1)Henry David Thoreau, http://thoreau.eserver.org/walden00.html
“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drum. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away”
2)From I Sing The Body Electric by Walt Whitman, http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15753
I have perceiv’d that to be with those I like is enough,
To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,
To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough,
To pass among them or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly round his or her neck for a moment, what is this then?
I do not ask any more delight, I swim in it as in a sea.
There is something in staying close to men and women and looking on them, and in the contact and odor of them, that pleases the soul well,
All things please the soul, but these please the soul well.
3)From Howl by Allen Ginsberg, http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15308
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving, hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
Angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats,
floating across the tops of cities contempating jazz.
7 comments
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March 6, 2008 at 10:02 am
ric booth
Some of my favs:
ee cummings
anyone lived in a pretty how town
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15403
robert frost
Bond and Free
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19445
The Road Not Taken
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15717
I have a book of like 80 some of Frost’s poems. I love the way he can say something powerfully within a meter and rhyme.
March 6, 2008 at 10:17 pm
edfromct
Ric, what I love about e.e. cummings is his imaginative, and to me whimsical, use of words. “anyone lived in a pretty town” is one of my favorites, along with the beautiful “somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond”.
somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose
Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” is of course a classic. You have just motivate me to go back to poets.org, a great site I have not been to in a while. Thanks!
March 7, 2008 at 7:04 am
ric booth
Ditto Thanks!
And thanks for the e.e. cummings poem. I had not read it before.
February 8, 2010 at 3:37 pm
Nicholas Snelling
I have always loved Errol Flynn’s classic comment: ‘ My main problem is reconciling my gross habits with my net income’!!
February 8, 2010 at 5:42 pm
edfromct
Great quote Nicholas.
Errol Flynn lived a life as flamboyant as he was. I think he term “swashbuckler” may have been invented for him. He tried to live life to it’s fullest, with equal doses of good and bad.
February 9, 2010 at 11:58 am
Saya
I also love cummings ‘ The art of losing’
February 9, 2010 at 10:06 pm
edfromct
Thanks for stopping by Saya. I am not familiar with the EE Cumings poem “The art of losing”
I went over a list of his poems on the Famous Poets and Poems site, but couldn’t find it.
Do you have a source were I can read find it?