Green Group discussion

As a retired English teacher, I love poetry--so I thought we might share poems that have inspired us as we strive to become more "green".

This one from Billy Collins speaks to the idea of spending time with this amazing world--I certainly need to "stand in the tremble of thought" even as I take action or study.


Directions
(excerpt)

The best time is late afternoon
when the sun strobes through
the columns of trees as you are hiking up,
and when you find an agreeable rock
to sit on, you will be able to see
the light pouring down into the woods
and breaking into the shapes and tones
of things and you will hear nothing
but a sprig of birdsong or the leafy
falling of a cone or nut through the trees,
and if this is your day you might even
spot a hare or feel the wing-beats of geese
driving overhead toward some destination.

But it is hard to speak of these things
how the voices of light enter the body
and begin to recite their stories
how the earth holds us painfully against
its breast made of humus and brambles
how we who will soon be gone regard
the entities that continue to return
greener than ever, spring water flowing
through a meadow and the shadows of clouds
passing over the hills and the ground
where we stand in the tremble of thought
taking the vast outside into ourselves.

Great idea! Love it...

And I teach English. Actually, first year college composition, but I throw in literature now and again to break up the non-fiction essays.

The following poem influenced me greatly in high school. It is mostly about death; the title means a view of death. But it has that Romantic period sentiment about how we are all one with nature:


Thanatopsis
BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

To him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart;—
Go forth, under the open sky, and list
To Nature’s teachings, while from all around—
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air—
Comes a still voice—

Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix for ever with the elements,
To be a brother to the insensible rock
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.

Yet not to thine eternal resting-place
Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world—with kings,
The powerful of the earth—the wise, the good,
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills
Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun,—the vales
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The venerable woods—rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks
That make the meadows green; and, poured round all,
Old Ocean’s gray and melancholy waste,—
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun,
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
Are shining on the sad abodes of death,
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom.—Take the wings
Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness,
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound,
Save his own dashings—yet the dead are there:
And millions in those solitudes, since first
The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep—the dead reign there alone.
So shalt thou rest, and what if thou withdraw
In silence from the living, and no friend
Take note of thy departure? All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
Plod on, and each one as before will chase
His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come
And make their bed with thee. As the long train
Of ages glide away, the sons of men,
The youth in life’s green spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years, matron and maid,
The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man—
Shall one by one be gathered to thy side,
By those, who in their turn shall follow them.

So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan, which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

Ah, Jimmy--thanks for the reminder of this poem. Bryant's view of the universe is so encompassng--I especially am struck by the line: "All that breathe/Will share thy destiny." All, not just humans--the wee ant, the graceful deer, the fierce lion.

When my ashes become part of this earth, I only want one poem read, by my favorite poet, Robinson Jeffers:

Inscription for a Gravestone
Robinson Jeffers

I am not dead, I have only become inhuman:
That is to say,
Undressed myself of laughable prides and infirmities,
But not as a man
Undresses to creep into bed, but like an athlete
Stripping for the race.
The delicate ravel of nerves that made me a measurer
Of certain fictions
Called good and evil; that made me contract with pain
And expand with pleasure;
Fussily adjusted like a little electroscope:
That's gone, it is true;
(I never miss it; if the universe does,
How easily replaced!)
But all the rest is heightened, widened, set free.
I admired the beauty
While I was human, now I am part of the beauty.
I wander in the air,
Being mostly gas and water, and flow in the ocean;
Touch you and Asia
At the same moment; have a hand in the sunrises
And the glow of this grass.
I left the light precipitate of ashes to earth
For a love-token.

I am reminded of this next poem each time I witness our destruction of nature:


"THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US; LATE AND SOON"
by William Wordsworth

THE world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

1806.

Another wonderful poem: "We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!" And to what have we given them? "Getting and spending".

Whitman is another favorite--and this one shows me that intellectual study can only go so far.

WHEN I heard the learn'd astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts, the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the learned astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

Walt Whitman (1865)

Wordsworth and Whitman - can it get any better!?!?

Julia wrote: "As a retired English teacher, I love poetry--so I thought we might share poems that have inspired us as we strive to become more "green".

This one from Billy Collins speaks to the idea of spendin..."

I loved the Billy Collins poem... Thank you for sharing it with us.

