you of life and what it means
to be a crazy man
to understand a dream.
If to love me will make you cry
and if you don't know the reason why
just whistle through the storm
it will be warm
the clouds can't hide the sun forever
be happy child
don't worry 'bout the weather.
Night is night and the day is bright
in-between may seem to last forever
well forever it may be
though to me it's almost morning
and morning comes only once a day.
If all the dreams of a crazy man seem far away
then I say to listen to the wind
as it begins to tell you of life and what it means
to be a crazy man
to understand a dream.
If to love me will make you cry
and if you don't know the reason why
just whistle through the storm
it will be warm
the clouds can't hide the sun forever
be happy child
don't worry 'bout the weather.
Night is night and the day is bright
in-between may seem to last forever
well forever it may be
though to me it's almost morning
and morning comes only once a day.
Dreams of a Crazy Man
If all the dreams of a crazy man seem far away
then I say to listen to the wind
as it begins to tell you of life and what it means
to be a crazy man
to understand a dream.
If to love me will make you cry
and if you don't know the reason why
just whistle through the storm
it will be warm
the clouds can't hide the sun forever
be happy child
don't worry 'bout the weather.
Night is night and the day is bright
in-between may seem to last forever
well forever it may be
though to me it's almost morning
and morning comes only once a day.
If all the dreams of a crazy man seem far away
then I say to listen to the wind
as it begins to tell you of life and what it means
to be a crazy man
to understand a dream.
If to love me will make you cry
and if you don't know the reason why
just whistle through the storm
it will be warm
the clouds can't hide the sun forever
be happy child
don't worry 'bout the weather.
Night is night and the day is bright
in-between may seem to last forever
well forever it may be
though to me it's almost morning
and morning comes only once a day.
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Still Here
Langston Hughes
I’ve been scarred and battered.
My hopes, the wind done scattered.
Snow has friz me, sun has baked me.
Looks like between ‘em,
They done tried to make me
Stop laughin’, stop lovin’, stop livin’—
But I don’t care!
I’m still here!
This poem was sent to me in an email from Harvard sociologist, Anthony Abraham Jack.
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2 ... 2016%20(1)
~
Langston Hughes
I’ve been scarred and battered.
My hopes, the wind done scattered.
Snow has friz me, sun has baked me.
Looks like between ‘em,
They done tried to make me
Stop laughin’, stop lovin’, stop livin’—
But I don’t care!
I’m still here!
This poem was sent to me in an email from Harvard sociologist, Anthony Abraham Jack.
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2 ... 2016%20(1)
~
Last edited by CarmelaBear on Sat Apr 30, 2016 10:51 am, edited 1 time in total.
Once in a while a door opens, and let's in the future. --- Graham Greene
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