Music as Poetry #1- Let It Be

Alright, so I haven't been keeping my promise of posting daily. That is because life seemed to become more busy than I thought. I will try to write at least two posts a week now, maybe three if I get the time. I'd like to apologize for having disappeared for a while but I'm back! I hope you keep reading and commenting.

Now, I'd like to emphasize the fact that most of the songs you listen to on a daily basis is just poetry put to music. The lyrics of songs are the real poetry. Some rhyme and some don't like some of the poems I've talked about before. Today we shall read and listen to one of my favorite songs in the world: Let It Be. I love The Beatles and this is one of Paul McCartney's big hits. So, let us begin.

Let It Be
By Paul McCartney (Lennon/McCartney)

When I find myself in times of trouble, mother Mary comes to me, 
speaking words of wisdom, let it be. 
And in my hour of darkness she is standing right in front of me, 
speaking words of wisdom, let it be. 

Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be. 
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be. 

And when the broken hearted people living in the world agree, 
there will be an answer, let it be. 
For though they may be parted there is still a chance that they will see, 
there will be an answer. let it be. 

Let it be, let it be, ..... 

And when the night is cloudy, there is still a light, that shines on me, 
shine until tomorrow, let it be. 
I wake up to the sound of music, mother Mary comes to me, 
speaking words of wisdom, let it be. 

Let it be, let it be, ..... 


So, the message is quite simple: things will get well in the end if you just let things be. Really simple but the beauty of it all comes from the way it is sung. The singer must show the worry in him/her and show that it will all be good in the end. Now, Paul talks about Mother Mary in the song and many think he is talking about the Virgin Mary. In some ways he his but he also had a mother, and her name was Mary. I like that connection, makes the song more meaningful. Well, that's all from me for today. Please comment!

Preformed by Sir McCartney and the Wings

Day 7: I Swear My Math Teacher Wrote This

Today's poem and blogpost was written by a friend of mine, Mia. There are a thousand ways to look at a single poem and I like to see what other people think about the poems they read. That's why I'd like to thank Mia for doing this and letting me see a poem differently. 


This poem is called: I Swear My Math Teacher Wrote This.
The second line of the title is: "Let s be the length of the arc subtended by Θ"
by River Standford

Lets be the length of the ark subtended by Theta
and lie in her streams, plying the waters
with subdued strokes of due course
Let's meander her aquae silvae 
Submerged in the spring singing of nymphs
Lets be the length of the ark subtended by Theta
drifting drifting out to Alpha
drifting drifting to Omega

I love this poem for a lot of reasons. Read it out loud to discover the first reason. It sounds beautiful. It's rhythm is perfectly imperfect, the th sounds and the s sounds flow like the water it tells of. The repetition of the word "Drifting" in the last two lines is like a lullaby, close your eyes as you say "Drifting, drifting out to Alpha, drifting drifting to Omega." It's physically relaxing, unlike a lot of poetry that tends to be just mentally soothing.

This poem, at it's title, sounds like a parody, a satirical poem brought about by homework. In reality, it serves as proof that inspiration can come from anywhere. I don't pay much attention in math class either, but I certainly don't spend it thinking about love, adventure, beauty, existentialism, eternity, or destiny, and I could never bring all those huge ideas together into a small but powerful piece as Stanford has done here.

I picture a person floating on their back in a calm body of water with another person who happens to be the most important person in the world to the first. But that doesn't matter in the second this poem is existing around them. The only thing that matters is their apparent invincibility, and acceptance of going wherever life takes them "with the subdued strokes of due course". They can close their eyes and picture nymphs, because the water is that sparkling and that removed from modern society. They don't care where the water takes them, be it the beginning or the end, because they are so at peace with each other, their surrounding, and with the world.
- Mia 


If you have any thoughts or feelings about this poem write a comment!

Day 6: Reaper

I know this is late one day but I had this almost finished but didn't have time to publish it. Today will be a two-post day (which I hope does not become a regular thing).
Anyways, yesterday's poem has to do with re-imagining Death. Death is a serious thing and we have given it the symbol of it looking like a skeleton with a scythe. This figure is to give us terror, make us afraid of the end. This poem tries to have us imagine Death as being something else, like one of us.

Reaper
by Billy Collins

As I drove north along a country road
on a bright spring morning
I caught the look of a man on the roadside
who was carrying an enormous scythe on his shoulder.

He was not wearing a long black cloak
with a hood to conceal his skull-
rather a torn white tee-shirt
and a pair of loose khaki trousers.

