Tag: poetry

Sounds Pleasant for a Boy

April 30, 2010

Reading poetry is not always easy. It’s a kind of writing that most of us aren’t used to seeing very often. There are many different types of poems, structures, rhyme schemes, free verse, prose poetry, all with different forms, all of which require a different way of reading. Words dance around on the page. Line breaks come in odd and sometimes awkward places. How is one meant to read these pieces? Where does one thought end and the next begin? Do you treat each line as its own sentence and pause at the end? When do you stop for a breath? These are just some of the common questions that can confront and confound readers of poetry. Continue reading “Sounds Pleasant for a Boy” →

National Poetry Month: April 30th

April 18 by Sylvia Plath

the slime of all my yesterdays
rots in the hollow of my skull

and if my stomach would contract
because of some explicable phenomenon
such as pregnancy or constipation

I would not remember you

or that because of sleep
infrequent as a moon of greencheese
that because of food
nourishing as violet leaves
that because of these

and in a few fatal yards of grass
in a few spaces of sky and treetops

a future was lost yesterday
as easily and irretrievably
as a tennis ball at twilight

This poem was selected by Sue M. (Reader’s Services)

Poetry Copyright Notice

National Poetry Month: April 28th

April 28, 2010

Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven by W. B. Yeats

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

This poem was selected by Mary B. (Reader’s Services)

Poetry Copyright Notice

National Poetry Month: April 25th

April 25, 2010

Love Sonnet XIV by Pablo Neruda

I don’t have time enough to celebrate your hair.
One by one I should detail your hairs and praise them.
Other lovers want to live with particular eyes;
I only want to be your stylist.

In Italy the call you Medusa,
because of the high bristling light of your hair.
I call you curly, my tangler;
my heart knows the doorways of your hair. Continue reading “National Poetry Month: April 25th” →

National Poetry Month: April 23rd (Happy Birthday, William Shakespeare!)

April 23, 2010

Sonnet XXVII by William Shakespeare

WEARY with toil, I haste me to my bed,
The dear repose for limbs with travel tired;
But then begins a journey in my head,
To work my mind, when body’s work’s expired:
For then my thoughts, from far where I abide,
Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,
And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,
Looking on darkness which the blind do see
Save that my soul’s imaginary sight
Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,
Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night,
Makes black night beauteous and her old face new.
            Lo! thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind,
            For thee and for myself no quiet find.

This poem was selected by Lesley W. (Reference Librarian)

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