My favorite poem. What 's yours?

Joseph Campbell formulated what became his most quoted dictum, "Follow your bliss" in the decade before his death. Join this conversation to explore this idea and share stories.

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Ercan2121
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Post by Ercan2121 »

A something in a summer’s Day
As slow her flambeaux burn away
Which solemnizes me
A something in a summer’s noon
—A depth — an Azure — a perfume —
Transcending ecstasy.
And still within a summer’s night
A something so transporting bright
I clap my hands to see
from A Something in a Summer's Day by Emily Dickinson

CarmelaBear
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Post by CarmelaBear »

Jeanette LeBlanc

Blessed Be


https://soundcloud.com/jeanette-bursey- ... te-leblanc


Blessed be your longing. Your endless ache. Your sharp crystal shatter. Your sea glass heart.

Blessed be the long, slow slide into desire. The swift plunging wound to the heart. The bleeding out onto the kitchen floor.

Blessed be the fierce of want and the howl of despair and the swan dive of surrender.

Blessed be the indignation of right and the never more naked of wrong.

Blessed be your strong smooth body and your roadmap of scars and brittle bones that give way under the weight of lives unlived.

Blessed be the unmet passion, the ruthless boredom, the absolute certainty of regret.

Blessed be the sweet laughter. The hard fuck. The bitter fight. The soft impossible forgiveness.

Blessed be the restless seeker. The relentless urgency. The unanswered call.

Blessed be the giving up. The hope unraveled. The void at the end. The clenched fists and the desperate grasping and the way it all slides away when the time comes.

Blessed be your trembling breath and your strong knees. Blessed be your siren song and your briny tears and your frantic prayer.

Blessed be your violin body, your electric hipbone, your staircase ribs.

Blessed be your slaughtered dreams and your cynical projection.

Blessed be your fire of initiation. Your ritual of comfort. Your secret shame. Your whispered confession. Blessed be your primal roar.

Blessed be the rejection. The hollowed out, disregarded heart. Blessed be the end of the rope, the absence of expectation, the way it all gives way eventually.

Blessed be the blood and guts and gore of it all.

Blessed be the wanton emptiness of greed and the brutal havoc of love and the way peace grows in between cracks in cement.

Blessed be the dirty street corner hustle and the pretty surface of things and where they meet in the most sacred center.

Blessed be the harsh divinity. The winged flight. The salt skin. The symphony of lust.

Blessed be the holy and the worship. Blessed be the sacred mother.

Blessed be the faithless edges. Blessed be the ritual of liturgy and agnostic devotion.

Blessed be the profane and the provocation.

Blessed be the brazen orgy, the unabashed revelry, the stained glass cathedral of your hungry flesh.

Blessed be the solitary pilgrimage and the long journey home.

Blessed be the one who contains herself. Blessed be the one who contains us all.

Blessed be the truth that demands reckoning and the goodbye that wrenches secrets from behind closed lips. Blessed be the sucker punch bruises.

Blessed be smooth slide of sun behind the mountains. Blessed be the wise desert and the pounding sea.

Blessed be the sweet swell of words. The luxury of punctuation. The silent spaces between bodies. The ragged sigh of breath on bone.

Blessed be the poet and the poem and the one between them who has no words of her own.

Blessed be the plagiarism, the thievery, the rash disregard for origin, the gratitude for the beginning of things.

Blessed be our free fall into destiny. Our slow burn. Our consuming fire. Blessed be the breaking and the becoming.

Blessed be the ugly. Blessed be the sweet sin. Blessed be the rage. Blessed be the grace.

Blessed be. Blessed be. Blessed be.

In the end, all words are just another way to say amen.

~

Ercan2121
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Post by Ercan2121 »

Thank you, Carmela :)

CarmelaBear
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Post by CarmelaBear »

She said true things I would not dare think.

She reminds me and informs me.

She is a distant beacon.

I like this poet.

She's cool.

