while they did live happily ever after

whine whine moan moan complain complain as you will, but I've been in a cummings kind of mood:

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




and apparently loquaciousquark JUST DISCOVERED Gerard Manly Hopkins and fell in love with him all on her own (even though wait, I totally posted this poem earlier last year wait, look at that first comment there), so here's another one by him:

15. The Caged Skylark
AS a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cage
Man’s mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house, dwells—
That bird beyond the remembering his free fells;
This in drudgery, day-labouring-out life’s age.

Though aloft on turf or perch or poor low stage,
Both sing sometímes the sweetest, sweetest spells,
Yet both droop deadly sómetimes in their cells
Or wring their barriers in bursts of fear or rage.

Not that the sweet-fowl, song-fowl, needs no rest—
Why, hear him, hear him babble and drop down to his nest,
But his own nest, wild nest, no prison.

Man’s spirit will be flesh-bound when found at best,
But uncumbered: meadow-down is not distressed
For a rainbow footing it nor he for his bónes rísen.





SO National Poetry Month is coming up soon and generally I fail at it but I have a CLASS this year so MWAH-HAHAHA guess what we will be doing EVERY DAY I am an evil genius. Anyway, if you have any requests, name 'em here! (Past poems can always be found under the tag.)

From Second April
I
Edna St. Vincent Millay

We talk of taxes, and I call you friend;
Well, such you are, — but well enough we know
How thick about us root, how rankly grow
Those subtle weeds no man has need to tend,
That flourish through neglect, and soon must send
Perfume too sweet upon us and overthrow
Our steady senses; how such matters go
We are aware, and how such matters end.
Yet shall be told no meagre passion here;
With lovers such as we forevermore
Isolde drinks the draught, and Guinevere
Receives the Table's ruin through her door,
Francesca, with the loud surf at her ear,
Lets fall the coloured book upon the floor.





Those Who Love
Sara Teasdale

Those who love the most,
Do not talk of their love,
Francesca, Guinevere,
Deirdre, Iseult, Heloise,
In the fragrant gardens of heaven
Are silent, or speak if at all
Of fragile, inconsequent things.

And a woman I used to know
Who loved one man from her youth,
Against the strength of the fates
Fighting in somber pride,
Never spoke of this thing,
But hearing his name by chance,
A light would pass over her face.

i live! and lovie lives with me! these are all excellent things. like my job! but i will say nothing further about that for now. for now i just have links[ys].

1) can anyone give me the name of a good Napoleon biography? I feel like if I am going to be an obsessive coup-de-foudre fangirl of his I can at least know aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall the stories behind the heartache described in these kate beaton comics.

2) is it sad to say this changed my life? perhaps not changed, but threw it into startlingly beautiful perspective, if only for a moment. And I was content.

( excerpt, and mutterings )

3) Speaking of going back four-or-five years, someone on Facebook mentioned that Folk Choir is going to sing Biebl's Ave Maria, to which I scoffed a tiny bit because Folk Choir is good and all but this is not their kind of song, and also because freshman year of college I went to a ND-and-Michigan-Glee-Clubs concert, from which I discovered Guster due to the Michigan's-version-of-the-Undertones's cover of Mona Lisa (the only track I still have from the sadly lost CD). Anyway, they had the boys onstage and also in the balcony behind the stage, and the chant solo in the middle was sung from up there, and it was just--

( better described by freshman!Jade )

4) Speaking of college, or things I learned in college, or rather a lot of conversations I have been having recently about women in college and the like, or perhaps just feminism: Maureen Johnson on the whole "boys aren't reading!/don't have anything to read!" outcry (or, how a penis makes what you write suddenly interesting to the populace at large).

5) New Glee! WHY IS MY FLIST NOT DISCUSSING THIS MORE. Please do not tell me I got into Glee just in time for everyone else to be bored and ditch it, because so much happened, and it was all pretty cool! *sob*

♥


EXTRA BONUS LIMITED-TIME-ONLY LINK: romanitas graciously agreed to un-flock this hilarious, almost Growing-Up-Cullen-esque Merlin...joke...parody...hilarious thing that she and her friend did. READ IT BEFORE SHE FLOCKS IT AGAIN.

the National Poetry Month suggestion box is now open and accepting ideas. Be forewarned that unless you contribute, you may find an unbearable amount of T.S. Eliot in this month's selections.

To help get everyone pumped, here's the link to the official website. Within that, I would highlight Poem-A-Day (from whose offerings ideas and selections will be gleaned) and 30 Ways to Celebrate National Poetry Month, especially looking at this idea (suggestions for making it tenable for LJ?) and this other one (which I am already working on for this year*).

Happy Poem-Hunting!




*HO CRAP APPARENTLY MY ONE FROM BRIT LIT I IS NOT IN MY OUTBOX oh woe--luckily, in my textbooks, I had a system for which quotes were going into the commonplace book that included labeling them, so I'll just have to type everything up again, which I have to do for this semester anyway, no big deal. Also, it will help refresh my memory for those entries in the LOL section, which sometimes no longer made sense out of context.