In this installment, Roger Fanning reads “Trespass” by John Clare. Fanning‘s first book of poems, The Island Itself, was a National Poetry Series selection.  His second book, Homesick, was published in 2002, and he is currently at work on a third collection, tentatively titled Buoyancy Disorders.

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John Clare, “Trespass”

I dreaded walking where there was no path
And pressed with cautious tread the meadow swath
And always turned to look with wary eye
And always feared the owner coming by;
Yet everything about where I had gone
Appeared so beautiful I ventured on
And when I gained the road where all are free
I fancied every stranger frowned at me
And every kinder look appeared to say
“You’ve been on trespass in your walk today.”
I’ve often thought, the day appeared so fine,
How beautiful if such a place were mine;
But, having naught, I never feel alone
And cannot use another’s as my own.

admin Uncategorized john clare, roger fanning, trespass

In this installment, Richard Fammerée reads “Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats. Fammerée is a poet, composer, and performing artist; visit his website to learn more about his work.

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John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”

1.

Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

2.

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

3.

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

4.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.

5.

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,”—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know

admin Uncategorized john keats, ode to a grecian urn, richard fammerée

In this installment, Elise Paschen reads “To Autumn” by John Keats. Paschen is the author of Infidelities, winner of the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize, and of Houses: Coasts.  Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, Ploughshares, and Shenandoah, among other magazines, and in numerous anthologies, including Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry; The POETRY Anthology, 1912-2002; Reinventing the Enemy’s Language: Contemporary Native Women’s Writings of North America; and A Formal Feeling Comes: Poems in Form by Contemporary Women.  Former Director of the Poetry Society of America, she is the co-founder of “Poetry in Motion,” a nation-wide program which places poetry posters in subways and buses.  Co-editor of Poetry in Motion, Poetry in Motion from Coast to Coast, and Poetry Speaks, she teaches in the Writing Program at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  Learn more about Paschen’s work here.

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John Keats, “To Autumn”

1.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

2.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

3.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

admin Uncategorized elise paschen, john keats, to autumn

In this installment, Michelle Boisseau reads “The world is too much with us” by William Wordsworth. Boisseau was educated at Ohio University (B.A., M.A.) and the University of Houston (Ph.D.). Her books of poetry include Trembling Air (University of Arkansas Press, 2003); Understory, winner of the Morse Prize (Northeastern University Press, 1996); and No Private Life (Vanderbilt, 1990). She is also author of the popular text Writing Poems (Longman), in its 6th edition.  Her poems have appeared in The Yale Review, Threepenny Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Southern Review, Shenandoah, Poetry, and Ploughshares. Her work has received a National Endowment for the Arts poetry fellowship and awards from the Poetry Society of America. She is a professor of English at the University of Missouri-Kansas City where she also is associate editor of BkMk Press and the coordinator of the Creative Writing program.

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William Wordsworth, “The world is too much with us”

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.—Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

admin Uncategorized michelle boisseau, the world is too much with us, william wordsworth