What Is Your Favorite Poem? Lee Gordon, C’68
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Class of 1968 QOD – What is your favorite poem? Lee Gordon, C’68: I thought it might be interesting and worthwhile to hear from an expert in the literary field. Thus, Penn Professor Phyllis Rackin came to my immediate attention. Below are Phyllis’ “Elite Eight” poems: “Here are some of my favorites, in no particular order. Hopkins "God's Grandeur" Yeats "Father and Child" "Among School Children" "Vacillation" Shakespeare Sonnet 130 Macleish "Not marble nor the gilded monuments" Marvell "The Definition of Love" Frost "Nature's first green is gold" Lee Gordon, C'68 This one I had memorized back in Junior High School. This poem made me realize that you must never be envious of someone’s wealth, fame or looks. You just never know what is going on in other people’s lives. In short, be grateful for all the good things life has brought you. Even a cynical 60’s guy like me can be humbled by this poem. Richard Cory, by Edwin Arlington Robinson Whenever Richard Cory went down town, We people on the pavement looked at him: He was a gentleman from sole to crown, Clean favored, and imperially slim. And he was always quietly arrayed, And he was always human when he talked; But still he fluttered pulses when he said, "Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked. And he was rich—yes, richer than a king— And admirably schooled in every grace: In fine, we thought that he was everything To make us wish that we were in his place. So on we worked, and waited for the light, And went without the meat, and cursed the bread; And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, Went home and put a bullet through his head. Diane McClure Holsenbeck, CW’68 Most people do not read or do not understand poetry, so it is great to receive so many poems that follow my story: 19 years ago a sub-sized post card arrived in the mail inviting me to an event at Lincoln Center called “Poetry and the Creative Mind“ by the Academy of American Poets. I wondered why the invitation was so easy to overlook and circular file. Then I looked more closely. The moderator was to be Meryl Streep and one of the readers was to be Caroline Kennedy (only months after her brother’s fatal accident). I rsvp’d and was given two front row seats. When I asked my husband if he could take off work a tad early he said he didn’t understand poetry. (A Yale education somehow did not cure that.) So he appeared just before start time and remained standing in the back of the theatre. One of the first readers was Natalie Portman who was abysmal. Meryl Streep was on the edge of her seat cringing for her. It was obvious that the problem lay in the fact that Natalie had only been in movies where she relied on retakes instead of being in live stage performances. The other readers were captivating. They read some poems that hitherto my husband would have either passed over or simply not understood. Fast forward to the next year when my husband asked me when the poetry thing was going to be. He didn’t want to miss it. He became the eagle eye on the mail and started inviting guests. It is true that poets are notorious for not being able to read their own poems. Recall Robert Frost’s reading at Kennedy’s inauguration? And Jill Biden knew an exceptional poet for the 2021 inauguration, Amanda Gorman. And we have a poet in the Class of 1968 who is also a rare exception, Mary McGinnis. Poem choice: I must edit this request for a favorite poem in terms of what I have chosen just now. It is not “my favorite poem.“ It is “A favorite poem at the moment tonight.“ After all, why does the Academy of American Poets invite people to subscribe to “Poem-A-Day?“ This one is by the very accessible poet, Ted Kooser, a two term US Poet Laureate and Pulitzer prize winner. “Garrison, Indiana” was published in his 13th full length collection of poems entitled “Spitting an Order,“ when he turned 75. ` The north-south streets are named for poets – Longfellow, Whittier, Bryant, Lowell – so it is no surprise that this tiny village is fading to gray, mildewed and dusty, shelved at the back of the busy library of American progress. On this winter day all that’s left of Whittier’s “Snow-Bound “ whispers in under the nailed-shut door of a house at the edge of the cornfield, and slides across a red vinyl car seat wedged in a broken tree. All but a few stubborn families have packed up and left, seeking a better life, following Evangeline, leaving this island with it cars up on blocks, its gardens of broken washing machines, its empty rabbit hutches nailed to sheds, cold and alone on the sea of the prairie, to be pounded and pounded forever by time and then whitecaps of snow. *** If that poem is just too dreary a reminder then maybe this one, also by Ted Kooser, that starts from something downbeat BUT… “The Woman Whose Husband Was Dying” She turned her eyes from mine, for within mine she knew there wasn’t room for all her sorrow. She needed a plain that she could flood with grief, and as she stood there by the door I saw the distance before her slowly filling, as if from hidden springs, and she stepped outside, and placed one foot and then the other on the future, and it held her up. Betsy Scott Kleeblatt, CW'68 “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year. He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound's the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake. The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep. Linda Kates, CW’68, GED’69, WG’75 This has always been one of my favorite poems. I love the tranquility that it offers, especially welcome in our turbulent world. Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost Sue Croll, CW’68, G’94 Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall” is among my favorite poems. It’s message “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall…” is timely, as well: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44266/mending-wall. Elsie Sterling Howard, CW’68 “Ozymandias” By Percy Bysshe Shelley I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal these words appear: 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away;" Jack Goldenberg, C'68 “A Poison Tree” by William Blake I was angry with my friend: I told my wrath, my wrath did end. I was angry with my foe: I told him not, my wrath did grow Karen Whitestone Carr, CW'68 “Paul Revere’s Ride” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow My favorite poem since I grew up in Concord, Mass and we had to recite it every year on April 19th. Paul Revere rode into Concord from Boston after midnight on the 19th of April 1775 shouting “The British are coming!”. The start of the revolutionary war and the shot heard round the world. https://poets.org/poem/paul-reveres-ride Karen: This is one my daughter just reminded me of after a bad day at school: Lonnie Schooler, C'68 “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” & “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost 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 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. Phyllis Ettinger Rodbell, CW'68 I used the lyrics from the song Eleanor Rigby when I taught poetry to 8th graders right after I graduated from Penn. They said “blah" to poetry until they realized poetry was all around them.