A poem on your parents

I come from a very literary family.  Spontaneous "Name that Poem and Author" contests have been known to break out at family gatherings.  People quote Dylan Thomas, W B Yeats, and T S Elliot as part of normal conversation.  ("I grow old, I grow old, I wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled."  And someone will respond "Do I dare to eat a peach?")  I am one of the very few in my family without a degree in English (and without a Masters degree).  Members of my family write books, some are English professors.  Me?  Only a fine arts degree BA.

This poem was read by the singer Sting at a gala poetry reading in New York City on April 21. Blackbird attended - lucky lady. The event was very fine - poems read by Meryl Streep, Matt Dillon, Gabriel Byrne, Alan Cumming, and others.  My family has loved this poem for a long time.  It explains a lot, don't you think?

This Be the Verse

Philip Larkin

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

They may not mean to, but they do.

They fill you with the faults they had

And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn

By fools in old-style hats and coats,

Who half the time were soppy-stern

And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.

It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,

And don't have any kids yourself.

Now I must go deal with those I have fucked up.....

April is Poetry Month

This is my all-time most favorite poem, taken from this site.

The Windhover

To Christ our Lord

I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, king-

  dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding

  Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding

High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing

In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,

  As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding

  Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding

Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here

  Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion

Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

  No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion

Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,

  Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89)

It takes my breath away.