April WAS Poetry Month

I missed getting this blog posted because I was on the road a lot of April, facilitating various workshops, three of which included ways to engage college students with linguistically challenging poems.  I discovered several new poems that resonated with me, and which I share below.  Emily Dickinson seemed to be speaking directly to me with her admonition of bluntness in "Tell All the Truth", I was moved by Rabinath Tagore's noble call to his country to live free (during the "Quit India" movement in mid 40s) in "Where the Mind is Without Fear", I again marveled at the genius that is Shakespeare, to me the Beethoven of poetry
, and enjoyed the discovery of an elegant poem by Pablo Neruda, which I'm going to try to keep in mind the next time I'm assailed by the onslaught of noise and chaos that is Jaipur traffic in hopes it will take me to a quieter place.

In case you're interested, there is a terrific website that has audio files of many well-known actors and poets reciting poetry.  It's a great way to pass time if your aging peepers give out on you in the evenings as mine sometimes do.  The link is: POETRY OUT LOUD.

Finally, if anyone reads to the end of the poetry, you will find some first lines of famous poetry.  See how many you can identify, or better yet, check out the poems.  The Indian curriculum is way too top heavy on British poets, but they were the colonizers, after all.  I did my best to promote Frost, Sandburg, Whitman, Dickinson, and the likes, however.  Do you have a favorite poem or poet?  Send it in a comment, I'd love to read it.

Also, just before the new poems, here's a poem by my favorite Iowa poet, Iowa Citian Marvin Bell.  He's such a sweet looking man, I always think of his face when I hear these in my mind. I love this poem with its vivid sensorial images that take me immediately to the pines in our backyard we could reach out and touch from the sleeping porch.  I'm glad poetry has a month; otherwise, I might forget how pleasing it can be.

Around Us

  by Marvin Bell We need some pines to assuage the darkness
when it blankets the mind,
we need a silvery stream that banks as smoothly
as a plane's wing, and a worn bed of
needles to pad the rumble that fills the mind,
and a blur or two of a wild thing
that sees and is not seen. We need these things
between appointments, after work,
and, if we keep them, then someone someday,
lying down after a walk
and supper, with the fire hole wet down,
the whole night sky set at a particular
time, without numbers or hours, will cause
a little sound of thanks--a zipper or a snap--
to close round the moment and the thought
of whatever good we did.
- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16765#sthash.ysWRQB6P.dpuf

Tell All The Truth

Tell all the truth but tell it slant,


Success in circuit lies,


Too bright for our infirm delight


The truth's superb surprise; 



As lightning to the children eased


With explanation kind,


The truth must dazzle gradually


Or every man be blind.

Emily Dickinson

Where The Mind Is Without Fear

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high 


Where knowledge is free 


Where the world has not been broken up into fragments 


By narrow domestic walls 


Where words come out from the depth of truth 


Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection 


Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way

Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit 


Where the mind is led forward by thee 


Into ever-widening thought and action 


Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake

Rabindranath Tagore

Keeping Quiet

by Pablo Neruda

Now we will count to twelve

and we will all keep still.

For once on the face of the earth,


let's not speak in any language;


let's stop for one second,


and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment


without rush, without engines;


we would all be together


in a sudden strangeness.

Fisherman in the cold sea


would not harm whales

and the man gathering salt


would look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,


wars with gas, wars with fire,


victories with no survivors,


would put on clean clothes

and walk about with their brothers

in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused


with total inactivity.


Life is what it is about;


I want no truck with death.

If we were not so single-minded


about keeping our lives moving,


and for once could do nothing,


perhaps a huge silence


might interrupt this sadness


of never understanding ourselves


and of threatening ourselves with death.


Perhaps the earth can teach us


as when everything seems dead


and later proves to be alive.

Now I'll count up to twelve

and you keep quiet and I will go.

A CONTEST!  

“Tyger! Tyger! burning bright”
“She walks in beauty, like the night”
“Let us go then, you and I,”
“I celebrate myself, and sing myself,”
“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.”
“Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?’” “Death be not proud, though some have called thee”
“I met a traveller from an antique land”
“Because I could not stop for Death,”
“Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness”