commonplace book: poetry
I've been meaning for some time to pull together in link form the many poems I've posted here (copyright lawyers, go away): to make an accessible and updated cache, since one of the purposes of this blog was to be a commonplace book of sorts for certain texts. The response to the last Hikmet poem finally galvanized me to do so. Putting it together involved a lot of tedious linkage, but was still a great pleasure to wander back through all these familiar lines. I've left out song lyrics and scripture, and many other fragments of beloved texts posted over the last two and a half (!) years. Today is for the poets.
On the whole, it's not a bad virtual cousin of the bookshelf set aside for poetry, at least in terms of who's included. There are some surprising omissions--no Faiz (I have linked to him many times elsewhere, it turns out, and posted video clips of his work in musical form), no Neruda, no Ondaatje (except in a comment, where a mischievous interlocutor quotes back at me those seductive fragments of 'the Cinnamon Peeler' that I once left in a certain pigeonhole....), not much Rumi, no Gilbert, no Heaney, and most shockingly, no Louise Glück. I can only make sense of the latter failure by noting that it's particularly in the past year or so that I have been engaging seriously with her work, and during much of that time, a now-vanished favorite blog was posting quite a lot of it. This list also a bit biased towards contemporary and recent work; I spend a lot more time in the 15th-17th centuries (as well as the first half of the twentieth) that it would lead you to expect. (And where oh where is my dear Dunbar?) It was interesting, too, to note that several on this list have appeared in more than one post--often as partial fragments, but still, to quote one of them--we repeat ourselves. At least, I do.
Still, do not consider this a list of my favorite poems--I'm not sure I could produce such a thing--some are best-beloveds, but others are simply the poem that served the needed purpose at a given moment. And that gets at what underlies all this--a desire to affirm the importance of these words, their real and necessary presence in the day-to-day. There is poetry that I enjoy in a more abstract, 'literary' sense, but some is simply embroidered into my life, something I rely on as an alternate mode of interpreting and functioning in the world. Looking back over these posts and comments, I am also reminded of how (other people's) poetry has served as the medium for some of the most important ongoing conversations I conduct with certain people. This gathering is for them as much as for myself: enjoy.
Complete poems
First, of course, namesake and source text:
North American Time, Adrienne Rich
The Diameter of the Bomb, Yehuda Amichai
Farewell, Agha Shahid Ali
The Low Road, Marge Piercy
Imagine the Angels of Bread, Martín Espada (is this the year?)
Things I Didn't Know I Loved, Nazim Hikmet (in memoriam m.m.)
Fix, Alice Fulton (o, still; always)
The Unwed Mother, Huong Xuan Ho
The Mad Farmer Liberation Front, Wendell Berry
May Day, Phyllis Levin
Disbeliever, Mohja Kahf
Late Fragment, Raymond Carver
Optimism, Nazim Hikmet
Night in Al-Hamra, Saadi Youssef
A Nocturnall Upon St Lucies Day, John Donne
The Shirt, Jane Kenyon (aka, "an excellent short poem about lust")
The Graduates, Kathleen Jamie
The Lost Suitcase, Carolyn Forché
Listen, W.S. Merwin
In the Istanbul Detention House Yard, Nazim Hikmet
Fragments
The City of Daughters, Agha Shahid Ali
A Villanelle, Agha Shahid Ali
The City, C.P. Cavafy (trilingual fragment!)
A fragment, Mahmoud Darwish
Little Gidding, T.S. Eliot (from which dear S., sepoy, and myself invent epigraphs)
Fragment with a picture, Jelaladdin Rumi
October, Louise Glück (such a small fragment, but the only trace of her to include)
On the whole, it's not a bad virtual cousin of the bookshelf set aside for poetry, at least in terms of who's included. There are some surprising omissions--no Faiz (I have linked to him many times elsewhere, it turns out, and posted video clips of his work in musical form), no Neruda, no Ondaatje (except in a comment, where a mischievous interlocutor quotes back at me those seductive fragments of 'the Cinnamon Peeler' that I once left in a certain pigeonhole....), not much Rumi, no Gilbert, no Heaney, and most shockingly, no Louise Glück. I can only make sense of the latter failure by noting that it's particularly in the past year or so that I have been engaging seriously with her work, and during much of that time, a now-vanished favorite blog was posting quite a lot of it. This list also a bit biased towards contemporary and recent work; I spend a lot more time in the 15th-17th centuries (as well as the first half of the twentieth) that it would lead you to expect. (And where oh where is my dear Dunbar?) It was interesting, too, to note that several on this list have appeared in more than one post--often as partial fragments, but still, to quote one of them--we repeat ourselves. At least, I do.
