Poems that you love

[RiverNotch]

Oh, fecking feck.

Lesbos - by Sylvia Plath
...

    I love Plath's work. I stopped reading her more than 30 years ago, it scared me too much.
    But I just did now... guess I've gotten old enough (still scares me).

The first poem I ever read of hers is I think Ariel, and right now I'm reading her original manuscript (as in literally -- the book I *borrowed* online contains scanned versions) of Ariel, which includes this gem, among others. With that poem in mind, I've never really gotten scared --- whenever she talked about suicide or death or simply hating other people (especially the Other Woman here), I always thought she was talking about something else, something more than the whole oven thing --- not death, but resurrection. And I guess that's the recommended way of reading it --- after all, she did call the book "Ariel and other poems" --- although I'm not too well read about her, I suppose. A waste, really. ----- or maybe I'm just not as depressed? 

---

Another one, one I may have posted before?

Improvisation on Lines by Isaac the Blind - by Peter Cole


Only by sucking, not by knowing,
can the subtle essence be conveyed—
sap of the word and the world’s flowing

that raises the scent of the almond blossoming,
and yellows the bulbul in the olive’s jade.
Only by sucking, not by knowing.

The grass and oxalis by the pines growing
are luminous in us—petal and blade—
as sap of the word and the world’s flowing;

a flicker rising from embers glowing;
light trapped in the tree’s sweet braid
of what it was sucking. Not by knowing

is the amber honey of persimmon drawn in.
An anemone piercing the clover persuades me—
sap of the word and the world is flowing

across separation, through wisdom’s bestowing,
and in that persuasion choices are made:
But only by sucking, not by knowing
that sap of the word through the world is flowing.