What are some of your favorite small slices from poems, say no more than two lines? Let's change that to four lines to account for those stubby lines in modern poems.
......My heart in hiding stirred
For a bird: the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!
from "The Windhover" by Gerard Manley Hopkins
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Shorties and epigrams
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- DWill
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- DWill
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- Saffron
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And two more lines from Li-Young Lee -- From the poem is "Hold":
So we're dust. In the meantime, my wife and I
make the bed. Holding opposite edges of the sheet,
I was thinking that there are many different reasons for liking any two or four lines of poetry. I like these line because of how much Lee is able to say with these few words and the the one image he creates.
So we're dust. In the meantime, my wife and I
make the bed. Holding opposite edges of the sheet,
I was thinking that there are many different reasons for liking any two or four lines of poetry. I like these line because of how much Lee is able to say with these few words and the the one image he creates.
- Saffron
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I just finished a post on John Updike's book of poetry for Children entitled A Child's Calendar, on the Seasonal Poetry thread. These lines come from the poem for April.
The blushing, girlish
World unfolds
Each flower, leaf,
And blade of turf--
Small love-notes sent
From air to earth.
To my mind calling the spring world girlish captures fully what spring is all about.
The blushing, girlish
World unfolds
Each flower, leaf,
And blade of turf--
Small love-notes sent
From air to earth.
To my mind calling the spring world girlish captures fully what spring is all about.
- Diane D
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Just about any slice from T.S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock would do, such as:
"I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas."
or
"Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
or
"I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker"
or
"I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled."
or my favorite
"If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
'That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.'”
"I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas."
or
"Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
or
"I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker"
or
"I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled."
or my favorite
"If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
'That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.'”
- DWill
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