Sympathy
By Paul Laurence Dunbar

I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,
And the river flows like a stream of glass;
When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals—
I know what the caged bird feels!

I know why the caged bird beats his wing
Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
For he must fly back to his perch and cling
When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
And they pulse again with a keener sting—
I know why he beats his wing!

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,—
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings—
I know why the caged bird sings!


Paul Laurence. Dunbar, "“Sympathy.”" from The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar. (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, )
Source: Twentieth-Century American Poetry (2004)


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Caged Bird
By Maya Angelou

A free bird leaps
on the back of the wind
and floats downstream
till the current ends
and dips his wing
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks
down his narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and
his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.

The free bird thinks of another breeze
and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lawn
and he names the sky his own

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.


Maya Angelou, “Caged Bird” from Shaker, Why Don't You Sing? Copyright © 1983 by Maya Angelou. Used by permission of Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

Source: The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou (Random House Inc., 1994)


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Paul Laurence Dunbar
1872–1906

Born on June 27, 1872, Paul Laurence Dunbar was one of the first African American poets to gain national recognition. His parents Joshua and Matilda Murphy Dunbar were freed slaves from Kentucky. His parents separated shortly after his birth, but Dunbar would draw on their stories of plantation life throughout his writing career. By the age of fourteen, Dunbar had poems published in the Dayton Herald. While in high school he edited the Dayton Tattler, a short-lived black newspaper published by classmate Orville Wright.

Despite being a fine student, Dunbar was financially unable to attend college and took a job as an elevator operator. In 1892, a former teacher invited him to read his poems at a meeting of the Western Association of Writers; his work impressed his audience to such a degree that the popular poet James Whitcomb Riley wrote him a letter of encouragement. In 1893, Dunbar self-published a collection called Oak and Ivy. To help pay the publishing costs, he sold the book for a dollar to people riding in his elevator.

https://poets.org/poet/paul-laurence-dunbar


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Maya Angelou
1928-2014

An acclaimed American poet, storyteller, activist, and autobiographer, Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri. Angelou had a broad career as a singer, dancer, actress, composer, and Hollywood’s first female black director, but became most famous as a writer, editor, essayist, playwright, and poet. As a civil rights activist, Angelou worked for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. She was also an educator and served as the Reynolds professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University. By 1975, wrote Carol E. Neubauer in Southern Women Writers: The New Generation, Angelou was recognized “as a spokesperson for… all people who are committed to raising the moral standards of living in the United States.” She served on two presidential committees, for Gerald Ford in 1975 and for Jimmy Carter in 1977. In 2000, Angelou was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Bill Clinton. In 2010, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the U.S., by President Barack Obama. Angelou was awarded over 50 honorary degrees before her death.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/maya-angelou


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There are many, many artists, poets, writers and generally creative people who say more in one song, story or poem than 10,000 rote talks or sermons heard every week in religious meetings. There may be inspiration there, somewhere, for people here and there, but all too often - not.

I'd rather read a poem...



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/27/2019 07:56PM by Nightingale.

I am not jealous
of what came before me.

Come with a man
on your shoulders,
come with a hundred men in your hair,
come with a thousand men between your breasts and your feet,
come like a river
full of drowned men
which flows down to the wild sea,
to the eternal surf, to Time!

Bring them all
to where I am waiting for you;
we shall always be alone,
we shall always be you and I
alone on earth,
to start our life!

Unconditional love.

Also a precious rarity.

Thank you, Beth.

As you surely know, your noms de plume is one the greatest tropes in poetry, especially among the English Romantics, Keats, Coleridge and most famously, Shelley. But I prefer a lesser known didactic poem from the generation the Romantics reacted against, written by Cowper:

Did you admire my lamp, quoth he [glow-worm],
As much as I your minstrelsy,
You would abhor to do me wrong,
As much as I to spoil your song;
For 'twas the self-same pow'r divine
Taught you to sing, and me to shine;
That you with music, I with light,
Might beautify and cheer the night.

