"i thank you God for most this amazing"

I love e.e. cummings, and I love this poem. It nearly knocked me over the first time I read it. I have the first two stanzas memorized and I'll have the whole thing soon. More on that in a little while.


i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of allnothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of eyes are opened)

- e.e. cummings

A poem on the art of poetry

This is a chunk of a poem I stumbled across while I had The Norton Anthology of Poetry (nearly 2,000 glorious pages) checked out from the library this summer.


A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,

Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown --

A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds.

-Archibald MacLeish
from "Ars Poetica" (1926)

Isn't that lovely? The awesome rhyme scheme makes me grin. So perfect -- it's the "less" that keeps the last two lines from rhyming. Absolutely wonderful.

I join the swooners

So I'd seen some of the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice before, but yesterday I watched the whole first disc with Nikki and Anna, and I'll probably watch the second one tomorrow. This time Mr. Darcy was so much more swoonerific. Ne'er was there a hotter scowl. Oh, swoon. And every time I saw him I got a jolt like, Hey, I've seen that guy! (Thanks to LRRH, a certain cardboard man, and a very attractive squash, ahem.) When he made his confession to Lizzy, friends down the hall attest that I was shrieking, "THIS IS WHY HE'S SO HOT!" I threw the back of my hand to my brow and toppled over at that point.

And I liked the coats they wore riding. Hurrah for men in breeches. I do believe a reread of Austenland is in order.

Sigh.

Nice to be part of the swooning masses of Firth-Darcy fans. =)

"Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance? He does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in steadfast love. He will again have compassion on us; he will tread our iniquities underfoot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea. You will show faithfulness to Jacob and steadfast love to Abraham, as you have sworn to our fathers from the days of old."
- Micah 7:18-20

There's loveliness to be found here too

If I made a list of things I love about the Midwest, the trees would be the first item on it. Late summer/early fall, which is perfection, would be number two.