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Poem of the Day: The Hosting of the Sidhe

10/05/2007 by Cosmographia Books

The Hosting of the Sidhe

THE host is riding from Knocknarea
And over the grave of Clooth-na-Bare;
Caoilte tossing his burning hair,
And Niamh calling Away, come away:
Empty your heart of its mortal dream.
The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round,
Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound,
Our breasts are heaving, our eyes are agleam,
Our arms are waving, our lips are apart;
And if any gaze on our rushing band,
We come between him and the deed of his hand,
We come between him and the hope of his heart.
The host is rushing ‘twixt night and day,
And where is there hope or deed as fair?
Caoilte tossing his burning hair,
And Niamh calling Away, come away.

-William Butler Yeats

Posted in poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, sidhe, the hosting of the sidhe, the hosting of the widhe, william butler, wind, Write, Writer, writing, Yeats | Leave a Comment »

Poem of the Day: Alone

10/04/2007 by Cosmographia Books

Alone

From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life- was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.

-Edgar Allan Poe

Posted in edgar allan poe, macabre, october, Poe, poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, sad, scary, Write, Writer, writing | Leave a Comment »

Poem of the Day: Epidermal Macabre

10/03/2007 by Cosmographia Books

Epidermal Macabre

Indelicate is he who loathes
The aspect of his fleshy clothes, —
The flying fabric stitched on bone,
The vesture of the skeleton,
The garment neither fur nor hair,
The cloak of evil and despair,
The veil long violated by
Caresses of the hand and eye.
Yet such is my unseemliness:
I hate my epidermal dress,
The savage blood’s obscenity,
The rags of my anatomy,
And willingly would I dispense
With false accouterments of sense,
To sleep immodestly, a most
Incarnadine and carnal ghost.

-Theodore Roethke

Posted in macabre, poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, roehtke, skin, spooky, Write, Writer, writing | Leave a Comment »

Poem of the Day: The Future

10/02/2007 by Cosmographia Books

The Future

The future: time’s excuse
to frighten us; too vast
a project, too large a morsel
for the heart’s mouth.

Future, who won’t wait for you?
Everyone is going there.
It suffices you to deepen
the absence that we are.

-Ranier Maria Rilke (Translated by A. Poulin)

Posted in poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, rilke, time, Write, Writer, writing | Leave a Comment »

Poem of the Day: Poetry

10/01/2007 by Cosmographia Books

Poetry

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond

all this fiddle.

Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one

discovers in

it after all, a place for the genuine.

Hands that can grasp, eyes

that can dilate, hair that can rise

if it must, these things are important not because a

high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because

they are

useful. When they become so derivative as to become

unintelligible,

the same thing may be said for all of us, that we

do not admire what

we cannot understand: the bat

holding on upside down or in quest of something to

eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless

wolf under

a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse

that feels a flea, the base-

ball fan, the statistician–

nor is it valid

to discriminate against “business documents and

school-books”; all these phenomena are important. One must make

a distinction

however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the

result is not poetry,

nor till the poets among us can be

“literalists of

the imagination”–above

insolence and triviality and can present

for inspection, “imaginary gardens with real toads in them,”

shall we have

it. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,

the raw material of poetry in

all its rawness and

that which is on the other hand

genuine, you are interested in poetry.

-Marianne Moore

Posted in marianne moore, moore, poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, Write, Writer, writing | Leave a Comment »

Poem of the Day: Assault

09/28/2007 by Cosmographia Books

Assault

I

I had forgotten how the frogs must sound
After a year of silence, else I think
I should not so have ventured forth alone
At dusk upon this unfrequented road.

II

I am waylaid by Beauty. Who will walk
Between me and the crying of the frogs?
Oh, savage Beauty, suffer me to pass,
That am a timid woman, on her way
From one house to another!

-Edna St. Vincent Millay

Posted in millar, millay, poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, st. vincent, Write, Writer, writing | 1 Comment »

Poem of the Day: The Jabberwocky

09/27/2007 by Cosmographia Books

The Jabberwocky

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought–
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arm, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe

-Lewis Carroll

Posted in carroll, jabberwocky, lewis, nonsense, poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, Write, Writer, writing | 1 Comment »

Poem of the Day: A Supermarket in California

09/25/2007 by Cosmographia Books

A Supermarket in California

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the
streets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.

In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit
supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles
full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes! — and you,
Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?
I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the
meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price
bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and
followed in my imagination by the store detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting
artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier.
Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which way does
your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel
absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to
shade, lights out in the houses, we’ll both be lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in
driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you
have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and
stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?

-Allen Ginsberg

Posted in ginsberg, lonely, poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, thoughts, Write, Writer, writing | 1 Comment »

Poem of the Day: Fifteen, Maybe Sixteen Things to Worry About

09/24/2007 by Cosmographia Books

Fifteen, Maybe Sixteen Things to Worry About

 

My pants could maybe fall down when I dive off the diving board.

My nose could maybe keep growing and never quit.

Miss Brearly could ask me to spell words like stomach and special.

(Stumick and speshul?)

I could play tag all day and always be “it.”

Jay Spievack, who’s fourteen feet tall, could want to fight me.

My mom and my dad–like Ted’s–could want a divorce.

Miss Brearly could ask me a question about Afghanistan.

(Who’s Afghanistan?)

Somebody maybe could make me ride a horse.

My mother could maybe decide that I needed more liver.

My dad could decide that I needed less TV.

Miss Brearly could say that I have to write script and stop printing.

(I’m better at printing.)

Chris could decide to stop being friends with me.

The world could maybe come to an end on next Tuesday.

The ceiling could maybe come crashing on my head.

I maybe could run out of things for me to worry about.

And then I’d have to do my homework instead.

-Judith Viorst

Posted in judith viorst, poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, spell, worry, Write, Writer, writing | 2 Comments »

Poem of the Day: from Last Poems

09/23/2007 by Cosmographia Books

from Last Poems

THE laws of God, the laws of man,
He may keep that will and can;
Not I: let God and man decree
Laws for themselves and not for me;
And if my ways are not as theirs
Let them mind their own affairs.
Their deeds I judge and much condemn,
Yet when did I make laws for them?
Please yourselves, say I , and they
Need only look the other way.
But no, they will not; they must still
Wrest their neighbour to their will,
And make me dance as they desire
With jail and gallows and hell-fire.
And how am I to face the odds
Of man’s bedevilment and God’s?
I, a stranger and afraid
In a world I never made.
They will be master, right or wrong;
Though both are foolish, both are strong.
And since, my soul, we cannot fly
To Saturn nor to Mercury,
Keep we must, if keep we can,
These foreign laws of God and man.

-A.E. Housman

Posted in housman, i a stranger and afraid, in a world I never made, poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, stranger, Write, Writer, writing | 5 Comments »

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