And a
heaven in a wild flower,
Hold
infinity in the palm of your hand,
And
eternity in an hour.
~
William Blake Auguries of Innocence
I often
wonder if my words have ever provoked such thought in others as these words
have provoked in me. I am not a symbolic poet; I tend to say what I mean
and mean what I say, even if I take awhile to say it. Will a stanza from
one of my poems really make people sit back and think…well, what was she
trying to say….even:
Tell me
--
will this
world
ever stop
rotating?
Will this
whirlwind
never let
me out
~
Dayel Silver Whirlwind
is bold
and to the point. Even if we don’t know what, exactly the whirlwind
is. Why do these words from William Blake speak to me so much? Why
do I ponder them? I read the whole of the Auguries of
Innocence today and there are other such gems inside. I would
quote them here, but there are more than a few, and I would encourage you to
find your own gems. I quote the above simply because it is the
one that started me pondering everything. There are other random bits of
poetry I ponder, and I am also left to wonder why these, among others, stick in
my mind.
Not that
I bid you spare her the pain!
Let death
be felt and the proof remain;
Brand,
burn up, bite into its grace--
He is
sure to remember her dying face
~
Robert Browning The Laboratory
I’m not
sure why, but that one has been with me since my teenage years…I’m not sure I
ponder this one so much as simply remember it for its harshness. This one
as well….why I was so drawn to such unforgiving poetry, I’m not sure…
My
thoughts and my discourse as madmen's are,
At random
from the truth vainly express'd;
For I
have sworn thee fair and thought thee bright,
Who art
as black as hell, as dark as night.
~
Shakspeare Sonnet 147
Does
anyone, or will anyone ever ponder my words as I do these words?
Ironically, I haven’t even quoted here some of my favorite poetry, merely
random bits and pieces that have stuck in my head throughout the years….
Hope
springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never
Is, but always To be blest.
The soul,
uneasy, and confin'd from home,
Rests and
expatiates in a life to come.
~
Alexander Pope Essay on Man and Other Poems
Will
anyone ever have my words stuck in their mind, unable to get it out?
Or…years after reading…think back and go…what were those lines again? How
did that one poem start? I’ve had all of these stanzas unwittingly
memorized for about half my life, yet while putting this together I’ve had to
think really hard about what the lines were, when more often they come without
thought…
Between
the idea
And the
reality
Between
the motion
And the
act
Falls the
Shadow
~
T.S. Eliot The Hallow Men
These
works are timeless, and that is how they have survived thus far, and will keep
on surviving. I’m sure even before Robert Frost put into words choosing
one path over another, someone else already had, but Frost’s are the words that
become so recognized and now it seems we’re all trying to say what he said,
just differently…
I shall
be telling this will a sigh
Somewhere
ages and ages hence:
Two roads
diverged into a wood, and I –
I took
the one less traveled by,
And that
has made all the difference.
~
Robert
Frost The Road Not Taken
Some
people may look back and think I should have started with introducing this
stanza, but I would never agree. Frost happens to be one of my favorite
poets, true, but I also indentify with him, I do not go out into the woods to
stare at a path and wonder what in the world he meant by writing those five
lines. Yes, they are symbolic, or they could be quite literal, but at one
point, the voice is saying I took one path, not another, and that shaped my life.
Many parts are left open to interpretation, but not that key part.
Whereas the four lines by William Blake and indeed the whole poem is left quite
open. At the beach I can catch myself starting at the sand and then
running it through my hands in wonder…
- I don’t
oft’ write in stanzas, and never the controlled, measured ones we have seen
above…I think those stanzas and measures and rhymes are part of their success,
part of the reason they’re so easy to get in the mind, and so hard to get out…I
still wonder, I still ponder, will any one person ever ponder the meaning of my
poetry in any small way? Will anyone ever have even a small part of one
of my poems stuck in their head, unable to get it out? And so I leave
you, after reading the few stanzas that I have stuck in my head these many
years, with one of my own that I am also unable to get out of my head…truly,
you’d think that a writer would either remember everything she’d ever written,
or be able to put it aside once written, but neither of those are entirely
true. Often stanzas come to me and I have to ask myself, have I written
this before? And this one, this one came to me, and I have never been
able to forget….
Tick tock
says the
clock
in the
hall
on the
wall
as I say
goodbye
You ask
why
because
I always
leave
and
the clock
is
ticking
~
Dayel Silver Tick Tock
Essay
started 6/23/11 finished 6/24/11 - This essay is also posted on (my) KD Benji Facebook page
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