Friday Extras: Extra poetry

 Did you know April is National Poetry month? Here are a few of my favorite poets and their poems:

1. Christina Rossetti

Her brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, tends to hog all the attention, but Christina's poems are delicate and beautiful, rich with a combination of sensuality and spirituality that made me feel like I had found a kindred spirit when I first discovered her work in high school. Most people don't think they know her, but if you've ever heard the Christmas carols "In the Bleak Midwinter" or "Love Came Down at Christmas," then you do know some of her work. Here is one of my favorites: "I Loved You First;" and here is a beautiful sonnet that is one of her better-known poems: "Remember Me."

2. Gerard Manley Hopkins

Hopkins' subject matter, often viewing all of nature as bursting through with glimpses of Divine grace, is beautiful, but it's the sounds of Hopkins' poetry that really make my English-major heart go all a-flutter. Just see for yourself in one of my favorites (NOTE: Hopkins is best read aloud, so go ahead. The guy in the cubicle next to you will only think you're praying, and then he can't do anything to stop you.)

GLORY be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;	5
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:	10
Praise him.

To which I can only say, Amen. Read more of Hopkins' poetry here.

4. Edna St. Vincent Millay

Too romantic for the modern poets, too controversial for traditionalists, Edna St. Vincent Millay's poetry often gets overlooked. Here are the complete contents of her first book, Renascence and other poems, and here is a link to the Edna St. Vincent Millay society, where you can learn all about her remarkable life and work.

5. T.S. Eliot

I'll never stop loving Eliot's rich, allusive, symbolic poetry. It's poetry that keeps on giving and giving, with new interpretations and emphases every time I read it. If you find yourself having "measured out [your] life with coffee spoons," then you may want to give his first major work, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" a try. Here's Eliot himself reading the poem.

6. Bob Dylan

No list from me would be complete without Bob Dylan. I'm a real believer in keeping the music and the words together with Dylan, so I resist calling him a pure poet instead of a songwriter, but some songs are more poems than songs, and I think "Subterranean Homesick Blues," with its accompanying iconic predecessor to the modern music video, is one of them.  This vimeo link is a better quality video than the youtube one above.

Happy Friday! and Happy National Poetry Month!