{"id":745,"date":"2017-03-20T13:06:00","date_gmt":"2017-03-20T13:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/box5379.temp.domains\/~pjmaclay\/whats-your-favorite-poem-thats-question\/"},"modified":"2019-03-26T02:23:24","modified_gmt":"2019-03-26T02:23:24","slug":"whats-your-favorite-poem-thats-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pjmaclayne.com\/?p=745","title":{"rendered":"Favorite Poem- #OpenBook Blog Hop"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n<\/a><\/div>\n

What’s your favorite poem? That’s the question we’re answering this week. Those of you who have followed me for awhile know that I’ve written a bit of poetry myself. I’ve also read a lot of other poets’ work and I own more than the normal amount of poetry books. (Poetry books used to be my go-to answer about what gift to buy me.) It’s going to be difficult to narrow it down to one poem. So I won’t!<\/p>\n

I’m not sure who introduced me to Dylan Thomas’s work, but I’ve run into it time  and time again throughout my life. Although this one is well-known, it remains one of my favorites.<\/p>\n

Do not go gentle into that good night<\/p>\n

Dylan Thomas, 1914 – 1953<\/p>\n

Do not go gentle into that good night,
\nOld age should burn and rave at close of day;
\nRage, rage against the dying of the light.<\/p>\n

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
\nBecause their words had forked no lightning they
\nDo not go gentle into that good night.<\/p>\n

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
\nTheir frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
\nRage, rage against the dying of the light.<\/p>\n

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
\nAnd learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
\nDo not go gentle into that good night.<\/p>\n

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
\nBlind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
\nRage, rage against the dying of the light.<\/p>\n

It still amazes me how the poet was able to express such strong emotion while still sticking with an extremely strict form. I still get chills reading it.<\/p>\n

For the next poem, I debated between Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, both masters of free-form poetry. The margins and indentation of Howl don’t format well on this blog space, so I’m giving you America by Ginsberg instead.<\/p>\n

America
\nBY ALLEN GINSBERG<\/p>\n

America I\u2019ve given you all and now I\u2019m nothing.
\nAmerica two dollars and twentyseven cents January 17, 1956.
\nI can\u2019t stand my own mind.
\nAmerica when will we end the human war?
\nGo fuck yourself with your atom bomb.
\nI don\u2019t feel good don\u2019t bother me.
\nI won\u2019t write my poem till I\u2019m in my right mind.
\nAmerica when will you be angelic?
\nWhen will you take off your clothes?
\nWhen will you look at yourself through the grave?
\nWhen will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
\nAmerica why are your libraries full of tears?
\nAmerica when will you send your eggs to India?
\nI\u2019m sick of your insane demands.
\nWhen can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
\nAmerica after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
\nYour machinery is too much for me.
\nYou made me want to be a saint.
\nThere must be some other way to settle this argument.
\nBurroughs is in Tangiers I don\u2019t think he\u2019ll come back it\u2019s sinister.
\nAre you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
\nI\u2019m trying to come to the point.
\nI refuse to give up my obsession.
\nAmerica stop pushing I know what I\u2019m doing.
\nAmerica the plum blossoms are falling.
\nI haven\u2019t read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for murder.
\nAmerica I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
\nAmerica I used to be a communist when I was a kid I\u2019m not sorry.
\nI smoke marijuana every chance I get.
\nI sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
\nWhen I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
\nMy mind is made up there\u2019s going to be trouble.
\nYou should have seen me reading Marx.
\nMy psychoanalyst thinks I\u2019m perfectly right.
\nI won\u2019t say the Lord\u2019s Prayer.
\nI have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
\nAmerica I still haven\u2019t told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over from Russia.
\nI\u2019m addressing you.
\nAre you going to let your emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
\nI\u2019m obsessed by Time Magazine.
\nI read it every week.
\nIts cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
\nI read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
\nIt\u2019s always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie producers are serious. Everybody\u2019s serious but me.
\nIt occurs to me that I am America.
\nI am talking to myself again.<\/p>\n

Asia is rising against me.
\nI haven\u2019t got a chinaman\u2019s chance.
\nI\u2019d better consider my national resources.
\nMy national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals an unpublishable private literature that jetplanes 1400 miles an hour and twentyfive-thousand mental institutions.
\nI say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underprivileged who live in my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
\nI have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.
\nMy ambition is to be President despite the fact that I\u2019m a Catholic.<\/p>\n

