Terrific Two of the Week: 2/22-2/25/10

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So many intriguing poems by various poets have been covered this week. Here is a recap, and my two favorite poems of the week. What were YOURS? Which poets are your favorites?  Leave a comment with your  thoughts, and let me know which classic you would like to see. The two, terrific poems of the week for me were:

--Driving West in 1970 and --The Rainbow

Coffee Table Poetry for Tea Drinkers is updated daily. Simply subscribe by selecting E-mail or RSS Reader. You will treasure getting daily poetry in your mail! Please continue reading the Recap below. Just click on the titles to access the poems:

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February 22, 2010

The Rainbow
--Description: 19th C, Wordsworth W., Life, Nature--

February 24, 2010

Driving West in 1970
--Description: 21st C, Bly R., Humanity, Life, Patriotism--

February 25, 2010

The Runaway
--Description: 20th C, Frost R., Nature, Seasons--

Quote of the Day: Few people even scratch the surface, much less exhaust the contemplation of their own experience.
-Randolph Bourne

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Driving West in 1970

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--Description: 21st C, Bly R., Humanity, Life, Patriotism--

My dear children, do you remember the morning
When we climbed into the old Plymouth
And drove west straight toward the Pacific?

We were all the people there were.
We followed Dylan's songs all the way west.
It was Seventy; the war was over, almost;

And we were driving to the sea.
We had closed the farm, tucked in
The flap, and were eating the honey

Of distance and the word "there."
Oh whee, we're gonna fly
Down into the easy chair. We sang that

Over and over. That's what the early
Seventies were like. We weren't afraid.
And a hole had opened in the world.

We laughed at Las Vegas.
There was enough gaiety
For all of us, and ahead of us was

The ocean. Tomorrow's
The day my bride's gonna come.
And the war was over, almost.

Robert Bly

--Did You Know: (born December 23, 1926) Bly is an American poet, author, activist and leader of the Mythopoetic Men's Movement. Robert Bly was born in Minnesota to Jacob and Alice Bly, people of Norwegian ancestry. After one year at St. Olaf College in Minnesota, he transferred to Harvard University, joining the later famous group of writers who were undergraduates at that time, including Donald Hall, Adrienne Rich, Kenneth Koch, and John Hawkes. He graduated in 1950 and spent the next few years in New York. In 1956 he received a Fulbright Grant to travel to Norway and translate Norwegian poetry into English. While there he found not only his relatives, but the work of a number of major poets whose work was barely known in the United States, among them Pablo Neruda, Cesar Vallejo, Antonio Machado, Gunnar Ekelof, Georg Trakl, Rumi, Hafez, Kabir, Mirabai, and Harry Martinson. Bly determined then to start a literary magazine for poetry translation in the United States. The Fifties, The Sixties, and The Seventies, introduced many of these poets to the writers of his generation, and also published essays on American poets. During this time, Bly lived on a farm in Minnesota with his wife and children. His first marriage was to award-winning short story novelist Carol Bly. They had four children, including Mary J. Bly, a Literature Professor at Fordham University and also a best-selling novelist. Bly and Carol divorced in 1979; he has been married to the former Ruth Ray since 1980. He has a stepdaughter from his marriage to Ruth Bly. A stepson from the marriage died in a pedestrian-train incident while he attended private college in Minnesota. Suicide was suspected but never confirmed. Read more at: Robert Bly

--Poetry Terminology: Four Ages of Poetry-
Title of a (light hearted) essay by Thomas Love Peacock in which he classified poetry in terms of four periods: iron, gold, silver and brass.

--Word of the Day: hypnagogic \hip-nuh-GOJ-ik; -GOH-jik\, adjective:
Of, pertaining to, or occurring in the state of drowsiness preceding sleep.
Example:
It is of course precisely in such episodes of mental traveling that writers are known to do good work, sometimes even their best, solving formal problems, getting advice from Beyond, having hypnagogic adventures that with luck can be recovered later on.
-Thomas Pynchon, "Nearer, My Couch, to Thee", New York Times, June 6, 1993

--Quote of the Day: The 1970s, the decade of my teenage years, was a transitional period in American youth culture.
-Eric Allin Cornell

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Tuesday Twin Sonnets: 2/23/10

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Enjoy a sonnet duo to bring pleasure to your day!

Bright Star
--Description: 20th C, Keats J., Nature, Night, Sonnet--

Sonnet 44: Beloved Thou Hast Brought Me Many Flowers
--Description: 19th C, Barrett Browning E., Love, Nature, Sonnet-- 

--Poetry Terminology: Elision-
The suppression of a vowel or syllable for metrical purposes. E.g. 'The sedge has wither'd from the lake' from La Belle Dame Sans Merci by Keats. The elision, in this case, ensures that the line remains octosyllabic. Modern poets no longer use elision. See also synalepha.

