BW17: Notes on the Art of Poetry

As we wind up April and National Poetry Month, I'll leave you with a couple more tidbits.

Notes on the Art of Poetry

by Dylan Thomas

I could never have dreamt that there were such goings-on

in the world between the covers of books,

such sandstorms and ice blasts of words,

such staggering peace, such enormous laughter,

such and so many blinding bright lights,

splashing all over the pages

in a million bits and pieces

all of which were words, words, words,

and each of which were alive forever

in its own delight and glory and oddity and light.

******

Book Lover

by Robert William Service 

I keep collecting books I know

I'll never, never read;

My wife and daughter tell me so,

And yet I never head.

"Please make me," says some wistful tome,

"A wee bit of yourself."

And so I take my treasure home,

And tuck it in a shelf.

And now my very shelves complain;

They jam and over-spill.

They say: "Why don't you ease our strain?"

"some day," I say, "I will."

So book by book they plead and sigh;

I pick and dip and scan;

Then put them back, distrest that I

Am such a busy man.

Now, there's my Boswell and my Sterne,

my Gibbon and Defoe;

To savour Swift I'll never learn,

Montaigne I may not know.

On Bacon I will never sup,

For Shakespeare I've no time;

Because I'm busy making up

These jingly bits of rhyme.

Chekov is caviare to me,

While Stendhal makes me snore;

Poor Proust is not my cup of tea,

And Balzac is a bore.

I have their books, I love their names,

And yet alas! they head,

With Lawrence, Joyce and Henry James,

My Roster of Unread.

I think it would be very well

If I commit a crime,

And get put in a prison cell

And not allowed to rhyme;

Yet given all these worthy books

According to my need,

I now caress with loving looks,

But never, never read.

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