Poetry and a little bit more

Class project where I'll write about poems and what I think the authors meant with them.

[poetryrush]

The Paradoxical Commandments

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered. Love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives. Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies. Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable. Be honest and frank anyway.

The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds. Think big anyway.

People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs. Fight for a few underdogs anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway.

People really need help but may attack you if you do help them. Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you have anyway.

—Kent M. Keith

I loved this one. This one is about the human nature, how strange and paradoxical it is. But no matter how much humans act strange or push you for doing good, succeeding, being honest, fighting for the underdogs, building, helping and loving them, do it anyway.

[poetryrush]

Active and Passive Voice

Sentences can be active or passive. Therefore, tenses also have "active forms" and "passive forms." You must learn to recognize the difference to successfully speak English.

Active Voice

In active sentences, the thing doing the action is the subject of the sentence and the thing receiving the action is the object. Most sentences are active.

[Thing doing action] + [verb] + [thing receiving action]

Example:

       You               helped               me

Subject doing action  +  verb  +  subject receiving action

Passive Voice

In passive sentences, the thing receiving the action is the subject of the sentence and the thing doing the action is optionally included near the end of the sentence. You can use the passive form if you think that the thing receiving the action is more important or should be emphasized. You can also use the passive form if you do not know who is doing the action or if you do not want to mention who is doing the action.

[Thing receiving action] + [be] + [past participle of verb] + [by] + [thing doing action]

Example:

                  I                was helped     by you

Subject receiving action  +  passive verb  +  doing action

[poetryrush]

You Should Know

I don't know how to say this, but I thank you very much for always being there for me your gentle, friendly touch

You helped me to get better and stop what I regret you helped me through the hard times that, I can't forget. thank you.

You listened to my problems in a kind and caring way and without you I may not be smiling today thank you.

I trust you with my secrets that no one has been told I trust you with my feelings and in my heart, your words I'll take until I'm grey and old thank you.

—Abby Heard

A lovely poem about friendship, for that friend that made you get through the worst moments in your life, when you thought everything was bad that friend was there for you; and not only in the bad but also in the good times. For those friends who deserve everyday reminders about how much they matter to you because they made your life better.

[poetryrush]

May

I was you January and you were my May

A cold winter snowstorm, a bright sunny day.

Two polar opposites who weren't meant to be.

I loved you. You didn't love me.

—h.c

A sad short poem about unrequited love. For the author this special person was like a bright and warm day of May, not too cold but also not too hot, but for this person the author was just a cold January day when winter still hasn’t left.

[poetryrush]

Home

One thing

I learned when I was 20

was that no matter where you are

home is where the people you love are

—K.L.

This one if simple, a sentece we use a lot, a house never determines our home because home is where our heart is, where the people we love are.

[poetryrush]

Te Deum

Not because of victories I sing, having none, but for the common sunshine, the breeze, the largess of the spring.

Not for victory but for the day’s work done as well as I was able; not for a seat upon the dais but at the common table.

— Charles Reznikoff

We should not sing only for victories or miracles but for the small things or for simply not reason at all, we should sing and be happy for the mere sunshine, the small flowers and the nice breeze. We do not need concrete reasons to be happy and to sing.

[poetryrush]

The Ghost Ship

She plies an inland sea. Dull With rust, scarred by a jagged reef. In Cyrillic, on her hull Is lettered, Grief.

The dim stars do not signify; No sonar with its eerie ping Sounds the depths—she travels by Dead reckoning.

At her heart is a stopped clock. In her wake, the hours drag. There is no port where she can dock, She flies no flag,

Has no allegiance to a state, No registry, no harbor berth, Nowhere to discharge her freight Upon the earth.

—A. E. Stallings

An extremely beautiful poem, if I understood it properly, it talks about Grief as a ship without a proper place to go or a place to come from. Grief is like a ghost ship, slowing time and without a good destination, grief is there but it never stands out, it wanders on the sea, slow and distressing.

[poetryrush]

Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling on the sky the message “He is Dead”. Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves, Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves. He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong. The stars are not wanted now; put out every one, Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun, Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood; For nothing now can ever come to any good.

—W. H. Auden

The author expresses certainly how a person feels when someone they love die, the need to isolate after that person is dead, to make the world disappear because everything else doesn’t matter now after such a tragic thing happened.

[poetryrush]

A Word to Husbands

To keep your marriage brimming With love in the loving cup, Whenever you’re wrong, admit it; Whenever you’re right, shut up.

