Poem of the Week

Yes... I know I said "don't think about famous poets." But that's only while you're writing a poem of your own. When we're not writing poems, what should we do?

Well... I personally like to watch television or movies. Yes... this is a sin in the English Department in almost any university in America... but I do it anyway. Not because I'm trying to rebel against the established order, but because I like to relax and let others do my thinking for me for a while...

BUT...

This doesn't mean I don't enjoy reading poetry. I love to read something new. I love to find a poem that connects with me deeply. I want a poem to move me, change my life, make me think about the music of words. This is why I became a poet.

Since this is my first time writing a blog, I still don't know where to go from here. I kinda want to talk about other things besides poetry (hoping this won't be sacrilegious to poets in general). Besides, I believe life is poetry, and poetry comes from life. So... yay for interrelated terms!

Anyhow, I would like to start something called: Poem of the Week. A section that's gonna show some poems I like or admire from either old poets or contemporary ones.

Poem of the Week:

Song of Myself, by Walt Whitman.

This is Whitman's Magnum Opus, in my opinion. It's a very long poem that you really don't have to read unless you want to. However, it did make me feel like I was loved by the whole universe, and that I was no better or worse than any boss, parent, child, president or soldier.

I am only going to post my favorite part of his 52. Part 6, and here it is:

from Song of Myself
by Walt Whitman


6

A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; 
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he. 

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green 
stuff woven. 

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord, 
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt, 
Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we may see 
and remark, and say Whose? 

Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation. 

Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic, 
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones, 
Growing among black folks as among white, 
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I 
receive them the same. 

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves. 

Tenderly will I use you curling grass, 
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men, 
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them, 
It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken soon out 
of their mothers' laps, 
And here you are the mothers' laps. 

This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers, 
Darker than the colorless beards of old men, 
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths. 

O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues, 
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing. 

I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women, 
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken 
soon out of their laps. 

What do you think has become of the young and old men? 
And what do you think has become of the women and children? 

They are alive and well somewhere, 
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, 
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the 
end to arrest it, 
And ceas'd the moment life appear'd. 

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, 
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.