CURRENT MOON

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Fifth Annual Brigid Poetry Festival


It's almost Imbolc and that means that it's time for Anne Hill's Annual Brigid Poetry Festival, honoring the Goddess of poetry.

This is the now annual Silent Poetry Reading in honor of Brigid (Saint or Goddess, as you prefer). And while the first invitation was for a single day’s blogging event, watching the misty full moon tonight got me thinking of a favorite line from a poem that I want to offer, so I will simply declare that this year’s event has begun!

Life is hard enough; why shouldn’t we take all the full moon weekend leading up to February 2nd to celebrate this patroness of the arts and healing, and read her a poem or two?


So post a poem, a couple of poems, as many as you like, and then post a link to your poetry post(s) in the comments section at Anne's blog.

Many people enjoy Kipling's poems who would be confused by Keats; others delight in Burns who would be utterly without sympathy for Blake. The people who like Tennyson do not, as a rule, care much about Walt Whitman, and the admirers of Poe and Coleridge may find Wordsworth unattractive, and again his disciples might feel antagonized by Rossetti and Swinburne. It does not matter, so long as one finds one's own sustenance. Only, the happy men who can enjoy them all are the richest. The true test of poetry is sincerity and vitality. It is not rhyme, or metre, or subject. It is nothing in the world but the soul of man as it really is. Carlyle's 'French Revolution' is a great epic poem; so are Trevelyan's three volumes on 'Garibaldi and the Italian War of Independence.' That they are written in prose has nothing to do with the matter. That most poems are written rhythmically, and that rhythm has come to be the great technical fact of poetry, was, primarily, because men under stress of emotion tend to talk in a rhythmed speech. Read Lincoln's 'Address at Gettysburg' and 'Second Inaugural,' and you will see.

Nothing is more foolish than to say that only such and such forms are proper to poetry. Every form is proper to poetry, so long as it is the sincere expression of a man's thought. That insincere men try bizarre forms of verse to gain a personal notoriety is true, but it seems not very difficult to distinguish them from the real artists. And so long as men feel, and think, and have the need of expressing themselves, so long will their modes of expression change. For expression tends to become hackneyed and devitalized, and new methods must be found for keeping the sense of palpitant vigour.


~Amy Lowell

Picture found here.

PS: If you are one of those people who think that you "hate poetry," think: "song lyrics." I bet you have a set of song lyrics that speak to you. I won't upset you by suggesting that they are poetry. No, no. Just post your favorite song lyrics. ;)

4 comments:

Teacats said...

My personal favorites are the Metaphysical poets like John Donne -- not his stuffy odes or speeches to God -- but his rolicking odes to Love. "Begone, unruly Sun and let me Love!"

Burns is of course marvellous (Haggis is the Chieftain of the Pudding Race)-- my mum's family comes from the village of Kilmarnock -- Burns country! Did you know that a movie is planned around his life?

Jan at Rosemary Cottage

chicago dyke said...

poems? hang on, lemme think.


Poem by me:

Stardust, Hope and Longnecks
for LD

"I just read, to a friend today,
a poem about dust on the moon.
Funny thing is, and he'd even say,
a particle of that is in my room!

No, really. Believe me, i'm not lying.
The fodder of astronauts' is here, and beer!
Right here, by the wine bottle and the dead pipe,
in the basement where he showed no fear."

xan said...

Works which combine good poetry and good science are rare. This is one of them. Nice work CD. :)

the marzipan gargoyle said...

"go and catch a falling star/get with child a mandrake root/tell me where all pat years are/or who cleft the devil's foot/teach me to hear mermaids singing/or to keep off envy's stinging/and find/what wind/serves to advance an honest mind"

I didn't write that. John Donne did. He's cool