April 30, 2015
Time sure flies when you’re having fun. It’s hard to believe another National Poetry Month is already drawing to a close, but for one last hurrah, don’t miss this great mini-film adaptation of W.S. Merwin’s poem “Antique Sound.” Enjoy, and make sure to keep coming back to Off the Shelf for Poetry 365 – a great way to scratch your poetry itch all year long.
To the Break of Dawn by Michael Robbins
I wandered lonely as Jay-Z
after the Fat Boys called it quits,
before the rapper from Mobb Deep
met up with the Alchemist.
I wandered lonely all along
The Watchtower’s office front
in Dumbo, then across the bridge
that tempts the bedlamite to song.
From here you could’ve seen what planes
can do with luck and delta-v
as that fire-fangled morning
jingle-jangled helter skelterly.
From your gravity fails to whoops
there goes gravity, from Celine
to Celan, from “Turn the Beat Around”
to And the Band Played On,
from the Live Free or Die
of plates from New Hampshire
to Musidora vamping
her way through Les Vampires,
from It Takes a Nation
of Millions to Hold Us Back
to Daydream Nation,
from Station to Station,
I take this cadence from the spinning plates
where the DJ plots the needle’s fall.
I take it, and I give it back again
to the dollar dollar bill and the yes yes y’all.
This poem was selected by Russell J. (Adult Services Librarian)
April 29, 2015
Your Laughter by Pablo Neruda
Take bread away from me, if you wish,
take air away, but
do not take from me your laughter.
Do not take away the rose,
the lance flower that you pluck,
the water that suddenly
bursts forth in joy,
the sudden wave
of silver born in you.
April 28, 2015
The Missing Person by Donald Justice
He has come to report himself
A missing person.
The authorities
Hand him the forms.
He knows how they have waited
With the learned patience of barbers
In small shops, idle,
Stropping their razors.
April 27, 2015
The World Is Too Much With Us by William Wordsworth
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;–
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
This poem was selected by Heather R. (Adult Services Librarian)
April 25, 2015
Natural History by E.B. White
The spider, dropping down from twig,
Unwinds a thread of her devising:
A thin, premeditated rig
To use in rising.
And all the journey down through space,
In cool descent, and loyal-hearted,
She builds a ladder to the place
From which she started.
Thus I, gone forth, as spiders do,
In spider’s webs a truth discerning,
Attach one silken strand to you
For my returning.
(Sent by White to his wife during a 1929 business trip and published fifty years later.)
This poem was selected by Jeff B. (Readers’ Services)
April 24, 2015
Novel by Arthur Rimbaud
I.
No one’s serious at seventeen.
–On beautiful nights when beer and lemonade
And loud, blinding cafes are the last thing you need
–You stroll beneath green lindens on the promenade.
Lindens smell fine on fine June nights!
Sometimes the air is so sweet that you close your eyes;
The wind brings sounds–the town is near–
And carries scents of vineyards and beer…
April 22, 2015
Patience by Rabindranath Tagore
If thou speakest not I will fill my heart with thy silence and endure it.
I will keep still and wait like the night with starry vigil
and its head bent low with patience.
The morning will surely come, the darkness will vanish,
and thy voice pour down in golden streams breaking through the sky.
Then thy words will take wing in songs from every one of my birds’ nests,
and thy melodies will break forth in flowers in all my forest groves.
This poem was selected by Kate K. (North Branch)
April 21, 2015
Life is Fine by Langston Hughes
I went down to the river,
I set down on the bank.
I tried to think but couldn’t,
So I jumped in and sank.
I came up once and hollered!
I came up twice and cried!
If that water hadn’t a-been so cold
I might’ve sunk and died.
But it was Cold in that water! It was cold!
April 20, 2015
Eating Poetry by Mark Strand
Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.
The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.
The poems are gone.
The light is dim.
The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.
Their eyeballs roll,
their blond legs burn like brush.
The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.
She does not understand.
When I get on my knees and lick her hand,
she screams.
I am a new man.
I snarl at her and bark.
I romp with joy in the bookish dark.
This poem was selected by Heather R. (Adult Services Librarian)
