Poems for Life Read online

  Dearest Olivia,

  Thank you so much for your note. I’m sorry for the delay. Life has been rather hectic recently.

  However, I’ve enclosed a poem by Langston Hughes called “To Be Somebody.” I love this poem because of the inspiration it has given me as an artist struggling, striving and working to make it to the top of my profession. The beauty of the poem is that there is always room for each and every one of us at the top.

  Many Thanks, Best Wishes and Great Success.

  Sincerely,

  To BE SOMEBODY

  Little girl

  Dreaming of a baby grand piano

  (Not knowing there’s a Steinway bigger, bigger)

  Dreaming of a baby grand to play

  That stretches paddle-tailed across the floor,

  Not standing upright

  Like a bad boy in the corner,

  But sending music

  Up the stairs and down the stairs

  And out the door

  To confound even Hazel Scott

  Who might be passing!

  Oh!

  Little boy

  Dreaming of boxing gloves

  Joe Louis wore,

  The gloves that sent

  Two dozen men to the floor.

  Knockout!

  Bam! Bop! Mop!

  There’s always room,

  They say,

  At the top.

  — Langston Hughes

  MARTIN CHARNIN

  Dear Rebecca,

  My poem is—

  LAUGHING DOWN LONELY CANYONS

  Fear corrodes my dreams tonight,

  and mist has grayed the hills,

  mountains seem too tall to climb,

  December winds are chill.

  There’s no comfort on the earth,

  I am a child abandoned,

  Till I feel your hand in mine

  and laugh down lonely canyons.

  Snow has bent the trees in grief,

  my summer dreams are dead,

  Flowers are but ghostly stalks,

  the clouds drift dull as lead.

  There is no solace in the sky,

  I am a child abandoned.

  Till we chase the dancing moon

  and laugh down lonely canyons.

  Birds have all gone south too soon,

  and frogs refuse to sing,

  Deer lie hidden in the woods,

  the trout asleep till spring.

  There is no wisdom in the wind —

  I am a child abandoned

  Till we race across the fields

  and laugh down lonely canyons.

  Darkness comes too soon tonight,

  the trees are silent scars,

  rivers rage against the rocks,

  and snow conceals the stars.

  There’s no music in the air

  I am a child abandoned

  Till I feel my hand in yours

  and laugh down lonely canyons.

  — James Cavenaugh

  To some it may seem soupy — but the images hit me hard when I first saw it … and it comes very close to being lyric — a thing I am partial to.

  Best,

  MARIO CUOMO

  Dear Grade V:

  I am happy to participate in your project. I have a favorite quotation from a poem called “Outwitted,” by Edwin Markham. This particular stanza sums up the strategy of inclusiveness that I employ at every opportunity in my political life:

  He drew a circle that shut me out,

  Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.

  But Love and I had the wit to win,

  We drew a circle that took him in!

  I hope this has been useful. Thank you for asking. Best wishes for a successful project.

  Sincerely,

  DAVID DINKINS

  Dear Rebecca:

  It is with pleasure that I respond to your request for my favorite poem for the book that your class is compiling to raise money for refugee children. May I applaud you and your classmates on having chosen to devote yourselves to so worthwhile a project.

  In my life, of course, I have read many lovely and moving poems. The one I am sending you seems particularly apt for a book intended to benefit children. “Stars” by the great American poet Langston Hughes is a poem that works on the psyche on several levels at the same time. On one level, it is simply about the beauty of a moment in space and time. On another, it is about the Village of Harlem, a special place with a unique history. On a third level, “Stars” is about having a dream and striving to realize that dream. Finally, the poem evokes the presence and danger of obstacles to achieving our dreams. Moreover, “Stars,” like all great works, is one in which new meaning can be uncovered with each reading.

  The text of the poem is printed below. Please accept my warm wishes for the success of your humanitarian enterprise.

  Sincerely,

  STARS

  O, sweep of stars over Harlem streets,

  O, little breath of oblivion that is night.

