1st edition (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
First word purging and now onto verse wearing.
Throughout the year I also collected poems from my daily feeding from www.poets.org. Daily offerings are contemporary, while weekends focus on past classics. I began subscribing for a couple of reasons:
1. Poetry appreciation came into my life later than sooner and I’m making up for lost time.
2. Since becoming an AP teacher I figure it’s best practice to move beyond my basic knowledge of Frost–doctors must keep up on new practices, so as a practicing English literature teacher I should as well.
After a year of daily dosing of poems I have found I’m still drawn more to the classic poets, yet still appreciate the “now” of poetry today and listen, for the most part, what is being said.
So, here are the poems that I keep in my “save” file. I plan to wear these verse offerings by pulling them out for discussion in class. And here, as well. Any comments? Are you more contemporary or classic in your poetry choices?
All poems and bio information are from poets.org
Edgar Guest:
Guest has been called “the poet of the people.” Most often his poems were fourteen lines long and presented a deeply sentimental view of everyday life. When his father died, Guest was forced to drop out of high school and work full time at the Detroit Free Press, eventually considering himself “a newspaper man who wrote verses.” Of his poetry he said, “I take simple everyday things that happen to me and I figure it happens to a lot of other people and I make simple rhymes out of them.”
Only A Dad
Edgar Guest
Only a dad with a tired face,
Coming home from the daily race,
Bringing little of gold or fame
To show how well he has played the game;
But glad in his heart that his own rejoice
To see him come and to hear his voice.
Only a dad with a brood of four,
One of ten million men or more
Plodding along in the daily strife,
Bearing the whips and the scorns of life,
With never a whimper of pain or hate,
For the sake of those who at home await.
Only a dad, neither rich nor proud,
Merely one of the surging crowd,
Toiling, striving from day to day,
Facing whatever may come his way,
Silent whenever the harsh condemn,
And bearing it all for the love of them.
Only a dad but he gives his all,
To smooth the way for his children small,
Doing with courage stern and grim
The deeds that his father did for him.
This is the line that for him I pen:
Only a dad, but the best of men.
From the book "A Heap o' Livin'" ©1916
I appreciate this poem because it gets a shout out to dads. There are so many poems that exult moms (which I don’t mind) and I think fathers get shorted on all they do and how we feel about them.
Radar Data #12
by Lytton Smith
It was in the absence of light
as when near new moon and
no moonlight; as when a part
of a picture is in shadow (as
opposed to a light); as when
in the condition of being
hidden from view, obscure,
or unknown–in concealment,
or else without knowledge
as regards to some particular;
and of the weather, season,
air, sky, sea, etc., characterized
by tempest; in times, events,
circumstances etc. subject to
tempers; inflamed, indicative, predictive, or symbolical of
strife (harbinger of coming
trouble)-a period of darkness
occurring between one day &
the next during which a place
receives no light from the sun,
and what if it is all behind us?
I no longer fear the rain will
never end, but doubt our ability
to return to what lies passed.
On the radar, a photopresent
scraggle of interference, as if
the data is trying to pretend
something’s out there where
everything is lost.
About This Poem
“People are always curious where a name like ‘Lytton’ comes from–and it’s not from modernist biographer Lytton Strachey, but gothic novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton. He famously came up with the opening phrase (in Paul Clifford) ‘It was a dark and stormy night.’ But I’ve begun to feel guilty mentioning that; his opening sentence is actually pretty good, so I’ve begun writing a whole series of poems that try to translate, rework, recuperate it.” Lytton Smith
This is My Life
by William Stanley Braithwaite
To feed my soul with beauty till I die;
To give my hands a pleasant task to do;
To keep my heart forever filled anew
With dreams and wonders which the days supply;
To love all conscious living, and thereby
Respect the brute who renders up its due,
And know the world as planned is good and true-
And thus -because there chanced to be an I!
This is my life since things are as they are:
One half akin to flowers and the grass:
The rest a law unto the changeless star.
And I believe when I shall come to pass
Within the Door His hand shall hold ajar
I’ll leave no echoing whisper of Alas!
This poem smacks of resolution for the New Year. It stirs a resolve to become better than I am and to leave no regrets at the passing of the day. Yup, that’s what a poem should do–get some soul stirring going.
My hopes are that your New Year will be filled with verse, be it created or found, and that the words will resonate in your life into others!
- Coping Skills. #26. Writing Poetry (annarosemeeds.wordpress.com)
- Open verse and other poetry forms (vicariouslyinlovewithyou.wordpress.com)
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Pam Webb 