Poems to Carry in the Blood
A question answered; and an invitation to join the shenanigans October 25th
Welcome to Quiet Reading, a weekly refuge for our shared humanity, inspired by authors, books, and this world of marvels. This post belongs to the Quiet Reading Community Pages, featuring various kinds of collaboration with other Substack writers.
Last Friday, I asked the Substack Notes community for advice:
Today, I want to share the abundant results of my request (so abundant that you’ll need to click the title of this post in email to jump to a browser to read them all)! If you feel inspired, as I do, to stoke the fire of your soul with fresh verses and bleat them to the skies, find guidelines at the end of this post to participate in a group recitation & read-aloud on Friday, October 25th. Come bleat with me. :-)
But first, a story …
A semester or two ago, I had a lightbulb moment.
I was in the back yard, feeling glum, staring with displeasure at the sagging fence, and counting miseries like rosary beads. “When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,” I groused to myself for the umpteenth time in the decades since I had studied Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29 in school.
When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate…1
I was in no mood for the slumgullion slosh of “thy sweet love remembered,” so I let my mind wander. How many others, I wondered, reached for Sonnet 29 on dark days? Thousands living? Hundreds of thousands over time? Millions maybe?
Okay, maybe “all alone” wasn’t the right modifying phrase.
When flattened by this stupid, unfair world I more or less in crowded ranks complain ---
Oh, what did I have to complain about?
In Sicily a father plants a tree . . .2
A father burying a lock of hair from an infant who died — now there’s something to weep about.
When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes I mope and drag and wallow in the slosh.
That was more like it.
But then a strange note cut into my self-pity: “Glory be to God for dappled things” came out of nowhere.
Okay, not nowhere.
It came out of the box in my brain where I keep remembered lines from poems I once memorized. Sure enough, Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “Pied Beauty” and Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29 were jumbled together.
And while we’re at it: “The Spangled Pandemonium is missing from the zoo. / He bent the bars the barest bit / And slithered glibly through.”
Oh, for heaven’s sake!
Heaven?
Were my cries not bootless after all?
*
And then came the question, from heaven, I guess: Do my kids or my students have old poems in their brains? What cadences come up for them in dark times?
Recitation went out of style a good, long generation ago. Unless they lucked into an oddball poetry enthusiast along the way, the young ones have none of these metrical companions that come in gracious robes to humor me.3
By jiminy, here was reason to get out of bed in the morning!
And so you find me now, foisting poetry on unsuspecting twenty-somethings.
Some say I’ve lost my head. So let them say.
Care to join me? 😉
A Hint of Things to Come
In five weeks, on Friday, October 25, I invite you to post a video or audio recording of you reciting or reading a poem of your choice. It could be one of the suggestions below, something you have written, or something else. Scroll down to the end of this post to help me show my students how remembered poems become part of our character, part of our armor against cruelty, part of our sense of humor, and more.
We are what we eat. Here are some appetizing morsels to consider for this latest Quiet Reading community writing adventure:
Poems to remember
The Substack Notes community obliged my request for memorable poems with an outpouring of suggestions.
I’ve organized the list by form, so if you prefer to choose a metrical poem, a short poem, a sonnet, etc., you’ll find your preferred kind of verse easily.
Within each form, the lists are alphabetized by the poet’s last name. Substack writers who suggested the poem are also named and linked. (If you like their taste in poems, check out their newsletters!)
Sonnets
Their regular rhythm, rhyme, and inner order make sonnets great choices for memory.
Sonnet 29 “When in disgrace” by William Shakespeare - from
Sonnet 116 “Let me not to the marriage” by William Shakespeare - from
&Sonnet 130 “My mistress’ eyes” by William Shakespeare - from
“Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley - from
“When I consider how my light is spent” by John Milton - from Elijah Blumov, Host of Versecraft podcast (Thanks
!)“When I have fears that I may cease to be” by John Keats - from Elijah Blumov, Host of Versecraft podcast (Thanks
!)“I thank you God for most this amazing day” by E. E. Cummings (scroll down the link to hear Cummings read it in 1953) - suggested by
Offered as a gratitude prompt by
in her COVID-era , Nov. 22, 2020.
