Archive for the ‘sunday poetry’ Category

Last Tuesday I was able to preview a new movie called Bright Star. I was unfamiliar with the movie, only knowing that it was about Keats. I knew the basic story of his life and his death at an early age, but nothing about the premise of the movie, which covered the years before his death when he wrote most of his famous works and also had a relationship with a woman, Fanny Braun.

John Keats died at the age of 25, before his poetry reached popularity. His poetry is defined as part of the Romantic movement, which also includes poets like Lord Byron and Shelley. I shared a part of one of his poems last week–you can see that his poetry is very vivid and beautiful, filled with sensual imagery.

I thought the movie did his poetry justice, following the tone and feel of one of his poems. It was very beautiful, filled with symbolical allegory and just generally gorgeous scenery and landscaping. The characters of Fanny Braun and John Keats were emotional, the actors well-crafted in the art. I would have to argue that this movie, while a tale of Keats, was more the tale of Fanny. She was the clear main character, and the audience followed her life and her powerful feelings.

I would recommend this movie for any lover of poetry of any kind, or for someone that loves a beautiful period movie. I especially enjoyed Fanny’s dresses throughout the film (she apparently was some sort of amateur fashionista). Any contestant on Project Runway would die for her fashions, I’m sure!

See the movie. Love the story. Feel the emotions and sense Keats’ poetry. I don’t think you will be disappointed.

As a preview for this Sunday’s poetry post, I wanted to share a poem by John Keats. This Sunday I will be writing about Keats’ poetry, and the new movie about his fated romance with Fanny Braun, Bright Star, which I saw this evening.

MY heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
’Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,-
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

Excerpt from Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats

Check the blog this Sunday for my thoughts on the movie and his poetry!

Now that I will be blogging regularly again, I wanted to revive my weekly themed posts. So today, I’d like to again talk about some of my favorite poetry, and this week I’ll be discussing the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke. I first learned of this poet while reading Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater. In this beautiful novel, which I discussed here, Sam introduced Grace to this German poet. I researched Rilke on the Internet, and here is one of my favorite poems:

Love Song
How can I keep my soul in me, so that
it doesn’t touch your soul? How can I raise
it high enough, past you, to other things?
I would like to shelter it, among remote
lost objects, in some dark and silent place
that doesn’t resonate when your depths resound.
Yet everything that touches us, me and you,
takes us together like a violin’s bow,
which draws one voice out of two seperate strings.
Upon what instrument are we two spanned?
And what musician holds us in his hand?
Oh sweetest song.

Rilke was a German poet in the late 19th and early 20th century. His poems have been translated in to many languages, and I think that part of the beauty of his poetry is the translation–the slight unhinged wording that is used as a result of these words being translated into English. His words are simple, yet powerful with feeling.

His poetry is very lyrical, haunting, intense (which is, I’m sure, why Stiefvater chose to use it for Shiver). “How can I keep my soul in me, so that it doesn’t touch your soul?” he asks, in Love Song. What does this line mean to you? To me, its a yearning of the heart, someone that can’t contain their love for someone else, so that the person’s heart and soul is threatening to break out of their core, reaching out to touch that other person.

These are the type of beautiful words that resonate with people with all ages, especially young people (like myself) and teenagers. Feelings are amplified, thoughts and words are big. Every word glues something together or cuts it apart.

This is the type of beauty that I would like to show in my life, the words I would love to write, but since they have already been written, I can appreciate them and smile at their amazing vivacity.

A few years ago I discovered the poetry of Mairead Byrne, an Irish poet. I’m not a student of poetry, although I love to read and write it, so I can’t name her style, if you could even categorize it, but her poems are very current, but have a lyrical longevity to them. I can feel the beat and the power behind the words. At her blog you can read a lot of poems that she posts, in addition to information regarding readings and events.

