  Poetry
This week: Willa Cather Edited by: Stormy Lady  
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| This is poetry from the minds and the hearts of poets on Writing.Com. The poems I am going to be exposing throughout this newsletter are ones that I have found to be, very visual, mood setting and uniquely done. Stormy Lady |
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Poppies On Ludlow Castle
by Willa Cather
Through halls of vanished pleasure,
And hold of vanished power,
And crypt of faith forgotten,
A came to Ludlow tower.
A-top of arch and stairway,
Of crypt and donjan cell,
Of council hall, and chamber,
Of wall, and ditch, and well,
High over grated turrets
Where clinging ivies run,
A thousand scarlet poppies
Enticed the rising sun,
Upon the topmost turret,
With death and damp below,--
Three hundred years of spoilage,--
The crimson poppies grow.
This hall it was that bred him,
These hills that knew him brave,
The gentlest English singer
That fills an English grave.
How have they heart to blossom
So cruel and gay and red,
When beauty so hath perished
And valour so hath sped?
When knights so fair are rotten,
And captains true asleep,
And singing lips are dust-stopped
Six English earth-feet deep?
When ages old remind me
How much hath gone for naught,
What wretched ghost remaineth
Of all that flesh hath wrought;
Of love and song and warring,
Of adventure and play,
Of art and comely building,
Of faith and form and fray--
I'll mind the flowers of pleasure,
Of short-lived youth and sleep,
That drunk the sunny weather
A-top of Ludlow keep.
London Roses
by Willa Cather
"ROWSES, Rowses! Penny a bunch!" they tell you--
Slattern girls in Trafalgar, eager to sell you.
Roses, roses, red in the Kensington sun,
Holland Road, High Street, Bayswater, see you and smell you--
Roses of London town, red till the summer is done.
Roses, roses, locust and lilac, perfuming
West End, East End, wondrously budding and blooming
Out of the black earth, rubbed in a million hands,
Foot-trod, sweat-sour over and under, entombing
Highways of darkness, deep gutted with iron bands.
"Rowses, rowses! Penny a bunch!" they tell you,
Ruddy blooms of corruption, see you and smell you,
Born of stale earth, fallowed with squalor and tears--
North shire, south shire, none are like these, I tell you,
Roses of London perfumed with a thousand years.
On December 7, 1873, Charles Cather and his wife Mary welcome daughter Wilella Cather into their family. Cather’s father came from a family of farmers. His grandparents owned land and gave several acres to farm in Back Creek, Virginia. Cather’s mother was a former school teacher. The couple had six more children after Willa. At the age of nine her family moved to Catherton, Nebraska in to once again try farming land. Her father was unsuccessful at it and the family moved to Red Cloud, Nebraska. Cather graduated from Red Cloud High school.
In September 1890, Cather moved to Lincoln to continue her education at the University of Nebraska. She had always wanted to be a physician but while in her first year of studies she wrote a paper her English professor submitted for publication. After seeing her name in print Cather’s aspirations changed to writing. She became an editor of the college paper. she began writing columns for the Nebraska State Journal. Cather graduated in 1895 and became a journalist. In 1901 she took a break from being a journal and turned to teaching at a local school. During this time she started writing short stories and books. She published April Twilights in 1903, a book of verse, and The Troll Garden in 1905, a collection of short stories.
Upon the publication of The Troll Garden she left teaching and started working at a magazine as a publisher. She worked there until she was thirty-eight. When she took the advice of a friend and left her job to devote her time to
writing. She published her first novel in 1912 “Alexander's Bridge” followed by O Pioneers! one year later. She published The Song of the Lark in 1915 and published My Ántonia in 1918.
Willa Cather continued writing throughout her life. In the 1930’s she had to deal with the deaths of her mother, her brothers and her close friend Isabelle McClung. Her tremendous emotional stress showed in her writings during this time. When world war II she turned her focus to world events. This and the pain in her hand stopped her for writing. On April 24, 1947, Wilella (Willa) Cather died of a cerebral hemorrhage in her New York residence.
The Hawthorn Tree
by Willa Cather
Across the shimmering meadows--
Ah, when he came to me!
In the spring-time,
In the night-time,
In the starlight,
Beneath the hawthorn tree.
Up from the misty marsh-land--
Ah, when he climbed to me!
To my white bower,
To my sweet rest,
To my warm breast,
Beneath the hawthorn tree.
Ask of me what the birds sang,
High in the hawthorn tree;
What the breeze tells,
What the rose smells,
What the stars shine--
Not what he said to me!
Prairie Spring
by Willa Cather
Evening and the flat land,
Rich and sombre and always silent;
The miles of fresh-plowed soil,
Heavy and black, full of strength and harshness;
The growing wheat, the growing weeds,
The toiling horses, the tired men;
The long empty roads,
Sullen fires of sunset, fading,
The eternal, unresponsive sky.
Against all this, Youth,
Flaming like the wild roses,
Singing like the larks over the plowed fields,
Flashing like a star out of the twilight;
Youth with its insupportable sweetness,
Its fierce necessity,
Its sharp desire,
Singing and singing,
Out of the lips of silence,
Out of the earthy dusk.
Thank you all!
Stormy Lady
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The winner of "Stormy's poetry newsletter & contest" [ASR] is:
The Gray Man
The gray man a ghostly figure
and watchman over autumn nights—
unearthly as he walks obscure
through the mist in which he delights.
Glowing golden brown in moonlight
there's a heaviness in the air
felt or seen that is often rare.
He's a creature of dark magic
and is hidden from humankind
for his life is O so tragic
because darkness controls his mind.
Trapped in the land of in-between,
forever walks in this limbo
and unseen wherever he'll go.
Honorable mention:
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Poetry: September 16, 2015 Issue [#7211]
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