Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Doing My Bit for National Poetry Month

Replay:

Arithmetic is where numbers fly is an old post I wrote about Carl Sandburg. The post has a link to the short film made from Carl Sandburg's "Arithmetic." Real Player required (alas).

Leatherwing Bat on the Ocarina is a song I transcribed a few months before I began guitar lessons. It's an Appalachian folk song I wish I had written. I'm playing the song for my guitar recital this Sunday.

Three Songs of Stars and Fire contains one of my favorite poems, "A Pavane for the Nursery," by William Jay Smith.

Rainier Maria Rilke and Richard Wilbur write about angels and the things of this world.

My one Poetry Friday post has links to Walter de la Mare, Pablo Neruda, Edward Lear and Robert Louis Stevenson.

All of the poems and songs I cited in the above links are by poets who are men. It's something I find peculiar to note, because there was a time in my life when I went out of my way to read and study poetry by women. My theory: male poets sometimes talk about their "Muses," and the traditional Muses are female. Maybe because I'm female, my non-traditional Muse is male. If so, I need to give him a name. Thalia is the Muse of comedy and Euterpe is the Muse of lyric poetry. What is the Ancient Greek translation for "Muse of Silly Songs?"

Thalerpe?

Addendum
Robert from the comments section suggests "Anoitos" as the Muse of Silly Songs. Anoitos means "fool." (Thank you, Babel Fish, for allowing me to appear more erudite than I really am.) It works for me:

Sing, O Anoitos,
the vanity of Achilles son of Heelius,
that brought countless blisters upon the Achaeans.
Many a brave sole wore sandals hurrying down to Macy's,
and many a bunion did it yield...


Oh, I can't sustain this.

5 comments:

Yorkshire Pudding said...

Sorry I wasn't shouting at you the other day...
I wonder what E.E.Cummings might have written about the lost ones at Virginia Tech? Perhaps the only suitable poem is a blank page - like a snowfield, unspoilt by pathetic human scribblings. I never met any of those people but it still hurts real bad.

Anonymous said...

Anoitos perhaps?

Saints and Spinners said...

YP: I'm a fan of blank pages when words just won't do.

By the way, I wish my prof had corrected me when I wrote about E. E.Cummings in a paper-- it sure made things look wrong to keep it all lower-case letters.

Robert: Anoitos it is! Thanks.

Anonymous said...

Keep going - even in private - you're on a roll! :)

Saints and Spinners said...

Robert: Thanks! I'm sure Homer is somewhere shaking his fist at me, but sometimes I just can't help myself.