On National Poetry Month: "Ode to the Moon"
This is intended to be a somewhat continuing series in honor of National Poetry Month. I intend to post this series two or three times a week throughout the month of April with various themes.
The theme for this offering is, "Ode to the Moon."
In this and each of the offerings, I will present some poetry of note and a few of my own. I would hope that in the comments, a poem that follows the theme, original or one dear to the heart, might be shared.
With that, let's continue the series with...
Ode to the Moon
Full moon shining bright
Midnight on the water
Oh Aradia
Diana's silver daughterLady of the Moon
Lunar Goddess
Puller of seasWe greet your celestial jewel
At the waxing of its powers
With a rite in your honorLady
You are known by many namesAphrodite
Kerridwen
Diana
Isis and many more.
The moon, methinks, looks with a watery eye; And
when she weeps, weeps every little flower.
-- William Shakespeare
"Midsummer Night's Dream"
I Sang
To you and the moon
But only the moon remembers.I sang
O reckless free-hearted
Free-throated rhythms,Even the moon remembers them
And is kind to me.
-- Carl Sandburg
"I Sang"
In my sky at twilight you are like a cloud
and your form and colour are the way I love them.
You are mine, mine, woman with sweet lips
and in your life my infinite dreams live.The lamp of my soul dyes your feet,
the sour wine is sweeter on your lips,
oh reaper of my evening song,
how solitary dreams believe you to be mine!You are mine, mine, I go shouting it to the afternoon's
wind, and the wind hauls on my widowed voice.
Huntress of the depth of my eyes, your plunder
stills your nocturnal regard as though it were water.You are taken in the net of my music, my love,
and my nets of music are wide as the sky.
My soul is born on the shore of your eyes of mourning.
In your eyes of mourning the land of dreams begin.
-- Pablo Neruda
"In My Sky At Twilight"
Not Saints But Men
by
Justice Putnam
Swaying uselessly
In the loose wind
Floating in
Finite expectancy
Of summer without end
To have a great gift
And not know it
To only fantasize
And not actualize
Except on passion
For passion's sake
Caught in spidery entanglement
Of esoteric intrigue
While flowing in consciousness
Of personal design
(Blue River, Oregon 1985)
From Big Sur to Malibu
by
Justice Putnam
Are we the dispossessed?
The fleeting minds
Caught in a bleeding time
Seeking fame near
The sands of a
Television beach
Reaching for the stick
Shifting only to second gear
As another stoplight
Halts another long line
Of narrowed dreams?
We displace ourselves
And reach for another
Beer bottle in another
Surfside café
Antique gaffs
Hang from our window
And portraits of Jack London
Adorn the only potential
Bare spots on a seemingly
Aged wall.
A hungry crowd of pedestrians
Line the sidewalk
And occasional paper-bagged
Wine bottles are
Passed around.
We leave and cross the boulevard
To the metered parking lot.
We smell the red tide
Waft through the
Pillars of the pier
Hear the revving of engines
In syncopated time
With the lonely surf.
(Laguna Beach, California 1980)
And The Angels Weep
by
Justice Putnam
Honduran café
Mezcal afternoon
Straw-woven sombrero
La Concetta in green pantaloons
See how the jungle encroaches
Upon our palm-frond adobe
And the white sands of this
Martyred shore
(Playa Samara, Costa Rica 1980)
Ruined by Light
by
Justice Putnam
I was hanging in the night
Like some exotic fruit
On some secret tree
I was blowing
Or maybe drifting
In the cool hands
Of air that pressed me
Every leaf consented
To song and dance.
I lived among the poets
And the Atlas
Our sister fell easy
Like an Empire
Of Emotion
Into the encasing
Of our arms
We would rule the road
Often
Two of us
Would think
Of one woman.
I crossed the crying
Land of her hair
Low great sorrow
That was its length
Hollow long day
I know the slaughter
Of her perfect dream.
And the mad Greeks danced
Enflamed rooms
Illiterate
We proclaimed genius
Insanity was our revolution
That turned our anguish
Into kisses.
Knowledge may rule the world
But knowledge of her
And her wild cat expression
Of men wailing
Lost inevitably
I watch the air
Capture the room.
(Ann Arbor, Michigan 1978)
Frail Tears of the Universe
by
Justice Putnam
The moon hides transparent
Behind wet neon mist
Closed eyes
In the cold night
A nocturnal
Journey west.
She lies in a bed
Of black satin
Her skin
Soft
Reflected light
I turn
I think she
Is sleeping
But she moves
On her
Western flight.
I want her to know
I think of her
Though
The clouds are
In the way
And she moves
In a walking slumber
As night
Fades to day.
(Valley of the Moon, California 1988)
© 2009 by Justice Putnam
Fleur de Sel Musique
and Mechanisches-Strophe Verlagswesen
I Sang
I SANG to you and the moon
But only the moon remembers.
I sang
O reckless free-hearted
free-throated rythms,
Even the moon remembers them
And is kind to me.
Carl Sandburg
April 9, 2009 8:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
Big shoulders and all.
April 9, 2009 9:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
I especially love your last poem. And I especially love that Roman poem.
Poetry slows the world down.
(and if I could type it, I'd have the word "down" be like a staircase... going down.)
April 9, 2009 8:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
We are in the throes of a full moon and poetry is a naked person.
April 9, 2009 9:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
The moon here was simply stunning last night! I'm so glad you did this blog on moon poetry.
April 9, 2009 9:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
The moon was stunning here last night as well; the only thing to do was honor the moon.