Thanks, Greta--nice to find others who enjoy poetry :-)

The Powwow at the End of the World
BY SHERMAN ALEXIE

I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall
after an Indian woman puts her shoulder to the Grand Coulee Dam
and topples it. I am told by many of you that I must forgive
and so I shall after the floodwaters burst each successive dam
downriver from the Grand Coulee. I am told by many of you
that I must forgive and so I shall after the floodwaters find
their way to the mouth of the Columbia River as it enters the Pacific
and causes all of it to rise. I am told by many of you that I must forgive
and so I shall after the first drop of floodwater is swallowed by that salmon
waiting in the Pacific. I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall
after that salmon swims upstream, through the mouth of the Columbia
and then past the flooded cities, broken dams and abandoned reactors
of Hanford. I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall
after that salmon swims through the mouth of the Spokane River
as it meets the Columbia, then upstream, until it arrives
in the shallows of a secret bay on the reservation where I wait alone.
I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall after
that salmon leaps into the night air above the water, throws
a lightning bolt at the brush near my feet, and starts the fire
which will lead all of the lost Indians home. I am told
by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall
after we Indians have gathered around the fire with that salmon
who has three stories it must tell before sunrise: one story will teach us
how to pray; another story will make us laugh for hours;
the third story will give us reason to dance. I am told by many
of you that I must forgive and so I shall when I am dancing
with my tribe during the powwow at the end of the world.

Sherman Alexie, “The Powwow at the End of the World” from The Summer of Black Widows. Copyright © 1996 by Sherman Alexie.

Jimmy wrote: "The Powwow at the End of the World
BY SHERMAN ALEXIE

I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall
after an Indian woman puts her shoulder to the Grand Coulee Dam
and topples it. I..."

Love Sherman Alexie...

John Keats - Ode to a Nightingale:

1.

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,—
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.10

2.

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim.

3.

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs,
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.30

4.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.40

5.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

6.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
[111]To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem become a sod.60

7.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

8.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?


And read by Benedict Cumberbatch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrAGC...

Oh, Jimmy and Lynn--what a joy to check in this morning and read these two wonderful poems. Jimmy, Sherman Alexie speaks so powerfully for the native Americans. The very fact that the U.S. still has a Columbus Day is appalling, and I'd spend the day with my students discussing Indigenous People's Day. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigeno...

And I'd share with them this poem, "Columbus Day":

Columbus Day
by Jimmie Durham, Wolf Clan Cherokee
(when he was a 6th grader)

In school I was taught the names
Columbus, Cortez, and Pizzaro and
A dozen other filthy murderers.
A bloodline all the way to General Miles,
Daniel Boone and General Eisenhower.

No one mentioned the names
Of even a few of the victims.
But don't you remember Chaske, whose spine
Was crushed so quickly by Mr. Pizzaro's boot?
What words did he cry into the dust?

What was the familiar name
Of that young girl who danced so gracefully
That everyone in the village sang with her--
Before Cortez' sword hacked off her arms
As she protested the burning of her sweetheart?

That young man's name was Many Deeds,
And he had been a leader of a band of fighters
Called the Redstick Hummingbirds, who slowed
The march of Cortez' army with only a few
Spears and stones which now lay still
In the mountains and remember.

Greenrock Woman was the name
Of that old lady who walked right up
And spat in Columbus' face.
We must remember that, and remember
Laughing Otter the Taino who tried to stop
Columbus and who was taken away as a slave.
We never saw him again.

In school I learned of heroic discoveries
Made by liars and crooks. The courage
Of millions of sweet and true people
Was not commemorated.

Let us then declare a holiday
For ourselves, and make a parade that begins
With Columbus' victims and continues
Even to our grandchildren who will be named
In their honor.

Because isn't it true that even the summer
Grass here in this land whispers those names,
And every creek has accepted the responsibility
Of singing those names? And nothing can stop
The wind from howling those names around
The corners of the school.

Why else would the birds sing
So much sweeter here than in other lands?

And Lynn, I just listened to the Cumberbatch reading--how gently he makes those lines come alive.

Keats has always hurt my heart; the title of one biography comes from the first line of verse 6: "Darkling I Listen: The Last Days and Death of John Keats" by John Evangelist Walsh.

