Thursday, September 28, 2006

Poetry Corner

In honor of Connecticut's new poet laureate, John Hollander of Yale (you may read one of his poems here, if you wish), let's take a quick poetry break. Here's a poem I found with an autumn in Connecticut theme:
Autumn Twilight
Harry Hibbard Kemp

Cornwall Bridge, Connecticut

Rich afterglows of Autumn
Fill all the world with light
And elm and oak and maple
Loom up like fire in flight,

And golden is the valley,
And golden is the hill,
And golden is the first star
At twilight’s window-sill.


You can read about a Connecticut poet, Wilbert Snow, who was governor for about two weeks back in the 1940s here, and see a few lines from one of his poems.

Feel free to post a poem you like. Also feel free to stay far, far away from poetry.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

October, November, oh the Autumn Glow,

By 30 points Rell will pummell DeStefa-NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

Anonymous said...

From "Of Hartford in a Purple Light" by Wallace Stevens:

This stage-light of the Opera?
It is like a region full of intonings.
It is Hartford seen in a purple light.

A moment ago, light masculine,
Working, with big hands, on the town,
Arranged its heroic attitudes.

But now as in an amour of women
Purple sets purple round. Look, master,
See the river, the railroad, the cathedral.

Anonymous said...

And here are some stanzas from Hollander's "River Remembered:"

My memory floats over now, to stay
With scraps of past reflection from along
Its banks I knew well in a distant day
To fall into old rhythms of its song.

Gathering tidal force beyond the land,
An estuary runs up from the shore, which
Begins to narrow at New London and
Runs out of breadth at the old port of Norwich

(How the New World undoes good English names!
I know two lovely sisters: one of them's
A daughter of New London on the Thames,
The other born in England by the Thames)

***

Some days, from the east bank, gobbets of floating
Gunk, that looked quite nasty, yellow, rotten,
Defaced the river's countenance, denoting
That pharmaceuticals were made at Groton.

So mirrored on the bosom of the stream
At a bad moment in our history
Lurk emblems of what happened to our dream
Of progress, health and wide prosperity:

Pollution by the fruits of our success --
The drugs that killed bacteria before
And made us fear contagion somewhat less
Now let in cancers by the cellar door.