@KittieKaye Thanks, I’ll start in tomorrow!
@jukebox I try to spread the wealth of information. No sense in hoarding it, ha-ha.
For grins, you guys might like The Golden Ass by Apuleius, particularly the story of Cupid and Psyche. It tells of the birth of Voluptas, or Pleasure. Kind of sensual and risque!
good job man !! inspiring really.
William Blake, William Butler Yeats, Walt Whitman…
I don’t read much but I like Joaquin Miller
Midnight Pencillings
I am sitting alone in the moonlight,
In the moonlight soft and clear,
And a thousand thoughts steal o’er me,
While penciling, sitting here;
And the cricket is chirping, a chirping
And sings as I sit alone,
In the tall willow grass around me,
In a low and plaintive tone.
But fancy goes flitting and flying,
And I cannot keep it here,
Though the crickets are singing so plaintive,
And the moon shines never so clear.
Away in the hazy future—
Afar by the foaming sea
I am painting a cot in my fancy—
A cottage, and “Minnie” and me.
Now fancy grows dim in the distance—
So dim in the long since past,
That I scarce can take the fair picture
Of the playmates I spotted with last.
But away in the western wildwood
In the woodland wild and wier,
I relive in fancy my childhood
And sigh that I’m sitting here.
Yet I know 'tis wrong to be sighing
And seeking a future too fair,
Or to call up old hopes that are lying
A wreck in the sea of despair;
I know that the present has pleasures
That I ought to enjoy and embrace,
Lest I sigh for these days that are passing
When the future has taken their place.
Yet, as I sit in the moonlit meadow,
With no voice but nature’s near,
Save the chirp and the chime of the cricket
Falling plaintively on the ear,
I cannot control my fancy,
My thoughts are so wayward and wild,
That I ever will dream of the future,
Or wish I again were a child.
Joaquin Miller
I like Robert Frost for his poem ‘the road not taken’
I like Poe, he is my favorite.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh
Kahlil Gibran
“Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky, We fell them down and turn them into paper,
That we may record our emptiness.”
William Carlos Williams, T.S. Eliot, Emerson, and Wallace Stevens.
Also love Poe’s A Dream Within a Dream
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow —
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand —
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep — while I weep!
O God! Can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
I love nearly every poet you folks mentioned. But I’ll add Basho, Shiki, Mary Oliver, Beowulf-who ever wrote that, Wliiam Blake, and I’ll second Mr. Gibran.
Langston Hughes, 1902 - 1967
I, Too
I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.
Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—
I, too, am America.
My favorite is Edgar Allen Poe.
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