I’m a fan of many types of poetry, from all eras, but modern poetry, describing modern issues (see her poem on June 2 called layoffs) is especially appealing to me, and I think could be especially appealing to teens. Many of the poets today that write for a teen audience adopt this similar flow of words that are biting yet powerful. Take, for example, Sonya Sones, and What My Mother Doesn’t Know, and Ellen Hopkins, with Crank, and many other voices out there today.

What entices teen to this form of poetry? I can imagine it is the same reason they are drawn to other works based in reality. These voices speak when they cannot. They describe what they may not understand. They give power to the crazy tangle of emotions that is adolescence.

In the summer I always remember some of my fondest traveling experiences. In college, I was fortunate enough to travel to many cities in the US and also Europe during many of my summers off from school. I tried to write wherever I went, even if just a log of what I did, what I saw, so that I’d be able to have that memory forever.

When I think poetry and travel, I always think of The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost and his famous line that he took the road “less traveled by.” Of course, this is a metaphor for much more than a trip; it’s a description of how the narrator of the poem lived his life, and how many people live their lives. Do you take the least popular road? What is your path in life?

As a teen, I felt I did march to my own beat, but I was not adventuresome–my timidity stopped me from trying new things, meeting new people, traveling a different road. That has come later in my life, and it’s still something I work for every day. In many cases, there is nothing wrong with taking the popular road, the route that everyone before you has gone along. But the new path may lead to an adventure, or to new sights, feelings, or people–take a leap of faith and give something new a try!

I have a few poems I wrote while traveling that I thought convey the mood of this post.

My Italy

Take me back to
the cobblestone streets
and the hills
and the food
and the gypsies selling snakes
Take me back to my Italy
where I’ll fall in love
on a beach
underneath
the sun that
shines eternal.

Belgrave Street

Dreary clouds over
Belgrave street,
I stand and watch
my feet,
Passing time
waiting for the
bus.

I wave out my
hand and smile,
And the red vehicle
stops, right at my
toes.

Here goes!

Place des Vosges

Spring chills
Lover lies on the grass
Musicians and a
sparrow paint the
air in melody,
Not quite yet in bloom.

This Sunday I have been thinking a lot about how I have changed over the past 10 years (since I began high school). In some ways, I think I am much the same person, but lately I’ve begun to realize how much I have really changed. If I asked my friends that I still see from high school, I think they would say the same. Last night I attended a gorgeous, beautiful wedding for 2 wonderful friends of mine. The night was spectacular, the band phenomenal, and all I wanted to do was converse and dance and just have fun and be in the moment. I adore weddings.

In high school, I was shy, timid–painfully so. I didn’t involve myself in many activities (to my regret, now), and I had a close knit group of friends (I don’t regret this, at all). I had no confidence in myself. I had no idea how to speak for myself. As the eldest child of 5, I didn’t have many examples to teach me how to speak out in the world.

Today I talk and laugh and smile and enjoy others, even strangers, with almost complete ease. I still suffer from anxiety as I used to, especially when I’m alone with a group of strangers, but I know how to overcome the situation. I know that I am a fun, cheerful person, that can make others laugh, and that can hold a conversation on my own. I will always have some self confidence issues–who doesn’t?–but I know that I have overcome some of the biggest hurdles in keeping me from forming connections with others.

I have many people to thank for this: some of my former supervisors, college professors, and even friends and family. I have learned by example. I have learned by being forced. And it has been a rocky path along the way, but I am ever grateful.

Today I only have a few bits of my own poetry to share–words that show the struggles I have had with my self confidence. I have worked every day since being a teenager to overcome this anxiety, and I think I finally realize how much success I have had.

Finding

I’m seeking a new confidence,
a way to say, “I’m here, I matter.”
Maybe a way to love myself,
so that I can let others love me.
Wholly.
Fully.
Completely.

I shy from your touch.
Run from your words.
They sting, you know,
a thousand prickers in my
skin and fleshy heart.
A real feeling for something
so emotionally hurtful.

Today

Nervous eye twitch,
ticking, teasing my temple,
tummy tumbling,
tongue-tied,
impossibility.