*
Other short poems, 16 lines or less
Metrical
“Triolet” by G. K. Chesterton - suggested by
“Something Told the Wild Geese” by Rachel Field - suggested by
“Nothing Gold Can Stay” by Robert Frost - suggested by
&“Unsaid” by Dana Gioia (text) - suggested by
“Invictus” by William Ernest Henley - suggested by
“Pied Beauty” by Gerard Manley Hopkins - suggested by
&“Sea-Fever” (“I must go down to the sea again”) by John Masefield - suggested by
“My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke - suggested by Sherman Alexie
“Lay of the Last Minstrel,” Canto 6 [My Native Land] by Sir Walter Scott - suggested by
[More about the full ballad here]“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,” from Macbeth by William Shakespeare - suggested by
“Portia’s Speech” from The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare - suggested by
“Restatement of Romance” by Wallace Stevens - suggested by
“Requiem” by Robert Louis Stevenson - suggested by
&“Travel” by Edna St. Vincent Millay - suggested by
“Crossing the Bar” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson - suggested by
“The Lake Isle of Innisfree” by William Butler Yeats - suggested by
Free Verse
“The Diameter of the Bomb” by Yehuda Amichai - suggested by Dan Ehrenkrantz of
“We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks - suggested by
“Prayer” by Joseph Bruchac - suggested by
“Late Fragment” by Raymond Carver - suggested by
“My Dream about Time” by Lucille Clifton - suggested by
Poems by Billy Collins - suggested by
:“Memory Sack” by Joy Harjo - suggested by
“Annunciation” and “Prayer” by Marie Howe - suggested by
“Widening Circles” by Rainer Maria Rilke - suggested by
“The Way It Is” by William Stafford - suggested by
“Lost” by David Wagoner - suggested by
Metrical Stanzas over 16 lines
Rhymed:
“Still I Rise” by Maya Angelou - suggested by
“One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop - suggested by
“Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll - suggested by
&“Bilingual / Bilingüe,” by Rhina P. Espaillat (English & Spanish) - from
“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost - suggested by
&“Love (III)” by George Herbert - suggested by Rona Maynard
“To Autumn” by John Keats - suggested by
“The Owl and the Pussycat” by Edward Lear - suggested by
“Calico Pie” by Edward Lear - suggested by
“The Village Blacksmith” or “The Children’s Hour” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - suggested by
“A Short Story of Falling” by Alice Oswald - suggested by
“Mad Girl’s Love Song” by Sylvia Plath - suggested by
“A Christmas Carol” (“In the bleak midwinter”) by Christina Rossetti - suggested by
“The Charge of the Light Brigade” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson - from
&Blank verse:
“An Old Man’s Winter Night” by Robert Frost - suggested by
Prince Hal’s “I Know You All” speech from Henry IV, Part I, by William Shakespeare - suggested by
Free Verse Poems over 16 Lines
“Everything that Happens Can Be Called Aging” by Carl Adamshick - suggested by
“Guerilla Garden Writing Poem” by Inua Ellams - suggested by
“I Know the Way You Can Get” by Hafiz - suggested by
“Praise the Rain” by Joy Harjo - suggested by
“Undivided Attention” by Taylor Mali - suggested by Tara Connor
“To Be of Use” by Marge Piercy - suggested by
“I am Vertical” by Sylvia Plath - suggested by
“Myth Dispelled” by Adam Possner - suggested by
“Say Yes Quickly” by Rumi - suggested by
“Be Nobody’s Darling” by Alice Walker - suggested by
“The End and the Beginning” by Wisława Szymborska - suggested by
[If you have never read the 1996 Nobel Prize winner in Literature, please check out this poem!]“Mockingbirds” by Mary Oliver - suggested by
, who highlighted the last 3 stanzas:Wherever it was I was supposed to be this morning— whatever it was I said I would be doing— I was standing at the edge of the field— I was hurrying through my own soul, opening its dark doors— I was leaning out; I was listening.
Also two of Mary Oliver’s best-known poems, suggested by
& :“The Summer Day” (with its famous last lines, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?”
