npm2016

NPM16 - Carl Sandburg

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Carl Sandburg: The great Chicago poet who looked carefully at his city and wrote everyman sort of poetry about them. Here one about the "Clark Street Bridge" which is near the famous corn cob buildings and a hundred other urban wonders. This bridge is only a few blocks from where we stay in Chicago during Elijah's crohn's treatments and was directly on our path back to the train station. Sandburg was the first to call Chicago the "City of Big Shoulders." 

DUST of the feet
And dust of the wheels,
Wagons and people going,
All day feet and wheels.

Now.    .    .  
.    .   Only stars and mist
A lonely policeman,
Two cabaret dancers,
Stars and mist again,
No more feet or wheels,      
No more dust and wagons.

    Voices of dollars
    And drops of blood
    .   .   .   .   .
    Voices of broken hearts,
    .  .  Voices singing, singing,       
    .  .  Silver voices, singing,
    Softer than the stars,
    Softer than the mist.

What poems do you write about your city, your streets, the people you meet and see along the way? Don't just go where you are going. Truly see the marvels around you as you go and then sit and write something beautiful about it.

NPM2016 - Thomas Hardy

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I've been looking into some Thomas Hardy poetry recently and quite enjoy his work so far. "Though frequently described as gloomy and bitter, Hardy’s poems pay attention to the transcendent possibilities of sound, line, and breath—the musical aspects of language." Here's one to get you started if you don't know him. 

I look into my glass,
And view my wasting skin,
And say, ‘Would God it came to pass
My heart had shrunk as thin!’

For then, I, undistrest
By hearts grown cold to me,
Could lonely wait my endless rest
With equanimity.

But Time, to make me grieve,
Part steals, lets part abide;
And shakes this fragile frame at eve
With throbbings of noontide.

Thomas Hardy as found in Great Short Poems