Reality Bypass

Friday Flashback: Read poetry September 3, 2010

Friday Flashback from April 25th, 2008 (Update: I’m almost DONE with my PHD now, I’ll have to update with my new favorite poems next week!)

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I’m planning to get my PHD in Spanish poetry, which always stirs stares of shock, dismay and horror from listeners. Poetry is generally described as “emo depressed people” scribbling down angst in esoteric metaphors that don’t really make sense. Or, I regularly hear the complaint, “The author really didn’t mean all that we read into the poem” or, “Poetry is just so… flowery and unreal. No one really feels like that.” Or my favorite, “I just don’t like poetry.”

¡Au contraire, mes amies! Some of our most oft-quoted phrases come directly from the world’s poets. And frankly, if you like music… you like poetry. I think some of the ‘fear’ of poetry comes from the stereotyped idea that understanding the art is best left for the literature einsteins of the world, or that it’s for those weird artsy freaks and not for the normal person. Only “smart people” get poetry, I’ve heard. That’s such a shame. There’s so much of our daily lives that can be found in poetry, it just takes letting go of the fear you won’t understand and realizing that there isn’t a correct answer to what poetry means. The only answer is “What does it mean to you?”

Here are some of my favorite lines from poems, and I’d love to hear any more y’all can come up with. There’s so many, I just had to pick a few!:

• Tyger! Tyger! burning bright, in the forests of the night, what immortal hand or eye. could frame thy fearful symmetry (William Blake)
• Do not go gentle into that good night, old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. (Dylan Thomas)
• Their’s not to make reply, Their’s not to reason why, Their’s but to do and die: Into the valley of Death, Rode the six hundred. (Tennyson)
• A cry of defiance, and not of fear, A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door, And a word that shall echo for evermore! For, borne on the night-wind of the Past, Through all our history, to the last, In the hour of darkness and peril and need, The people will waken and listen to hear, The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed, And the midnight message of Paul Revere. (Longfellow)
• Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky, With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high! Blood-red were his spurs i’ the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat, When they shot him down on the highway, Down like a dog on the highway, And he lay in his blood on the highway, with a bunch of lace at his throat. (Noyes)
• Que es mi barco mi tesoro, que es mi dios la libertad,  mi ley, la fuerza y el viento, mi única patria, la mar (Song of the Pirate, Espronceda). (And so my boat is my treasure, my only god liberty, my law, my strength is the wind, and my only allegience the sea)
• Oh pequeño emperador sin orbe, conquistador sin patria, mínimo tigre de salón, nupcial sultán del cielo  (Neruda, Ode to the cat) (Oh tiny emperor without kingdom, minimal tiger of the parlor, sensual sultan of heaven…)
• La princesa está triste.. Qué tendrá la princesa? Los suspiros se escapan de su boca de fresa, que ha perdido la risa, que ha perdido el color. La princesa está pálida en su silla de oro; (Dario) (The princess is sad, why is she sad? Her sighs escape from her young lips that have lost their laughter, have lost their color. The princess is pale, sitting on her golden throne)
• Caronte, yo seré un escándolo en tu barco. Mientras las otras sombras recen, giman, o lloren… yo iré como una alondra cantando por el río (Ibarbourou, Rebel) (Charon, I’d be a scandal on your boat. While the other shades plead, moan or cry, I would go singing like a dove along your river).

~Kris