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The Monday Poem (old)
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'Lines for Winter' by Mark Strand / 8th December 2014
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Jenny, an extraordinary poem! The images and the feeling are so moving. I just love it. (I also am very fond of poetryfoundation.)
I've shared this poem once before as a link in poetry chat, but Mark Strand, Canadian-born American poet, translator, essayist and artist, died a bit over week ago on November 29th, and if felt right to share it here again. If you'd like to read a little about him, I recommend Paris Review's The Art of Poetry No. 77 an interview with him from 1998, a year before he won the Pulitzer Prize for Blizzard of One or Poetry Foundation's bio of him.
Plus an obituary by the New York Times
Terri wrote: "Jenny, an extraordinary poem! The images and the feeling are so moving. I just love it. (I also am very fond of poetryfoundation.)"Terri, it is a great site! I made a lot of new discoveries there over the past years.
Mod
To me the message of the poem is: Believe in yourself, never stop believing in yourself, never stop striving, and in success and failure accept yourself, love yourself for who you are and have become. I don't think that many young people are content in life.
And there are 2 kinds of poets: those who bring you into their worlds and those who speak of experiences you can relate to - I think Strand falls in the latter category.
I agree Noorilhuda about the message. I found the last bit very moving:"And if it happens that you cannot
go on or turn back
and you find yourself
where you will be at the end,
tell yourself
in that final flowing of cold through your limbs
that you love what you are."
Another poet for my tottering TBR mountain... perhaps I will start a separate little TBR hill just for poetry.
My interpretation of this poem is "never give up on yourself no matter how hard or lonely your road may be".I don't read alot of poetry, but this really touched me.
Mod
The poem has a "never give up" message as Noorilhuda and Julia say, but despite that, it strikes me as such a sad poem, a lonely poem. All the music of the journey comes from within, from the "tune your bones play." How very sad!
"Tune your bones play" - what a lovely phrase, the sound of it, the novel use of such familiar words. I also like "crackling white of the moon's gaze." I can almost hear the crack of settling ice!
Despite the hopeful message on the surface, what strikes me most about this poem are the deep reserves of icy sadness that underlie it, the rueful acceptance of a cold, inhospitable climate where if you're lucky you might get a "small fire" but only "for once." For the cold will take everyone in the end, but despite that, there's the determination to love - to love what we are.
What a sad and beautiful poem Jenny!
Mod
oh my gosh, I was out of the country so I didn't hear this sad news:( I adore his poems:(
Mark Strand
for Ros Krauss
Tell yourself
as it gets cold and gray falls from the air
that you will go on
walking, hearing
the same tune no matter where
you find yourself—
inside the dome of dark
or under the cracking white
of the moon's gaze in a valley of snow.
Tonight as it gets cold
tell yourself
what you know which is nothing
but the tune your bones play
as you keep going. And you will be able
for once to lie down under the small fire
of winter stars.
And if it happens that you cannot
go on or turn back
and you find yourself
where you will be at the end,
tell yourself
in that final flowing of cold through your limbs
that you love what you are.
Source: poetryfoundation / New Selected Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, 2007)