Tis true Stevie. You really can't beat old fashioned love letters (and you can also ceremonially burn them in a cathartic way when the relationship is over...) Balance is the key and saying something meaningful and beautiful in 150 characters (or whatever it is) can be a challenge but also can get to the essence of the feeling, a bit like haiku! (although I think it would be pushing it to say that any of my texts are that poetic!
).
Originally Posted by Stevie
The Paul Varley poem was interesting. I like the rhythm to it. Cheers Stevie.
Am listening to Poetry Please on Iplayer and they had this wonderful poem by Kathleen Raine:
Amo Ergo Sum - Kathleen Raine (1908-2003)
Because I love
The sun pours out its rays of living gold
Pours out its gold and silver on the sea
Because I love
The earth upon her astral spindle winds
Her ecstacy-producing dance.
Because I love
Clouds travel on the winds through wide skies.
Skies wide and beautiful, blue and deep.
Because I love
Wind blows white sails,
The wind blows over flowers, the sweet wind blows.
Because I love
The ferns grow green, and green the grass, and green
The transparent sunlit trees.
Because I love
Larks rise up from the grass
And all the leaves are full of singing birds.
Because I love
The summer air quivers with a thousand wings,
Myriads of jewelled eyes burn in the light.
Because I love
The iridescent shells upon the sand
Take forms as fine and intricate as thought.
Because I love
There is an invisible way across the sky,
Birds travel by that way, the sun and moon
And all the stars travel that path by night,
because I love
There is a river flowing all night long.
Because I love
All night the river flows into my sleep,
Ten thousand living things are sleeping in my mind
And sleeping wake, and flowing are at rest.
Its interesting how hearing the above poem read aloud made it infinitely more moving than seeing it written. So many poems must be written to be read aloud.
Yes Varley not Farley! Don't know why I wrote that - good thing you know who is!
My word you and Freckle have similar tastes - she posted the same poem on 26th June! But it's still good to read it again.
Yes when you hear poems read aloud it simplifies things. You lose all the structure when the poem is read aloud - it might as well be a single paragraph on a page, but hearing it read continuously you can get the flow and meaning of it more easily.
I was at a poetry slam on Saturday night and with all the poems being read aloud it could be difficult to spot the line breaks unless the poems rhymed. But it didn't matter, and the poet who won had made no attempt to reveal the structure of what she was saying - the meaning just shone through. It was Lucy English
I have been a bit snowed under lately and haven't been paying enough attention to all the posts here so I missed the fact that Freckle had posted this so recently but I do think we have a similar taste in poetry, particularly the romantic stuff!
You can't have too much of a good thing HesI have been a bit snowed under lately and haven't been paying enough attention to all the posts here so I missed the fact that Freckle had posted this so recently but I do think we have a similar taste in poetry, particularly the romantic stuff!
Things
There are worse things than having behaved foolishly in public.
There are worse things than these miniature betrayals,
committed or endured or suspected; there are worse things
than not being able to sleep for thinking about them.
It is 5 a.m. All the worse things come stalking in
and stand icily about the bed looking worse and worse and worse.
Fleur Adcock
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