--Word of the Day: gastronome \GAS-truh-nohm\, noun:
A connoisseur of good food and drink.
Example:
If "poultry is for the cook what canvas is for a painter," to quote the 19th-century French gastronome Brillat-Savarin, why paint the same painting over and over again?
-John Willoughby and Chris Schlesinger, "From Poussin to Capon a Chicken in Every Size", New York Times, September 22, 1999

--Quote of the Day: Sonnets are guys writing in English, imitating an Italian song form. It was a form definitely sung as often as it was recited.
>-Steve Earle

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Terrific Two of the Week: 2/12-2/19/10

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So many intriguing poems by various poets have been covered this week. Here is a recap, and my two favorite poems of the week. What were YOURS? Which poets are your favorites?  Leave a comment with your  thoughts, and let me know which classic you would like to see. The two, terrific poems of the week for me were:

--Marriage Morning and --To His Coy Mistress

Coffee Table Poetry for Tea Drinkers is updated daily. Simply subscribe by selecting E-mail or RSS Reader. You will treasure getting daily poetry in your mail! Please continue reading the Recap below. Just click on the titles to access the poems:

 ----------------------------------

February 12, 2010

Marriage Morning
--Description: 19th C, Tennyson, Alfred Lord, Love, Marriage--

February 13, 2010

To His Coy Mistress
--Description: 17th C, Marvell A., Love, Passion--

February 15, 2010

Love
--Description: 19th C, Coleridge S.T., Love--

February 17, 2010

A Crazed Girl
--Description: 20th C, Yeats W.B.., Life, Love--

February 18, 2010

The Rainy Day
--Description: 19th C, Longfellow H.W., Nature, Seasons, Sorrow--

February 19, 2010

Echoes
--Description: 19th C, Carroll L., Children, Fantasy, Humor--

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Echoes

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--Description: 19th C, Carroll L., Children, Fantasy, Humor--

Lady Clara Vere de Vere
Was eight years old, she said:
Every ringlet, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden thread.

She took her little porringer:
Of me she shall not win renown:
For the baseness of its nature shall have strength to drag her
down.

"Sisters and brothers, little Maid?
There stands the Inspector at thy door:
Like a dog, he hunts for boys who know not two and two are four."

"Kind words are more than coronets,"
She said, and wondering looked at me:
"It is the dead unhappy night, and I must hurry home to tea."


Lewis Carroll

--Did You Know: (27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898) Carroll was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass as well as the poems "The Hunting of the Snark" and "Jabberwocky", all examples of the genre of literary nonsense. He is noted for his facility at word play, logic, and fantasy.The young adult Charles Dodgson was about six feet tall, slender and deemed attractive, with curling brown hair and blue or grey eyes (depending on the account). He was described in later life as somewhat asymmetrical, and as carrying himself rather stiffly and awkwardly, though this may be on account of a knee injury sustained in middle age. As a very young child, he suffered a fever that left him deaf in one ear. At the age of seventeen, he suffered a severe attack of whooping cough, which was probably responsible for his chronically weak chest in later life. Another defect he carried into adulthood was what he referred to as his "hesitation", a stammer he acquired in early childhood and which plagued him throughout his life. Read more at: Lewis Carroll

--Poetry Terminology: Imagery-
verbal expression of a sensory detail (visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory, or olfactory)

--Word of the Day: vivify \VIV-uh-fy\, transitive verb:
1. To endue with life; to make alive; to animate.
2. To make more lively or intense.
Example:
Can the writer isolate and vivify all in experience that most deeply engages our intellects and our hearts?
-Annie Dillard, "Write Till You Drop", New York Times, May 28, 1989

--Quote of the Day: A well-developed sense of humor is the pole that adds balance to your steps as you walk the tightrope of life.
-William Arthur Ward

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The Rainy Day

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--Description: 19th C, Longfellow H.W., Nature, Seasons, Sorrow--

The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the moldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.

My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the moldering Past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast
And the days are dark and dreary.

