April is National Poetry Month. It’s also Earth Month, STD Awareness Month, Mathematics Awareness Month, Jazz Appreciation Month, Financial Literacy Month, and Arab-American Month, too.
I don’t think I could conceivably combine all of those and if I tried the result would be awful, but the Poetry month so far has been really enjoyable thanks to the appearance of poems in my Twitter feed, my email inbox, and occasionally on public transport.
So I wanted to ask you: Do you have a favorite poem?
I have three favorites. The first line of ee cummings’ “i carry your heart” is carved inside Adam’s and my wedding bands
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
His reads, “i carry your heart.” Mine says, “i carry it in my heart.”
Amanda: I’m a huge e.e. fan and that is so sweet!
“If Your Forget Me” by Pablo Neruda was the first poem I remember crying to and reading it now, it still makes me cry. BRB, just sobbing for a minute.
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine
Sarah: Wow.
Redheadedgirl: I like TS Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. It’s a fave and has been for a long time, and weirdly, the poems of his we read (and over analyzed to DEATH) in high school I also love.
“Sweeney Among the Nightingales”
The circles of the stormy moon 5
Slide westward toward the River Plate,
Death and the Raven drift above
And Sweeney guards the horned gate.
It’s just so much dread and danger.
Amanda: And then I have a special love for “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost. Anyone who could memorize it and recite it in my English class in high school would get extra credit. I memorized the shit out of that poem.
Sarah: I love how the poem is about the speaker knowing they’ll reminisce that they took the road “less traveled” when both paths were “really about the same.” Now it’s used to encourage people to take the less-traveled path – even though, if you read the whole poem, there was not much difference between the original paths in the yellow wood.
Elyse: I love “The Lady of Shallot.” And Loreena McKinnett turned it into a beautiful song.
Redheadedgirl: I also adore Langston Hughes’ use of rhythm.
That always makes me think of Anne Shirley.
“The Lady of Shallot,” not Hughes.
Elyse: True story: in sophomore English I had to write about “The Lady of Shallot” and Arthurian legend and I wrote that they should put a bag over Lancelot’s head because he’s fucking up stuff for women everywhere.
And I was told that was not valid literary criticism.
HAHA MOTHERFUCKER LOOK WHAT I DO FOR A JOB NOW
Redheadedgirl: There’s a thirteenth century French romance (in the classical sense) called Le Roman de Silence that’s an epic poem about the daughter of the earl of Cornwall who grew up raised as a boy.
Carrie: Scroll down to #5 – “Coastal”
a loon. It’s so sick,
she says when I ask.
Foolish kid,does she think she can keep
this emissary of air?
Is it trust or illness
It was printed as a solo poem in the New Yorker and I cut it out and have kept it over my desk for over twenty years because the girl in the poem represents the person I most wish to be.
I didn’t know it was part of a longer poem cycle until I looked for a link!
Sarah: You are that person. You are the girl and the loon.
Carrie: I actually did get to save a coastal bird on a beach once in Junior High on a field trip – it was caught in fishing line and I had a pocket knife and my friends held it while I cut it loose – it was very Disney.
Sarah: That’s pretty bad ass.
What about you? Do you have a favorite poem? Please share!