"On October 21, 1820, John Keats set foot in Rome for what he hoped would be a swift convalescence that would return him to his normally energetic pace of writing. Exactly one hundred days later, he succumbed to consumption, dead at the age of twenty-five. This charming, elegiac, and detailed book brings to light the last days of his life, describing what he experienced in his room overlooking the quaint Piazza di Spagna and his tragically unrealized ambitions for the future."

http://www.amazon.com/Darkling-Listen...

Sorry, Jimmy--I started this thread for poetry, not for selections that use the term "smart ass". Those types of inflammatory words stop all dialogue from happening. This has been floating around the internet for awhile, and denigrates both generations.

Maybe you could post this on another thread--not sure why you would have put it here with poetry, but I hope you can move it.

Meanwhile, back to poetry:

"Window Poem" by Wendell Berry

Sometimes he thinks the earth
might be better without humans.
He's ashamed of that.
It worries him,
him being a human, and needing
to think well of others
in order to think well of himself.
And there are
a few he thinks well of,
a few he loves
as well as himself almost,
and he would like to say
better.

But history
is so largely unforgivable.
And now his might government
wants to help everybody
even if it has to kill them
to do it - like the fellow in the story
who helped his neighbor to Heaven:
'I heard the Lord calling him,
Judge, and I sent him on.'
According to the government
everybody is just waiting
to be given a chance
to be like us. He can't
go along with that.

Here is a thing, flesh of his flesh,
that he hates. He would like
a little assurance
that no one will destroy the world
for some good cause.
Until he dies, he would like his life
to pertain to the earth.
But there is something in him
that will wait, even
while he protests,
for things turn out as they will.

Out his window this morning
he saw nine ducks in flight,
and a hawk dive at his mate
in delight.

The day stands apart
from the calendar. There is a will
that receives it as enough.

He is given a fragment of time
in this fragment of the world.

He likes it pretty well.

Julia wrote: "And Lynn, I just listened to the Cumberbatch reading--how gently he makes those lines come alive.

Keats has always hurt my heart; the title of one biography comes from the first line of verse 6: ..."

Mr. Cumberbatch has a wonderful voice. And fortunately for us, he has done a number of readings, including children's books.

Jimmy wrote: "I deleted it, although I thought it wss pretty harmless."

I actually love that post off of FB. It probably doesn't belong here in poetry, but if you could post it somewhere else, I would appreciate it. Shout Out or even Green Quotes would work.

I don't really think that it denigrates anyone - it is making a good point, and I was going to share it with my students next semester. While progress is good, sometimes what is called progress is really far less healthy for both humans and the environment, and the old ways of doing things are better.

Michael Pollan makes the same point in In Defense of Food when he basically says, eat like your grandparents/great-grandparents (depending on your age).

I guess at 72, I'm just not comfortable with the term "smart ass" regarding young people, whom I taught for 31 years. I agree with you, Lynn--Michael Pollan does a great job of saying that same idea--his "In Defense of Food" was our five-city book read last summer.

On Earth Day, I'd use this poem with my high school students--Ackerman is one of my favorites.

"School Prayer" by Diane Ackerman

In the name of the daybreak
and the eyelids of morning
and the wayfaring moon
and the night when it departs,

I swear I will not dishonor
my soul with hatred,
but offer myself humbly
as a guardian of nature,
as a healer of misery,
as a messenger of wonder,
as an architect of peace.

In the name of the sun and its mirrors
and the day that embraces it
and the cloud veils drawn over it
and the uttermost night
and the male and the female
and the plants bursting with seed
and the crowning seasons
of the firefly and the apple,

I will honor all life
—wherever and in whatever form
it may dwell—on Earth my home,
and in the mansions of the stars.

"The Peace of Wild Things"


When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

--Wendell Berry

Lynnm wrote: "Jimmy wrote: "I deleted it, although I thought it wss pretty harmless."

I actually love that post off of FB. It probably doesn't belong here in poetry, but if you could post it somewhere else, ..."

I completely understand. Young people today have a lot of criticism aimed at them, most of it unjustified. I feel as if I'm constantly defending my students.

But, I don't think that it would bother them. I think most of them might even be interested in the differences, and it would bring up some good talking points.

Julia wrote: ""The Peace of Wild Things"


When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wo..."

I've never read this Wendell Berry poem. Very nice...