But still, as I flew past him,
he turned and met my glance
as if I had an appointment in Samarra,
not just the usual lunch at the Raccoon Lodge.

There was no sign I could give him
in that instant-no casual wave,
or thumbs-up, no two-fingered V
that would ease the jolt of fear

whose voltage ran from the ankles
to my scalp-just the glimpse,
the split-second lock of the pupils
like catching the eye of a stranger on a passing train.

And there was nothing to do
but keep driving, turn off the radio,
and notice how white the houses were,
how red the barns, and green the sloping fields.

Even though Death in this poem is a person the same fear is felt by the author as if it were a skeleton in black. The end of our times is a fear that all humans have so it makes the feelings of this poem relatable. My favorite part of the poem is where the narrator has a hard time choosing a sign to give Death, like waving. I am a firm believer of re-imagining everything around you, trying to look at it through different eyes. That is the main reason I chose this poem.

If you have any thoughts about this poem, please leave a comment!

Day 5: Dreams

Todays poem is a short one because of time constraints. Also it shows how poetry doesn't have to be very long to get it's meaning across.

Dreams

By Langston Hughes

Hold fast to dreams

For if dreams die

Life is a broken-winged bird

That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams

For when dreams go

Life is a barren field

Frozen with snow.

I think Hughes knows what he is talking about from experience. He did quite a bit in his life for he was a poet, novelist, playwright, and columnist. Dreams are needed for people to do their best, to be inspired to become something more than what they are now. This poem is very good at showing that. 

If you have any thoughts about this poem you wish to share, please, write a comment!

Day 4: All The World's A Stage

Last night I went to a production of As You Like It performed by the American Shakespeare Center. It was a very good performance of the play but it is not my favorite of all Shakespeare's plays. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark still takes home the prize as my favorite Shakespeare play. Anyways, in the play that I saw yesterday there was the famous "All the world's a stage" monologue and I thought that would be a very good poem to share with you all.


All the World's a Stage monologue in As You Like It 
by William Shakespeare

“All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women are merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances:

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,

Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms;

And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel

And shining morning face, creeping like a snail

Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,

Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad

Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,

Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,

Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,

Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,

In fair round belly with good capon lin’d,

With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,

Full of wise saws and modern instances;

And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloons,

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;

His youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too wide

For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness and more oblivion;

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”

- Jaques (Act II, Scene VII, lines 139-166)

Here is a very interesting version of the poem being acted out for the Stratford Shakespeare Festival.

This poem, as most of Shakespeare's writing can be considered poetry, is one of his most famous. The most famous part is the first two lines because it seems that those are the only lines anyone remembers. Not much analysis should be done to this poem because it seems (at least to me) very understandable. If you do not understand something don't be afraid to ask about it in the comments. My favorite line in this poem was "sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything", mostly because it very well explains old age where one goes to having nothing. Overall, the play As You Like It is a very enjoyable comedy but this monologue was one of the highlights of seeing it performed live. 

As I was looking up information about the monologue I found this compressed limerick written by historian Robert Conquest about the poem above:

Seven ages: first puking and mewling;

Then very p***ed off with one's schooling;

Then f**ks; and then fights;

Then judging chaps' rights;

Then sitting in slippers; then drooling.

Apart from the explicits, it's a very interesting modern way at looking at a poem that was written over four hundred years ago. 

Please, if you have some questions or an opinion on this poem write a comment about it. 

Day 3: The Labyrinth

Today's poem is The Labyrinth by Jorge Luis Borges. In a lot of literature the image of a labyrinth has many meanings but this is my favorite depiction in all of the stories I have read that use that symbol.

The Labyrinth
by Jorge Luis Borges
Translated by Stephen Kessler

Zeus himself could not undo the web
of stone closing around me. I have forgotten
the men I was before; I follow the hated
path of monotonous walls
that is my destiny. Severe galleries
which curve in secret circles
to the end of the years. Parapets
cracked by the days' usury.
In the pale dust I have discerned
signs that frighten me. In the concave
evenings the air has carried a roar
toward me, or the echo of a desolate howl.
I know there is an Other in the shadows,
whose fate it is to wear out the long solitudes
which weave and unweave this Hades
and to long for my blood and devour my death.
Each of us seeks the other. If only this
were the final day of waiting.