  A city building

  To a mother’s song.

  A city dreaming

  To a lullaby.

  Reach up your hand, dark boy, and take a star.

  Out of the little breath of oblivion

  That is night,

  Take just

  One star.

  — Langston Hughes

  E. L. DOCTOROW

  Dear Lily,

  A poem I have always loved is “A Blessing,” by James Wright. I’ve enclosed a copy here in case you’re not familiar with it. In the poem, a man walks into a field to look at two ponies grazing there at twilight. I can’t be sure if this is my favorite poem, but I do know that it is one that I return to year after year and say to myself with undiminished awe.

  James Wright is an American poet from Ohio who lived until 1980. I knew him when we were students at Kenyon College — he was writing poems even then, as a young man.

  My best wishes to you, Lily, and to your classmates. All together you are doing a wonderful thing with your project.

  A BLESSING

  Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,

  Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.

  And the eyes of those two Indian ponies

  Darken with kindness.

  They have come gladly out of the willows

  To welcome my friend and me.

  We step over the barbed wire into the pasture

  Where they have been grazing all day, alone.

  They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness

  That we have come.

  They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.

  There is no loneliness like theirs.

  At home once more,

  They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.

  I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,

  For she has walked over to me

  And nuzzled my left hand.

  She is black and white,

  Her mane falls wild on her forehead,

  And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear

  That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.

  Suddenly I realize

  That if I stepped out of my body I would break

  Into blossom.

  –James Wright

  GERALDINE FERRARO

  Dear Clare,

  I thank you for your letter regarding the work Class V is doing to raise money for the International Rescue Committee.

  My favorite poem as a child was Rudyard Kipling’s “If.” The reason I liked it is because it told me how best to approach life.

  Good luck with your project.

  Cordially,

  ALLEN GINSBERG

  Dear Nightingale-Bamford School:

  Percy B. Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” is my favorite poem tonite — because following the phrasings & breaths indicated by punctuation, you can get a high buzz reciting it aloud, & it comes to ecstatic
expression of abandon to truth at the end —

  ODE TO THE WEST WIND

  I

  O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,

  Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead

  Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

  Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,

  Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,

  Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

  The wingéd seeds, where they lie cold and low,

  Each like a corpse within its grave, until

  Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

  Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill

  (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)

  With living hues and odors plain and hill:

  Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;

  Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!

  II

  Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky’s commotion,

  Loose clouds like earth’s decaying leaves are shed,

  Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,

  Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread

  On the blue surface of thine airy surge,

  Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

  Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge

  Of the horizon to the zenith’s height,

  The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge

  Of the dying year, to which this closing night

  Will be the dome of a vast sepulcher,

  Vaulted with all thy congregated might

  Of vapors, from whose solid atmosphere

  Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh, hear!

  III

  Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams

  The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,

  Lulled by the coil of his crystálline streams,

  Beside a pumice isle in Baiae’s bay,

  And saw in sleep old palaces and towers

  Quivering within the wave’s intenser day,

  All overgrown with azure moss and flowers

  So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou

  For whose path the Atlantic’s level powers

  Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below

  The sea-blooms and oozy woods which wear

  The sapless foliage of the ocean, know

  Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,

  And tremble and despoil themselves: oh, hear!

  IV

  If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;

  If I were a swift cloud to with thee;

  A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share

  The impulse of thy strength, only less free

  Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even

  I were as in my boyhood, and could be

  The comrade by thy wanderings over Heaven,

  As then, when to outstrip thy skyey speed

  Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne’er have striven

  As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.

  Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!

  I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

  A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed

  One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

  V

  Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:

  What if my leaves are falling like its own!

  The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

  Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,

  Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,

  My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

  Drive my dead thoughts over the universe

  Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!

  And, by the incantation of this verse,

  Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth

  Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

  Be through my lips to unawakened earth

  The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,

  If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

  — Percy Bysshe Shelley

  RUDOLPH GIULIANI

  Dear Elaine:

  I applaud your efforts on behalf of the International Rescue Committee in order to benefit refugee children, and I am pleased to provide a poem of my choosing. Here, then, is the poem I have chosen.

