the milkmaid by johannes vermeer / vermeer by wisława szymborska (trans. clare cavanagh)

why is the poetry society. registered charity no. 303334. sending me destiel content via their mailing list

@ohwhatevers​ behold

people in the notes are being surprised at the quality of the poem and like. yeah? it’s a finalist in a competition run by the poetry society and it’s their poem of the month? this post was about the unexpectedness of being sent this poem by The Poetry Society TM and not to complain about Bad poetry.

The day begins and ends without permission. We do not own time but yes, to make sense of it. Life ends When the last breath dies down And the night?… the perfect invitation to dream.

poetry-siir ©

El día comienza y termina sin permiso. No somos dueños del tiempo, pero sí, de darle un sentido. La vida termina, cuando el último suspiro se apaga. Y la noche?… la invitación perfecta para soñar.

poetry-siir ©

mishacollins | misha

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the milky way, They stretched in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. The waves beside them danced; but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: A poet could not but be gay, In such a jocund company: I gazed–and gazed–but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought: For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils. - William Wordsworth

Misha reciting a ‘never before heard’ poem at the Random Acts event tonight. (x)

Is there anything better than Misha reciting a poem and a warm cup of tea ☕

So inspiring… 😂 😂 😂

Columbia Poetry Review

God he looks so good… 😋

Lord Byron wrote his last poem on this day

On this day (22 January) in 1824, Byron wrote “On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year,” his last poem. He had arrived at Missolonghi three weeks earlier, taking command of his “army of liberation” which would free Greece from the Turks. But he died of fever on 19 April, after railing against incompetent doctors who literally bled him to death. On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year

‘Tis time the heart should be unmoved, Since others it hath ceased to move: Yet, though I cannot be beloved, Still let me love!

My days are in the yellow leaf; The flowers and fruits of love are gone; The worm, the canker, and the grief Are mine alone!

The fire that on my bosom preys Is lone as some volcanic isle; No torch is kindled at its blaze– A funeral pile.

The hope, the fear, the jealous care, The exalted portion of the pain And power of love, I cannot share, But wear the chain.

But ’tis not thus–and ’tis not here– Such thoughts should shake my soul nor now, Where glory decks the hero’s bier, Or binds his brow.

The sword, the banner, and the field, Glory and Greece, around me see! The Spartan, borne upon his shield, Was not more free.

Awake! (not Greece–she is awake!) Awake, my spirit! Think through whom Thy life-blood tracks its parent lake, And then strike home!

Tread those reviving passions down, Unworthy manhood!–unto thee Indifferent should the smile or frown Of beauty be.

If thou regrett’st thy youth, why live? The land of honourable death Is here:–up to the field, and give Away thy breath!

Seek out–less often sought than found– A soldier’s grave, for thee the best; Then look around, and choose thy ground, And take thy rest.

For more than forty years, Pulitzer Prize winning poet Mary Oliver lived on Cape Cod with the love of her life, the remarkable photographer Molly Malone Cook.

When Cook died in 2005 at the age of eighty, Oliver looked for a light, however faint, to shine through the thickness of bereavement. She spent a year making her way through thousands of her spouse’s photographs and unprinted negatives, which Oliver then enveloped in her own reflections to bring to life Our World - part memoir, part deeply moving eulogy to a departed soulmate, part celebration of their love for one another through their individual creative loves. Embraced in Oliver’s poetry and prose, Cook’s photographs reveal the intimate thread that brought these two extraordinary women together — a shared sense of deep aliveness and attention to the world, a devotion to making life’s invisibles visible, and above all a profound kindness to everything that exists, within and without.

Oliver ends Our World with The Whistler, a poem on never fully knowing even those nearest to us — a beautiful testament to what another wise woman once wrote: “You can never know anyone as completely as you want. But that’s okay, love is better.”

THE WHISTLER

All of a sudden she began to whistle. By all of a sudden I mean that for more than thirty years she had not whistled. It was thrilling. At first I wondered, who was in the house, what stranger? I was upstairs reading, and she was downstairs. As from the throat of a wild and cheerful bird, not caught but visiting, the sounds war- bled and slid and doubled back and larked and soared.

Finally I said, Is that you? Is that you whistling? Yes, she said. I used to whistle, a long time ago. Now I see I can still whistle. And cadence after cadence she strolled through the house, whistling.

I know her so well, I think. I thought. Elbow and an- kle. Mood and desire. Anguish and frolic. Anger too. And the devotions. And for all that, do we even begin to know each other? Who is this I’ve been living with for thirty years?

This clear, dark, lovely whistler?

From Mary’s FB:

To Mary’s beloved readers, we’re very sorry to share this sad news:

Mary Oliver, beloved poet and bard of the natural world, died on January 17 at home in Hobe Sound, Florida. She was 83.

Oliver published her first book, No Voyage, in London in 1963, at the age of twenty-eight. The author of more than 20 collections, she was cherished by readers, and was the recipient of numerous awards, including the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for American Primitive, and the 1992 National Book Award for New and Selected Poems, Volume One. She led workshops and held residencies at various colleges and universities, including Bennington College, where she held the Catharine Osgood Foster Chair for Distinguished Teaching until 2001. It was her work as an educator that encouraged her to write the guide to verse, A Poetry Handbook (1994), and she went on to publish many works of prose, including the New York Times bestselling essay collection, Upstream (2016). For her final work, Oliver created a personal lifetime collection, selecting poems from throughout her more than fifty-year career. Devotions was published by Penguin Press in 2017.

Her poetry developed in close communion with the landscapes she knew best, the rivers and creeks of her native Ohio, and, after 1964, the ponds, beech forests, and coastline of her chosen hometown, Provincetown. She spent her final years in Florida, a relocation that brought with it the appearance of mangroves. “I could not be a poet without the natural world,” she wrote. “Someone else could. But not me. For me the door to the woods is the door to the temple.” In the words of the late Lucille Clifton, “She uses the natural world to illuminate the whole world.”

In her attention to the smallest of creatures, and the most fleeting of moments, Oliver’s work reveals the human experience at its most expansive and eternal. She lived poetry as a faith and her singular, clear-eyed understanding of verse’s vitality of purpose began in childhood, and continued all her life. “For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.”

When Death Comes

When death comes

like the hungry bear in autumn;

when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;

when death comes

like the measle-pox;

when death comes

like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:

what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything

as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,

and I look upon time as no more than an idea,

and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common

as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,

tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something

precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder

if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,

or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

1.7.17 | Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

A Good Morning

A poem by Misha Collins

my name is cow and wen she sits benethe the stall withe tiny kit

I hav no hands withe which to pat I use mye tung I lik the cat

my name is cat and with tha kit In front of stall we lyk to sit

I feel her tongue I say meow I have a fren Her name is cow

– Rainer Maria Rilke

i’ve got a zippo in my pocket

I’m selfish, maybe I don’t care

if I saved the world, isn’t it mine to end?

I give and it destroys everything I offer it takes what I don’t it wants you it breathes down my neck tries to take you from me

well, let it try i’ve got a zippo in my pocket and I’ll watch it burn