Wednesday's Poetry Watch #3

This is a new feature I’ll be posting once a week, and in each post I’ll feature a different poet or poem that I really love. I’ll share a few facts about the poet and recommend an additional poem(s) that you may enjoy as well. Poetry has always been a HUGE passion of mine whether it’s writing it, reading it, or discussing it. And I’m really looking excited to share some of the mad love I have for it with all of you lovelies! 

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This week I'm featuring a poet that I may be slightly obsessed with... but if you've read any of his work how can you possibly blame me? The poet I'm referring to is William Butler Yeats, not only are his poems gorgeous to read but he's from Ireland.. and it's well known that I have an obsession with all things Irish! 

A few facts for you: "William Butler Yeats (pronounced /ˈjeɪts/) was an Irish poet and dramatist, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years Yeats served as an Irish Senator for two terms. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival, and along with Lady Gregory and Edward Martyn founded the Abbey Theatre, serving as its chief during its early years. In 1923 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for what the Nobel Committee described as "inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation." He was the first Irishman so honored. Yeats is generally considered one of the few writers who completed their greatest works after being awarded the Nobel Prize; such works include The Tower (1928) and The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1929).
Yeats was born and educated in Dublin but spent his childhood in County Sligo. He studied poetry in his youth, and from an early age was fascinated by both Irish legends and the occult. Those topics feature in the first phase of his work, which lasted roughly until the turn of the century. His earliest volume of verse was published in 1889, and those slow paced and lyrical poems display debts to Edmund Spenser and Percy Bysshe Shelley, as well as to the Pre-Raphaelite poets. From 1900, Yeats' poetry grew more physical and realistic. He largely renounced the transcendental beliefs of his youth, though he remained preoccupied with physical and spiritual masks, as well as with cyclical theories of life." ~Wikipedia

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One of my absolute favorite poems by Yeats would have to be, "He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven". 

"He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven"

"Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."

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It's not a very long poem, but some of the best poems are on the short side. It doesn't take an extreme amount of words to get the point and the feeling across, it just takes the right ones. And in keep with my theme of the whole "grave site visiting" thing, I would most definitely love to see his, as well as the part of Ireland where he lived/grew up! :D

A few of my other favorites are, A Faery Song, Lullaby, and The Cap and Bells.

Do I have any fellow Yeats fanatics out there?! Or must I convert you? *mwahahaha....* :D

“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”

Wednesday's Poetry Watch #2

This is a new feature I’ll be posting once a week, and in each post I’ll feature a different poet or poem that I really love. I’ll share a few facts about the poet and recommend an additional poem(s) that you may enjoy as well. Poetry has always been a HUGE passion of mine whether it’s writing it, reading it, or discussing it. And I’m really looking excited to share some of the mad love I have for it with all of you lovelies! 

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So for this weeks poetry watch, I decided to feature a poet that I've loved since childhood, Robert Frost. I fell in love with his writing after I got a book featuring one of his poems (Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening) as a Christmas gift and ever since then I've been a huge fan. 

A few facts for you: "Robert Frost was born in San Francisco on March 26th, 1874. He moved to New England at the age of eleven and became interested in reading and writing poetry during his high school years in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He was enrolled at Dartmouth College in 1892, and later at Harvard, though he never earned a formal degree. Frost drifted through a string of occupations after leaving school, working as a teacher, cobbler, and editor of the Lawrence Sentinel. His first professional poem, "My Butterfly," was published on November 8th, 1894, in the New York newspaper The Independent. 
In 1895, Frost married Elinor Miriam White, who became a major inspiration in his poetry until her death in 1938. The couple moved to England in 1912, after their New Hampshire farm failed, and it was abroad that Frost met and was influenced by such contemporary British poets as Edward Thomas, Rupert Brooke, and Robert Graves. While in England, Frost also established a friendship with the poet Ezra Pound, who helped to promote and publish his work. By the time Frost returned to the United States in 1915, he had published two full-length collections, A Boy's Will and North of Boston, and his reputation was established. By the nineteen-twenties, he was the most celebrated poet in America, and with each new book—including New Hampshire (1923), A Further Range (1936), Steeple Bush (1947), and In the Clearing (1962)—his fame and honors (including four Pulitzer Prizes) increased.
Frost was 86 when he read his well-known poem "The Gift Outright" at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy on January 20th, 1961. He died in Boston two years later, on January 29th, 1963, of complications from prostate surgery. He was buried at the Old Bennington Cemetery in Bennington, Vermont. His epitaph quotes the last line from his poem, "The Lesson for Today (1942): "I had a lover's quarrel with the world."

