[lit-ideas] Poems for Tuesday, April 12th (4 of them)

From: "Stan Spiegel" <writeforu2@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 01:49:42 -0400
This is from the only book of poetry that I've ever read from start to finish. 
It's called "Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle...and other modern 
verse" published by Scott Foresman in 1966 when I was still young. I remember 
buying it in a bookstore because of its interesting title, how nice the book 
felt in my hands, the layout and design of the verse within, not to mention the 
awfully attractive pieces selected by the three editors. 
This one -- "How to Eat a Poem" by Eve Merriam -- introduces the verse that 
follows:

Don't be polite.
Bite in.
Pick it up with your fingers and lick the juice that may run down your chin.
It is ready and ripe now, whenever you are.

You do not need a knife or fork or spoon
or plate or napkin or tablecloth.

For there is no core
or stem
or rind
or pit
or seed
or skin
to throw away.

# 

Or this one called "Gone Forever" by someone I've never heard of called Bariss 
Mills who wrote something out of my own experience:

Halfway through shaving it came --
the word for a poem.
I should have scribbled it
on the mirror with a soapy finger,
or shouted it to my wife in the kitchen,
or muttered it to myself till it ran
in my head like a tune.

But now it's gone with the whiskers
down the drain. Gone forever,
like the girls I never kissed,
and the places I never visited --
the lost lives I never lived.

#

Or William Carlos Williams piece called "This is just to say"

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

(I just hope the lines stay together as Williams meant them to be.) Simple 
thoughts put down simply. Hard to do that, for me at least. I have to admire 
the simplicity, which is so hard to get to-- or to recognize and put into words.

#

And then John Ciardi wrote a piece that really stands out as a great poem to 
read aloud -- especially to kids. It's so much fun to read the words and make 
the sounds, even now at my advanced age.

Why Nobody Pets the Lion at the Zoo

The morning that the world began
The Lion growled a growl at man.

And I suspect the Lion might
(if he'd been closer) have tried a bite.

I think that's as it ought to be
And not as it was taught to me.

I think the Lion has a right
To growl a growl and bite a bite.

And if the Lion bothered Adam,
He should have growled right back at 'im.

The way to treat a Lion right
Is growl for growl and bite for bite.

True, the Lion is better fit
For biting than for being bit.

But if you look him in the eye
You'll find the Lion's rather shy.

He really wants someone to pet him.
The trouble is: his teeth won't let him.

He has a heart of gold beneath
But the Lion just can't trust his teeth.


--------------------------------------------------------
"Every morning in Africa a gazelle wakes up. It must
outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning 
in Africa a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than 
the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn't matter whether
you're a lion or a gazelle -- when the sun
comes up, you'd better be running." - Anon
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[lit-ideas] Poems for Tuesday, April 12th (4 of them)

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