Poems that you love

[ellajam]

Grammar
by Tony Hoagland
...

My oh my oh my!
This is the sort of writing I aspire to.
After reading this I hurried off to read him more.*

Magical metaphors seamlessly sewn. (Best description I could come up with).

Wow! (Now I got me someone else to steal from).



* Should anyone wish, there are 17 more of his here.

Bena!!! This is one of my all time favorite poems. I think I've posted it somewhere on the site, it's what I hope will happen but rarely does as I read poem after poem. It's exactly what I mean when I talk about a how a successful poem can bring me to the same place again and again, and it is my place, the place where I interact with the poem.

The images in the middle strophe slay me, and
"In the meantime, she is the one today among us
most able to bear the idea of her own beauty,"
somehow hits me, clobbers me, with some kind of truth few can articulate.

Thanks for the read.

Ha, I found it on the What is a Gerund? thread, I said it's the only thing that comes to mind when people start talking grammar to me.

edit:
"In the meantime, she is the one today among us
most able to bear the idea of her own beauty,"

I've been thinking about these lines, again. For me, Hoagland has hit on the essence of the only difference between the happy and sad, the satisfied and miserable. The "today" is essential, it is a situation in flux for us all. The beauty is something every human has, we are so often so overwhelmed that we can't hold it up and admire it for what it is, so intimidated by it we attempt to bury it. That is why so often we can see in someone else what they can't see in themselves, and what others see that we can't. When someone has a day like Maxine's, yes, worthy of applause.