since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry
—the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids’ flutter which says
we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis
(submitted by iamthewayfarer)
"I want to be alone, and I want people to notice me — both at the same time." Thom Yorke
Posts tagged poetry.
"And while I didn’t know it then,
this would be my first lesson
measuring the distance between desire
and its undoing."
— Tony Magistrale, from “Thumbing My Way to the Egg” (thank you, marshwalk)
Darwin’s Tangled Bank in verse
The last paragraph of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species is one of the most poetic passages in all of science. Even in its original prose, it paints a picture of biological diversity and adaptation that is both awe-inspiring and loaded with knowledge. You can read it here.
UC Berkeley biologist Michael Eisen helped his daughter render that final paragraph into verse. Here is the result:
The Tangled Bank
Contemplate a tangled bank
Clothed with many kinds of plant
Insects and birds flitting about
Worms crawling through the dampReflect that these elaborate
And differently constructed forms
Have been produced by such a simple set
Of ever acting normsGrowth, reproduction and inheritance
Variation to transmit
Natural selection then leading to
Extinction of the less fitFrom the war of nature
From famine and from death
Follow the most exalted species
To have ever drawn a breathThere is grandeur in this view of life
And its powers not yet gone
Having been originally breathed
Into a few forms or just oneFrom as simple a beginning
As could ever be resolved
Endless forms most beautiful
Are continuously evolved.An artfully evolved version of the original.
"Though these mornings
I wish books loved back."
— Sandra Cisneros, from “Bay Poem from Berkeley” (with thanks to aseaofquotes)
"
We are, I am, you are. Rich wrote many lines that meant something important to me over the course of her long career, but that one strikes me as core. In those six lean words, she bound us together — the entire beautiful and ugly mass of us made, by virtue of her words, indivisible. Indivisibility is classic Rich. She was a great connector of things: art to politics, love to rage, consciousness to action, society to self, power to wound, me to you, us to her.
[…]
She believed in the power of art, not only its beauty and necessity but also the real, raw, actual power of it. She agitated for poetry “as living language, the core of every language, something that is still spoken, aloud or in the mind, muttered in secret, subversive, reaching around corners, crumpled into a pocket, performed to a community, read aloud to the dying, recited by heart, scratched or sprayed on a wall. That kind of language.”
And she wrote that kind of language. From the heart and the mind. From the gut and the crotch. She pulled us into the deep waters of her own darkest reckoning and made us understand that the reckoning was ours too. The ferocity of her vision was matched only by the tenderness at its root.
"— A beautiful remembrance of beloved poet Adrienne Rich, who passed away in 2012, by the one and only Cheryl “Dear Sugar” Strayed. (via explore-blog)
(via explore-blog)
e. e. cummings, “since feeling is first”
"This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper."
— T.S. Eliot, “The Hollow Men” (thanks, ephemerallegacy)
"neither of us really
knew who we were back then."
— Daniel Romo, from “just so you know…” (via the-final-sentence)
"Now I know a language so beautiful and lethal
My mouth bleeds when I speak it."
— Gwendolyn MacEwen, from “But” (via the-final-sentence)
Why Afghan Women Risk Death to Write Poetry
Seamus Murphy/VII for The New York TimesSaheera Sharif, the founder of Mirman Baheer (upper center); Ogai Amail, a poet and member of the group (bottom left); also pictured are other members of the poets’ group.
This poem: You won’t allow me to go to school. I won’t become a doctor. Remember this: One day you will be sick was written by an eleven year old Afghan girl. The New York Times Magazine published a recent article about underground poetry written by Afghan women who resist the male dominance that is overwhelming is Afghanistan, and this poem, being among the many, was a small form of expression to depict their oppressed rights as females.
To read more about this story, click here.
These women are so brave.
(via lipstick-feminists)
"That’s crudely put, but…
If we’re not supposed to dance,
Why all this music?"
— Gregory Orr, from “To Be Alive” (via the-final-sentence)
"The parts
of me that are on fire can’t
put the parts of you that are on fire out."
— Allison Titus, from “Modern Romance” (via the-final-sentence)
