Four Poems for November

This is the fourth blog in a series. For those of you who wish to attend poetry readings or wish to attend more poetry readings than you already have, but are hindered by time, distance and a lack thereof, here are a few poem recommendations from poets who have been published on our poetry blog.   

 

Richard Stoltzfoos writes:  

“The Future of Forestry” examines how the world might look in fifty years. Will trees even exist? What will youth imagine, when we tell them what trees were? Note the subtle scheme of rhyme: two (sometimes slant) rhyming syllables per line, not at regular distances, so that the listener, failing to detect end rhyme, only remarks that it “sounds nice.” Notice as well that the forests are a metaphor for mankind.  

C.S. Lewis’s poetry is little-known, a single volume carried by HarperOne (among other publishers) entitled “Poems.” However, I have connected with his poetry more than with that of almost any other, since there is nearly always a discernible meaning. Some might call that a touch of didacticism, but I appreciate a little didacticism, unlike many poets who would rather not lift another individual to the position of teaching them, preferring to view preachers, lecturers, professors, etc. as sources of information/inspiration rather than as occupying any real position of authority to which one ought to submit oneself. I say that to convince you the reader not to dislike a clear meaning; having read this, however, you may not find Lewis’s poetry to be so to you, and in that case I say so much the better, at least from the standpoint of modern literature.   

“The Future of Forestry” by CS Lewis  

How will the legend of the age of trees
Feel, when the last tree falls in England?
When the concrete spreads and the town conquers
The country’s heart; when contraceptive
Tarmac’s laid where farm has faded,
Tramline flows where slept a hamlet,
And shop-fronts, blazing without a stop from
Dover to Wrath, have glazed us over?
Simplest tales will then bewilder
The questioning children, “What was a chestnut?
Say what it means to climb a Beanstalk,
Tell me, grandfather, what an elm is.
What was Autumn? They never taught us.”
Then, told by teachers how once from mould
Came growing creatures of lower nature
Able to live and die, though neither
Beast nor man, and around them wreathing
Excellent clothing, breathing sunlight –
Half understanding, their ill-acquainted
Fancy will tint their wonder-paintings
Trees as men walking, wood-romances
Of goblins stalking in silky green,
Of milk-sheen froth upon the lace of hawthorn’s
Collar, pallor in the face of birchgirl.
So shall a homeless time, though dimly
Catch from afar (for soul is watchfull)
A sight of tree-delighted Eden.  

 

Hannah K writes: 

I was first introduced to Alfred Noyes in 7th grade, when I became mesmerized by his poem “Song of Sherwood” in my textbook. Other than “The Highwayman”, I never read anything else by Noyes until this past January, when I found a beautiful 1930’s edition of his poems at a second-hand bookshop in Inverness, Scotland. “The Outlaw” was one of the first poems in the book, and it struck me with its powerful theme of truth and love personified as outlaws. I love the confidence of the narrator, who knows that he is on the side of truth, and is grounded by his lover’s dedication to him. In a society that seems eager to banish morality, absolute truth, and sacrificial love, I think this poem has the perfect amount of swagger to remind us that we’re on the winning side.   

“The Outlaw” by Alfred Noyes

Deep in the greenwood of my heart
My wild hounds race.
I cloak my soul at feast and mart,
I mask my face;

Outlawed, but not alone, for Truth
Is outlawed, too.
Proud world, you cannot banish us.
We banish you.

Go by, go by, with all your din,
Your dust, your greed, your guile,
Your gold, your thrones can never win—
From Her—one smile.

She sings to me in a lonely place,
She takes my hand.
I look into her lovely face
And understand….

Outlawed, but not alone, for Love
Is outlawed, too.
You cannot banish us, proud world.
We banish you.

Now which is outlawed, which alone?
Around us fall and rise
Murmurs of leaf and fern, the moan
Of Paradise.

Outlawed? Then hills and woods and streams
Are outlawed, too!
Proud world, from our immortal dreams,
We banish you.

 

Bryan Snyder writes:  

I love this poem—because who doesn’t love simple language that tells them honestly how things are? I like the dialogue between Oliver’s longstanding love for nature and her newer feelings for God which she realizes are closely connected. (She doesn’t attempt to explain how.) And I appreciate how her love for God supersedes love for her possessions. There is suspense in not knowing where that love will ask her to go, but it’s a joyful suspense. I want to take the same journey.  

“Thirst” by Mary Oliver

Another morning and I wake with thirst
for the goodness I do not have. I walk
out to the pond and all the way God has
given us such beautiful lessons. Oh Lord,
I was never a quick scholar but sulked
and hunched over my books past the hour
and the bell; grant me, in your mercy,
a little more time. Love for the earth
and love for you are having such a long
conversation in my heart. Who knows what
will finally happen or where I will be sent,
yet already I have given a great many things
away, expecting to be told to pack nothing,
except the prayers which, with this thirst,
I am slowly learning.

 

Sheila Petre writes:  

I always wish more people knew more about my friends’ poems. Any and all of them. So as a stand-in for all of my friends’ verse, here’s one I love by Elizabeth Riall.  

“Mercy” by Elizabeeth Riall

Touched by no tower’s crest,
Drawn down by no man’s hands,
That Ear lists, at heart’s key-hole pressed,
To the babble He understands.

I like this poem, first, because it’s short, and I like short verse (see also R.B. Graham). Second, I like the sounds of it—three t’s to start, in the first line, then three d’s in the second, then three r’s…There are not only the hands/understands rhyme, preluded with “man’s,” but the crest/pressed one with its ending sounds reverberating in “lists,” heart’s,” and “stands”. To fit so many echoes into so small a chamber seems a feat, and one I would love to manage. Then there is the strong, central image, that ear pressed against the heart. This is not the heart He has yet entered, this is the heart He waits outside. And to be heard, to be understood—by one we have not yet accepted? What else is mercy but that? And who are we to think we could force it?  

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Artwork: James Hamilton 1819-1878 From the Tempest