Borges, for all of you who don't know, was an Argentinian writer/poet/essayist who worked a lot with the fantastic literature genre. He is known for his use of labyrinths in many of his works, each time meaning a different thing. Here, you can maybe say that the labyrinth is a symbol for life. Something that is so difficult even a god can not undo seems to be either life or death, but death seems to be personified as this Other, wanting to find and take the narrator as his own. This fear of death is in all of us and I like how this poem plays with it, making one notice that they are stuck in this life trying to get away from a monster that wants them dead. The poem reminds me a little bit of the last words of Simon Bolivar in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's The General in His Labyrinth, "Damn it, how will I ever get out of this labyrinth?" It's interesting to think of life as this puzzle, a puzzle that the only way out really is through death. Well, at least it's a very interesting puzzle.

If you have any views on this poem that you wish to share please write a comment.

                                                                    Jorge Luis Borges

Day 2: You And I Are Disappearing

Today's poem was suggested to me by a friend and as I was reading it I noticed that I was trying to find out what this girl meant, what the burning meant. Thinking deeply about poems is good but it felt like I was analyzing it too much. Poetry, from what I've read in my life, seems to be more about the feelings that the author is trying to give/show the reader than what is on the page. 


You And I Are Disappearing 
by Yusef Komunyakaa


The cry I bring down from the hills
belongs to a girl still burning
inside my head. At daybreak
she burns like a piece of paper. 
She burns like foxfire
in a thigh-shaped valley.

A skirt of flames
dances around her


at dusk.

We stand with our hands

hanging at our sides,


while she burns 

like a sack of dry ice.

She burns like oil on water.


She burns like a cattail torch


dipped in gasoline.


She glows like the fat tip


of a banker's cigar,

silent as quicksilver.

A tiger under a rainbow

    at nightfall.

She burns like a shot glass of vodka.


She burns like a field of poppies


at the edge of a rain forest.


She rises like dragonsmoke

    to my nostrils.


She burns like a burning bush


driven by a godawful wind.

I very much enjoyed the repetition of "she burns" because it becomes clear that the narrator is seeing this, trying to analyze what this other worldly thing is by comparing it to things they know. My favorite line is "she glows like the fat tip of a banker's cigar", mostly because it's a very clear image I get from it. It's a very good poem by a very interesting poet. I was looking up information about his writing and it looks like some of his inspirations come from the time period before the Civil Rights movement here in the United States and I can completely see how this poem relates to that and the awful acts done by white supremacy groups. 

Well, if you have any thoughts about this poem you want to share please share them in the comments. I would really like this to be a more two way conversation because poetry is very different for every person who reads it. The way I read it isn't the only way to understand this poem. Tell me what you think about today's poem down below...

Day 1: Carpe Diem- El Dorado

What is poetry? Who can be a poet? Why write poetry?
Three questions I think that can only be answered by living, not from a textbook. Because of this I have decided to start this project where I try to learn what poetry really is. I fancy myself a poet-in-training but in reality I don't know much about poetry except for the stuff I have learned about it in my English classes, where a poem is taken and broken in bits until it sometimes becomes unenjoyable to read poetry, always being aware for symbols that may not even be there. This is my journey trying to see the other side of poetry and learn from the masters: Keats, Poe, Dickinson, and much more...
My plan for this journey is that I'll daily put up a poem that I have recently read and enjoyed to share it with others. I might post my own stuff as this goes but it won't be a regular thing for these first few months. This is all free spirited, in a way. I don't have much of a plan for it. I just want to get myself and others to read more poetry and learn to enjoy it in the way it was meant to be enjoyed: in your free time without homework on it.
You may be wondering about the title of this blog (inspired by the movie The Dead Poets Society). I feel that even though people are dead what they left here on Earth is to be enjoyed. I don't think of those poets as being fully dead because their words are still being read today.
Below is one of my favorite poems up to date which is by Edgar Allen Poe. Poe is always an interesting read but my favorite thing that he wrote is "El Dorado", a poem where a knight spends his years obsessed with the search for this city of gold. It reminds me a little of the story of Don Quixote but also what an obsession can do to someone.

El Dorado
by Edgar Allen Poe

Gaily bedight, A gallant knight, In sunshine and in shadow, Had journeyed long, Singing a song, In search of Eldorado. But he grew old, This knight so bold, And o'er his heart a shadow Fell as he found No spot of ground That looked like Eldorado. And, as his strength Failed him at length, He met a pilgrim shadow; "Shadow," said he, "Where can it be, This land of Eldorado?" "Over the mountains Of the moon, Down the valley of the shadow, Ride, boldly ride," The shade replied,-- "If you seek for Eldorado!"

Do you have a poem you have written you want me to read and maybe post?
Are there poems you recommend me to read? Please, write it down in the comments!