Poetry
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When lips to a mind of music speak…
why speak words? Are they speaking due to their own music limits? Do they speak because they are externally asked to convey words, while they have already conveyed music? Are words explanation? Does music need wording? Is music whole through explanation? Why the needy libretto? Who needs who? Is poetry the pursuit of completion?Is the…
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The Life You Give: Victor Hugo *1802
Victor Hugo, born Victor-Marie Hugo, on February 26 1802, in Besançon, France, is the poet, novelist, and dramatist who was the most important of the French Romantic writers. Though regarded in France as one of that country’s greatest poets, he is better known abroad for such novels as Notre-Dame de Paris (1831) and Les Misérables…
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The Life You Give: Bertolt Brecht *1898
Bertolt Brecht, born Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht, on February 10 1898, in Augsburg, Germany, is the poet, playwright, and theatrical reformer whose epic theatre departed from the conventions of theatrical illusion and developed the drama as a social and ideological forum for leftist causes. Until 1924 Brecht lived in Bavaria, where he was born, studied…
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The Virtuous Black IX: Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou, born Marguerite Annie Johnson on April 4 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.A., is the poet, memoirist, and actress whose several volumes of autobiography explore the themes of economic, racial, and sexual oppression. Although born in St. Louis, Angelou spent much of her childhood in the care of her paternal grandmother in rural…
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The Life You Give: Patti Smith *1946
Punk rock’s poet laureate Patti Smith ranks among the most ambitious, unconventional, and challenging rock & rollers of all time. When she emerged in the ’70s, Smith’s music was hailed as the most exciting fusion of rock and poetry since Bob Dylan’s heyday. With her androgynous, visual presentation echoing her unabashedly intellectual and uncompromising songwriting,…
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I died for beauty but was scarce
I died for beauty but was scarceAdjusted in the tomb,When one who died for truth was lainIn an adjoining room. He questioned softly why I failed?“For beauty,” I replied.“And I for truth, the two are one;We brethren are,” he said. And so, as kinsmen met a night,We talked between the rooms,Until the moss had reached…
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The Life You Give: Rainer Maria Rilke *1875
Rainer Maria Rilke, born December 4 1875, in Prague, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary [now in Czech Republic] was the poet who became internationally famous with such works as Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus. Rilke was the only son of a not-too-happy marriage. His father, Josef, a civil servant, was a man frustrated in his career; his…
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I
That is the selfSimpleSingularMajusculeQuite a featIn the mind with the English tonguewriting it displays a highly concerted and concentrated effortIn that which I prepare to drink or eatand in how I drink or eat itIn the sounds with timing I wish to composethe words I conveyeither for poetryor conversation In the frames I freeze through…
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The Longfellow Fennel
The Goblet of LifeFilled is Life’s goblet to the brim;And though my eyes with tears are dim,I see its sparkling bubbles swim,And chant a melancholy hymn With solemn voice and slow. No purple flowers,–no garlands green,Conceal the goblet’s shade or sheen,Nor maddening draughts of Hippocrene,Like gleams of sunshine, flash between Thick leaves of mistletoe. This…
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Simple versus Easy
In a hut / in a castleOn a shore / in the forest / on a hillAlone / with a herd — in the hut / about the hut / in the castle / around a castleTangible and intangible chores in creativity, and logic, and magicTo be, lively, in wisdom, in love, That is simpleNot…
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“the usual rilke” by Ernst Jandl
Translation from the German by Joshua Weiner rilke’s separationthe unusual rilkeand the usual rilkeare stuck in their samenessthe unusual rilkeand the usual rilkewould have stayed togetherthe unusual rilkeand the usual rilkewould have to separatethe unusual rilkeand the usual rilkeboth knew it rilke’s breath 1rilkebreathedthe airthe good air 2rilkebreathedwithout pause rilke’s noseentrance and exitof the airit…
Sila Blume 