April 9, 2009 11:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
EE Cummings - i carry your heart
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
April 9, 2009 8:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
So beautiful.....
April 9, 2009 9:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
I thought I had hit reply... but it's down below...
April 9, 2009 11:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
very nice!
April 9, 2009 9:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
Here's another one I wrote, which isn't really about the moon, but it mentions the moon, so...
Yesterday, Today, And
Heroes burning while the world fiddles
countries talking to each other in riddles
God this and Jesus that and Buddha ran circles round the moon, once
I know
I was there
I saw it
I have a piece of burnt cheese to prove it
I’d sell it to you for fifty cents
but I’ve the feeling you need your money
Save it in case the world don’t end
If you’re lucky it might just multiply
get fruitful and all that rot
I’m tired
a little sad
So show me this in the morning and we’ll all have a good laugh
The morning will come
It has every other day
no matter what the hell is going on
So maybe heroes know what they’re talking about
But I don’t want to listen anymore
I just don’t
April 9, 2009 12:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
LisB.
Wonderful! Gave me shivers (good kind).
April 9, 2009 12:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Great poem LisB!
April 9, 2009 7:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh good. Sometimes I read these opinions and articles and I am sure that morning just is getting too tired to return on the morrow.
April 9, 2009 8:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
13 Moons
Sugar Moon is April
Sucker Moon is May
Blossom Moon
Berry Moon
Rice Moon
Follow on the way
To Moon of Changing Leaves
That change to Falling Leaves Moon
November now upon us
Freezing Moon is here too soon
Little Spirit Moon holds the darkest day
Spirit Moon continues as Wintermaker still holds sway
Bear Moon hibernating we huddle in our den
Til snowflakes thaw and refreeze
And gives us Snow Crust Moon again
Then it's time for rejoicing
Broken Snowshoe Moon is here
It's time to tap the sugar bush
And start another year.
~Wahbigwanahbinooje
(I wrote this, at the request of a teacher, for children learning bits of Native culture in the classroom. The teacher was only in the district for one year before moving on. I do not know if she took this poem with her or not. I hope so.)
April 9, 2009 12:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Perfect!
April 9, 2009 7:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
The moon outside my window
is usually the same moon
except when there are plum flowers
then it becomes a different moon.
I don't remember the authors', (Japanese), name.
April 9, 2009 1:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sounds like Basho.
April 9, 2009 7:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
ok, just for National Poetry Month
I gave it a whirl.
April 9, 2009 7:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sounds like a beat poem; not beatific, as Corso, Snyder, Ginsburg, Kerouac, et.al, would describe their work, but you beat down that litte Wiener.
Good job!
April 9, 2009 7:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ginsburg had beat timing. Ferlinghetti, not so much in my mind, but at times did and still can work it in his poetry. William S. Burroughs could do it without poetry. I know that BeatGen means more than tempo and meter, and there are many excellent poets/authors rightfully associated with it, but musically, I'm first and foremost a percussionist, so the rhythm moves.
Not exactly beat, but did you ever get around to reading Richard Brautigan?
April 9, 2009 8:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh yeah, I lived in Muir Beach when Brautigan was still alive and living in Bolinas. He remains a hero up here in the SF Bay Area.
All of his books were on my dad's shelves when I was growing up
Saw him downstairs looking in the philosophy book bin at City Lights, once.
I take Beat, not only as music when applied to Snyder, Corso and the Beats, but as a fluid state of mind; Beat down, Beat up, Beatific; but the influence of jazz is really what's cited mostly.
April 9, 2009 8:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Cold War's Real Saviors of the Free World. Shostakovich never had an effin chance. USA!
April 10, 2009 4:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
That they were...
April 10, 2009 4:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
Good links/good point!
April 10, 2009 4:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sandburg wrote a lot of poems about the moon, but that at the top, is my favorite. I even wrote one, but
I can't find it.
=D
I figure it's a good thing
April 9, 2009 7:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
i saw Sandburg give a reading when I was about four or five years old. My mom had been a jazz singer and my dad a history prof; and between them, our LP collection and going to see performances was wide and varied. Every kind of music was represented, not only every kind of opera, or Library of Congress recordings of Mississippi Delta Blues, but Tuvan throat singing recorded in the '30's on 78 rpm discs.
We also had many recordings of poets reading their work; TS Elliot, Robert Frost, of course Dylan Thomas, Neruda and Lorca in Spanish, Ezra Pound before and after he went crazy; and Carl Sandburg.
Being able, as a young child, to hear the recordings and then seeing many of them performed by the artists live, had a profound impact on me.
When I was reading regularily, I patterned my performances after Sandburg's; he would read a poem or two, then sing a song while playing his guitar, then he would read an essay or story, then a few more poems, a story, a few songs; the evening was entrancing. Listening over the years to Sandburg's performance at Carnegie Hall and other performances on LP embedded the Sandburg ethos, certainly,
My interest in the Power of Landscape is manifested out of that poetic ethos as well.
April 9, 2009 8:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
One more from me:
Lon Cheney
I’ve locked myself in for the night
If I howl at the moon
I’ll do it alone
No one need witness an emotional scene
I’ll keep my tears to myself
Bite my pillow to keep from screaming
Should I watch for hair
to grow on my knuckles?
Shall I watch for fangs
to mar my smile?
No, I’ll just look for the sunrise
Wait for my calm and equilibrium
to return once again
Until next month
Until the next full moon
April 11, 2009 6:23 PM | Reply | Permalink