Poets United Midweek Motif ~ When I Think About Myself

   

“This above all; to thine own self be true.”— Shakespeare

SOURCE

“I am very much aware of my own double self. The well-known one is very under control; everything is planned and very secure. The unknown one can be very unpleasant. I think this side is responsible for all the creative work — he is in touch with the child. He is not rational; he is impulsive and extremely emotional.”—Ingmar Bergman

Midweek Motif ~ When I think About Myself

Let’s begin today with Maya Angelou’s poem When I Think About Myself:

When I think about myself,
I almost laugh myself to death,
My life has been one great big joke,
A dance that's walked
A song that's spoke,
I laugh so hard I almost choke
When I think about myself.

Sixty years in these folks' world
The child I works for calls me girl
I say 'Yes ma'am' for working's sake.
Too proud to bend
Too poor to break,
I laugh until my stomach ache,
When I think about myself.

My folks can make me split my side,
I laughed so hard I nearly died,
The tales they tell, sound just like lying,
They grow the fruit,
But eat the rind,
I laugh until I start to crying,
When I think about my folks. 

                

Do you find time to think about yourself? Even if you don’t you have to do it Now for this week’s Motif’s sake J We want a self-portrait poem this week.

           

What thoughts rise up when you think of yourself? Is it about the long path you’ve been walking that has almost shaped you? Is it about the small but meaningful and significant moments that have changed you? Is it about the thousand ‘yous’ that’s living within you?

The list can go on and on. Think over and write your lines:

I Am

by John Clare

I am: yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
And yet I am! and live with shadows tost

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
And e'en the dearest- that I loved the best-
Are strange- nay, rather stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod;
A place where woman never smil'd or wept;
There to abide with my creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;
The grass below- above the vaulted sky. 

My Own Heart Let Me More Have Pity On

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

My own heart let me more have pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet.
I cast for comfort I can no more get
By groping round my comfortless, than blind
Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find
Thirst's all-in-all in all a world of wet.

Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise
You, jaded, let be; call off thoughts awhile
Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room, let joy size
At God knows when to God knows what; whose smile
's not wrung, see you; unforeseen times rather - as skis
Betweenpie mountains - lights a lovely mile.

Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community—

                (Next week Susan’s Midweek Motif will be ~ Lady Liberty)

        

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Colour (Color)

Color effect – Sunlight shining through stained glass onto carpet
(Nasir ol Molk Mosque located in Shiraz, Iran)

“Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.”― Alice Walker

“One should be a painter. As a writer, I feel the beauty, which is almost entirely colour, very subtle, very changeable, running over my pen, as if you poured a large jug of champagne over a hairpin.”― Virginia Woolf

"ME TOO" by Annell Livingston:
"Hold the world as tenderly as a lover."
(Used with permission.)

Midweek Motif ~ Color (Colour)

Working on this prompt is brightening my world! Today, I share words from Annell Livingston who created the "Me Too" acrylic painting above:  

I have been studying color for over fifty years.  And color is like exploring a cave deep underground, the doors or passageways keep opening, just when you think you have a handle on the subject, another door opens and presents new possibilities.  We begin with the hues of color, or the names of each color, like red, yellow and blue.  The lights and darks of color, tints and shades.  The temperature of color, warm or cool.   And the intensity of color, or the brightness or dullness of color.  There is so much to explore about color and its vibrations, it is a lifetime study.

Today, I'm inviting us to question how color around us shapes our moods and how our moods influence our environments.

The Challenge:  In your brand new poem, reveal the color of a place or an event.

Angostura de Paine, Chile. By Ricardo Hurtubia

The Art Room

BY SHARA MCCALLUM

for my sisters

Because we did not have threads

of turquoise, silver, and gold,

we could not sew a sun nor sky.

And our hands became balls of fire.

And our arms spread open like wings.

Because we had no chalk or pastels,

no toad, forest, or morning-grass slats

of paper, we had no colour

for creatures. So we squatted

and sprang, squatted and sprang.

Four young girls, plaits heavy

on our backs, our feet were beating

drums, drawing rhythms from the floor;

our mouths became woodwinds;

our tongues touched teeth and were reeds.

(Used with permission of the poet.)

First appeared in Song of Thieves 
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003

Colors passing through us

BY MARGE PIERCY

Purple as tulips in May, mauve

into lush velvet, purple

as the stain blackberries leave

on the lips, on the hands,

the purple of ripe grapes

sunlit and warm as flesh.

