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you shall above all things be glad and young  for if you're young, whatever life you wear 
  it will become you; and if you are glad  whatever's living will yourself become.  girlboys may nothing more than boygirls need:  i can entirely her only love 
  whose any mystery makes every man's  flesh put space on; and his mind take off time 
  that you should ever think, may god forbid  and (in his mercy) your true lover spare:  for that way knowledge lies, the foetal grave  called progress, and negation's dead undoom. 
  i'd rather learn from one bird how to sing  than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance
  ee cummings 
 
  
"I don't know which is worse: ignorance or apathy. And, frankly, I don't care." - Anonymous
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Hello, We've had too many blizzards here too: 100 days of continual snow, so I appreciated your poem contribution. Thanks.   And we've just had 100 consecutive days above 20 C (68 F).  
 
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Carpal Tunnel 
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Carpal Tunnel 
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Another American favorite: William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)
  The Poem
  It's all in the sound. A song Seldom a song. It should
  be a song - made of particulars, wasps, a gentian - something immidiate, open
  scissors, a lady's  eye - waking centrifugal, centripetal 
 
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I reacted not to the post, but the 'making fun of a form' sense of the limerick.
  Don't get me wrong, I happened to enjoy a limerick or two, especially if well written and witty (with just a touch of salacity). I don't mind analysis or even over-analysis, but my question was innocent. I did not understand what you were saying. Now that I do, I have no problem with it.
  Now, for my limerick story. Years ago, the founder of Oedilf (the Omniscient (née Oxford) English Dictionary in Limerick Form and I found ourselves to be the only two participants on a fortnightly words-related chat. He had very strong opinions on modern poetry (as in it not really being poetry at all) and the superior verse form which is the limerick. I started out on my task of twitting him: first, by mentioning that I particularly liked the limericks of Edward Leary, and had never quite gotten used to the fifth line not have the same rhyme word (and usually a identical  construction) as the first one. He soon disabused me of my fantastically absurd notion. The we moved on to a factoid which I found highly amusing. many people who take poetry seriously (and that includes folks from the only if it rhymes and scans school as well as dyed in the wool free verse modernists and posts) dismissed the limerick as a minor poetic form at best. This was enough to launch the fellow into the atmosphere, and I feared for my life upon his re-entry. He raged and raged for many minutes, which is a difficult thing to do in chat form. I quickly began trying to extract myself from the situation. I assured him these were not my feelings, as I found the occasional well-written limerick a momentary joy, and I was not very passionate about them either way in the Grand Scheme of Things. It was then that he uttered an expletive or two, and we stood there (on our fingertips as it were) silently mouthing our despair like fish out of water before deciding that the day was getting on without us and we departed. It was the last time we were to speak. 
 
  
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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in fact, it reminds me of those folks who 'workshop' limericks in an attempt to perfect the form. 8-) thanks for the 'limerick story', zmjezhd; I'm afraid I despaired of having to try to explain my somewhat snarky comment (smiley notwithstanding), but you've rather done that for me. - joe (enigmas 'Я us) friday 
 
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Hello, We've had too many blizzards here too: 100 days of continual snow, so I appreciated your poem contribution. Thanks.   And we've just had 100 consecutive days above 20 C (68 F).      That is my idea of heaven: I am green with envy. It was 60degF yesterday, but snow predicted tonight and tomorrow. 
 
  
 ----please, draw me a sheep----
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journeyman 
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get the the translation of thisTry  this; the site has some translations into other languages and commentary. Celan was one of the great 20th century poets. He was a German-speaking Romanian Jew.    Thanks so much, he really is a great poet. This has always been on of my favorites. God's Grandeur   by Gerard Manley Hopkins  The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod? Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; And wears man's smudge |&| shares man's smell: the soil Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod. And for all this, nature is never spent; There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; And though the last lights off the black West went Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs -- Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast |&| with ah! bright wings.     
 
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Yes, very nice, thanks much. 
 
  
 ----please, draw me a sheep----
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Gerard Manley HopkinsHopkins is one of my favorites. he even coined a great poetic term,  sprung rhythm. Here's my favorite: The WindhoverI caught this morning morning’s minion, king- dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing	 In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing, As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding	 Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding	 Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!	   Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here	 Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!	   No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion	 Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,	 Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.  
 
  
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Nice, the two poems by a new to me poet. 
 
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A favorite of mine (Frost, I believe)
 
  Nature's first green is gold her hardest hue to hold.
  Her early leaf's a flower but only so an hour.
  The leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief.
  So dawn goes down to day Nothing gold can stay.
 
  
Last edited by LukeJavan8; 03/19/2010 9:26 PM.
 
 
  
 ----please, draw me a sheep----
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 Song by Rupert Brooke      All suddenly the wind comes soft,    And Spring is here again; And the hawthorn quickens with buds of green,    And my heart with buds of pain.
  My heart all Winter lay so numb,    The earth so dead and frore, That I never thought the Spring would come,    Or my heart wake any more.
  But Winter's broken and earth has woken,    And the small birds cry again; And the hawthorn hedge puts forth its buds,    And my heart puts forth its pain.
 
  Rupert Brooke, 1912
      
 
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 ----please, draw me a sheep----
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This Dylan Thomas part from Fern Hill is more about the springtime of life than about the actual season:
  And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home, .....In the sun that is young once only, ..........Time let me play and be .....Golden in the mercy of his means, And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold, ..........And the sabbath rang slowly .....In the pebbles of the holy streams. 
 
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