Bill McKibben mentioned this poem in one of his lectures.

Robert Frost's "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 kept 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.

This poem was written after the Earthrise picture was taken in 1968.

VOYAGE TO THE MOON
Archibald MacLeish

Presence among us,
wanderer in the skies,
dazzle of silver in our leaves and on our
waters silver,
O silver evasion in our farthest thought--
"the visiting moon" . . . "the glimpses of the moon" . . .
and we have touched you!

From the first of time,
before the first of time, before the
first men tasted time, we thought of you.
You were a wonder to us, unattainable,
a longing past the reach of longing,
a light beyond our light, our lives--perhaps
a meaning to us.

Now our hands have touched you in your depth of night.

Three days and three nights we journeyed,
steered by farthest stars, climbed outward,
crossed the invisible tide-rip where the floating dust
falls one way or the other in the void between,
followed that other dawn, encountered
cold, faced death--unfathomable emptiness . . .
Then, the fourth day evening, we descended,
made fast, set foot at dawn upon your beaches,
sifted between our fingers your cold sand,

We stand here in the dusk, the cold, the silence . . .
and here, as at the first of time, we lift our heads.
Over us, more beautiful than the moon, a
moon, a wonder to us, unattainable,
a longing past the reach of longing,
a light beyond our light, our lives--perhaps
a meaning to us . . .

O, a meaning!

Over us on these silent beaches the bright earth,
presence among us.


Earthrise: How Man First Saw the Earth

Earth Your Dancing Place
by May Swenson

Beneath heaven's vault
remember always walking
through halls of cloud
down aisles of sunlight
or through high hedges
of the green rain
walk in the world
highheeled with swirl of cape
hand at the swordhilt
of your pride
Keep a tall throat
Remain aghast at life

Enter each day
as upon a stage
lighted and waiting
for your step
Crave upward as flame
have keenness in the nostril
Give your eyes
to agony or rapture

Train your hands
as birds to be
brooding or nimble
Move your body
as the horses
sweeping on slender hooves
over crag and prairie
with fleeing manes
and aloofness of their limbs

Take earth for your own large room
and the floor of the earth
carpeted with sunlight
and hung round with silver wind
for your dancing place

From Collected Poems by May Swenson. Copyright © 2013.

Being But Men

by Dylan Thomas

Being but men, we walked into the trees
Afraid, letting our syllables be soft
For fear of waking the rooks,
For fear of coming
Noiselessly into a world of wings and cries.

If we were children we might climb,
Catch the rooks sleeping, and break no twig,
And, after the soft ascent,
Thrust out our heads above the branches
To wonder at the unfailing stars.

Out of confusion, as the way is,
And the wonder, that man knows,
Out of the chaos would come bliss.

That, then, is loveliness, we said,
Children in wonder watching the stars,
Is the aim and the end.

Being but men, we walked into the trees.

"Being But Men" by Dylan Thomas, from Collected Poems. © Norton, 1971.

Ah, Jimmy--great poem. I love her line "Remain aghast at life." And the idea of the earth being our "dancing place" is magical.

One of the side-effects of what we are doing to the environment is what we are also doing to our own souls. I think of so many who no longer can truly see the stars--when I first went to Wyoming and lifted my eyes, the tears came in wonder.

Here's a rather long one from David Wagoner:

"The Silence of the Stars"

When Laurens van der Post one night
In the Kalihari Desert told the Bushmen
He couldn't hear the stars
Singing, they didn't believe him. They looked at him,
Half-smiling. They examined his face
To see whether he was joking
Or deceiving them. Then two of those small men
Who plant nothing, who have almost
Nothing to hunt, who live
On almost nothing, and with no one
But themselves, led him away
From the crackling thorn-scrub fire
And stood with him under the night sky
And listened. One of them whispered,
Do you not hear them now?
And van der Post listened, not wanting
To disbelieve, but had to answer,
No. They walked him slowly
Like a sick man to the small dim
Circle of firelight and told him
They were terribly sorry,
And he felt even sorrier
For himself and blamed his ancestors
For their strange loss of hearing,
Which was his loss now. On some clear nights
When nearby houses have turned off their visions,
When the traffic dwindles, when through streets
Are between sirens and the jets overhead
Are between crossings, when the wind
Is hanging fire in the fir trees,
And the long-eared owl in the neighboring grove
Between calls is regarding his own darkness,
I look at the stars again as I first did
To school myself in the names of constellations
And remember my first sense of their terrible distance,
I can still hear what I thought
At the edge of silence where the inside jokes
Of my heartbeat, my arterial traffic,
The C above high C of my inner ear, myself
Tunelessly humming, but now I know what they are:
My fair share of the music of the spheres
And clusters of ripening stars,
Of the songs from the throats of the old gods
Still tending even tone-deaf creatures
Through their exiles in the desert.

