A Poem For Today - A Chunk of Amethyst

[KDick...@aol.com]

A Chunk of Amethyst

 

Held up to the window light the Amethyst has

elegant corridors, that give and take light. The discipline

of its many planes suggest that there is no use trying to live

forever. Its exterior is jagged, but in the inner house all is

in order. Its corridors become ledges, solidified thoughts that

pass each other.

 

This chunk of Amethyst is a cool thing, hard as a

dragon's tongue. The sleeping times of the whole human race

lie hidden there. When the fingers fold the chunk into the

palm, the palm hears organ music, the low notes that makes the

sins of the whole congregation resonate, and catches the

criminal five miles away with a tinge of doubt.

 

With all its planes, it turns four or five faces toward

us at once, and four or five meanings enter the mind.

 

The exhilaration we felt as children returns...We feel the

wind on the face as we go down hill, the sled's speed

increasing.

 

        - Robert  Bly

[Lauren de Boer]

I have always found Robert Bly a difficult poet to like. I liked his selection of other poets in anthologies and insights on poetry in general more than his work. As for his own poetry, I always felt that he was intentionally obtuse, at times didactic, and his images frustrated me rather than inspired me. But I have to say, Ken, that the last two poems of his that you have sent have changed my mind about him. I don't know where they are from, I'm unfamiliar with them, but I like them a lot.  Who knows, maybe I'm the one who has changed, some new version of me whistling down the glen?

Thank you for sharing them. I feel like I can finally appreciate a poet who has done so much for the "cause" of poetry in American society. If, indeed, poetry can be a cause for anything other than the heart. 

Lauren

Lauren de Boer

terravitabooks.net

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[Kurt Heyl]

Thank you Lauren for that beautiful description  of  poetry as the "cause" of the heart.

Hugs

Kurt

Sent from my iPhone

[KDick...@aol.com]

Hi Lauren:

 

Yes I agree with you about Robert Bly and I love his commentaries and insights on poetry so much that its nice also to find some of his poems that I also really love.

 

The poems can be found as follows:

 

"A Chunk of Amethyst" by Robert Bly from Stealing sugar from the castle: Selected Poems, 1950 to 2013 New York: W.W. Norton & Company

 

"People Like Us" by Robert Bly from Morning Poems, Harper Collins

 

Best

 

Ken