MY POETRY "KICK"
KIERSTEN BENSON
(1997--20--)
IS IT WRONG that I now have this profound, ubiquitous love for poetry and all things like it? I now find the very straying thoughts wandering from my head searching for it, looking under tables and the small spaces between the couch and carpet. My food is no longer food, but words aligned into poetry. My drink? Its existence. I wake up to hear its slumberous song tapping on my window and no long drift asleep to solace, but to magic; to passion wringing out on a small clothing line draped with nothing more than words and aestheticization. Upon rediscovering a book sent to me inside a packaged box months before, my passion for poetry was ignited. "The Romantic Period" is the name (edited by: Albert Granberry Reed) of my kindle. The admiration I have for it seems to be indescribable. I want to sleep with it, caress it, bury it inside my soul and at the same time wish nothing more than to simply set it down and stare out the window hoping all I've read will somehow nestle inside me and stay there.
It makes me think.
It makes me think.
And then there is another book drifting into my thoughts. It is any book with which poetry inks its pages. It is every word that intrigues my inner poet and fascinates my inner guilelessness. But tell me dear, poet, how your words can strike me so? Tell me how you can smite my heart and spirit with a few dancing words and then proceed to do it over and over again?
Tell me.
Because it is agony to leave me beyond curious.
But going back to the wondrous book I found, on a day I had quite a bit of time to slaughter, I read my dear little book with my hands gripped quite tightly around it and then nearly fell off the warm bench with which I sat upon after finding a poem that not only spoke my name.
But sang it.
(Elaboration:)
Tell me.
Because it is agony to leave me beyond curious.
But going back to the wondrous book I found, on a day I had quite a bit of time to slaughter, I read my dear little book with my hands gripped quite tightly around it and then nearly fell off the warm bench with which I sat upon after finding a poem that not only spoke my name.
But sang it.
(Elaboration:)
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770-1850)
LUCY POEMS
STRANGE FITS OF PASSION HAVE I KNOWN
STRANGE fits of passion have I known:
And I will dare to tell,
But in the Lover’s ear alone,
What once to me befell.
When she I loved looked every day
Fresh as a rose in June,
I to her cottage bent my way,
Beneath an evening-moon.
Upon the moon I fixed my eye,
All over the wide lea;
With quickening pace my horse drew nigh
Those paths so dear to me.
And now we reached the orchard-plot;
And, as we climbed the hill,
The sinking moon to Lucy’s cot
Came near, and nearer still.
In one of those sweet dreams I slept,
Kind Nature’s gentlest boon !
And all the while my eyes I kept
On the descending moon.
My horse moved on; hoof after hoof
He raised, and never stopped:
When down behind the cottage roof,
At once, the bright moon dropped.
What fond and wayward thoughts will slide
Into a Lover’s head !
“O mercy !” to myself I cried,
“If Lucy should be dead!”
(But then my dear song continued and here is what it sung:)
SHE DWELT AMONG THE UNTRODDEN WAYS
SHE dwelt among untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
A Maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love.
A violet by mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye !
--Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.
She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and, oh,
The difference to me !
I TRAVELED AMONG UNKNOWN MEN
I TRAVELED among unknown men,
In lands beyond the sea;
Nor, England ! did I know till then
What love I bore to thee.
‘ T is past, that melancholy dream !
Nor will I quit thy shore
A second time; for still I seem
To love thee more and more.
Among thy mountains did I feel
The joy of my desire;
And she I cherished turned her wheel
Beside an English fire.
Thy mornings showed, thy nights concealed
The bowers where Lucy played;
And thine too is the last green field
That Lucy’s eyes surveyed.
THREE YEARS SHE GREW
THREE years she grew in sun and shower;
Then Nature said, “A lovelier flower
On earth was never sown;
This Child I to myself will take;
She shall be mine, and I will make
A Lady of my own.
“Myself will to my darling be
Both law and impulse: and with me
The Girl, in rock and plain,
In earth and heaven, in glade and bower,
Shall feel an overseeing power
To kindle or restrain.
“She shall be sportive as the fawn
That wild glee across the lawn
Or up the mountain springs;
And hers shall be the breathing balm,
And hers the silence and the calm
Of mute insensate things.
“The floating clouds their state shall lend
To her; for her willow bend;
Nor shall she fail to see
Even in the motions of the Storm
Grace that shall mould the Maiden’s form
By silent sympathy.
“The stars of midnight shall be dear
To her; and she shall lean her ear
In many a secret place
Where rivulets dance their wayward round,
And beauty born of murmuring sound
Shall pass into her face.
“And vital feeling of delight
Shall rear her form to stately height,
Her virgin bosom swell;
Such thoughts to Lucy I will give
While she and I together live
Here in this happy dell.”
Thus Nature spake--The work was done--
How soon my Lucy’s race was run !
She died, and left to me
This health, this calm, and quiet scene;
The memory of what has been,
And never more will be.
A SLUMBER DID MY SPIRIT SEAL
A SLUMBER did my spirit seal;
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.
No motion has she now, no force,
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course,
With rocks, and stones, and trees.
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770-1850)
LUCY POEMSDid you hear it? Did you hear the song ringing so clearly to my soul? Of course you did not, that would defeat the purpose of it being my own song, but still I shared it. When you share something that is so obviously yours it can be difficult, but it also can be defining. Giving away a piece of you shows what courage you can have to trust a person to see it, hold it, and then appreciate it. My song, my dear "Lucy Poems" did that for me the moment I began to read them. And then it ended as sweet as a song bird's song drifting from the tree it sat upon and to the sky and it was then that I substantially realized poetry moved me. Poetry picked me up, stole my soul and sung a song only I could here all at once. And it was in that unforgettable moment that my profuse love of poetry began.
I'm telling you, compelling even, the moment you open a book
Magic Happens.
August 30, 2014
Saturday
3:20PM
On an over-cast,
Cheerful day
