Poetry Friday: Inked (on memorizing Gerard Manley Hopkins)

I wake up and pretend
it's between my shoulder
blades. I get out of bed:
Shook foil

I walk the dog and plot
how it gets stamped
on my ankle bone:
Crushed

I reach for a high-heeled
shoe and it flares
across the small
of my back:
Bleared

I want to flaunt it,
roll up my sleeves
in winter. Oh my
god! There,
on her bicep!
Smell

If you shaved off my hair,
it would be on my skull,
curved like cornrows:
Deep down things

I run after what’s
blown from my hand.
The poem lifts
with my hamstrings:
Brown brink eastward springs

It splays on my chest
like Eve's claws:
Broods

A microdot of information,
it could be mistaken
for a mole:
Ah!

Did it hurt?
Nah, I lie.
I turn my forearm up.
A word has appeared:
Cantilever
I don't even know what that is.

I look again.
The word
has changed. I bend
my wrist in the light:
wings

I want a tattoo of wings.
Are you sure?

Yes.
Here at the base of my throat:
Bright wings

----Sara Lewis Holmes (all rights reserved)

See here for a copy of the Gerard Manley Hopkins poem and my first post about memorizing it.

If you'd like to hear me read this poem, here's a link to Dropbox.

Poetry Friday is hosted by Big A, little a

Poetry Friday: I want to know it by heart

I made a vow to memorize a poem this month. Adrienne inspired me.

But memorization doesn't come as easily to me as it did when I was a teenager. I once memorized an entire scene in a couple of hours when an actress had to drop out of a theater showcase we were performing that night. And I can still recite, from 9th grade English class, Cassius's speech from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar:

"Why, man he doth bestride the narrow world
like a Colossus and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves. Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings."

But now? Tell me a simple thing, like your name, and I'll forget it in two seconds.

So to help my old brain, I made an audio recording of me reading the poem I want to memorize: God's Grandeur by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

If you want to join me, here's a list of great tips to help you memorize poetry. And from the same source, a list of "starter" poems to try. There is also a whole site devoted to a national recitation contest, Poetry Out Loud, and one that podcasts classic poetry in a deep, rich voice with an English accent. (Don't know who it is, because the "About Me" section says: "Who I am is not important. The point is the poetry."

Also, since cloudscome is launching her brilliant idea to leave poetry where people might find it, I'm going to post this one inside that gazebo I blogged about several Poetry Fridays ago. I wonder what my poetry graffiti friends will think of it?


God's Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

---Gerard Manley Hopkins

***For another reading of this poem, go to the Favorite Poem Project and click on the Stanley Kunitz video link. He blew me away talking about how he encountered this poem for the first time and what it meant to him.

Poetry Friday is hosted by a wrung sponge.