How to be the right kind of language snob

Stephen Fry = golden. 

Khepera: put your hand on my heart, it's been a long day.

Khepera: put your hand on my heart, it's been a long day. 

What you are not saying

(I fear)

is what I’m not saying too.

There is a little blue house

on a green hill (far away)

where the grey skies feel like sunshine.

Sometimes I think about the table

(Jesus, that table)

and all the things I should’ve known. 

Frost, "Devotion"

Devotion 


The heart can think of no devotion
Greater than being shore to ocean -
Holding the curve of one position,
Counting an endless repetition. 


(I want to believe.)

Inspiring.

I'm crouched, shivering, in front of the heating vent of my new SLC room, wearing only a cami and underwear. Most people would take this opportunity to throw on sweatpants and a sweatshirt. Not me. I'm too busy being inspired and wondering who chose the color for this bedroom. 

Touche, Neil. I'm picking up what you're putting down. 

Tyler James of Nashville, TN. 

"There are days I wake to peace I can't explain" <--yes. 

Remind me, quick. I'm drifting.  

And now some poetry. 

Yesterday two of my favorite people on this planet got married. Kellie had this poem printed on her cake so I was able to slip it into my toast. The world is full of so much win...and so much love. 

(This is one of my favorite love poems of all time and I'm kinda jealous Kellie got to claim it before me. Oh well.)

[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]

BY E. E. CUMMINGS

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

                                                      i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

Jack Gilbert, "Failing and Flying"

I really, really like this poem. And Press Play-Poetry. And NPR.

Many months ago, I marked May 1 on my calendar as a day of change. In ways that I did not expect at all, it is very much such a day. The tone in this poem reflects how I feel, today, about this tornado (in the very best of ways).

Failing and Flying

by Jack Gilbert

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.

It's the same when love comes to an end,

or the marriage fails and people say

they knew it was a mistake, that everybody

said it would never work. That she was

old enough to know better. But anything

worth doing is worth doing badly.

Like being there by that summer ocean

on the other side of the island while

love was fading out of her, the stars

burning so extravagantly those nights that

anyone could tell you they would never last.

Every morning she was asleep in my bed

like a visitation, the gentleness in her

like antelope standing in the dawn mist.

Each afternoon I watched her coming back

through the hot stony field after swimming,

the sea light behind her and the huge sky

on the other side of that. Listened to her

while we ate lunch. How can they say

the marriage failed? Like the people who

came back from Provence (when it was Provence)

and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.

I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,

but just coming to the end of his triumph.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

I wonder how many times my mother has uttered this prayer for me. Do all mothers of daughters whisper this prayer? What a strange and beautiful world we live in.  


Prayer to Persephone 
Be to her, Persephone,
All the things I might not be:
Take her head upon your knee.
She that was so proud and wild,
Flippant, arrogant and free,
She that had no need of me,
Is a little lonely child
Lost in Hell,—Persephone,
Take her head upon your knee:
Say to her, "My dear, my dear,
It is not so dreadful here." 


I remember the moment this poem struck me when I was but a tender-hearted college freshman. Strange how the words connote the same wistfulness but have a different meaning now; how bittersweet all the years that both connect and estrange me from that dreary winter morning have been. 


What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why (Sonnet XLIII)

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why, 
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain 
Under my head till morning; but the rain 
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh 
Upon the glass and listen for reply, 
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain 
For unremembered lads that not again 
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry. 
Thus in winter stands the lonely tree, 
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one, 
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before: 
I cannot say what loves have come and gone, 
I only know that summer sang in me 
A little while, that in me sings no more.

Right from Wikipedia to my blog! Yehaw: 

Edna St. Vincent Millay (February 22, 1892 – October 19, 1950) was an American lyrical poet, playwright and feminist.[1] She received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry,[2] and was known for her activism and her many love affairs. She used the pseudonymNancy Boyd for her prose work. The poet Richard Wilbur asserted, "She wrote some of the best sonnets of the century."[3]

dusk again

the bees, too, prefer the drunken aroma of springtime citrus
orange, lemon, grapefruit
they, too, get drunk on the delicate white kisses,
blooms unfolding in the evening air

please, God, You know where my heart is 
reveal my heart to me


I have been Tipsy 
waltzing with my Father 
hoping the current will pull me out a little farther


God gave them autopilot for evenings like this
(slow setting sun lush and almost shiftless)
their wings beat mechanical as the scent intoxicates
(belle notte)
they browse halflight drowsy


but, God, You know where my heart is and
something's buzzing below my collar bone