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National Poetry Month: Edna St. Vincent Millay Comments Off

Edna St. Vincent Millay, first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, produced poetry with a simplicity that eases you into its tangible emotions. Her life choices were not what I consider admirable, but her poetry is full of grace. You can read more about her here, in a brief biography 

God’s World

O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!
   Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!
   Thy mists that roll and rise!
Thy woods this autumn day, that ache and sag
And all but cry with colour!  That gaunt crag
To crush!  To lift the lean of that black bluff!
World, World, I cannot get thee close enough!

Long have I known a glory in it all,
   But never knew I this;
   Here such a passion is
As stretcheth me apart, — Lord, I do fear
Thou’st made the world too beautiful this year;
My soul is all but out of me, — let fall
No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.

 

She is best known for her poem Renascence; her poem The Suicide is more approachable (don’t be deterred by the title).

National Poetry Month: Cummings Comments Off

April is National Poetry Month. Read some poetry. It’s a lost art, it’s good for your soul, it’s better than chicken noodle soup!

One of my favorites, just to get you started:

E. E. Cummings - Read about him here. (Highlights: he was born in Massachusetts, studied at Harvard, was a volunteer ambulance driver in France during WWI, was imprisoned for suspected espionage, was anti-war, and in his writing he experimented with radical changes in grammar, punctuation, and form.)

When you read his poetry (especially the first time, especially if you’re not particularly inclined toward poetry-lovin’), read it aloud. The sound and rhythm of his lines are important. Don’t think in terms of dictionary definitions of the words he uses; think in terms of connotation, the feeling and memories evoked by a word. Poets often use a word’s connotation, but Cummings mastered the connotative qualities of words to the point that they overpowered the definition. He created a new definition for words by using them according to associations rather than formal meaning.

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of allnothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

Read more of his poetry here.

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