Song
by T. S. Eliot
Tag: poetry
46
by e e cummings
never could anyone
who simply lives to die
dream that your valentine
makes happier me than i
but always everything
which only dies to grow
can guess and as for spring
she’ll be the first to know
You’d Sing Too
You’d sing too
if you found yourself
in a place like this
You wouldn’t worry about
whether you were as good
as Ray Charles or Edith Piaf
You’d sing
You’d sing
not for yourself
but to make a self
out of the old food
rotting in the astral bowel
and the loveless thud
of your own breathing
You’d become a singer
faster than it takes
to hate a rival’s charm
And you’d sing, darling
You’d sing too
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!
How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!
Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines (Excerpt)
by Pablo Neruda
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
Poets Eleven Poem
Between the page with the heart
and the mind wrestling upon it,
and the ear which later will receive
those limbs of light as perfect harmony,
there’s a stillness whose volume speaks
worlds of words defiant of measure,
treasures of the unsayable, secrets
of the ever-beginning enchantment
and the never-ending gathering
at the lips of the kiss of the poem.
In a Station of the Metro
by Ezra Pound
The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals on a wet, black bough.
I Choose the Mountain
by Howard Simon
The low lands call
I am tempted to answer
They are offering me a free dwelling
Without having to conquer
The massive mountain makes its move
Beckoning me to ascend
A much more difficult path
To get up the slippery bend
I cannot choose both
I have a choice to make
I must be wise
This will determine my fate
I choose, I choose the mountain
With all its stress and strain
Because only by climbing
Can I rise above the plain
I choose the mountain
And I will never stop climbing
I choose the mountain
And I shall forever be ascending
I choose the mountain
My Heart Leaps Up
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
Review: Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass by Lana Del Rey
The genre: Poetry
The gist: Poems about love, LA, feeling lost, and finding yourself.
The background: Not much except that I should probably give a heads up that I’m biased as a fan of Lana Del Rey’s music, so when I heard she was putting out a poetry collection last year I figured I’d like it.
The tea: The poems in this book read to me like the more elevated version of Tumblr poetry—you know, those overly simplistic poems that are more like statements with lots of line breaks that suddenly transform them into something “deep”—but here’s how I actually mean that as a compliment:
I like the accessibility of these kinds of poems. I don’t think a poem needs to be an inscrutable puzzle or have layers and layers of meaning to be effective.
While Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass is more mature and insightful than Tumblr poetry, the poems have the same kind of approachability and give you something to latch onto when reading. They’re about relatable situations, like getting over someone, moving to a new city, the current state of the world.
Plus, I like that lines like, “Sugar sugar lips and teeth / fingertips touch emojis” speak to present-day love and intimacy; sure, a letter or phone call is easier to romanticize than pressing a button to send a digital heart to your lover—that’s why I appreciate artists who embrace this aspect of modern living and can make it sound just as romantic.
Accompanying the typewriter-page poems are lo-fi, brightly filtered photos of LA taken by Del Rey. The whole package might come off as artsy hipster overkill if it weren’t so predictably on-brand for Lana Del Rey, and why fix what works? It’s a pretty aesthetic.
The wrap-up: Reading through these reflective and dreamily worded poems while glancing at the hazy LA visuals isn’t a bad way to spend an afternoon or two. Especially if you like contemporary poetry or Lana’s music.
The rating: ⭐⭐⭐/5
May my eyes always stay level to the horizon, may they never gaze as high as heaven to ask why
May I never go where angels fear to tread, so as to have to ask for answers in the sky
The whys in this lifetime I’ve found are inconsequential compared to the magic of nowness– the solution to most questions
there are no reasons, and if there are– i’m wrong
but at least i won’t have spent my life waiting
looking for God in the clouds of the dawn
—Lana Del Rey, Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass
That Book Broad 