National Poetry Month

[hobgoblinn]

Looks like I'm about to miss National Poetry Month. What should I share?

How my 10th and 12th grade English teacher, Willie Mae Burlage, (God rest her soul) told us that we should all memorize poems because someday we might be captured or imprisoned and pretty much stuck with whatever we'd furnished our little minds with?

How I found out some years later, how right she was? How the fragments I could pull forth both tortured and strengthened me at a very bad time in my life?

Nah. Here's something I can recite from memory (might miss a bit here and there, so you'll know I'm not cheating):

Now the hungry lion roars, and the wolf behowls the moon,
Whilst the heavy plowman snores, all with weary task fordone.
Now the wasted brands do glow, whilst the screech owl, screeching loud,
Puts the wretch that lies in woe, in remembrance of a shroud.
Now it is the time of night when the graves all gaping wide,
Every one lets forth his sprite in the churchway paths to glide
And we fairies that do run by the triple Hecate's team,
from the presence of the sun following darkness like a dream,
Now are frolic. Not a mouse shall disturb this hallowed house.
I am sent with broom before, to sweep the dust behind the door.

[And a little later, the hobgoblin makes his last appearance:]

If we shadows have offended, think but this, and all is mended.
That you have but slumbered here, whilst these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme, no more yielding but a dream
Gentles, do not reprehend. If you pardon, we will mend.
And as I am an honest Puck, if we have unearned luck,
now to 'scape the serpent's tongue,we shall make amends 'ere long.
Else the Puck a liar call. And so, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands if we be friends,
and Robin shall restore amends.

(Will Shakespeare, Midsummer Night's Dream, V,I).

Comments

[hobgoblinn.livejournal.com]

Hey, you're poetic even when you're all rambly. I like some poetry-- the kind that just crystallizes an image, or something that's just True. Some of the forms are fun to pick apart of the rhyme or rhythm (patterns), the same way you might take apart a piece of music to see what makes it work. Or a story. My mind works that way.

I think, if we're lucky, we carry around bits of story and song and verse inside us, to give us help knowing how to react to powerful things in our lives, good and bad. I think it not only helps us know what to say or do or feel in those times, but it comforts us on some level, that somebody else has been here before us and got through it, and even fashioned something beautiful from it.

And while I haven't been as commenty as I'd like of late, know that I have been seeing some of your trials and sending good wishes and thoughts your way. Take some time to take care of you, okay?

Hob

[gillo]

Up and down
Up and down
Iwill lead them up and down
I am feared in field and town
Goblin! Lead them up and down.

I love AMND with a passion.

[hobgoblinn.livejournal.com]

Here comes one.

So does my Wee Hobgoblinn, who would make a Great Puck, with his naturally pointed ears and elfin little face. He loved it when I told him that Puck got to pretend to be other people and to insult them. I'm taking him to the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company's Tempest later this month. How cool is it, that my little 12 year old is a fanboy of Giles Davies, one of the company's actors, and once spent several hours at a party he also attended, seriously discussing stage sword fighting with him?

[gillo]

That is cool! My sixteen-year-old spent part of Sunday in Stratford watching John Barton, a distinguished stage director, do a verse-speaking workshop with Ian McKellen and Judi Dench. She was in transports of delight - I find that pretty cool too! I do hope your little Puck loves The Tempest.