Everyday Canvas

On Poetry

Prompt: Have you ever asked someone what their favorite poem is? It's not as easy as you would think for them to name an author and a poem with the reason why.
One of mine is Marge Piercy's The Moon is Always Female. I was trying to understand women in general.
Please recommend a couple to us and why.

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No, I don’t ask anyone what their favorite anything is because I am so fickle myself, especially with poetry. What I love changes all the time.

I just fished these two from my notepad. There are others, and many more are elsewhere. As I said, my tastes change all the time, although not so much concerning the poets I love.

One of the poets I've always loved is Emerson, and so, I’ll let the poems talk for themselves.

Days
by Emerson

Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days,
Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes,
And marching single in an endless file,
Bring diadems and fagots in their hands.
To each they offer gifts after his will,
Bread, kingdoms, stars, or sky that holds them all.
I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp,
Forgot my morning wishes, hastily
Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day
Turned and departed silent. I, too late,
Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.


Another favorite poet of mine is Rumi

Only Breath

Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu
Buddhist, sufi, or zen. Not any religion

or cultural system. I am not from the East
or the West, not out of the ocean or up

from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not
composed of elements at all. I do not exist,

am not an entity in this world or in the next,
did not descend from Adam and Eve or any

origin story. My place is placeless, a trace
of the traceless. Neither body or soul.

I belong to the beloved, have seen the two
worlds as one and that one call to and know,

first, last, outer, inner, only that
breath breathing human being.