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Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem.-Edgar Allan Poe

Poetry is when emotion has found its thought and thought has found words--Robert Frost

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance--Carl Sandburg

I have nothing to say, I am saying it, and that is poetry--John Cage

You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some of it with you--Joseph Joubert

Poetry is what in a poem makes you laugh, cry, prickle, be silent, makes your toe nails twinkle, makes you want to do this or that or nothing, makes you know that you are alone in the unknown world, that your bliss and suffering is forever shared and forever all your own. ~Dylan Thomas

joybragi84
Aug 14, 20222 min read

A New Mined Poetic Nugget and a Different Photographer


This morning's picture was taken by my son Jesse. He had some Naked Ladies, AKA Surprise Lilies (Lycoris squamigera), pop up in his yard, and he shared the picture. I did some research because I was not sure that Surprise Lilies and Naked Ladies were the same thing. Apparently, they are. Thanks for the picture, Jesse.

Now, I have never mined for gold or silver. I don't even think I have dug for diamonds at Murfreesboro, AR in my recollection, but I do shovel around in my old poems looking for gems that I can refine, and I was tickled to find one that did not need a lot of refining. The following poem, again about birds and inspiration, was originally written in 2005. The trouble was that it didn't end. It just stopped. I know that I have looked at this poem several times throughout the years, and I never could figure out how to keep it from just stopping without an end. Well, as strange as it sounds, I cut the poem in half, threw the second half out, and found the end in the middle of the poem. I did change the metrical rhythm of the poem to iambic tetrameter rather than what it was, so I removed, replaced, and/or added 15-20 words. Still, I am very excited to have found a poem that was so easily revised that fits in with the current themes and ideas of my poetry. Enjoy!


A Cardinal Sin

(e pluribus unum)


As I lie resting on my couch,

I study how I feel at odds,

How I have coolly lost my touch

With what were once inspiring gods.


(Have I placed faith in other gods?)


I reckon the Creator’s one;

I set no idols before Him,

Nor worship them as some have done

And in that honor abhor Him.


(Have I placed faith in idols?)


I do not fear they demons be,

Nor that I will be led astray

By some who sing deliciously

And in a very lustful way.


(Have I placed faith in song?)


One who is not against is for,

One who does not slander praises,

Who asks for nothing receives more

Than those who pile empty phrases.


(Have I placed faith in ambiguity?)


My cardinal sin is not so deep.

That faith is nothing more than words,

A tiny confidence I keep

Inspired by sweet singing birds.


(I place my faith in naïve birds?)


Comments

I find that I cannot exist without Poetry--without eternal poetry--half the day will not do--the whole of it--I began with a little, but habit has made me a Leviathan.-John Keats

We do not quite say that the new is more valuable because it fits in; but its fitting in is a test of its value.-T. S. Eliot

A man may praise and praise, but no one recollects but that which pleases.-George Gordon, Lord Byron

The great beauty of poetry is that it makes everything in every place interesting.-John Keats

Our faulty elder poets sacrificed the passion and passionate flow of poetry to the subtleties of intellect and to the stars of wit; the moderns to the glare and glitter of a perpetual, yet broken and heterogeneous imagery, or rather to an amphibious something, made up, half of image, and half of abstract meaning. The one sacrificed the heart to the head; the other both heart and head to point and drapery.-S. T. Coleridge

The purpose of rhythm, it has always seemed to me, is to prolong the moment of contemplation, the moment when we are both asleep and awake, which is the one moment of creation.-W. B. Yeats

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