The Spoken Word

One of the best things I love about this new blog is that it has my mind more in tune with poetry. Today, my ears got back in tune with it. Eight years ago I was given a beautiful hardbound book called “Poetry Speaks” which came with not one, but THREE cd’s which either has the vocal recording of the featured poet reading their poetry or another famous poet reading another’s poetry. They are all original recordings, some of them the very earliest recordings in existence, ever, let alone by poets. But hearing them in their own words is very special.

After a long day, here is my favorite for the day-- Carl Sandburg speaking, no, singing his poems. He knows he’s being recorded and it’s in the early days of recording so he turns on the drama. I love hearing what the poets have to say all in their own voices...

Grass

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo,
Shovel them under and let me work--
I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?

I am the grass.
Let me work.

Cool Tombs

When Abraham Lincoln was shoveled into the tombs, he forgot the copperheads and the assassin . . . in the dust, in the cool tombs.

And Ulysses Grant lost all thought of con men and Wall Street, cash and collateral turned ashes . . . in the dust, in the cool tombs.

Pocahontas' body, lovely as poplar, sweet as a red haw in November or a pawpaw in May, did she wonder? does she remember? . . . in the dust, in the cool tombs?

Take any streetful of people buying clothes and groceries, cheering a hero or throwing confetti and blowing tin horns . . . tell me if the lovers are losers . . . tell me if any get more than the lovers . . . in the dust . . . in the cool tombs.