Sonnet Thread

That is good. Three cheers for poetry in the morning. I need to find more books of sonnets. Anyone have titles of books of sonnets by a single author that they would recommend? Again, I have the Millay, Shakespeare, Neruda, Sor Juana, and Rilke. I had a lot of the older poets (besides Shakespeare) but I threw them out because they took up space, and I didn't read them. Maybe I should go back to them i.e. Wordsworth, Keats or whatever. The poems olderman and Fins posted peak my interest, too. I just need book titles, and an ISBN would be helpful

Enormous moon, that rise behind these hills
Heavy and yellow in a sky unstarred
And pale, your girth by purple fillets barred
Of drifting cloud, that as the cool sky fills
With planets and the brighter stars, distills
To thinnest vapour and floats valley-ward,
You flood with radiance all this cluttered yard,
The sagging fence, the chipping window sills.
Grateful at heart as if for my delight
You rose, I watch you through a mist of tears,
Thinking how man, who gags up on despair,
Salting his hunger with the sweat of fright
Has fed on cold indifference all these years,
Calling it kindness, calling it God's care.

All that we've gained the machine threatens, as long
as it dares to exist as Idea, not obedient tool.
To inure us to the hand's more masterful lingerings,
for rigid buildings it cuts starker stone.

Nowhere does it idle, it gives us no chance to flee
and leave it self-lubricating in silent factories.
It is life, - believes it does everything best,
making, arranging, destroying, all the same.

But for us existence still can enchant; in a hundred
places it's still Origin. A play of pure forces,
which no one touches who doesn't kneel in wonder.

Words still softly give way before the unsayable . . .
And music, forever new, out of the most tremulous stones
builds in unusable space her house fit for gods.




Do you agree with this? How do you make a word italic?

Or I shall live your epitaph to make
Or you survive when I in earth am rotten.
From hence your memory death cannot take,
Although in me each part will be forgotten.
Your name from hence immortal life shall have,
Though I, once gone, to all the world must die.
The earth can yield me but a common grave,
When you entombed in men's eyes shall lie.
Your monument shall be my gentle verse,
Which eyes not yet created shall o'erread;
And tongues to be your being shall rehearse
When all the breathers of this world are dead.
You still shall live-such virtue hath my pen-
Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men.

#6 from Sonnets from an Ungrafted Tree

Then cautiously she pushed the cellar door
And stepped into the kitchen-saw the track
Of muddy rubber boots across the floor,
The many paper parcels in a stack
Upon the dresser; with accustomed care
Removed the twine and put the wrappings by,
Folded, and the bags flat, that with an air
Of ease had been whipped open skillfully,
To the gape of children. Treacherously dear
And simple was the dull, familiar task.
And so it was she came at length to as:
How came the soda there? The sugar here?
Then the dream broke. Silent, she brought the mop,
And forced the trade-slip on the nail that held his
razor strop.

O, how I faint when I of you do write,
Knowing a better spirit doth use your name,
And in the praise thereof spends all his might,
To make me tongue-tied speaking of your fame.
But since your worth, wide as the ocean is,
The humble as the proudest sail doth bear,
My saucy bark, inferior far to his,
On your broad main doth willfully appear.
Your shallowest help wil hold me up afloat
Whilst he upon your soundless deep doth ride,
Or, being wracked, I am a worthless boat,
He of tall building and of goodly pride.
Then, if he thrive and I be cast away,
The worst was this: my love was my decay.

Three birds of the sea, three sunbeams, three scissors
crossed the cold sky toward Antofagasta:
that's why the air was left trembling,
why everything trembled like a wounded flag.

Loneliness, give me the sign of your ceaseless origins,
the path-hardly a path-of the cruel birds,
the palpitation that surely comes
before honey, music, the sea, a birth.

(Loneliness sustained by a constant face-
like a calm slow flower, constantly held out-
till it reaches the pure swarming throngs of the sky.)

Cold wings of the sea, of the archipelago, went
flying toward the sands of northeast Chile.
The night slid shut its heavenly bolt.

Soneto

Feliciano me adora y le aborrezco;
Lisardo me aborrece y yo le adoro;
por quien no me apetece ingrato, lloro,
y al que me llora tierno, no apetezco.
A quien más me desdora, el alma ofrezco;
a quien me ofrece víctimas, desdoro;
desprecio al que enriquece mi decoro,
y al que le hace desprecios, enriquezco.

Si con mi ofensa al uno reconvengo,
me reconviene el otro a mí, ofendido;
y a padecer de todos modos vengo,

pues ambos atormentan mi sentido:
aquéste, con pedir lo que no tengo;
y aquél, con no tener lo que le pido.

Sonnet

Philip worships me and I abhor him;
Leonard hates me; and for him I yearn;
for him who would desire me not, I'm weeping,
and him who weeps for me I always spurn.
To him who'd shame me most, my soul I offer;
him who'd sacrifice for me, I shame;
I scorn him who'd exalt my reputation,
of him who'd scorn it, I exalt the name.

If I complain that one of them offends me,
the other censures me for some offense;
in either case I suffer in my task,

for each of them wreaks torture on my feelings:
the latter asking for what I don't have;
the former by not having what I ask.