The Poetry Page
I have decided not to initiate a poetry category. Instead all matters poetic will appear on this page. Since the page will be updated, altered and/or tweaked from time to time, it won’t actually be static.
Let’s start off with the only poem I ever wrote that doesn’t, after repeated readings, strike me as having been written for a high school English class.
Caruthersville, Missouri, 1962
Big Muddy slipped on southward
on that fine Missouri night
as we danced near the ferry
in the pickup’s lights
and if it wasn’t love
it should have been.
In the perfect light of a Heartland moon
her face was as bright as the cotton fields
stretching north and south and westerly
away from our close-pressed flesh
and the sweet sad center
of our last night together
forever.
copyright 1996 – 2010, Tom Weeks
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Gerard Manley Hopkins was an English Jesuit priest who loved God, God’s creations, and the English language. I’ve always thought of “The Windhover” as a love poem to all three. Hopkins’ sprung rhythm and liberal use of alliteration and bold imagery put his poetry well ahead of its (Victorian) time.
The Windhover
To Christ our Lord
I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.
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Robert Herrick was another English man of the Cloth. The Encyclopedia of World Biography summarizes Herrick’s work quite well:
“The English poet and Anglican parson Robert Herrick (1591-1674) invented a fanciful world compounded of pagan Rome and Christian England, of reality and fantasy, which he ruled as his poetic domain.”
Since I am always impressed by great imagery and written language that is obviously designed to be spoken, Herrick’s “Upon Julia’s Clothes” is one of my favorite short poems.
UPON JULIA’S CLOTHES.
by Robert Herrick
WHENAS in silks my Julia goes,
Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows
That liquefaction of her clothes.
Next, when I cast mine eyes and see
That brave vibration each way free ;
O how that glittering taketh me.
Read this little poem out loud and notice how the words flow just as sweetly as Julia’s clothes must have. Check out other Herrick poems here.
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