America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
\nI will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his automobiles more so they\u2019re all different sexes.
\nAmerica I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe
\nAmerica free Tom Mooney
\nAmerica save the Spanish Loyalists
\nAmerica Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
\nAmerica I am the Scottsboro boys.
\nAmerica when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother Bloor the Silk-strikers\u2019 Ewig-Weibliche made me cry I once saw the Yiddish orator Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have been a spy.
\nAmerica you don\u2019t really want to go to war.
\nAmerica its them bad Russians.
\nThem Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
\nThe Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia\u2019s power mad. She wants to take our cars from out our garages.
\nHer wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader\u2019s Digest. Her wants our auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
\nThat no good. Ugh. Him make Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers. Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
\nAmerica this is quite serious.
\nAmerica this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
\nAmerica is this correct?
\nI\u2019d better get right down to the job.
\nIt\u2019s true I don\u2019t want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts factories, I\u2019m nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
\nAmerica I\u2019m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.<\/p>\n

\nBerkeley, January 17, 1956<\/p>\n

If you’ve hung in so far, here’s one more.<\/p>\n

Ain’T I A Woman? – Poem by Sojourner Truth<\/p>\n

Wall, chilern,
\nwhar dar is so much racket
\ndar must be somethin’ out o’ kilter.
\nI tink dat ‘twixt de nigger of de Souf
\nand de womin at de Norf,
\nall talkin’ ’bout rights,
\nde white men will be in a fix pretty soon.
\nBut what’s all dis here talkin’ ’bout?<\/p>\n

Dat man ober dar say
\ndat womin needs to be helped into carriages,
\nand lifted ober ditches,
\nand to hab de best place everywhar.
\nNobody eber halps me into carriages,
\nor ober mudpuddles,
\nor gibs me any best place!
\nAnd ar’n’t I a woman?<\/p>\n

Look at me!
\nLook at my arm!
\nI have ploughed,
\nand planted,
\nand gathered into barns,
\nand no man could head me!
\nAnd ar’n’t I a woman?<\/p>\n

I could work as much
\nand eat as much as a man —
\nwhen I could get it —
\nand bear de lash as well!
\nAnd ar’n’t’ I a woman?<\/p>\n

I have borne thirteen chilern,
\nand seen ’em mos’ all sold off to slavery,
\nand when I cried out with my mother’s grief,
\nnone but Jesus heard me!
\nAnd ar’n’t I a woman?<\/p>\n

Den dey talks ’bout dis ting in de head;
\nwhat dis dey call it?
\n‘Intellect,’
\n(whispered someone near).
\nDat’s it, honey.
\nWhat’s dat got to do wid womin’s rights
\nor nigger’s rights?
\nIf my cup won’t hold but a pint,
\nand yourn holds a quart,
\nwouldn’t ye be mean
\nnot to let me have my little half-measure full?<\/p>\n

Den dat little man in black dar,
\nhe say women can’t have as much rights as men,
\n’cause Christ wan’t a woman!
\nWhar did your Christ come from?
\nWhar did your Christ come from?
\nFrom God and a woman!
\nMan had nothin’ to do wid Him.<\/p>\n

If de fust woman God ever made
\nwas strong enough to turn de world upside down
\nall alone,
\ndese women togedder ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again!
\nAnd now dey is asking to do it,
\nde men better let ’em.<\/p>\n

Bleeged to ye for hearin’ on me,
\nand now ole Sojourner
\nhan’t got nothin’ more to say.’
\nSojourner Truth<\/p>\n

Now I’m off to see find out what everyone else’s favorite poems are!<\/p>\n

March 20 – Tell us about your favorite poems
\nRules:
\n1. Link your blog to this hop.
\n2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.
\n3. Promise to visit\/leave a comment on all participants’ blogs.
\n4. Tweet\/or share each person’s blog post. Use #OpenBook when tweeting.
\n5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.
\nWordpress:<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Custom Blog:<\/p>\n

\nAn InLinkz Link-up<\/a><\/div>\n

An InLinkz Link-up<\/p>\n

get the InLinkz code<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What’s your favorite poem? That’s the question we’re answering this week. Those of you who have followed me for awhile know that I’ve written a bit of poetry myself. I’ve also read a lot of other poets’ work and I own more than the normal amount of poetry books. (Poetry… Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paJdTo-c1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pjmaclayne.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pjmaclayne.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pjmaclayne.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjmaclayne.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjmaclayne.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=745"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjmaclayne.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1742,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjmaclayne.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745\/revisions\/1742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pjmaclayne.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjmaclayne.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjmaclayne.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}