Resolution #642

Read more poetry.

And if this is your resolution, too, read this one, which I was reminded of today as I looked at a photo:

I dwell in Possibility—
A fairer House than Prose—
More numerous of Windows—
Superior—for Doors—

Of Chambers as the Cedars—
Impregnable of Eye—
And for an Everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky—

Of Visitors—the fairest—
For Occupation—This—
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise—

 -Emily Dickinson

I have this photo, which will soon go on a layout, of Rowen (of course), and her toy airplane (of course), and how she dwells in the house called Possibility.

One thing about poets. They have this real knack for distilling phrases down to their very essence. For saying in 2 words or 8 or 10 what would take me a month, or that I can’t say, having not found words yet like, “I dwell in Possibility/A fairer House than Prose” 

But I think about telling these stories of my life as both a gathering process (my Occupation - This - /The spreading wide my narrow Hands / To gather Paradise), and as a scattering one (maybe something not so presumptuous as Paradise). I love that the world is full of other human beings. I LOVE in this phase of my life (a little tied, like the pencil-end of a compass, to the 10-square-mile circle around my house) to read a poem from Emily Dickinson, who in her entire life, never went more than 10 miles from her house, and yet wrote poems that continue to have power and depth and meaning for people 150 years later.

I love that people stop by here. Thank you. If you have any good poems you’ve come across lately, help me out with my resolution. :D

-J 

Comments

[Katie]

I love the poem "To be of use" by Marge Piercy.

[Dedra]

For a lift..because I'm learning to not take myself so seriously..anything by Shel Silverstein.

[Vivian]

"Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle
Received from a Friend Called Felicity"
by John Tobias
This is a poem we read in high school that has never left me. I hope you enjoy it too.

[Sharon]

I love this one:
http://www.artsfoundation.org.nz/hone_tuwhare02.html

Rain by Hone Tuwhare

[Amy Sorensen]

I can't tell you how happy this blog post made me this morning...no one reads enough poetry! I love exactly what you did here...connect this old, old thought (but still, amazing and fresh) to your life right now. That to me is one of the magic things about poems. MY resolution #642 is to write more often about the poems I read. At the risk of sounding like I'm tooting my own blog...I have several poems on my blog that I've written about. (Not poems I'VE written, good poems by well-known writers.) They're all in the "Really Good Poems" category.

Happy poetry reading, where ever you read!

[Tenny]

so kind of silly, but i thought this was the greatest poem when i was a kid, it's by Ogden NAsh(who sometimes illustrated for Roald Dahl):

A Cow is of the bovine ilk;
one end moo, the other milk.

short, sweet, hilarious.

[Deirdre]

You Reading This, Be Ready

Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?

When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life---

What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?

William Stafford

[Carin]

Hi...I wasn't going to put the poem in here because it's several stanzas, but a fw other people did so here goes. This poem is called "The Chambered Nautilus"

This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,
Sail the unshadowed main,--
The venturous bark that flings
On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings
In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings,
And coral reefs lie bare,
Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;
Wrecked is the ship of pearl!
And every chambered cell,
Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,
Before thee lies revealed,--
Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!

Year after year beheld the silent toil
That spread his lustrous coil;
Still, as the spiral grew,
He left the past year's dwelling for the new,
Stole with soft step its shining archway through,
Built up its idle door,
Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,
Child of the wandering sea,
Cast from her lap, forlorn!
From thy dead lips a clearer note is born
Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn;
While on mine ear it rings,
Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:--

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!

By Oliver Wendall Holmes (1809-94).

This is about a sea-creature (a real one) that constantly forms new chambers in its shell as it grows becuase it continues to get too big; I like it--the idea of forming a new shell for yourself, a new "shining archway," as it were, as you grow. The last stanza is about the lesson Holmes took from it-I love the idea.

I am a teacher, so I also love and can recite from memory, "sick," by Shel Siverstein. :)

[Jody Ferlaak]

"There once was a PhotoShop Queen,
She asked for some tips on poetry,
When she read through her comments,
She got quite a response...
Including a CK SOY limerick.

Hi Jessica! Okay, I haven't left a comment in awhile (or ever, I forget), but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to write a limerick here. =) I know it's not perfect 'prose', but my point wasn't that it would flow and rhyme in that way...but that it would make you smile as you read through it. I hope I accomplished my silly little goal.
In other thoughts, I so appreciate that you share with all of us your Photo Shop tips and tutorials. I still use Adobe PhotoShopLE, so not all of your tips work for me, but some of them give me hints or helps that work when I play with my pictures anyway. SO, just wanted to let you know that while you may not 'have a way with words' as such people as Emily Dickenson or Robert Frost, you do have a knack for explaining yourself well in computer lingo. That is a gift for many of us who read your blog (and magazine articles/books). Thank you.
One more note, I had to add that it IS interesting that Emily Dickenson's words are so far-reaching. I am amazed at that through my own blog and scrap pages. I laughed with my parents just a couple of weeks ago that so many people are touched by the things I blog about from day to day, and the truth is that I am at home almost full time, and rarely leave other than to get groceries or go to church! =) I guess it has more to do with life experiences, insights and perspective than how many miles a person logs traveling the world. ALthough that could be interesting and make for some good prose too! Just my thoughts. I'm glad my world has broadened this past year to include people like yourself, CK magazine editors, and so many new scrap-friends. I just wish I could have gotten my hands on a few spools of that French ribbon while I was at Memory Trends last October! =) Remember that? Probably not. That's alright, I just wanted you to read a funny little poem here today. Thanks for the original you shared. Have more fun scrapping your cute kids. I need to get on that more! =)

[lisa]

i love emily d. great blog!