—William Cowper—
— The Nightingale And Glow-Worm—

The whole poem:

http://www.luminarium.org/eightlit/cowper/nightingale.htm

Allow me to quote the conclusion:

Those Christians best deserve the name,
Who studiously make peace their aim;
Peace, both the duty and the prize
Of him that creeps and him that flies.

Thank you, Human. I enjoyed reading that poem. This verse too:

Hence jarring sectaries may learn
Their real int'rest to discern;
That brother should not war with brother,
And worry and devour each other;
But sing and shine by sweet consent,
Till life's poor transient night is spent,
Respecting in each other's case
The gifts of nature and of grace.


"The gifts of nature and of grace". Nice.

Much poetry takes time and effort to ponder and comprehend. It's worth the time and thought though. I admit that often I don't plumb the depths and may miss the point altogether. But even so, it's interesting and satisfying to disappear for a time into a poem's world and tease out some meaning, even if we may miss the poet's true intent.

I admire a person's ability to share truth and beauty in this form.

I admit to not enjoying poetry lessons in school, often finding the exercise tedious and the meanings elusive. But, as with so much, from a distance, as we get older, some things become more clear and also our tastes change, and mature.

Having attended church meetings with JWs, LDS, and various EV groups, I note the distinct lack of depth or lyricism in the first two, while in more mainstream religious groups I found that the music and the talks/sermons were more poetic, learned, meaningful and lyrical. Some of that comes with a more educated clergy, which JWs and LDS eschew. Perhaps that explains, in part, why those groups tend to be exceptionally shallow and boring in time. I can remember as a JW often wondering how long I could tolerate the same old, same old bland music and repetitive talks by laity. It was OK, I guess, if one really believed that Armageddon was poised to strike any instant but otherwise, the repetition throughout the entirety of one's church life was stultifying.

A little poetry would have gone a long way.

As for LDS, that dratted Popcorn song *still* resounds in my head. They assigned me to Primary as a teacher almost while I was still dripping from the baptism font, although I had no talents in that direction and certainly no knowledge.

Turns out, they like it that way.


Meanwhile, I enjoyed the books I read over this past Christmas break, some containing thought-provoking snatches of poetry. Even a fragment of a quote encountered here and there or a half-remembered line somewhere is more delightful than 1000 "talks" in a tiny little closed fundamentalist system that repels individualism, inspiration, initiative and creativity.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 12/29/2019 06:41PM by Nightingale.

Hear hear! Yes. Amen.

But it doesn’t even have to be learned, church poetry/lyrics I mean. It just has to have feeling, sincerity.

African American Gospel music is simple, but add feeling, add heart-felt sincerity, and the sublime suddenly breaks through.

Aretha Franklin at her brother’s LA church is one of my all-time most listened to albums. Then they finally released the movie (directed by the late Sydney Pollack). “Mary Don’t You Weep” is a lyrically simple rendition of the Lazarus story, but add a choir, and an audience full of feeling, and of course Aretha, and...oh my goodness:

https://youtu.be/xiChwl_zHiU

That’s a religious service able to cast out devils, so to speak, and lift one up.

Popcorn popping on an apricot tree it ain’t.

All the best in the new year and new decade. Cheers!

Human

Euridice --Ocean Vuong

It’s more like the sound
a doe makes
when the arrowhead
replaces the day
with an answer to the rib’s
hollowed hum. We saw it coming
but kept walking through the hole
in the garden. Because the leaves
were bright green & the fire
only a pink brushstroke
in the distance. It’s not
about the light—but how dark
it makes you depending
on where you stand.
Depending on where you stand
his name can appear like moonlight
shredded in a dead dog’s fur.
His name changed when touched
by gravity. Gravity breaking
our kneecaps just to show us
the sky. We kept saying Yes—
even with all those birds.
Who would believe us
now? My voice cracking
like bones inside the radio.
Silly me. I thought love was real
& the body imaginary.
But here we are—standing
in the cold field, him calling
for the girl. The girl
beside him. Frosted grass
snapping beneath her hooves.


Why do I like this so much when I rarely like poetry?