I am happy to report that Bath Poetry's first meeting was a disarming and devastating success!;-) My horizons have been expanded by Irish and Spanish poetry in particular, and it was great to meet up and enjoy poems in good company.
For the next meeting in December we are thinking of moving to The Star - a quiet, cosy pub up on the hill (it has a real fire!) where we ended up having drinks afterwards.
And here is a treat I found via the Poetry Foundation website - my new found source of inspiration and poetic material. Whether you are looking for poems to bring to the next meeting or not, their site worth having a peek at!
Ars Poetica
By Archibald MacLeish
A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,
Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,
Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown—
A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds.
*
A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs,
Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,
Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,
Memory by memory the mind—
A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs.
*
A poem should be equal to:
Not true.
For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf.
For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea—
A poem should not mean
But be.
Star: good choice (but I would say that). Name your date.
ReplyDeleteMichael Hartnett on Thomas Kinsella:
The Poet as Mastercraftsman
for Thomas Kinsella
Eras do not end when great poets die,
for poetry is not whole, it is where man
chose mountains to conform, to carve his own
face among the Gothic richness and the sky,
and the gargoyles, and the lesser tradesmen.
Praise from the apprentice is always shown
in miniatures of a similar stone.
I saw the master in his human guise
open doors to let me in, and rhythm out.
He smiled and entertained into the night.
I was aware of work undone. His eyes,
like owls', warned images from the room.
Under the stairs the muse was crying; shields
clashed in the kitchen and the war drum's boom,
men in celtic war dress entered from the right.
I left, my conversation put to rout.
To poets peace poetry never yields.