I’m currently reading Crank by Ellen Hopkins, and wanted to briefly touch on it for my weekly poetry post, and I thought to myself: Who else can I bring to the table that can even touch the edge of the power of this book? It’s raw and real and I can even barely breathe sometimes while reading it, and then I thought–Emily Dickinson, she that also wrote poetry that bled from the pain of her own emotions.

Emily Dickinson’s poetry covers a wide spectrum of topics–including death. Her life was surrounded by loss and loneliness. It is commonly thought that she suffered from depression or manic disorder. Emily Dickinson’s poems developed from the real events surrounding her–the deaths of family, close friends, and then even her parents. Take, for example, I measure every Grief I meet where she wonders if others grief weighs like her own.

In Crank, by Ellen Hopkins, Kristina, a high school junior, gives her life over to drugs. This story has been told by many authors–but the hard-hitting and biting effect of this novel lies in it’s form, the unconventional poetry where each word slams at you, packed with powerful meaning, and lies also in that Ellen Hopkins wrote from personal experience, the story being based on events in the life of her own daughter.

How do we, the reader, benefit from this poetry that has it’s basis in real life? How could we not? It takes a brave soul to lay any emotion on the table, let alone ones such as grief, loss, fear, and despair–such difficult emotions that the author has actually experienced. For me, I read these words, powerful with feeling, and as I share in the pain, I also feel the encouragement of the “we”–We are not alone in the pain. I am not the only person on this earth to have ever suffered loss. I am not the only person to fear or despair. And then there is hope.

Emily Dickinson may have written about death, but she also wrote about light and beauty.

We are not alone.

I have been fortunate enough to not have experienced that much loss in my life, yet. I have however known pain, loneliness, and fear.

Solitude

This frozen solitude
of regrets, dreams
that’ve died–
the cloud of
it blinds
my escape,
and
I fall;
breaking
along the way.

Panic

Thunder–
and I think
there’s a storm,
waves of rebellion,
fight
Yet I cringe
and cry out in
fright
of the night
only the dark,
lonesome, anxious,
night.

Hurt

So there’s the times when
I feel so lonely,
it just hurts to exist
and the heavy weight of it all
hurts my lungs and I
can’t
breathe.

I wonder

wonder,

if they notice this absurd pain
of mine.

It passes.

And then I’m me again.

But I can’t help worrying about when it will return.
—

For More: Emily Dickinson’s poetry @ poets.org and Ellen Hopkin’s web site.

I’m planning on posting some poetry every Sunday–a day I usually spend relaxing, bouncing around the Internet, and occasionally at the library–a combination of my own and others that I have found. I’m very into novels-in-verse at the moment, so I’ll most likely be sharing some of my favorites with you for the next couple of weeks.

This week’s topic: First Loves. One novel-in-verse that I think fits perfectly into this category is Lisa Ann Sandell’s Song of the Sparrow, a retelling of the story of Elaine of Ascolat (including many of the characters from the stories of King Arthur). This is a beautifully written, absolutely gorgeous novel dealing with Elaine’s first love–Lancelot, and what becomes of her feelings as she grows older and wiser, amidst a group of men at war.

I’d also like to mention Lisa Schroeder’s I Heart You, You Haunt Me, a very haunting, indeed, novel-in-verse that shares the story of a teenage girl’s lost first love, and how he comes back to her in quite an unusual way, and the consequences that follow.

And here are two quick poems from me:

Crescendo

I felt the warmth of your breath
on the skin of my neck
and I inhaled
my chest arising and my
eyes closed
as I clung tightly to
the pointed bend of your hip
letting myself
descend
fall
plummet
ever deeper.

The Kiss

He touched my shoulder,
staring at the burnt, auburn
skin, and I flinched a little–
it hurt, and I was surprised
and well, wow.

I wasn’t sure what it meant,
but I’d take it, anything,
as long as he’d stay.

Then I turned and he looked
me in the eyes and I couldn’t
even breathe. The bright blue
of his gaze held me still and
then my lungs burned and I
sucked in deep and he was
there, his lips on mine.

—
Thank you.