poetry meme

[janne_d]

When you see this, post your favorite poem in your journal.

Gah, just one? I have lots of favourite poems. But the first one I thought of when I saw this was


And Death Shall Have No Dominion

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.

-- Dylan Thomas



Okay, I totally can't stop at one. I also immediately thought of


Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town to another due,
Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

-- John Donne



There's a line in A Dorothy L Sayers book where Harriet and Peter talk about getting drunk on words in reference to Donne. I'm there with them (though not just with Donne).

Comments

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Two of my very favourites! I shall have to think of something else.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I just came back to read "Batter my heart" once more time. I think Harriet and Peter have a point about Donne: there's something about his words that zap straight to certain centres of the brain. Or the heart.

And I don't usually even like religious poetry - but there are exceptions.

[janne-d.livejournal.com]

words that zap straight to certain centres of the brain. Or the heart

That is exactly what I like about my favourite poems. There are some where I have no idea what the poem means but I love the words.

I'm not particularly into religious poetry either, but you've reminded me of a very long Scottish poem (possibly translated from Gaelic, I'm not sure) which goes vaguely hypnotic through repeated phrases of Christ's cross and then has a change at the end that I found very effective.

I can think of a couple of antireligious poems that I also liked a lot.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

This discussion got me trying to remember a poem about divine love I loved, which I studied in Italian literature as an undergraduate. Sadly, I've lost that text book - and dearly wish I still had it.

Anyway, though I forget the author's name, I think the title was "Ibrezzo d'Amore" (The Drunkenness of Love) and I loved the part of it at the end that went - please forgive my misspellings and such -

amor, amor, fa me in te transire,
amor, amor, anneghame in amore.

Meaning, "love, love, make me pass through you:/Love, love, drown me in love." So Sufi, and transcendental. I need to find that one again.

What are the antireligious poems you like? There are some I love, too, but darned if I can think of them right now.

(Someone must have put Retcon in my coffee - that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!)

[janne-d.livejournal.com]

"love, love, make me pass through you:/Love, love, drown me in love."

That is gorgeous. I love the title too.

This is the one of the ones I was thinking of as anti-religious:

Contrasts

Against your black I set the dainty deer
stepping in mosses and in the water where
there are miles of moorland under miles of air.

Against your psalms I set the various seas
slopping against the mussels fixed in place,
slums on the ancient rocks in salty rows.

Against your bible I set the plateau
from which I see the people down below
in their random kingdoms moving to and fro.

Against your will I set the changing tones
of water swarming over lucid stones
and salmon bubbling in repeated suns.

Against your death I let the tide come in
with its weight of water and its lack of sin,
the opulent millions of a rising moon.

-- Iain Mac A'Ghobhain
(or Iain Crichton Smith in his non-Gaelic name)

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

That is gorgeous. I love the title too.

Yes, which is why I remembered it. And I love the way it doesn't sound the way I'd expect a medieval Italian to sound - it's more like the American transcendentalists than like Dante or Petrarch. So cool.

Contrasts is indeed wonderful. Thank you for sharing it; I've never read it before.

[janne-d.livejournal.com]

You know, I'm feeling kind of inspired now to get my poetry collection in electronic form in a different way - maybe post one every Friday or something. I've got 291 to get through, so that would only take me...um, 5 years!

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I like the idea of doing one each Friday. I will if you will!

[janne-d.livejournal.com]

That would be very cool - I'd love to see the ones you like. I bet we have a lot of the well-known stuff in common.

I put one up yesterday already - but I think I might do more than one a week because I am impatient like that.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

It all depends on my level of time and inspiration. But I'm planning to post one per week.

[janne-d.livejournal.com]

This was the other:

A Highland Woman

Hast thou seen her, great Jew,
who art called the One Son of God?
Hast thou seen on Thy way the like of her
labouring in the distant vineyard?

The load of fruits on her back,
a bitter sweat on brow and cheek,
and the clay basin heavy on the back
of her bent poor wretched head.

Thou hast not seen her, Son of the carpenter,
who art called the King of Glory,
among the rugged western shores
in the sweat of her food's creel.

This Spring and last Spring
and every twenty Springs from the beginning,
she has carried the cold seaweed
for her children's food and the castle's reward.

And every twenty Autumns gone
she has lost the golden summer of her bloom,
and the Black Labour has ploughed the furrow
across the white smoothness of her forehead.

And Thy gentle church has spoken
about the last state of her miserable soul,
and the unremitting toil has lowered
her body to a black peace in a grave.

And her time has gone like a black sludge
seeping through the thatch of a poor dwelling:
the hard Black Labour was her inheritance;
grey is her sleep tonight.

-- Somhairle MacGill-Eain
(or Sorley MacLean)

Another Scottish one, oddly.

But so was the very religious one I remembered - by an Abbot of Iona.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Excellent, also - a little more hard-hitting and less subtle, but definitely a hard message. Those Scots certainly can express themselves.

[janne-d.livejournal.com]

a little more hard-hitting and less subtle, but definitely a hard message

Yeah.

One of the anthologies was the New Pengiun Book of Sottish Verse - I got quite a lot out of that, though I did have to write down translations of the Scots words! And me Scottish too. But Scots isn't what I speak, or Gaelic sadly.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Languages, and dialects especially, can be tricky things. But it's fun to decipher them.