Every day I will give you a color,

like a new flower in a bud vase

on your desk. Every day

I will paint you, as women

color each other with henna

on hands and on feet.

Red as henna, as cinnamon,

as coals after the fire is banked,

the cardinal in the feeder,

the roses tumbling on the arbor

their weight bending the wood

the red of the syrup I make from petals.

Orange as the perfumed fruit

hanging their globes on the glossy tree,

orange as pumpkins in the field,

orange as butterflyweed and the monarchs

who come to eat it, orange as my

cat running lithe through the high grass.

Yellow as a goat’s wise and wicked eyes,

yellow as a hill of daffodils,

yellow as dandelions by the highway,

yellow as butter and egg yolks,

yellow as a school bus stopping you,

yellow as a slicker in a downpour.

. . . . 

(Read the rest of this marvelous poem HERE.)

Colorful fall foliage in New York.

In a London Drawingroom

                          BY GEORGE ELIOT

The sky is cloudy, yellowed by the smoke. 

For view there are the houses opposite 

Cutting the sky with one long line of wall 

Like solid fog: far as the eye can stretch 

Monotony of surface & of form 

Without a break to hang a guess upon. 

No bird can make a shadow as it flies, 

For all is shadow, as in ways o'erhung 

By thickest canvass, where the golden rays 

Are clothed in hemp. No figure lingering 

Pauses to feed the hunger of the eye 

Or rest a little on the lap of life. 

All hurry on & look upon the ground, 

Or glance unmarking at the passers by 

The wheels are hurrying too, cabs, carriages 

All closed, in multiplied identity. 

The world seems one huge prison-house & court 

Where men are punished at the slightest cost, 

With lowest rate of colour, warmth & joy. 

In the Bois de Boulogne by Berthe Morisot (1880)

Pied Beauty 

BY GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

Glory be to God for dappled things – 

   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; 

      For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; 

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings; 

   Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough; 

      And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim. 

All things counter, original, spare, strange; 

   Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) 

      With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; 

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: 

                                Praise him.

🌈

 Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community—

(Next week Sumana’s Midweek Motif will be ~ Treasure)

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Beauty

source

                                                Midweek Motif ~ Beauty

"Ugly is just a word", I said, "Like beauty. They mean different things to different people....." This quote is taken from a short story, Most Beautiful by Ruskin Bond. Strange it is! How come a thing truly beautiful is not so to another person?

The narrator of the said story assumes that 'Beauty' is a relative term.

And the more I ponder over the word the more layered it becomes.

The poem Beauty XXV by Khalil Gibran says:

The aggrieved and the injured say, "Beauty is kind and gentle.
Like a young mother half-shy of her own glory she walks among us."
And the passionate say, "Nay, beauty is a thing of might and dread.
Like the tempest she shakes the earth beneath us and the sky above us."

Beauty then seems to be hidden everywhere and in everything. Only the eye of the beholder finds it.

Poets are seers. Through your eyes we shall look at Beauty today.

A couple of poems to get inspirations from:

Sleep! Sleep! Beauty Bright

by William Blake

Sleep! sleep!  Beauty bright,
Dreaming o'er the joys of night;
Sleep! sleep! in thy sleep
Little sorrows sit and weep.

Sweet Babe, in thy face
Soft desires I can trace,
Secret joys and secret smiles,
Little pretty infant wiles.

As thy softest limbs I feel,
Smiles as of the morning steal
O'er thy cheek, and o'er thy breast
Where thy little heart does rest.

O! the cunning wiles that creep
In thy little heart asleep.
When thy little heart does wake
Then the dreadful lightnings break.

From thy cheek and from thy eye,
O'er the youthful harvests nigh.
Infant wiles and infant smiles
Heaven and Earth of peace beguiles.

Pied Beauty

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Glory be to God for dappled things--
  For skies of couple-color as a brinded cow;
    For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
   Landscape plotted and pieced-- fold, fallow, and plough;
       An all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
   Whatever is fickle, freckled(who knows how?)
      With swift, slow; sweet, sour; a dazzle dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
                                                                Praise him.

Next week's Midweek Motif will be "Silence."


Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community.

