Poetry Monday!: "Dirge Without Music" by Edna St. Vincent Millay

(For the rest of my playlist, click here. Past poems are "Ulysses" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson; "The Pulley" by George Herbert; and "Harmonie du soir" by Charles Baudelaire.)

Comments

[Intelligent Mr Toad]

As long as we're reciting poetry, try a bit of this one (sorry about the poor sound-quality; I need to get a better mike).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaIHj_WMEho

[Krychek_2]

Poem for the day:

It gives me neither stab nor squirm
To tread by chance upon a worm
"Aha, my little dear," I say,
"Your kind will pay me back one day."

Dorothy Parker

[Intelligent Mr Toad]

Ogden Nash:

Some primal termite knocked on wood,
And tasted it, and found it good!
And that is why your cousin May
Fell through the parlor floor today.

[LegoAthos]

I always enjoy logging on to my computer and finding its ____day poetry day at the VC.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Edna St. Sincent-Millay was born in Rockland, Maine back when it very much was a gritty industrial city. There were 160 lime kilns burning lime 24/7 to make the unslaked lime used for plaster & mortar to build East Coast cities like Boston & NYC. Fish offal was processed into fish meal and sea weed into carrageenan -- both smelly processes with liquid waste being dumped into the harbor.

My favorite:
Hearing your words, and not a word among them
Tuned to my liking, on a salty day
When inland woods were pushed by winds that flung them
Hissing to leeward like a ton of spray,
I thought how off Matinicus the tide
Came pounding in, came running though the Gut,
While from the Rock the warning whistle cried,
And children whimpered and the doors blew shut;
There in the autumn when the men go forth,
With slapping skirts the island women stand
In gardens stripped and scattered, peering north,
With dahlia tubers dripping from the hand:
The wind of their endurance, driving south,
Flattened your words against your speaking mouth.

[bernard11]

Great choice, Sasha, and well done.

I was not familiar with this before hearing your reading, but I like it vary much. I am reminded of Dylan Thomas, "Do not go gentle into that good night.."