hey, that last one was my 50th post.

So it may be because so many of my friends are carrying the banner so well, or it may be (likely) because I'm just too lazy or poetically illiterate to try--but I'm not posting a poem a day for National Poetry Month. (Actually, it may also be because I just finished a semesterful class called "English 366: Studies in Poetry" in about two weeks' time. Ouch.)

However. I heart [good] poetry, and the world (read: Provo) seems to be at least thinking about spring. So I'm stealing some of my favorites, largely from folks who have already posted them.

Spring

NOTHING is so beautiful as spring—
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.
What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden.—Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

G.M. Hopkins, naturally

I just can't get over Hopkins. He was my first real poetic crush, and no one has kicked him off his pedestal yet in my mind. Go ahead--just try to find someone else with such playfulness and gravity and artistry and regard for language, for words, sounds. Hopkins rings when you read him, which is the danger (at least for me) of reading him silently: doing so always leaves my head buzzing afterwards, as if the words are pinballing around until they can get out and shine.

And hey, just for old time's sake, my forever favorite poem by the same:

God's Grandeur

THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;	5
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;	10
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

I've read this one so many times now that it's almost become old hat, but it still makes me cry sometimes. He writes what I don't think my mind even understands, but that (cliche, yes) my heart recognizes and sings along with. No?

And if you're going to talk God/spring stuff, you've got to see Gluck. I'd never even heard of her (shame) until my 495 class last year, but she sticks--stuck--like that 80s soft-rock you can't get out of your head. (Only better. Much, much better.)


Listen.

My great happiness
is the sound your voice makes
calling to me even in despair; my sorrow
that I cannot answer you
in speech you accept as mine.

You have no faith in your own language.
So you invest
authority in signs
you cannot read with any accuracy.

And yet your voice reaches me always.
And I answer constantly,
my anger passing
as winter passes. My tenderness
should be apparent to you
in the breeze of summer evening
and in the words that become
your own response.

--Louise Gluck


Man, I can't do her justice. Thank God for people in this world who can coax words into saying things that come closer to actually saying than I could ever hope to. I stole that one from ke's post; I've been trying to find my own favorites, but she's tricky to find full-text of online. The book where I first met Gluck (too lovely--it's a Pulitzer winner--go buy it) is buried in a box somewhere in the storage room. Perhaps I will dig it up today. Maybe that will help it stop raining.