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Poem of the Day: If You Forget Me

03/19/2007 by Cosmographia Books

If You Forget Me

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch…

-Pablo Neruda

Posted in Neruda, Nina Alvarez, poem of the day, poetry | Leave a Comment »

Poem of the Day: The Pardon

03/19/2007 by Cosmographia Books

The Pardon

My dog lay dead five days without a grave
In the thick of summer, hid in a clump of pine…

-Richard Wilbur

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Poem of the Day: Wolves

03/17/2007 by Cosmographia Books

Wolves

I do not want to be reflective any more
Envying and despising unreflective things…
-Louis MacNeice

Posted in Louis MacNeice, macneice, poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, Wolves, words, Write, Writer, writing | Leave a Comment »

Poem of the Day: Fire and Ice

03/16/2007 by Cosmographia Books

Ice and rain may cover the Northeast this weekend to such a degree that I won’t be able to travel to Morgantown and give my paper at the African Literature Association’s 33rd annual conference. In rueful honor of this, today’s poem:

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

-Robert Frost

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Poem of the Day: Song of Myself

03/15/2007 by Cosmographia Books

from Song of Myself

I Celebrate myself, and sing myself,

And what I assume you shall assume,

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,

I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil,

this air,

Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and

their parents the same,

I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,

Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance,

Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never

forgotten,

I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,

Nature without check with original energy.

-Walt Whitman

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Poem of the Day: O me! O life!

03/14/2007 by Cosmographia Books

O me! O life! 

O me! O life!… of the questions of these recurring;
Of the endless trains of the faithless–of cities fill’d with the foolish;
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light–of the objects mean–of the struggle ever renew’d;
Of the poor results of all–of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me;
Of the empty and useless years of the rest–with the rest me intertwined;
The question, O me! so sad, recurring–What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.

That you are here–that life exists, and identity;
That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.

-Walt Whitman

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Poem of the Day: The Waking

03/13/2007 by Cosmographia Books

The Waking

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.

-Theodore Roethke

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Poem of the Day: For the Young Who Want To

03/12/2007 by Cosmographia Books

For the Young Who Want To

Talent is what they say
you have after the novel
is published and favorably
reviewed. Beforehand what
you have is a tedious
delusion, a hobby like knitting.

Work is what you have done
after the play is produced
and the audience claps.
Before that friends keep asking
when you are planning to go
out and get a job.

Genius is what they know you
had after the third volume
of remarkable poems. Earlier
they accuse you of withdrawing,
ask why you don’t have a baby,
call you a bum.

The reason people want M.F.A.’s,
take workshops with fancy names
when all you can really
learn is a few techniques,
typing instructions and some-
body else’s mannerisms

is that every artist lacks
a license to hang on the wall
like your optician, your vet
proving you may be a clumsy sadist
whose fillings fall into the stew
but you’re certified a dentist.

The real writer is one
who really writes. Talent
is an invention like phlogiston
after the fact of fire.
Work is its own cure. You have to
like it better than being loved.

-Marge Piercy

Posted in piercy, poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, words, Write, Writer, writing | 3 Comments »

Poem of the Day: Painters

03/11/2007 by Cosmographia Books

Painters

In the cave with a long-ago flare
a woman stands, her arms up. Red twig, black twig, brown twig.
A wall of leaping darkness over her.
The men are out hunting in the early light
But here in this flicker, one or two men, painting
and a woman among them.
Great living animals grow on the stone walls,
their pelts, their eyes, their sex, their hearts,
and the cave-painters touch them with life, red, brown, black,
a woman among them, painting.

-Muriel Rukeyser

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Poem of the Day: The Lake Isle of Innisfree

03/10/2007 by Cosmographia Books

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee;
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

-W.B. Yeats

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