Today is World Poetry Day, which is odd because National Poetry Month is next month, which I can’t say for sure, but I believe is a tribute to T.S. Eliot for his poem “The Waste Land.”
April is the cruelest month, breeding
lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
memory and desire, stirring
dull roots with spring rain.
So, maybe it’s from Eliot. As some of you may remember, Eliot is one of my favorites for his poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufock. I’ll quote my favorite section, words that I hold to be some of the most beautiful ever written.
For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
I owe my love of Eliot to Mrs. O’Neal from my favorite high school English class.
Shakespeare has long been a love of mine. His plays — masterpieces. His sonnets — music to the ear. My favorite sonnet is number 130 (because it’s superfantastic) and because it was the first I’d read), introduced to me by Sting of all people, in the song “Sister Moon.” He said of the sonnet and his song,
“In Lyrics By Sting, the singer recounted when he used Shakespeare to appease a staggering drunk one night who kept demanding to know “How beautiful is the moon?” He answered with a line from Sonnet #130: “My mistress’s eyes are nothing like the sun.”
The inebriated man liked the answer and stumbled away into the night. Sting wrote: “Shakespeare is always useful, I’ve found, for calming down violent drunks, if only because it gives them the impression that you’re crazier than they are.”
Crazy is good.
The poem is great because he compares features of his mistress to things far more beautiful, but he loves her the way she is.
Sonnet 130
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
Lastly, my favorite modern poet, Lang Leav. I’ve shared several of her poems here. I thought this one perfect for today.
Superfantastic. Happy World Poetry Day.
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