Still, do not consider this a list of my favorite poems--I'm not sure I could produce such a thing--some are best-beloveds, but others are simply the poem that served the needed purpose at a given moment. And that gets at what underlies all this--a desire to affirm the importance of these words, their real and necessary presence in the day-to-day. There is poetry that I enjoy in a more abstract, 'literary' sense, but some is simply embroidered into my life, something I rely on as an alternate mode of interpreting and functioning in the world. Looking back over these posts and comments, I am also reminded of how (other people's) poetry has served as the medium for some of the most important ongoing conversations I conduct with certain people. This gathering is for them as much as for myself: enjoy.
Complete poems
First, of course, namesake and source text:
North American Time, Adrienne Rich
The Diameter of the Bomb, Yehuda Amichai
Farewell, Agha Shahid Ali
The Low Road, Marge Piercy
Imagine the Angels of Bread, Martín Espada (is this the year?)
Things I Didn't Know I Loved, Nazim Hikmet (in memoriam m.m.)
Fix, Alice Fulton (o, still; always)
The Unwed Mother, Huong Xuan Ho
The Mad Farmer Liberation Front, Wendell Berry
May Day, Phyllis Levin
Disbeliever, Mohja Kahf
Late Fragment, Raymond Carver
Optimism, Nazim Hikmet
Night in Al-Hamra, Saadi Youssef
A Nocturnall Upon St Lucies Day, John Donne
The Shirt, Jane Kenyon (aka, "an excellent short poem about lust")
The Graduates, Kathleen Jamie
The Lost Suitcase, Carolyn Forché
Listen, W.S. Merwin
In the Istanbul Detention House Yard, Nazim Hikmet
Fragments
The City of Daughters, Agha Shahid Ali
A Villanelle, Agha Shahid Ali
The City, C.P. Cavafy (trilingual fragment!)
A fragment, Mahmoud Darwish
Little Gidding, T.S. Eliot (from which dear S., sepoy, and myself invent epigraphs)
Fragment with a picture, Jelaladdin Rumi
October, Louise Glück (such a small fragment, but the only trace of her to include)
posted by kitabet at 9:39 PM
4 Comments:
This is excellent - many thanks for the links here! (That this is now distracting me from work is not good).
I haven't really been much of a poetry reader. Whatever interest I have now started only about 2 years or so back and I think that a huge part of it was combination of Hikmet, Faiz and Darwish.
Btw, I love the Kahf poem. It's the first time I've read her poetry and it's simply lovely.
Also, is there any particular version of Rumi that you would reccomend? (I have had decidedly mixed experiences with his work).
Also...(making my way through the poems still. I think I'll keep returning - it really is a virtual bookshelf!) Amichai's poem reminded me a lot of Yehoshua's A Woman in Jerusalem. I don't know if you've read Yehoshua but he is someone you must read...
dearest,
rereading these shall be fun! (though, yes, nothing quite beats the surprise of finding a fragment, a full poem! in one's pigeon hole)
i woke up this morning and read the loveliest poem Vespers by Eamon Grennan. it's not available on the web dammit but i shall download it from my 80 years of the New Yorker cds and send to you. In the meanwhile, do check him out on poets.org - the selection there is reflective of the sad sharp beautiful poem i read this morning.
Love,
Sz: glad you're enjoying it, and I do recommend the Kahf book if you can lay hands on it. I have read Yehoshua, but not that particular volume--will add it to the pile.
darling, of course you of all people are reading a poem called 'Vespers' in the morning. Promise me you'll follow up with one of Gluck's 'Matins' at dusk? Grennan too has entered the to-be-read queue.
Post a Comment
<< Home