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

--Did You Know: (February 27, 1807 – March 24, 1882) Longellow was an American educator and poet whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and "Evangeline". He was also the first American to translate Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy and was one of the five Fireside Poets.Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine, then part of Massachusetts, and studied at Bowdoin College. After spending time in Europe he became a professor at Bowdoin and, later, at Harvard College. His first major poetry collections were Voices of the Night (1839) and Ballads and Other Poems (1841). Longfellow retired from teaching in 1854 to focus on his writing, living the remainder of his life in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in a former headquarters of George Washington. His first wife, Mary Potter, died in 1835 after a miscarriage. His second wife, Frances Appleton, died in 1861 after sustaining burns from her dress catching fire. After her death, Longfellow had difficulty writing poetry for a time and focused on his translation. He died in 1882. Longfellow predominantly wrote lyric poems which are known for their musicality and which often presented stories of mythology and legend. He became the most popular American poet of his day and also had success overseas. He has been criticized, however, for imitating European styles and writing specifically for the masses. Read more at: Henry W. Longfellow

--Poetry Terminology: Rising Meter-
Term used to describe end-stressed meters such as iambic and anapestic - as opposed to falling meter.

--Word of the Day: obnubilate / PRONUNCIATION: /(ob-NOO-buh-layt, -NYOO-)
verb tr.: To cloud over, obscure, or darken.
Example:
"In the room which Monsieur [Jacques Parizeau] vacated so suddenly, the 'body odour of race', to quote Montreal poet A.M. Klein, will continue to obnubilate until a window breaks."
-Peter Reimann; Monsieur's Lapse; The Globe and Mail (Toronto, Canada); Nov 3, 1995.

--Quote of the Day: Only a fool tests the depth of the water with both feet.
-African Proverb

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A Crazed Girl

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--Description: 20th C, Yeats W.B.., Life, Love--

That crazed girl improvising her music.
Her poetry, dancing upon the shore,

Her soul in division from itself
Climbing, falling She knew not where,
Hiding amid the cargo of a steamship,
Her knee-cap broken, that girl I declare
A beautiful lofty thing, or a thing
Heroically lost, heroically found.

No matter what disaster occurred
She stood in desperate music wound,
Wound, wound, and she made in her triumph
Where the bales and the baskets lay
No common intelligible sound
But sang, 'O sea-starved, hungry sea.'


William Butler Yeats

--Did You Know: (3 June 1865–28 January 1939) Yeats was an Irish poet and dramatist and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years Yeats served as an Irish Senator for two terms. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival, and along with Lady Gregory and Edward Martyn founded the Abbey Theatre, and served as its chief during its early years. In 1923, he was awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature for what the Nobel Committee described as "inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation;" and he was the first Irishman so honored.[1] Yeats is generally considered one of the few writers whose greatest works were completed after being awarded the Nobel Prize; such works include The Tower (1928) and The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1929). Yeats was born and educated in Dublin, but spent his childhood in County Sligo. He studied poetry in his youth, and from an early age was fascinated by both Irish legends and the occult. Read more at: William Butler Yeats

--Poetry Terminology: Baroque Poetry-
Baroque derives from the Portuguese for imperfectly formed pearl. Baroque poetry is characterised by a highly elaborate style laced with extravagant conceits e.g. the work of the 17th century English poet Richard Crashaw.

--Word of the Day: tarradiddle \tair-uh-DID-uhl\, noun; also taradiddle:
1. A petty falsehood; a fib.
2. Pretentious nonsense.
Oh please! Even in the parallel universe, tarradiddles of this magnitude cannot go unchallenged.
-"Taxation in the parallel universe", Sunday Business, June 11, 2000

--Quote of the Day: Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.
-C. S. Lewis

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Tuesday Twin Sonnets

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Enjoy a sonnet duo to bring pleasure to your day!

My Love Is Like To Ice
--Description: 16th C, Spenser E., Adoration, Love, Sonnet--



My Lady Carries Love Within Her Eyes
--Description: 14th C, Alighieri D., Adoration, Love, Sonnet--

--Poetry Terminology: Ellipsis-
Refers to any omitted part of speech that is understood; i.e. the omission is intentional. Analogously, in printing and writing, the term refers to the row of three dots (...) or asterisks (* * *) indicating such an intentional omission.

--Word of the Day: propinquity\pruh-PING-kwih-tee\ , noun;
1.Nearness in place; proximity.
2.Nearness in time.
3.Nearness of relation; kinship.
Example:
Following the race he took umbrage at Stewart's rough driving so early in the day, and the propinquity of the two drivers' haulers allowed the Kid to express his displeasure up close and personal.
-Mark Bechtel, "Getting Hot", Sports Illustrated, December 6, 2000

--Quote of the Day: All is amiss. Love is dying, faith's defying, heart's denying.
-Richard Barnfield

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Love

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--Description: 19th C, Coleridge S.T., Love--

All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame.

Oft in my waking dreams do I
Live o'er again that happy hour,
When midway on the mount I lay,
Beside the ruined tower.

