Guillaume Apollinaire – Gertrude Stein

painting by: Maurice de Vlaminck (1903)

Give known or pin ware
Fancy teeth, gas strips.
Elbow elect, sour stout pore, pore caesar, pour state at.
Leave eye lessons I. Leave I. Lessons. I. Leave I lessons, I.

(1934)

Interesting to note that Guillaume a French Poet died as a result of the Spanish Flu in 1918.

The Great Figure – William Carlos Williams

painting by: Charles Demuth, 1928

The Great Figure

by William Carlos Williams

Among the rain
and lights
I saw the figure 5
in gold
on a red
firetruck
moving
with weight and urgency
tense
unheeded
to gong clangs
siren howls
and wheels rumbling
through the dark city.

(1921)
Critique below
(more…)

To May – William Wordsworth

photo credit: SmilingMonk

To May

by William Wordsworth

And what if thou, sweet May, hast known
Mishap by worm and blight;
If expectations newly blown
Have perished in thy sight;
If loves and joys, while up they sprung,
Were caught as in a snare;
Such is the lot of all the young,
However bright and fair.

(1840)

Still I Love to Rhyme – Robert Louis Stevenson

painting by: John Singer Sargent, August 1885

Still I Love to Rhyme

by Robert Louis Stevenson

Still I love to rhyme, and still more, rhyming, to wander
Far from the commoner way;
Old-time trills and falls by the brook-side still do I ponder,
Dreaming to-morrow to-day.

Come here, come, revive me, Sun-God, teach me, Apollo,
Measures descanted before;
Since I ancient verses, I emulous follow,
Prints in the marbles of yore.

Still strange, strange, they sound in old-young raiment invested,
Songs for the brain to forget -
Young song-birds elate to grave old temples benested
Piping and chirruping yet.

Thoughts? No thought has yet unskilled attempted to flutter
Trammelled so vilely in verse;
He who writes but aims at fame and his bread and his butter,
Won with a groan and a curse.

O Captain! My Captain! – Walt Whitman

O Captain! My Captain!

by Walt Whitman

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, 
The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won, 
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, 
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring; 
   But O heart! heart! heart! 
      O the bleeding drops of red, 
         Where on the deck my Captain lies, 
            Fallen cold and dead.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells; 
Rise up–for you the flag is flung–for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths–for you the shores 
     a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning; 
   Here Captain! dear father! 
      This arm beneath your head! 
         It is some dream that on the deck 
            You’ve fallen cold and dead.

My captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done, 
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won; 
   Exult, O shores, and ring O bells!
      But I, with mournful tread, 
         Walk the deck my Captain lies, 
            Fallen cold and dead.

The Road not Taken

In a state of curiousity I boarded a train from Saco, Maine to Boston, Massachusetts yesterday.  I had made up my mind to purchase a one way ticket as I walked by the train station.  I was out yesterday looking for a Mother’s Day present, of course the constant downpour and cold weather coming in hindered my efforts.

Outfitted with a camera, umbrella, kindle, school ID and check card I boarded the train and trekked towards Boston.  I plan on talking about the Kindle in a later post, but that miracle reading device makes any traveling enjoyable.  After two hours on board, I arrive at my final destination, North Station\TD Banknorth Garden in the North End of Boston.   Armed now with a free Trolley tour map I descend upon the city on streets that appear to circle back on themselves.  

With no plans or events to see I continue down roads and alleyways not with the psyche of an out of order wayfarer but that of a natural denizen.  Boston is unlike the dozens of other cities I’ve been to.  Soon enough I will have to make the decision where I’ll want to start my career and future.  Therefore I always  go by the roads not taken.

The Road not Taken

by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

(1920)

The Phoenix and the Turtle – William Shakespeare

photo credit: Art Spark: Susan Sanford

The Phoenix and the Turtle

by William Shakespeare

The Phoenix and the Turtle
Let the bird of loudest lay
On the sole Arabian tree,
Herald sad and trumpet be,
To whose sound chaste wings obey.
But thou shrieking harbinger,
Foul precurrer of the fiend,
Augur of the fever’s end,
To this troop come thou not near.

From this session interdict
Every fowl of tyrant wing
Save the eagle, feather’d king:
Keep the obsequy so strict.

Let the priest in surplice white
That defunctive music can,
Be the death-divining swan,
Lest the requiem lack his right.

And thou, treble-dated crow,
That thy sable gender mak’st
With the breath thou giv’st and tak’st,
‘Mongst our mourners shalt thou go.

Here the anthem doth commence:—
Love and constancy is dead;
Phoenix and the turtle fled
In a mutual flame from hence. (more…)

May Day – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Seeing as its May 1st, I thought I would put up a May Day poem, from the best, Ralph Emerson.

MAY-DAY

by Ralph Waldo Emerson

AUGHTER of Heaven-and Earth, coy Spring,
With sudden passion languishing,
Maketh all things softly smile,
Painteth pictures mile on mile,
Holds a cup with cowslip-wreaths,
Whence a smokeless incense breathes.
Girls are peeling the sweet willow,
Poplar white, and Gilead-tree,
And troops of boys
Shouting with whoop and hilloa,
And hip, hip, three times three.
The air is full of whistlings bland ;
What was that I heard

The poem in its entireity can be read in May-day, and Other Pieces and is availble to read or download from Google Books here.