Julia - another forum that you might like here on Goodreads, if you haven't already discovered it, is The Readers Review: Literature from 1800 to 1910. Mostly novels, and they have a gorup of people who have an excellent understanding of literature. For the summer, they are going to read The Forsythe Saga, and are starting a Roman Fleuve project (they selected Zola). They are also in the midst of a Dickens Project that I've been doing - we are up to Dombey and Son.

Thanks, Lynn--I've been thinking about adding another group, but right now the Coursera "Climate Literacy" class is keeping me busy. "Eaarth" certainly ties right in--McKibben is all over the forums there. Our professors are two great women from the University of British Columbia.

I highly recommend everyone take a look at www.coursera.org which offers more than 200 courses, all free, with professors and students from around the globe. I'll be taking the "Climate Change" class in August and a poetry class in September.

The courses cover the humanities, sciences--even food and nutrition. You can do as much or as little of the course work as you like--but it's all free learning!!

I'll be in the Climate Change class in August as well! Should be fun.

Jimmy wrote: "Earth Your Dancing Place
by May Swenson

Beneath heaven's vault
remember always walking
through halls of cloud
down aisles of sunlight
or through high hedges
of the green rain
walk in the world
hi..."

Jimmy, it's been some time since I've read May Swenson, and I thank you for giving me a reason with this poem to return to her work. It's just beautiful!

Jimmy wrote: "Being But Men

by Dylan Thomas

Being but men, we walked into the trees
Afraid, letting our syllables be soft
For fear of waking the rooks,
For fear of coming
Noiselessly into a world of wings and ..."

Also this one--quite lovely. I've added a piece of it that would fit to a tweet.

"Enriching the Earth"

by Wendell Berry

To enrich the earth I have sowed clover and grass
to grow and die. I have plowed in the seeds
of winter grains and of various legumes,
their growth to be plowed in to enrich the earth.
I have stirred into the ground the offal
and the decay of the growth of past seasons
and so mended the earth and made its yield increase.
All this serves the dark. I am slowly falling
into the fund of things. And yet to serve the earth,
not knowing what I serve, gives a wideness
and a delight to the air, and my days
do not wholly pass. It is the mind's service,
for when the will fails so do the hands
and one lives at the expense of life.
After death, willing or not, the body serves,
entering the earth. And so what was heaviest
and most mute is at last raised up into song.

Julia- could you please tell me which of Billy Collin's books has "Directions" in it?

Certainly--it's from "The Art of Drowning".

"The Summer Day" - Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up
and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated
eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes
her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the
fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your own wild and precious life?

Julia wrote: "Certainly--it's from "The Art of Drowning"."

Thank you Julia! - I will buy a copy-

Nice, Greta--I have a signed copy of his "Picnic, Lightning" that a student got for me years ago, and I treasure it.

Lynn, Mary Oliver is very special, and I love the one you posted. Those last 3 lines make my heart fly. Here's another :-)

What Can I Say

What can I say that I have not said before?
So I'll say it again.
The leaf has a song in it.
Stone is the face of patience.
Inside the river there is an unfinishable story
and you are somewhere in it
and it will never end until all ends.

Take your busy heart to the art museum and the
chamber of commerce
but take it also to the forest.
The song you heard singing in the leaf when you
were a child
is singing still.
I am of years lived, so far, seventy-four,
and the leaf is singing still.

~ Mary Oliver ~

Julia wrote: "Nice, Greta--I have a signed copy of his "Picnic, Lightning" that a student got for me years ago, and I treasure it.

Lynn, Mary Oliver is very special, and I love the one you posted. Those last 3 ..."

Mary Oliver has long been a personal favourite of mine, and this poem is one that I truly love. You make me want to dig out my copies of her work, and post a few more.

