Poetry ABCs

[GentleReader9]

Thank you, Mary Lupin, for posting the Joy Harjo poem, Deer Dancer! I am going to prevail upon the presenters of the section of our agency training for supporting survivors in the sex industry to add it to that chapter of our volunteer manual. Several of the other sections have poems in them, but this section has been a little thin in that area and this is perfect for showing the beauty, dignity and strong spiritual being at the heart of the subject, in spite of whatever has been projected or imposed on her from outside. Perfect.

[GentleReader9]

H is for H.D.: Helen and Helen in Egypt.

Also for hell and horse-hockey! This library computer software is not set up so I can cut and paste from a site that has these poems or information on H.D. and I don't know her well enough to type it all in from memory. She exists. Google-- no that was yesterday -- hunt her up.

[Saffron]

Ah, I almost forgot HD. Thank you, GentleReader. She is a favorite poet of my daughter. Here is one of my HD favorites and a link to more links of her poems, including Helen and Helen in Egypt.

Poetry of H.D.

At Baia
by H. D.

I should have thought
in a dream you would have brought
some lovely, perilous thing,
orchids piled in a great sheath,
as who would say (in a dream),
"I send you this,
who left the blue veins
of your throat unkissed."

Why was it that your hands
(that never took mine),
your hands that I could see
drift over the orchid-heads
so carefully,
your hands, so fragile, sure to lift
so gently, the fragile flower-stuff--
ah, ah, how was it

You never sent (in a dream)
the very form, the very scent,
not heavy, not sensuous,
but perilous--perilous--
of orchids, piled in a great sheath,
and folded underneath on a bright scroll,
some word:

"Flower sent to flower;
for white hands, the lesser white,
less lovely of flower-leaf,"

or

"Lover to lover, no kiss,
no touch, but forever and ever this."

[MaryLupin]

Let's not forget Homer.

http://classics.mit.edu/Homer/odyssey.html

http://classics.mit.edu/Homer/iliad.html

[DWill]

No, let's not forget Homer. I always liked The Odyssey so much more than The Iliad. My offering is Gerard Manley Hopkins. A couple of my most favorite lines come from "The Windhover":

My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,-- the achieve of, the mastery of the
thing!

[Saffron]

Haiku

[MaryLupin]

The Windhover is one of the best poems of the English language.

Here's the poem for those of you poor sods who haven't read it:

http://www.bartleby.com/122/12.html

All the allusions in it - buckle, chevalier, dauphin, wimpling - ruddy genius he was.

[Saffron]

Hap
by Thomas Hardy

If but some vengeful god would call to me
From up the sky, and laugh: "Thou suffering thing,
Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,
that thy love's loss is my hate's profiting!"

Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die,
Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;
Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I
Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.

But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain,
And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?
--Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,
And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan. . .
These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown
Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.

[Saffron]

I

I think I will be a challenge. Don't you?

[MaryLupin]

I always liked The Odyssey so much more than The Iliad.

Me too. My favourite bit is book 11 (the blood offering) when Achilles says he would rather be a servant in a poor man's house and be alive than be king of kings among the dead. That, in my opinion, is the key stone of the whole epic.