The Indications
THE indications, and tally of time;
Perfect sanity shows the master among philosophs;
Time, always without flaw, indicates itself in parts;
What always indicates the poet, is the crowd of the pleasant company
of singers, and their words;
The words of the singers are the hours or minutes of the light or
dark--but the words of the maker of poems are the general light
and dark;
The maker of poems settles justice, reality, immortality,
His insight and power encircle things and the human race,
He is the glory and extract thus far, of things, and of the human
race.
The singers do not beget--only the POET begets;
The singers are welcom'd, understood, appear often enough--but rare
has the day been, likewise the spot, of the birth of the maker
of poems, the Answerer, 10
(Not every century, or every five centuries, has contain'd such a
day, for all its names.)
The singers of successive hours of centuries may have ostensible
names, but the name of each of them is one of the singers,
The name of each is, eye-singer, ear-singer, head-singer, sweet-
singer, echo-singer, parlor-singer, love-singer, or something
else.
All this time, and at all times, wait the words of true poems;
The words of true poems do not merely please,
The true poets are not followers of beauty, but the august masters of
beauty;
The greatness of sons is the exuding of the greatness of mothers and
fathers,
The words of poems are the tuft and final applause of science.
Divine instinct, breadth of vision, the law of reason, health,
rudeness of body, withdrawnness,
Gayety, sun-tan, air-sweetness--such are some of the words of
poems. 20
The sailor and traveler underlie the maker of poems, the answerer;
The builder, geometer, chemist, anatomist, phrenologist, artist--all
these underlie the maker of poems, the answerer.
The words of the true poems give you more than poems,
They give you to form for yourself, poems, religions, politics, war,
peace, behavior, histories, essays, romances, and everything
else,
They balance ranks, colors, races, creeds, and the sexes,
They do not seek beauty--they are sought,
Forever touching them, or close upon them, follows beauty, longing,
fain, love-sick.
They prepare for death--yet are they not the finish, but rather the
outset,
They bring none to his or her terminus, or to be content and full;
Whom they take, they take into space, to behold the birth of stars,
to learn one of the meanings, 30
To launch off with absolute faith--to sweep through the ceaseless
rings, and never be quiet again.
poem by Walt Whitman
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Related quotes
Poems About Poems About Poems
Poems about poems about poems-
More poems and more poems and more poems-
Poems poems poems poems poems-
How many poems?
How much poetry
Until there is no poetry at all?
But only 'words' and 'words' and 'words'
Until one goes far away
Where there was never a poem before-
And suddenly hears
“Let there be Light”.
And Poetry perhaps
Is born again.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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Not Every Poem Knows How To Say Its Own Name Properly
NOT EVERY POEM KNOWS HOW TO SAY ITS OWN NAME PROPERLY
Not every poem knows how to say its own name properly-
There are poems that have no name
And poems that are named by others who have not written them-
There are poems whose names make them what they are
And poems whose names contradict and belie them-
Many poems have their first lines as their names
And these poems often are as memorable as one line only-
Great poems and good poems can be nameless
Or can have unforgettable names.
Not every poem knows how to say its own name properly -
Poems are poems are poems
And names are names are names
And sometimes they meet and are one
And live happily ever after-
But there are times when perhaps
They never should have met each other at all.
Poems have their names
And names have their poems
But sometimes they love each other
And truly are one.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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All These Poems About Poems
All these poems about poems
Where do they lead?
The world is so rich in so many other things
Write poems about them.
At twilight I look out
At strangers walking
To do their errands of preparation
for Sukkot.
A poem should have some Beauty in it
And not just be an effort at recording observations-
The scarlet bright flowers rage at me from the distance
I cannot translate their Beauty to words -
There is so much I have seen
And so much I will never write –
And so many Poems beyond my Imagination.
All these poems about my failing at poetry
And about translating the Beauty of the world to words-
This is a poem I not know how to properly finish.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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The Deceased Poets Of Nature
Such beautiful poems to Nature they did write
The poetry we love for to read and recite
May they rest in peace now where-ever they lay
The deceased poets of Nature their poems live today
They glorified Nature and her praises they sung
And though they may be long dead their poems remain young
the poets of the land and the poets of the sea
In their beautiful poetry their greatness we do see
Their poems and their songs I loved as a boy
And their poems and their songs I will always enjoy
The beauty of Nature they did celebrate
And beauty in their words they loved to create.
Great insights of Nature from them we did gain
The beauty of their words with us does remain
We loved them for their poems in decades long gone
The deceased poets of Nature their poems living on.
poem by Francis Duggan
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Poems About.