—Ogden Nash

Well, more like to both parties of the marriage, if you want your marriage to blossom and to keep going on strong you must admit your errors and must not rub in when you’re right.

[poetryrush]

Where The Mind Is Without Fear

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high Where knowledge is free Where the world has not been broken up into fragments By narrow domestic walls Where words come out from the depth of truth Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit Where the mind is led forward by thee Into ever-widening thought and action Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

—Rabindranath Tagore

A world without fear would be a world where humans can reach perfection, kownledge and truth because without it we could be open and more motivated to do what we want.

[poetryrush]

Do Not Stand At My Grave And Weep

Do not stand at my grave and weep; I am not there. I do not sleep. I am a thousand winds that blow. I am the diamond glints on snow. I am the sunlight on ripened grain. I am the gentle autumn rain. When you awaken in the morning's hush I am the swift uplifting rush Of quiet birds in circled flight. I am the soft stars that shine at night. Do not stand at my grave and cry; I am not there. I did not die.

—Mary Frye

The meaning of this poem is very clear: Do not weep for me because dead is something I am not. It’s a metaphoric way of saying: “I’m still here, in the nature, in the little things that surround you, I did not disappear, I’m still with you.”

[poetryrush]

No Man is an Island

No man is an island, Entire of itself; Every man is a piece of the continent, A part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, As well as if a promontory were: As well as if a manor of thy friend's Or of thine own were.

Any man's death diminishes me, Because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.

—John Donne

Here, Donne says poetically that humans are not just individuals, that we are in this world together, and when someone dies a piece of land is smaller.

[poetryrush]

“Hope” is the thing with feathers—

Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul, And sings the tune without the words, And never stops at all, And sweetest in the gale is heard; And sore must be the storm That could abash the little bird That kept so many warm. I've heard it in the chillest land, And on the strangest sea; Yet, never, in extremity, It asked a crumb of me.

—Emily Dickinson

Emily writes about ‘hope’ as a bird, always there with its beautiful singing, a bird that keeps everyone warm with its existence and even when the bird gives so much to others, it never asks even a little crumb out of us.

[poetryrush]

If You Forget Me

I want you to know one thing. You know how this is: if I look at the crystal moon, at the red branch of the slow autumn at my window, if I touch near the fire the impalpable ash or the wrinkled body of the log, everything carries me to you, as if everything that exists, aromas, light, metals, were little boats that sail toward those isles of yours that wait for me. Well, now, if little by little you stop loving me I shall stop loving you little by little. If suddenly you forget me do not look for me, for I shall already have forgotten you. If you think it long and mad, the wind of banners that passes through my life, and you decide to leave me at the shore of the heart where I have roots, remember that on that day, at that hour, I shall lift my arms and my roots will set off to seek another land. But if each day, each hour, you feel that you are destined for me with implacable sweetness, if each day a flower climbs up to your lips to seek me, ah my love, ah my own, in me all that fire is repeated, in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten, my love feeds on your love, beloved, and as long as you live it will be in your arms without leaving mine.

—Pablo Neruda

Here the author (Neruda) speaks about how if that especial person, the one we love so much decides to — not literally speaking — ‘forget us’ then we will forget them as well but if in contrast that person keep ‘remembering’ and loving us we may keep loving them as well.

[poetryrush]

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—    I took the one less traveled by,    And that has made all the difference.

—Robert Frost

The first lines left me confused concerning what this poem is about but as the poem ends I feel I can finally realize that it may be about taking the less traveled road, even if we don’t know it’s a good decision or not, and finding how right we were about doing that.

[poetryrush]

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

The free bird leaps on the back of the wind and floats downstream till the current ends and dips his wings in the orange sun rays and dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks down his narrow cage can seldom see through his bars of rage his wings are clipped and his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings with fearful trill of the things unknown but longed for still and his tune is heard on the distant hill for the caged bird sings of freedom

The free bird thinks of another breeze and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees and the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn and he names the sky his own.

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream his wings are clipped and his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing

The caged bird sings with a fearful trill of things unknown but longed for still and his tune is heard on the distant hill for the caged bird sings of freedom.

—Maya Angelou

I feel what the author meant is kinda obvious in this poem, a captived caged bird sings while it longs for the freedom the uncaged bird has. The caged bird sings what it cannot have and thus can only long for.

Maybe I’m seeing too superficially and it actually means more than I can read.