~

CarmelaBear
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Post by CarmelaBear »

The Red Wheel Barrow
William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)

so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow


glazed with rain
water


beside the white
chickens

Image

Williams published the wheel barrow poem in a volume called "Spring and All". He did not give the poem a title. It appeared in order, preceded by the number XXII. This kind of poem is called "meditative". It is designed to slow the reader down and inspire free association.

Image

~
Once in a while a door opens, and let's in the future. --- Graham Greene

Billymack1949
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Post by Billymack1949 »

Finding the Father - Robert Bly

My friend, this body offers to carry us for nothing–as the ocean carries logs.
So on some days the body wails with its great energy; it smashes up the boulders, lifting small crabs, that flow around the sides.

Someone knocks on the door.
We do not have time to dress. He wants us to go with him through the blowing and rainy streets, to the dark house.

We will go there, the body says, and there find the father whom we have never met, who wandered out in a snowstorm the night we were born, and who then lost his memory, and has lived since longing for his child, whom he saw only once… while he worked as a shoemaker, as a cattle herder in Australia, as restaurant cook who painted at night.

When you light the lamp you will see him. He sits there behind the door… the eyebrows so heavy, the forehead so light… lonely in his whole body, waiting for you.
This is no ordinary universe!

edgeyy66
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Post by edgeyy66 »

I'm new to this board. By way of introduction I will share a poem I wrote when I first started getting excited about Joseph Campbell (only a couple of months ago)

Mysterious Mythologies

Sometimes I find myself
beside myself
lost inside a lie
blinded by the life
I tried to find
that lives in long lost histories.

I'm only whole in my
mysterious mythologies.

The science of conspiracy
in silence I suspend belief
just so I can be reminded
of the kind of man
I know I am supposed to be.

I'm only whole in my
mysterious mythologies.

My spirit cries for more
the door to who am
slams shut again
the pain of my lost soul
lays cold and broken
by a bold reality.

I'm only whole in my
mysterious mythologies.

******

That's mine but if you are interested in my favourite poet about Mythology it is Kate Tempest who wrote a spoken word production set to classical music called the Brand New Ancient (I'm sure others have run into her)

Here is a post I wrote about it with links to her video on "Icarus" and "My Shakespeare"

http://www.edgeynotes.com/2013/11/the-e ... ology.html

Kind Regards, Sam Edge
Free eBook "Planning for Success" when you subscribe to my Author Blog here: http://bit.ly/samfree

Clemsy
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Post by Clemsy »

Sam, welcome to the JCF Conversations of a Higher Order! Excellent first post! I look forward to checking out Kate Tempest's stuff. Thanks so much for sharing.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. :-)

Cheers,
Clemsy
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Give me stories before I go mad! ~Andreas

CarmelaBear
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Post by CarmelaBear »

Robert Frost

Dust of Snow

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

°°°
Once in a while a door opens, and let's in the future. --- Graham Greene

CarmelaBear
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Post by CarmelaBear »

A website on poetry:

http://www.webexhibits.org/poetry/

~
Once in a while a door opens, and let's in the future. --- Graham Greene

JamesN.
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Post by JamesN. »

Wow! Awesome site Carmela! 8)
What do I know? - Michael de Montaigne

CarmelaBear
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Post by CarmelaBear »

Yeah, no?!!

Did you go to Web Exhibits?

Mondo cool.

A Navajo sent me on a "vision quest"...online.

~
Once in a while a door opens, and let's in the future. --- Graham Greene

JamesN.
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Post by JamesN. »

CarmelaBear wrote:Yeah, no?!!

Did you go to Web Exhibits?

Mondo cool.

A Navajo sent me on a "vision quest"...online.

~

You have a real winner here Carmela! 8)
What do I know? - Michael de Montaigne

CarmelaBear
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Post by CarmelaBear »

:!:
Once in a while a door opens, and let's in the future. --- Graham Greene

JamesN.
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Post by JamesN. »

This short 10 minute clip is a powerful and poignant collection of young college students reciting their own work about their hopes and dreams as they ride on a city bus. ( Very moving. ) :idea:

http://www.nashvillescene.com/countryli ... -nashville
What do I know? - Michael de Montaigne

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