There are poems that you will never see
Marked in a folder titled 'privacy'
Poems of hate and anger and personal pain
Poems about greed and hunger and personal gain
Poems about people I would love to see dead
Poems about women I met
Poems about relationships that have gone bad
Poems about issues with mom and dad
Poems about me, the person no one knows
Poems about places where only my soul goes
Poems I wish I could place in the clouds for all to read
Poems about lust, selfishness and greed
Poems I know will hurt those I hate
Poems I write by complete mistake
Poems I have hidden in my heart and my head
Poems about things that are better left unsaid
Poems I want to share and poems I want to retract
Poems of shame and how others might act
They stay in my psyche, they are a part of me
These poems I write, but you will never see.
poem by Mahfooz Ali
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Oh The Poems And More Poems
OH THE POEMS AND THE MORE POEMS
Oh the poems and the more poems
The wonderful poems I am writing all the time
God has given me this gift
And when I wait in the right way
And when I listen to myself properly
The poems come in ways I could never have thought of or imagined before
They come as mysteries as gifts as surprises
As wonderful to me as perhaps to you their possible readers
Oh the poems and the more poems
The wonderful poems God has given me
And the light of this day and so many other days, also.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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Oh The Poems
OH THE POEMS AND THE POEMS AND THE POEMS
Oh the poems and the poems and the poems
Oh the love of Literature
Oh all that stuff
I have given my life to-
Words and meanings and feelings
Pages and pages and pages –
What it is all this literary life for?
When out the window out the door
With our eyes we see in an instant other worlds other dreams?
I don’t know and I will never know
And Literature is certainly far more than I can say it is-
Oh the poems and this poem and this day turning grey
And all my life old and old and more old and more old-
Oh why oh why oh why
And always back to God
My last rescue and refuge and escape
I who have read so much Great Literature
And can only write this-
Oh the why and the oh oh oh and the words
And the whole world of Literature
I would belong to and do not.
Oh the words oh the world oh the Literature
Oh God help me please can’t you please help me a little or not?
poem by Shalom Freedman
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Which Poems Are True and Which Poems Only A Story?
WHICH POEMS ARE TRUE AND WHICH POEMS ONLY A STORY?
Which poems are true
and which poems only a story?
There are poems I have to write
They are the heart of who I am-
And other poems that tell a story my mind makes
And takes me where I do not know I'll ever really be-
There are real poems and there are imaginary poems-
And there are poems-in- between like this one.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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We Need Poems To Make Us Love Life More
WE NEED POEMS TO MAKE US LOVE LIFE MORE
We need poems to make us love life more
Poems that will make us happier
Poems that will make us kinder, better people.
We need poems that will inspire us
That will add to our sense of the world’s Beauty
We need Poems that will make us love others as we love ourselves as we love God.
We need holy poems
And joyful poems
And blessed poems
And kind poems
We need poems which will make us love life more
Which will help us love others and ourselves more
God more
We need poems.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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Critics Have Appeared
critics have appeared
in these cyber times
hunting for poems
and passing wise words
on poems they swallow in seconds
and whose comments are like puke;
and whose own gems of poems when you seek
it turns out, they have not published any
at the very poetry portals where they pass such magnificent judgment…
O Ye Critics who hunt for poems
come back another day
when you have poems some of your very own…
poem by Raj Arumugam
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Let's Leave The 'Poems' Without Metaphors
LET’S LEAVE THE ‘POEMS’ WITHOUT METAPHORS
Let’s leave the ‘poems’ without metaphors
Bare and stark and original
Quiet and sleeping and still
The soothing poems the calming poems
The poems that even in the middle of the night
Let us sleep.
Let’s leave the poems without metaphors
And go back to the simple words
And let them say all they can by themselves
Until they become metaphors too.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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Poet's Soul
I read the poet's souls in the poems,
I read the poet's inner world.
Pulse beats louder, then duller,
And all my doubts are just hurled.
The sadness sometimes a kiss cover,
Then suddenly curled at my feet,
Giving the whole body a heat,
The warmth of a true lover.
Fever passes through nervous points,
Chill runs through the whole body,
I read the poet's souls in the poems,
And feel that the soul is haughty.
I delve into the words and their nature,
Understanding destroys the walls,
Now I would like to capture
The main idea and the poems calls.
I read and my joy is in full swing,
My own soul gets the wings,
I am ready to fly with the singer,
Like me the poet is a swinger.
I am with that one who dared
To plunge into the holy spring naked,
I am with that one who shared
An inspiration and was not faked.
I read the poet's souls in the poems.
But do I read the souls of reality or dream?
Let's deem that no one here and there lies,
And the law of poetry is always precise.
