pagan1
12-09-2008, 06:57 AM
For me poetry seems to defy definition,because it seems far more than words or emotion.Is the laughter of children poetry? Is Whale song poetry? Was the Big Bang a poem that is still being written...
What is actually happening when poetry is being formed,to me there seems an element of self promotion,but also selflessness since poetry has the best chance of touching anothers heart when the writer has more or less stepped aside and tried in some way to tap into a shared feeling or experience.
What is being shared? Is it like some message in a bottle that we hope will reach some distant shore of understanding,and reveal to others some small glimmer of our humanity.
On a more personal note when I write,at the moment of writing the experience seems almost overwhelming,but five minutes later I look at the poem and immediately want to disown it,it has become something of little worth or meaning in a moment of time.I keep all my poems,but when I read them again it feels like I am visiting a museum.
Why do we feel the need to write poetry? Is it our Whale song,like the need of a bird to sing,or the beating of a butterfly's wing...
What does poetry mean to you?
Why do you write?
Do you have any favourite poem?
Mine is:
The Hollow Men
Eliot, Thomas Stearns (1888-1965)
I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us--if at all--not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer--
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom
III
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
and avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
V
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
and the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
What is actually happening when poetry is being formed,to me there seems an element of self promotion,but also selflessness since poetry has the best chance of touching anothers heart when the writer has more or less stepped aside and tried in some way to tap into a shared feeling or experience.
What is being shared? Is it like some message in a bottle that we hope will reach some distant shore of understanding,and reveal to others some small glimmer of our humanity.
On a more personal note when I write,at the moment of writing the experience seems almost overwhelming,but five minutes later I look at the poem and immediately want to disown it,it has become something of little worth or meaning in a moment of time.I keep all my poems,but when I read them again it feels like I am visiting a museum.
Why do we feel the need to write poetry? Is it our Whale song,like the need of a bird to sing,or the beating of a butterfly's wing...
What does poetry mean to you?
Why do you write?
Do you have any favourite poem?
Mine is:
The Hollow Men
Eliot, Thomas Stearns (1888-1965)
I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us--if at all--not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer--
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom
III
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
and avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
V
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
and the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.