Jul 11, 2009

3rd Virtual Poetry Circle


Don't forget about the Verse Reviewers link I'm creating here on Savvy Verse & Wit.

Send me an email with your blog information to savvyverseandwit AT gmail DOT com

And now, for the third edition of the Virtual Poetry Circle:

OK, Here's a poem up for reactions, interaction, and--dare I say it--analysis:

Remember, this is just for fun and is not meant to be stressful.

Keep in mind what Molly Peacock's books suggested. Look at a line, a stanza, sentences, and images; describe what you like or don't like; and offer an opinion. If you missed my review of her book, check it out here.

Today, I wanted to share with you a poem from one of my favorite poets, Robert Frost, but I wanted to select one that most people don't cover in English courses.

In a Disused Graveyard

The living come with grassy tread
To read the gravestones on the hill;
The graveyard draws the living still,
But never anymore the dead.

The verses in it say and say:
"The ones who living come today
To read the stones and go away
Tomorrow dead will come to stay."

So sure of death the marbles rhyme,
Yet can't help marking all the time
How no one dead will seem to come.
What is it men are shrinking from?

It would be easy to be clever
And tell the stones: Men hate to die
And have stopped dying now forever.
I think they would believe the lie.

(From The Collected Poems, Complete and Unabridged: The Poetry of Robert Frost, Page 221)

Let me know your thoughts, ideas, feelings, impressions. Let's have a great discussion...pick a line, pick an image, pick a sentence. Most of all have fun!

Today's my first book club meeting, and we're discussing The Hunger Games and selecting our new book for the month. Wish us luck.

4 comments:

Lezlie said...

I like it! As you know, I'm not up on poetry, thought I keep wanting to try. This one makes me want to take a closer look again!

Lezlie

teabird said...

My first thoughts: in this poem, the gravestones are animate, but the visitors barely so. It's the stones who think and wonder, but their vision is limited to their small plot of earth.

I wonder if they are lonely and puzzled because they have no way of knowing that a small graveyard is almost a synechdoche of the vast graveyards, both formal and incidental - those with stones and those without. It holds the dead of a community, but nothing can hold the dead of the earth - except the earth -

Of course, the poem makes me think of Spoon River Anthology. (Less so of Our Town, which I never liked.)

You rarely can go wrong with Frost!

Anna said...

I love Frost, too. I like the rhyme in this one. Rhyme is so hard to do well in poetry.

--Anna
Diary of an Eccentric

Serena said...

Lezlie: We'd love to hear your thoughts about the poem.

Teabird: I really love your thoughts about the poem, and I can totally see what you are saying about the gravestones being animated. I am going to have to check out this anthology you mentioned.

Anna: Frost is so iconic.

I love how frost uses simple images to make readers think about everyday objects in new ways. The last stanza of this poem is very accurate--men/humans hate to die and attempt to avoid death.