BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: POETS & POETRY

The proof  of a poem is not that we have never forgotten it, 
but that we know at sight that we would never forget it.”

     Robert Frost.  Wisdom. Volume 38.

**

EMILY DICKINSON ON SPELLING

“Orthography always baffled me, and to N’s I had 
an especial aversion, as they always seemed unfinished
  M’s.”

** 
CARPE DIEM

I am writing for today only,
If I cd only remember
What day it is.

LJP

**

         ABOUT THINGS THAT GIVE PLEASURE

         “When a poem that you’ve composed for some event, 
or in an exchange of poems, is talked of by everyone and 
noted down  when they hear it. This hasn’t yet happened 
to me personally,  but I can imagine how it would feel.”

Sei Shonagon. The Pillow Book (Circa 1000)

**

A DOCTOR SO LAZY
HE CAN COMPOSE
ONLY 2/17th OF A HAIKU

Say ah!
**

ABOUT A RELATIVELY FORGOTTEN POET

ABRAHAM COWLEY wrote A Proposition for the Advancement 
of Experimental Philosophy (1661)and for a time acted 
as a cipher secretary to the Queen of England when she 
was in France.poet and essayist Abraham Cowley was born 
in London, England, in 1618. He displayed early talent 
as a poet, publishing his first collection of poetry, 
Poetical Blossoms (1633), at the age of 15. Cowley 
studied at Cambridge University but was stripped of 
his Cambridge fellowship during the English Civil War 
and expelled for refusing to sign the Solemn League 
and Covenant of 1644. In turn, he accompanied Queen 
Henrietta Maria to France, where he spent 12 years 
in exile serving as her secretary. During this time,
 Cowley completed The Mistress (1647). Arguably his 
most famous work, the collection exemplifies Cowley’s metaphysical style of love poetry. After the Restoration, 
Cowley returned to England, where he was reinstated 
as a Cambridge fellow and earned his MD before finally 
retiring to the English countryside. He is buried at 
Westminster Abbey alongside Geoffrey Chaucer and Edmund 
Spenser.

THE POETRY FOUNDATION 

**

From DRINKING by Abraham Crowley

The busy sun (and one would guess
By's drunken fiery face no less)
Drinks up the sea, and when h'as done,
The moon and stars drink up the sun.
They drink and dance by their own light,
They drink and revel all the night.
Nothing in Nature's sober found,
But an eternal health goes round.
Fill up the bowl then, fill it high,
Fill all the glasses there, for why
Should every creature drink but I,
Why, man of morals, tell me why?

**
THE AMBULANCE
 
“A poet has only one indispensable quality:
whether he is simple or complicated, people 
must need him. Poetry, if its genuine, is not 
a racing car rushing senselessly around
A closed track; it is an ambulance rushing 
to save someone.”
 
              Yevgeny Yevtushenko
**

From A PRECOCIOUS AUTOBIOGRAPHY , translated 
by Andrew R.MacAndrew (New York: E.P. Dutton 
& Co.1963)

**
THE FREEDOM TO MAKE POETRY OF EVERYTHING

“Theoretically we are free to make poetry 
of everything in the universe; in practice 
we are kept within the old limits, for the 
simple reason that no great man has 
appeared to show us how we can use our 
freedom. A certain amount of the life of 
the twentieth century is to be found in poetry, 
but precious little of its mind.”
                    Aldous Huxley

Aldous  Huxley. Collected Essays (New York: 
Bantam Books, 1960)
**
DEBTS

The cohesive sky
With multiple blues
Hovers over me,

Teasing me
Because I am in its debt,
But the sky 

Does not owe anyone
One red cent.

Louis Phillips