“Wild Geese” (read by Mary Oliver
)
*
Poems and Excerpts Offered in Full
“The Singing Bowl” by Malcolm Guite (from the book of the same name) - suggested by
Begin the song exactly where you are, Remain within the world of which you’re made. Call nothing common in the earth or air, Accept it all and let it be for good. Start with the very breath you breathe in now, This moment’s pulse, this rhythm in your blood And listen to it, ringing soft and low. Stay with the music, words will come in time. Slow down your breathing. Keep it deep and slow. Become an open singing-bowl, whose chime Is richness rising out of emptiness, And timelessness resounding into time. And when the heart is full of quietness Begin the song exactly where you are. *
Excerpt from “The Cure at Troy” by Seamus Heaney - suggested by
:History says, don’t hope on this side of the grave; but then, once in a lifetime, the longed-for tidal wave of justice can rise up and hope and history rhyme. *
Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare, Act II, Scene ii, Enobarbus's speech - from
I will tell you. The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne, Burned on the water: the poop was beaten gold; Purple the sails, and so perfumed that The winds were lovesick with them; the oars were silver, Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made The water which they beat to follow faster, As amorous of their strokes. For her own person, It beggar'd all description: she did lie In her pavilion, cloth-of-gold of tissue, O'erpicturing that Venus where we see The fancy outwork nature: on each side her Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids, With divers-colour'd fans, whose wind did seem To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool, And what they undid did. *
More poems that stay with us
Because of their length, these might not be the first candidates for memorization, but some of us carry around a few immortal lines of them, and that’s enough. You can find all of these easily online except the one I linked:
“Kubla Khan” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge - from
“A Poem about My Rights” by June Jordan - from
“Paul Revere’s Ride” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - from
Satan’s “Better to reign in Hell” speech, Paradise Lost by John Milton, Book I - suggested by
“The Raven” by Edgar Allen Poe - from
“The Cremation of Sam McGee” by Robert W. Service - from
“The Idea of Order at Key West” by Wallace Stevens - from
[David says, “I own a little company that makes loudspeakers, and we have a mural on the front of our building that includes a line from it. ‘But it was she and not the sea we heard.’ I take it as something of a reminder every day to remember the voice itself, and not just the medium.” How cool is that?]*
In Case You Read Greek
suggested these classic texts in Greek, though you may also enjoy translations:The Iliad by Homer, I.1-7
The Odyssey by Homer, I.1-10
John 1 (It reads like a poem) - [I’ve linked the Bible Gateway version. This resource lets you see the same text in dozens of versions using the popup menu in the top right corner.]
*
New Additions from Comments Below
No surprise - more poems are rolling in after publication. I’ll harvest at least the first ones and add them to the post. (It’s easier to read them up here in the main text.)
“Ithaka” by C. P. Cavafy - suggested by
[Free verse, 5 stanzas]“somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond” by E. E. Cummings - suggested by
[Free verse, 5 stanzas]Your Turn
Hit the Heart/Like button at the top or bottom of this post if you appreciate these suggestions or are a fan of memorizing poetry.
In the comments, have we missed a poem that you are glad to carry in your blood? (Links are welcome.)
Join the community writing project!
Poems to Carry in the Blood - How to Participate
Make a video or audio post featuring yourself reciting from memory or reading aloud a poem you are glad to have in your blood.
Publish it in your Substack newsletter on October 25th in any time zone.
Tag me (@TaraPenry) and mention this project so that I will see your post.
Please provide in written and spoken text:
Name of the poem
Name of the author (yourself or someone else)
Date of the poem’s publication or composition if you know it
Transcript or link to a written version of the poem if possible
Name of a book that we could check out or purchase to find that poem and more by the same author, if possible.
Options:
Feel free to provide any little story about the poem that you think would interest us.
If the poem is a long one, it’s possible to read an excerpt or the full poem. Let us know if you’re sharing just an excerpt, and provide a link to the full poem somewhere.
Copy the troubadour picture above or the poetry wall picture below into your post if you’d like to connect posts visually.
Thank you to all who suggested poems! Wow. Thanks also to
and for sharing the original Note.Here’s the full text of Sonnet 29 from the Poetry Foundation. In case you haven’t studied the poem in school, “bootless” means ineffectual, useless.
Dana Gioia’s “Planting a Sequoia” is a poem about a father planting a tree for his stillborn son. https://danagioia.com/planting-a-sequoia/
Thank you to
for pointing out to me that Poetry Out Loud, the national U.S. recitation competition founded by poet, critic, translator, and extraordinary human Dana Gioia when he presided over the National Endowment for the Arts, is still going strong!Thank you also to Zina for copying my Substack Note and encouraging her readers to add to my list of crowdsourced poems in her inspiring post this morning about writing communities:
Subscribe to Quiet Reading with Tara Penry
A weekly refuge for our shared humanity inspired by authors, books, and this world of marvels.
And This is it #2
This is it
This is really it
This is all there is
And it’s perfect as it is
There is nowhere to go
but Here
There is nothing here
but Now
There is nothing now
but this
And this it
This is really it
This is all there is
And it’s perfect as it is
This is great! I have 10/25 marked on my calendar:). FYI I had to memorize “Richard Cory” by Edwin Arlington Robinson in 8th grade. I still remember it, but I don’t really want to!