CELEBRATE POETRY WITH THE HERETIK! Dickinson, Brooks and Akmatova!

DICKINSON, BROOKS, and AKHMATOVA

Consider this post your chance to post whatever you like about poetry here and elsewhere in this world, to drop in favorite poems and songs in part or in whole that mean the world to you, to do whatever you like.  Thanks, Joe.

Hope
is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
and sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

Emily Dickinson

We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.

"We Real Cool"
Gwendolyn Brooks

And the stone word fell
On my still-living breast.
Never mind, I was ready.
I will manage somehow.

Today I have so much to do:
I must kill memory once and for all,
I must turn my soul to stone,
I must learn to live again—

Unless . . . Summer's ardent rustling
Is like a festival outside my window.
For a long time I've foreseen this
Brilliant day, deserted house.


"The Sentence"
Anna Akhmatova

 

Comments

[bitchphd]

I have always loved that Brooks poem.

[periangel]

I approve the choice of Akhmatova. It's strange ~ this is the first time I've read one of her poems in English. It feels different somehow... and reminds me that translation itself is an art form.