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One of my favorite poems by Robert Frost is The Road Not Taken. It's a pretty popular poem so I'm sure most of you have read it or at least heard of it. But for those who haven't, take a moment and see the brilliance of this piece.

"The Road Not Taken"

"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim

Because it was grassy and wanted wear,

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I marked the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference."

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This poem is pretty self explanatory, so there's not really much need in trying to state what it means lol. His is another grave site I'd like to visit someday :) A few other poems I recommend reading are, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Good Hours, and The Sound of Trees. There are so many others I could recommend! But that would take all day lol. 

So do I have any Frost fans out there? Have you read any of his work?

“Poetry is what gets lost in translation.”

Wednesdays Poetry Watch #1

This is a new feature I’ll be posting once a week, and in each post I’ll feature a different poet or poem that I really love. I’ll share a few facts about the poet and recommend an additional poem(s) that you may enjoy as well. Poetry has always been a HUGE passion of mine whether it’s writing it, reading it, or discussing it. And I’m really looking excited to share some of the mad love I have for it with all of you lovelies! 

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So this week to kick of my new feature, who better to start with than the brilliant Edgar Allan Poe himself?! Anyone who knows me well enough is perfectly aware of how much I love this particular poet/author, so it’s only fitting to start off with him. 

A few facts for you: “Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19th, 1809 in Boston, Massachusetts. His mother died shortly after his father abandoned their family, and he was taken in by John and Frances Allan, of Richmond, Virginia, but they never formally adopted him. He attended the University of Virginia for one semester but left due to lack of money. After enlisting in the Army and later failing as an officer's cadet at West Point, Poe parted ways with the Allans. His publishing career began humbly, with an anonymous collection of poems, Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827), credited only to "a Bostonian".

Poe switched his focus to prose and spent the next several years working for literary journals and periodicals, becoming known for his own style of literary criticism. His work forced him to move among several cities, including Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City. In Baltimore in 1835, he married Virginia Clemm. In January, 1845 Poe published his poem, "The Raven", to instant success. His wife died of tuberculosis two years after its publication. He began planning to produce his own journal, The Penn (later renamed The Stylus), though he died before it could be produced. On October 7, 1849, at age 40, Poe died in Baltimore; the cause of his death is unknown and has been variously attributed to alcohol, brain congestion, cholera, drugs, heart disease, rabies, suicide, tuberculosis, and other agents.” ~Via Wikipedia

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One of my favorite poems of all time would have to be “A Dream Within A Dream” now I’m sure some of you have read it, but I’m sure there are some of you that haven’t. If you are one of those poor unfortunate souls who haven’t read it, take a few minutes to delve into this masterpiece. 

(Lol couldn't resist :p)

"A Dream Within A Dream" 

“Take this kiss upon the brow! 

And, in parting from you now, 

Thus much let me avow- 

You are not wrong, who deem 

That my days have been a dream; 

Yet if hope has flown away 

In a night, or in a day, 

In a vision, or in none, 

Is it therefore the less gone? 

All that we see or seem 

Is but a dream within a dream. 

I stand amid the roar 

Of a surf-tormented shore, 

And I hold within my hand 

Grains of the golden sand- 

How few! yet how they creep 

Through my fingers to the deep, 

While I weep- while I weep! 

O God! Can I not grasp 

Them with a tighter clasp? 

O God! Can I not save 

One from the pitiless wave? 

Is all that we see or seem 

But a dream within a dream?” 

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The main thing this poem always puts me in mind of, is how in life there are things that will change and no matter how much we may not want them to, and there isn’t anything that can be done to stop it. And I’m sure all of us at some point have had the same or similar thoughts about certain things that have happened in our lives. 

Also on another note, I have decided that I WILL visit Poe’s grave site in Baltimore one day just to say that I’ve been lol. Now if you’re interested in more of Poe’s work a few that I recommend are: “The Raven”, “Annabel Lee”, and "The Masque of the Red Death" (a short story). 

So are any of you lovelies fans of Poe? Do you have any favorite poems or stories? 

"I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity."