“Don’t use the phone. People are never ready to answer it. Use poetry.”
-Jack Kerouac
Last week I had a blog post ready to go but I didn’t publish it. I liked it, and it was truthful, but it felt sorta “venty” and not in the good way. I may publish it one day but for now it is drafted and saved in my “maybe” pile. It was a post all about my frustrations with yoga and all the shit that’s going on right now, but I didn’t want to be seen as judgey or that I was following suit with all the other personalized “venty” pieces going on. I then made a commitment to make two posts in one week– at this rate it’s going to be two posts in two weeks *insert upside smiley emoji*. As I was thinking about what I wanted to write I saw an IG post that it was National Poetry Month. Voila! There is my inspiration–sharing some of my favorite poems. So here ya go! Longer poems will be excerpted and hyperlinked.
*Phenomenal Woman by Maya Angelou
Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much but they can’t see
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them,
They still can’t see.
I say:
It’s in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman
That’s me.
*A Poem for Trapped Things by John Wieners
The blue diamonds on your back
are too beautiful to do
away with.
I watch you
all morning
long.
With my hand over my mouth.
*Song of Myself by Walt Whitman
I too am not a bit tamed…I am too untranslatable,
I sound by barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.
The last scud of day holds back for me,
It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadowed wilds.
It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.
I depart as air…I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies and drift it in lacy jags.
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love.
If you want me again look for me under your bootsoles.
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean.
We sing together; we sing mouth to mouth.
The garden is a river flowing south.
She cries out loud the soul’s own secret joy;
She dances, and the ground bears her away.
She knows the speech of light and makes it plain.
A lively thing can come to life again.
*Borrowed Feet by Michael McClure
LOVE ME FOR THE FOOL I AM
(the laughing angel-imbecile)
The thrill
of kissing you
is seeing me reflected
in your eyes.
We try for purity
but
still
we’re glorious
blobs
of meat.
*Love Song by William Carlos Williams
I lie here thinking of you…
the stain of love
is upon the world!
Yellow, yellow, yellow
it eats into the leaves,
smears with saffron.
the horned branch that lean heavily against a smooth purple sky!
There is no light
only a honey thick stain
that drips from leaf to leaf
and limb to limb.
Spoiling the colors of the whole world.
You far off there under the wine red salvage of the West!
*Feeling is First by e.e. cummings
since feeling is first
who pays attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves,
and kisses are a far better fate
than wisdom
lady I swear by all the flowers. Don’t cry
–the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids’ flutter which says
we are for each other: then
laugh leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph
And death I think is no parenthesis
**********
What are your favorite poems? Who are your favorite poets? Do you have a style that you like more than another? I tend to favor Beat Poetry and Free Verse. I also tend to love poetry that speaks to me on a deeper level, like I can see myself in it. What do you think makes poetry special and unique?
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