I was privileged to see her do a reading at Bowdoin a few years back. What a spectacular evening that was--sold out house, and I was sitting on the steps because I got there too late to claim a seat. Some of my books have even been personally autographed!

That's wonderful, Greta--I'd love to see more Oliver. I'm 72, so she speaks powerfully to keeping the spirit young!

Here's another I love, since trees are so special. (My bumper sticker reads, "I don't just hug trees, I kiss them, too." :-)


When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness,
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, "Stay awhile."
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, "It's simple," they say,
"and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine."

~ Mary Oliver ~

Isn't this wonderful? All these Mary Oliver poems!

She makes my heart glow :-) This one has such a fierce joy--and I have geese on the river behind my house, so I think of this poem often:

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

~ Mary Oliver

Julia wrote: "She makes my heart glow :-) This one has such a fierce joy--and I have geese on the river behind my house, so I think of this poem often:

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have t..."

You've posted two of my most favourite Mary Oliver poems. I will have to see what else I have to offer to this discussion.

What I love about her is that she so captures the natural world in her writing. I get lost in her imagery.

Here is the Shelley poem quoted by McKibben in "Eaarth":

OZYMANDIAS
Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

[Ozymandias represents a transliteration into Greek of a part of the throne name of Ramesses II, User-maat-re Setep-en-re, "Ra's mighty truth, chosen of Ra".]

And here's one from Wendell Berry that shows the opposite viewpoint from "Ozymandias"--the gracious acceptance of our passing.


The Wish to Be Generous

All that I serve will die, all my delights,
the flesh kindled from my flesh, garden and field,
the silent lilies standing in the woods,
the woods, the hill, the whole earth, all
will burn in man's evil, or dwindle
in its own age. Let the world bring on me
the sleep of darkness without stars, so I may know
my little light taken from me into the seed
of the beginning and the end, so I may bow
to mystery, and take my stand on the earth
like a tree in a field, passing without haste
or regret toward what will be, my life
a patient willing descent into the grass.

~ Wendell Berry ~

Peonies at Dusk
by Jane Kenyon

White peonies blooming along the porch
send out light
while the rest of the yard grows dim.

Outrageous flowers as big as human
heads! They’re staggered
by their own luxuriance: I had
to prop them up with stakes and twine.

The moist air intensifies their scent,
and the moon moves around the barn
to find out what it’s coming from.

In the darkening June evening
I draw a blossom near, and bending close
search it as a woman searches
a loved one’s face.

Jane Kenyon from Constance (1993)

Oh I love this! Peonies are one of my favourite flowers. Thanks for posting this.

John Keats (1795–1821)
December 30, 1816

"On the Grasshopper and Cricket"

The poetry of earth is never dead:
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
That is the Grasshopper’s—he takes the lead
In summer luxury,—he has never done
With his delights; for when tired out with fun
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:
On a lone winter evening, when the frost
Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The Cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever,
And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,
The Grasshopper’s among some grassy hills.

W.H. Auden's "Their Lonely Betters":

As I listened from a beach-chair in the shade
To all the noises that my garden made,
It seemed to me only proper that words
Should be withheld from vegetables and birds.

A robin with no Christian name ran through
The Robin-Anthem which was all it knew,
And rustling flowers for some third party waited
to say which pairs, if any, should get mated.

Not one of them was capable of lying,
There was no one which knew that it was dying
Or could have with a rhythm or a rhyme
Assumed resonsibiilty for time.

Let them leave language to their lonely betters
Who count some days and long for certain letters;
We, too, make noises when we laugh or weep:
Words are for those with promises to keep.

Julia wrote: "John Keats (1795–1821)
December 30, 1816

"On the Grasshopper and Cricket"

The poetry of earth is never dead:
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice wil..."

Love Keats...

Ah, Lynn--how very true. I'm listening to the leaves whispering now in their own secret language not meant for us to understand.

I like this one from Whitman, when I see the world too full of human hubris:

"I think I could turn and live with the animals, they are so placid and self-contained;
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition;
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins;
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God;
Not one is dissatisfied-not one is demented with the mania of owning things;
Not one kneels to another, nor his kind that lived thousands of years ago;
Not one is responsible or industrious over the whole earth."