Poetry Friday - 5
I'm currently (belatedly) reading Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife
I Could Give All To Time
To Time it never seems that he is brave
To set himself against the peaks of snow
To lay them level with the running wave,
Nor is he overjoyed when they lie low,
But only grave, contemplative and grave.
What now is inland shall be ocean isle,
Then eddies playing round a sunken reef
Like the curl at the corner of a smile;
And I could share Time's lack of joy or grief
At such a planetary change of style.
I could give all to Time except - except
What I myself have held. But why declare
The things forbidden that while the Customs slept
I have crossed to Safety with? For I am There,
And what I would not part with I have kept.
This week's round up is at Cuentesitos
(Currently I would give my right arm for a trip in the TARDIS so I can catch up on this week's missing sleep - apparently my body decided to get me ready for the clocks moving forward to BST this weekend by depriving me of sleep this week ! Bah, humbug !)
14 comments:
Oh, I do love this poem. How could I have missed it all these years?!? It appeals to the pack rat in me, and to the one who is always trying to pack just a little more into each minute of the day to cheat time.
Oh, I loved The Time Traveler's Wife. Glad to see you're reading it - I hope you like it. I'm sorry to hear about your self-imposed sleep deprivation, and I hope you can get caught up again soon!
I'm always trying to cram every day full of things - it's why I don't sleep more than 6 hours most nights !
Glad you enjoyed the poem !
Sheila, I'm loving TTTW - and finding it very hard to put down to do essential things like work !
The lack of sleep isn't deliberately self-imposed - but thankfully I did sleep a full 7 hours last night !
I enjoyed the Time Traveler's Wife and Frost is one of my favorites. This is a great one!
Thanks ! I must confess that Frost is the only American poet I read regularly...
I had Frost yesterday as well. I love this one with its five-line stanzas and its false generosity. Did you visit Sheila at Greenridge? (I think she's the one that had David Tennant in a YouTube clip.)
Frost is one of my favorites, too, so I won't scold you for reading him. But I am pondering which other American poets I'd highly recommend. Dickinson and Eliot come to mind (he was expat, but still . . . )
Is it bad that I tend to think of TSE as British? *slaps wrists* I do read him fairly often - though not as often as Frost...
I do read Dickinson on occasion...
I didn't visit Sheila at Greenridge, but now I will ! (I've just been watching David hosting "The Friday Night Project" and have come over all unnecessary!)
I think of TSE as British, too. Ezra Pound as well (although I don't read him).
There's Walt Whitman, too. I should've suggested him. But he's a bit longwinded sometimes, I think. And he doesn't always suit my mood, whereas Frost does.
I read quite a bit of Whitman when I was doing my BA thesis as I did a comparison of some of his poems to those of Mary Borden (an American WW1 poet)...
I liked The Time Traveler's Wife a lot as I was reading it and whipped right through it. After I finished it, though, I kept finding fault. I guess it's a book that you have to enjoy while you can.
I finished it yesterday and am a little upset that no one warned me that the ending would reduce me to a sobbing wreck !
OK, everyone likes TTTW. Now I'm feeling my forehead and checking my pulse. I started listening to it and it never took. Maybe the audiobook was a mistake. I will try reading it. If all of you liked it...well, I am encouraged to try it again.
I would say it's worth a second look - and I can't imagine it would work as well as an audio book, somehow - but then I'm not a huge fan of audiobooks (audio dramas are a different kettle of fish, however !)
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