  Poetry
This week: Mark Van Doren 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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Spring Thunder
by Mark Van Doren
Listen, The wind is still,
And far away in the night --
See! The uplands fill
With a running light.
Open the doors. It is warm;
And where the sky was clear--
Look! The head of a storm
That marches here!
Come under the trembling hedge--
Fast, although you fumble...
There! Did you hear the edge
of winter crumble
Nothing Stays
by Mark Van Doren
Nothing stays
not even change,
That can grow tired
of it's own name;
The very thought
too much for it.
Somewhere in air
a stillness is,
So far, so thin-
But let it alone.
Whoever we are
it is not for us
On June 13, 1894, Doctor Charles Lucius Van Doren and his wife Eudora Ann Butz welcomed their fourth son Mark Van Doren into their family. The family lived on a farm in Illinois. His older brother was the literary critic and teacher Carl Van Doren. The boys both went to elementary school and high school in Urbana. Upon finishing high school, Van Doren attended Columbia University, where he first earned his Bachelor's degree, then continued on to earn his PhD. When he graduated from Columbia, he became a teacher there. Van Doren spent the next forty years being a professor at Columbia.
During his forty year teaching career he found the time to write over fifty works of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Van Doren’s poetry collections include Spring Thunder published in 1924 followed by Jonathan Gentry in 1931. A Winter Diary was published in 1935. In 1940 he won a Pulitzer Prize for his Collected Poems published in 1039. His last book of poetry The Mayfield Deer was published in 1941.
Van Doren first taught Erskine's General Honors course in the early 1920s. He then headed a crucial planning committee for Humanities A. Van Doren enjoyed this program so much he not only chaired the program, he taught the course for seventeen years, stating it was the best time he had teaching undergraduates. In 1922 he married Dorothy Graffe, novelist and writer of the memoir The Professor and I published in 1959. The couple had two sons Charles and John Van Doren.
In the 1930s, Van Doren and former colleague Mortimer Adler established the great books program at St. John's College in Annapolis. He then frequently visited as lecturer. Van Doren served as president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1957. After his retirement from Columbia in 1959, Van Doren went on to lectured at Harvard University.
Throughout his teaching career Van Doren also published scholarly books on other writers such as John Dryden, published in 1920, Shakespeare and Nathaniel Hawthorne, published in 1949. He also published An Anthology of World Poetry in 1928, and the essay collections The Noble Voice published in 1946. Introduction to Poetry (1951), and The Happy Critic, and Other Essays (1961).
Mark Van Doren went into surgery on December 8, 1972, for circulatory problems at the Charlotte Hungerford Hospital. He died on December 10, 1972, in Torrington, Connecticut. He was 78.
The Deepest Dream
by Mark Van Doren
The deepest dream is of mad governors,
Down, down we feel it, till the very crust
Of the world cracks, and where there was no dust,
Atoms of ruin rise. Confusion stirs,
And fear; and all our thoughts--dark scavengers--
Feed on the center's refuse. Hope is thrust
Like wind away, and love sinks into lust
For merest safety, meanest of levelers.
And then we wake. Or do we? Sleep endures
More than the morning can, when shadows lie
Sharper than mountains, and the cleft is real
Between us and our kings. What sun assures
Our courage, and what evening by and by
Descends to rest us, and perhaps to heal?
Thank you all!
Stormy Lady
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The winner of "Stormy's poetry newsletter & contest" [ASR] is:
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The funky caterpillar played the electric organ
His music swayed throughout the garden.
Perched high upon a glossy stone
Beneath him was the dance zone.
The flowers danced like wacky Jackson
Often slipping from the lack of traction.
The rain poured in heavenly showers
Draining away their gyrating powers.
The garden now was wet and muddy
Making everyone feel a little grubby.
Funky caterpillar started to play once again
Forgetting the strain from the troublesome rain.
Now he had help from the birds
Strange how they knew all of the words.
To songs like the Earth Song and Aint No Sunshine...
But they gave him the Butterflies singing Rockin' Robin.
Honorable mention:
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Poetry: May 24, 2017 Issue [#8301]
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