©Larisa Rzhepishevska (Odessa, Ukraine)
The 4th of April,2012
poem by Larisa Rzhepishevska
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now you, too, think I am what my poems say.
i know that your poems are you,
they always say a lot
from the bottom of your heart
i have always felt
what you want to tell
not just me but to this
world,
i must admit now,
without reservations
without any motive
for any evasion,
i am too, what my poems
say
about me, i am too what
my poems think, about me,
i am my poem
and i am true
i think you are your poems too
verily true
we feel it
as we read these poems
ourselves
some scars have become too visible,
some lies straightened
smoother this time, and have become shy
like convicts of some crimes
duly proven &
judged.
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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The History Poems Have Not Been Written
The history poems have not been written
The poems after Milosz
The Wallace Stevens poems will never be written
I can’t come close
I have tried the Blake poems
But of course I am not near them either
I would like to the ironic intellectual poems
I might be able to do them
I could do a kind of surrealistic association mind poem a prose poem
But I don’t like that very much
The poems of Jerusalem have not been good enough
Poems of propaganda are awkward and unacceptable
The small poems that tell of my life
They are for me the chance at real poetry
And I will continue as best I can with them
The American poems I have not yet found the idiom for
I can be epigrammatic in Emerson Thoreau fashion
But not with the hard New England observing eye
Borges poems I love
And the stories of mind and literature
Making the drama of a life of a storyteller
Interest me
But I doubt I could truly do them well
Imitation can only take one so far
And through it one may lose one’s way entirely
I can really do only what I am
Not the Dickinson poems nor the Hopkins poems nor the Wordsworth poems nor the Keats poems nor the Amichai poems nor the poems of many others whose poetry I love
The Biblical poems have been tried
The poems of cosmic and scientific reflection
I could try to improve them
There are too many different kinds of poems to write
And I cannot write almost all of them
This is another poem about poems and poetry
I have written many for a long time now
Perhaps I need to go elsewhere and write in a new way
A way I have not dreamed or even remotely understood possible before.
The poems of the unknown poetry await me
I will go on but I am not sure now I know in which wa
poem by Shalom Freedman
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Like So Many Poems I Read
LIKE SO MANY POEMS I READ
Like so many poems I read
These poems I am reading now
Are not poems to me.
They are too detached
Too abstract
Too up in the air.
I want to hear the words
Make a music of feeling
In my soul.
A poem must move me
If it is to be real.
Why then do I write these words
as if a poem?
poem by Shalom Freedman
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My Poems Are Poems Of The Light Of The Day
MY POEMS ARE POEMS OF THE LIGHT OF THE DAY
My poems are poems of the light of the day
The poems of the night are for others-
When the night comes
I hide and wait in silence
Until the day comes-
My poems are poems of the light of the day
And I dare not bring the poems of the night within them.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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Always The Poems In Me
Always the poems in me-
Saying themselves over and over
Returning to lines learned long ago
Or lines learned with more difficulty in old age-
Always the poems in me-
While my own poems written
And forgotten
As if only
Poems of a single occasion
The time of their writing-
Always the poems in me-
The poems which others will have in them after me
Poems not my own.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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Fame Postmortem Intervals
singers poets
are often remembered
for just one
or two songs poems
an interesting fact
is several great
classical poets
had very few poems
or even none
published
during their lives
fame postmortem
singers posers are often
electric fly by nighters
instant one hit wonders
longer lasting new styles
fading shadows
echo early days
flush fame games
history craze slices
poem by Terence George Craddock
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An Afternoon Poem Is Rare
AN AFTERNOON POEM IS RARE
An Afternoon Poem is rare-
Afternoon is long after the first light-
Afternoon is a time of heaviness and quiet
A time of rest-
Afternoon is after the morning work has been done-
Afternoon is the weight of the day-
Afternoon is the time after the day has lost its freshness-
Still there must be afternoon poems-
There must be a beauty that emerges
In its own way,
Perhaps from where lovers meet
Perhaps from ‘ripeness is all’
Perhaps from the anticipation of evening
Perhaps from winter where it is the warmest time of day.
There must be afternoon poems-
Poems that celebrate all that warmth can bring-
Poems of rest poems of sleep-
Poems of waiting to believe
That in the evening
A new day and a new world
Will make life easier again.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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The Poems Of The Wild Words And Unexpected Meanings
THE POEMS OF THE WILD WORDS AND UNEXPECTED MEANINGS
The poems of the wild words and the unexpected meanings
Escape me -
The surprises of each new line’s metaphors
Are far from my power-
A plodding literal single- mindedness
Informed by small irony
Is all I have.
Poems distant from mine and greater
Inhabit the dreaming worlds,
And I inferior
With lesser words
Persist in making my Mediocrity up.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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