O.K. People, you're not doing your part on this Poetry thing; I'm not going to keep it up all by myself. So far, all we've had are a couple of poems sent in that were written by other people; I had originally hoped to have more original work sent in. Why should I be the only one to embarrass myself publicly? I had thought that everyone wrote poetry; there's no need to be shy, I've been around the block, and have already seen most of the standard varieties of ineptitude. If you don't know how to write a poem, learn! Start with rhythmic babbling, and work up from there.
This was not supposed to be the all-things-Chesterton page, but I had wanted to share my favorite Chesterton poem, then Fred Pfeil sent "The House of Christmas" as a seasonal offering, and Andrea sent Abou Ben Adhem, which I decided to pair with Chesterton's parody, and I still want to include my favorite poem by G.K. Chesterton; so here it is:
--------------------------------------------A Second Childhood
When all my days are ending
And I have no song to sing,
I think I shall not be too old
To stare at everything;
As I stared once at a nursery door
Or a tall tree and a swing.
Wherein God's ponderous mercy hangs
On all my sins and me,
Because He does not take away
The terror from the tree
And stones still shine along the road
That are, and cannot be.
Men grow too old for love, my love,
Men grow too old for wine,
But I shall not grow too old to see
Unearthly daylight shine,
Changing my chamber's dust to snow
Till I doubt if it be mine.
Behold, the crowning mercies melt,
The first surprises stay;
And in my dross is dropped a gift
For which I dare not pray:
That a man grow used to grief and joy
But not to night and day.
Men grow too old for love, my love,
Men grow too old for lies;
But I shall not grow too old to see
Enormous night arise,
A cloud that is larger than the world
And a monster made of eyes.
Nor am I worthy to unloose
The latchet of my shoe;
Or shake the dust from off my feet
Or the staff that bears me through
On ground that is too good to last,
Too solid to be true.
Men grow too old to woo, my love,
Men grow too old to wed:
But I shall not grow too old to see
Hung crazily overhead
Incredible rafters when I wake
And find I am not dead.
A thrill of thunder in my hair:
Though blackening clouds be plain,
Still I am stung and startled
By the first drop of the rain:
Romance and pride and passion pass
And these are what remain.
Strange crawling carpets of the grass,
Wide windows of the sky:
So in this perilous grace of God
With all my sins go I:
And things grow new though I grow old,
Though I grow old and die.
-G.K. Chesterton
I hope no one is suffering from Chesterton overload!
Send poems to ddcomfort@gmail.com
5 comments:
Maxim,
I am guessing the writing I sent you in the e-mail did not constitute poem status?
Let me know and I will then send another writing which I think might fill the bill a bit better.
Not so; I just haven't gotten to it yet. Ideally, I would like to develop a backlog of poems from which I can select as occasion requires, but I have so few right now that I'm publishing everything almost immediately as it comes in. Of course, I don't guarantee to publish everything that is sent, and will only make space for 3-4 per month; so far, that hasn't been a problem. Right now I'm working on another post; I've been publishing two posts, and then one poem, so I should get to yours sometime next week.
Maxim,
And dear Maxim, please forgive my not sending you my regards on the day of your patron saint, Saint Maximus several days ago.
Many years to you Maxim.
I can think of two reasons not to submit poetry:
Worries over copyright.
Realization that one's poetry is not fit for publication. A kind of self-editing, if you will, that saves you the bother.
- V.
As to your own, personal poetry, I have said previously that all rights remain with the author; perhaps more is needed to preserve your right, but I don't know anything about that. I'm not a very legally-minded person; one of the main reasons why I don't try more agressively to publish my own poetry is that I hate the entire atmosphere of the publishing world. Certainly you shouldn't send in a poem by another author if you have any doubts about its copyright status, but I can't imagine there would be much of a problem in a forum such as this, so completely non-commercial. Most of those who write serious poetry have other places to send their material; this is visualised as a much more casual thing, more of a sharing, on the order of a group of friends getting together to read poetry. There probably aren't going to be many professional-grade poems here, but that's O.K.; one of the worst aspects of Modernity in my opinion is the restriction of all fields of endeavour to the qualified. If you sing in public, for instance, young men in headphones, carrying about with them their mechanically-processed tunes, will glare at you with a quite pointed hostility, but why should we consent to turn singing from a human thing into a mechanical thing? I will submit that no Art can be entirely healthy unless it rests securly on the base of a great deal of amateur involvment; the anomalous perfect product is but the apex. There is a lot of imperfect striving necessary to raise it to its peak of eminence. Not everything needs to be great; the good is also good, and that which fails to be good is at least worthy of the laudation "Greatly he failed, but it was bravely attempted". None of us are likely to be Wordsworths, but we may at least be village troubadors, and that is a worthy thing in itself. I realize there is a kind of shyness that needs to be overcome, especially if one is conscious of imperfections in his work, but that is the road of progress.
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