The moonshine, stealing o'er the scene
Had blended with the lights of eve:
And she was there, my hope, my joy,
My own dear Genevieve!.

She leant against the arméd man,
The statue of the arméd knight:
She stood and listened to my lay,
Amid the lingering light.

Few sorrows hath she of her own,
My hope ! my joy ! my Genevieve !
She loves me best, whene'er I sing
The songs that make her grieve.

I played a soft and doleful air,
I sang an old and moving story-
An old rude song, that suited well
That ruin wild and hoary.

She listened with a flitting blush,
With downcast eyes and modest grace:
For well she know, I could not choose
But gaze upon her face.

I told her of the Knight that wore
Upon his shield a burning brand:
And that for ten long years he wooed
The Lady of the Land.

I told her how he pined : and ah!
The deep, the low, the pleading tone
With which I sang another's love,
Interpreted my own.

She listened with a flitting blush,
With downcast eyes, and modest grace:
And she forgave me, that I gazed
Too fondly on her face!.

But when I told the cruel scorn
That crazed that bold and lovely Knight,
And that he crossed the mountain-woods,
Nor rested day nor night:

That sometimes from the savage den,
And sometimes from the darksome shade,
And sometimes starting up at once
In green and sunny glade,-

There came and looked him in the face
An angel beautiful and bright:
And that he knew it was a Fiend,
This miserable Knight!.

And that unknowing what he did,
He leaped amid a murderous band,
And saved from outrage worse than death
The Lady of the Land!.

And how she wept, and clasped his knees:
And how she tended him in vain-
And ever strove to expiate
The scorn that crazed his brain ;-

And that she nursed him in a cave:
And how his madness went away,
When on the yellow forest-leaves
A dying man he lay ;-

His dying words -but when I reached
That tenderest strain of all the ditty,
My faultering voice and pausing harp
Disturbed her soul with pity!.

All impulses of soul and sense
Had thrilled my guileless Genevieve:
The music and the doleful tale,
The rich and balmy eve:

And hopes, and fears that kindle hope,
An undistinguishable throng,
And gentle wishes long subdued,
Subdued and cherished long!.

She wept with pity and delight,
She blushed with love, and virgin-shame:
And like the murmur of a dream,
I heard her breathe my name.

Her bosom heaved -she stepped aside,
As conscious of my look she stepped-
The suddenly, with timorous eye
She fled to me and wept.

She half enclosed me with her arms,
She pressed me with a meek embrace:
And bending back her head, looked up,
And gazed upon my face.

'Twas partly love, and partly fear,
And partly 'twas a bashful art,
That I might rather feel, than see,
The swelling of her heart.

I calmed her fears, and she was calm,
And told her love with virgin pride:
And so I won my Genevieve,
My bright and beauteous Bride.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

--Did You Know: (21 October 1772 – 25 July 1834) Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was one of the founders of the Romantic Movement in England and one of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, as well as for his major prose work Biographia Literaria. His critical work, especially on Shakespeare, was highly influential, and he helped introduce German idealist philosophy to English-speaking culture. He coined many familiar words and phrases, including the celebrated suspension of disbelief. He was a major influence, via Emerson, on American transcendentalism. Throughout his adult life, Coleridge suffered from crippling bouts of anxiety and depression (neuralgia); it has been speculated that Coleridge suffered from bipolar disorder, a mental disorder which was unknown during his life. Coleridge chose to treat these episodes with opium, becoming an addict in the process. Samuel's father, the Reverend John Coleridge, was a well respected vicar of the parish and Head Master of Henry VIII's Free Grammar School at Ottery. He had ten children by his first wife. Samuel was the youngest of three by Reverend Coleridge's second wife. Of his childhood, Coleridge suggests that he "took no pleasure in boyish sports" but instead read "incessantly". Read more at: S. T. Coleridge

--Poetry Terminology: Tophographical Poetry-
The poetic equivalent of landscape painting e.g. Pope's Windsor Forest or Gray's Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College. A more modern example of the genre is Remains of Elmet by Ted Hughes which was a collaboration with the photographer Fay Godwin.

--Word of the Day: winsome\WIN-suhm\ , adjective;
1. Cheerful; merry; gay; light-hearted.
2. Causing joy or pleasure; agreeable; pleasant.
Quotes:
And, oh, it was a sweet smile, they said, none sweeter, so winsome and large it transformed her melancholy face.
-Flavia Alaya, Under the Rose

--Quote of the Day: Conceit spoils the finest genius. There is not much danger that real talent or goodness will be overlooked long; even if it is, the consciousness of possessing and using it well should satisfy one, and the great charm of all power is modesty.
-Louisa May Alcott

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