e.e.cummings i would wrought you
a poemthingy of soft bent iron like
garden gates tilted open by age and
as you approached there would be
(scented like sweet tea ambrosia
oceans and tulips are you)
a whispering, amazing,
and, ,gone just before falling asleep
to the sound of rain on roof sound
(you tasting like desert moon
and bumblebee song)
the gates would sigh like old
philosophers knowing they knew
not the carpentry artistry, gone,
and, ,amazing and sink
to the groundsky
defeated by dew,
by Paul Squires http://hello.wordpress.com
On Mondays I usually post poetry–mine, either something I wrote previously, or something new. But today I decided to do something different and post a favorite poem by my favorite writer on the web, Paul Squires who posts poetry and poetic prose at his blog “hello”. He also has lots of podcasts, books for sale, and he sells his poems on t-shirts via CafePress as well as organizing web-based anthology of Contemporary Poetry and the collaborative poetry space, The Orchid Room. So go check him out!
This may become a weekly feature–a poem by a poet I am reading which I want to share.
Sometime later today I will post a poem of mine (“Moon Muses”). In the meantime, enjoy the poem above by Paul and the poem below by ee cummings. In searching through 100 selected poems by e.e. cummings to find one to post here, I fall in love again with the familiar, the favorites (“in Just–/spring,” “i like my body when it is with your body,” and “may i feel said he“), and feel joy to find again his wondrous ways with words in poems less well known like the one I chose:
here’s to opening and upwards,to leaf and to sap
and to your(in my arms flowering so new)
self whose eyes smell of the sound of rain
and here’s to silent certainly mountains;and to
a disappearing poet of always,snow
and to morning:and to morning’s beautiful friend
twilight(and and first dream called ocean)and
let must or if be damned with whomever’s afraid
down with ought with because with every brain
which thinks it thinks,nor dares to feel(but up
with joy; and up with laughing and drunkeness)
here’s to one undiscoverable guess
of whose mad skill each world of blood is made
(whose fatal songs are moving in the moon
Wow, thanks again. That is so sweet of you. That second poem makes the first one look skimpy. I love the way ee mixes his prepositions and subject object of sentences up to make a whirl. It was one of the ways he worked to break down the idea of the self being distinct from the rest of the world. There is a flow through, a blurring of the distinction between reader writer and the addressee of the poem. We all become one humanity in one universe in his work. I’m falltered to be mentioned here in your site, Gwendolyn. Thankyou.
I disagree, Paul, that yours is “skimpy” by compare! They are different. ee’s is a sweet little 14 line sonnet, isn’t it, and you both work in these lovely ways to swirl the differences of the world into one
Time is not linear on the internet. I have been flying the machine and ended up here via google, how cool is that. Please delete this comment if you want to.