  If I can stop one Heart from breaking

  I shall not live in vain

  If I can ease one Life the Aching

  Or cool one pain

  Or help one fainting Robin

  Unto his Nest again

  I shall not live in Vain.

  — Emily Dickinson

  I love this poem because of its simplicity and for what it reveals about the author’s value system. Emily Dickinson valued service to others as a central purpose in living. In a world that is frequently ruled by selfishness, Emily Dickinson shines like a heavenly star.

  Sincerely,

  RICHARD F. GREIN

  Dear Antoinette,

  I am writing to you in response to your letter of April 27 in which you ask me to share with you a favorite poem and some explanation of why it is my favorite.

  Rather than select a whole poem I have selected four lines from T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. These lines come from the last of the Four Quartets called “Little Gidding.” A copy is enclosed. I like these four lines because they express for me, as a religious person, our going from God and our return to God. Therefore, they are lines which hold a promise. They also express what we could call the innate curiosity of human beings always wanting to explore. But, at the same time, hidden there is our true home.

  I hope this arrives on time.

  Faithfully,

  FROM “LITTLE CIDDING” (FOUR QUARTETS)

  We shall not cease from exploration

  And the end of all our exploring

  Will be to arrive where we started

  And know the place for the first time.

  —T. S. Eliot

  DAVID HALBERSTAM

  Dear Rebecca,

  Please excuse my delay in answering your lovely letter —

  Your project sounds like an estimable one — anything that gets people interested in poetry at an early age is a wonderful idea. I’m sending along the fragments of two poems (done from memory). The first, from “The Passing of Arthur,” I like very much because it reflects the idea of the world as a changing place where people have to adapt constantly to changing truths; it seems a good answer to those who believe that everything done in their childhood is better than anything that has happened since. For me as a reporter who covered the Civil Rights Revolution in the South in the late fifties and early sixties it has particular meaning.

  The other — we’d need more of the poem — is from Robert Frost — “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” — which John Kennedy quoted at about every appearance in his 1960 campaign — and about which I feel considerable nostalgia.

  “And I have promises to keep / And miles to go before I sleep.”

  Best of luck with your project and I hope I get to meet you someday,

  “THE PASSING OF ARTHUR” (FROM IDYLLS OF THE KING)

  And slowly answered Arthur from the barge:

  “The old order changeth, yielding place to new,

  And God fulfills himself in many ways,

  Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.

  Comfort thyself: what comfort is in me?

  I have lived my life, and that which I have done

  May He within himself make pure!“

  — Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  SHELDON HARNICK

  Dear Ms. Wolff:

  I am very flattered to be asked for my “favorite poem”; and your cause is certainly a worthy one — I do not have a “favorite” poem — there are dozens which fall into that category. But one of my favorites is Walt Whitman’s “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer,” which I have enclosed.

 
I think the reason that this poem affects me as it does has to do with a deep need on my part to preserve a sense of the mystery, the divinity (if you will) of life. Rather than explaining everything away by dry, cerebral means, there are moments when the intellect is not enough, when the spiritual part of me needs nourishment. That, or something like it, is what this poem says to me — and says it very powerfully.

  Good luck with your project!

  Cordially,

  WHEN I HEARD THE LEARN’D ASTRONOMER

  When I heard the learn’d astronomer,

  When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,

  When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,

  When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,

  How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,

  Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,

  In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,

  Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

  — Walt Whitman

  BILL IRWIN

  Stephanie Greco:

  I don’t know about a favorite poem but there is one that often haunts my mind. It is grim but beautiful. I’m afraid I can’t find it, perhaps you might be able to. It is called “The Yachts” and I think it is by William Carlos Williams. (Good Luck)

  All the best with your project,

  THE YACHTS

  contend in a sea which the land partly encloses

  shielding them from the too-heavy blows

  of an ungoverned ocean which when it chooses

  tortures the biggest hulls, the best man knows