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Weeds/Weediness

source

“A man of words and not of deeds, 
Is like a garden full of weeds.” 
― Benjamin Franklin

“With the exercise of a little care, the nettle could be made useful; it is neglected and it becomes hurtful. It is exterminated. How many men resemble the nettle!" He added with a pause: "Remember this, my friends: there are no such things as bad plants or bad men. There are only bad cultivators.” 
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

Wikipedia: "A dandelion . . .  is a well-known example of a plant  that is considered a weed in some contexts (such as lawns) but not a weed in others (such as when it is used as a leaf vegetable or herbal medicine).

Midweek Motif ~ 

Weeds/Weediness

Challenge:  Must we rid ourselves of weeds? What if we don't?  What if weeds and valued plants reversed themselves in our gardens? In what areas are we weedy or tolerant of weediness?

"What would the world be, once bereft,

of wet and wildness? Let them be left.

O let them be left; wildness and wet;

Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet."

-- Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem Inversnaid

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(Next week Susan's Midweek Motif will be Sustainability.)

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The Living Dead

Honouring our poetic ancestors

Pied Beauty

By Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)

Glory be to God for dappled things —
  For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
    For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
  Landscape plotted and pieced — fold, fallow, and plough;
    And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
  Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
    With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
                Praise him.

We don't have a Thanksgiving holiday in Australia, but can't fail to be aware of its importance in the United States — which may influence the rest of us in the global village to at least spare a thought for things we might be thankful about. So I thought a poem of gratitude would be appropriate today. This one came immediately to mind.

I only just realised, in researching this post, that Hopkins died so young (carried off by typhoid). A Jesuit priest, he felt a conflict between his religious and poetic vocations — on entering the priesthood he burnt his early poems, and later when he began to write again he refrained from publishing so as to avoid the fault of vanity. Luckily for us his old friend, the poet Robert Bridges, published his work posthumously.

Hopkins was a poetic innovator. He is now regarded as ahead of his time and his poetry as a precursor of free verse. He is particularly known for his invention of "sprung rhythm". This is explained in an excellent article at poets.org: 'By not limiting the number of “slack” or unaccented syllables, Hopkins allowed for more flexibility in his lines and created new acoustic possibilities', and by Wikipedia as, "designed to imitate the rhythm of natural speech".

It is more formal than free verse, however, with non-metric feet beginning with a stressed syllable and having any number unstressed. He sometimes accented certain syllables to show where the stresses fell. In this poem he's only done so twice, on the words "all trades" in the sixth line, and rightly so as otherwise we might not realise he intended both syllables to be stressed. Normally we, who were brought up on free verse, have no problem reading Hopkins, but his work must have posed some difficulties in a time when metric verse was considered the only way to write poetry in English.

Wikipedia goes on to say:

Some critics believe he merely coined a name for poems with mixed, irregular feet, like free verse. However, while sprung rhythm allows for an indeterminate number of syllables to a foot, Hopkins was very careful to keep the number of feet he had per line consistent across each individual work, a trait that free verse does not share. Sprung rhythm may be classed as a form of accentual verse, due to its being stress-timed, rather than syllable-timed, and while sprung rhythm did not become a popular literary form, Hopkins's advocacy did assist in a revival of accentual verse more generally.

And poets.org further notes:

In addition to developing new rhythmic effects, Hopkins was also very interested in ways of rejuvenating poetic language. He regularly placed familiar words into new and surprising contexts. He also often employed compound and unusual word combinations. As he wrote to in a letter to [Robert] Bridges, “No doubt, my poetry errs on the side of oddness…" Twentieth century poets such as W.H. Auden, Dylan Thomas, and Charles Wright have enthusiastically turned to his work for its inventiveness and rich aural patterning.

As you can see above, he also liked to play with sound, in such devices as alliteration and assonance.

Finally, it's worth noting that this poem is what he called a "curtal" (i.e. curtailed) sonnet, an abbreviated version of the Petrarchan sonnet, which he worked out to a mathematical formula. He was nothing if not inventive!

All in all, his experiments make for arresting poetry. However we want poetry to transcend its craft, and I think Hopkins always succeeds in this with his beautiful word choices and depth of feeling.

You can find more of his poetry at PoemHunter, and there are books galore at his Amazon pages, mostly second-hand — as well as a number in Kindle editions.

I'm thankful to Poets United for giving me the opportunity to immerse myself in Hopkins. It's been a long time, and he is so worth revisiting.

The Wikipedia link on his name, above, gives comprehensive biographical details. I was glad to read that, despite ill health, inner struggles and probable depressive illness, he exclaimed on his deathbed,

"I am so happy, I am so happy. I loved my life."