Meme: Poetry

[fourzoas]

Yanked this from hobbitblue.

When you see this post, post a poem to your LJ. She chose one of my favorites (Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art," a gorgeous villanelle), but here's another I quite like. YMMV.

"A Map of Love"
Donald Justice

Your face more than others' faces
Maps the half-remembered places
I have come to while I slept—
Continents a dream had kept
Secret from all waking folk
Till to your face I awoke,
And remembered then the shore,
And the dark interior.

Donald Justice links:
"Men at Forty" (another favorite poem)
Wikipedia entry
The Poetry Foundation

Comments

[fourzoas.livejournal.com]

Oh, I could have thought on this one for hours if I'd let myself, but the little voice whispered his name and I went seeking the book.

I adore what Donald Justice does with form; this poem is a really simple one, but he inhabits the sestina and the villanelle and introduced me to the pantoum, all the while bending and breaking and shaping them to make them his own.

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

Funnily enough I listened to the whisper of the little voice in my case too!