My Verses

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These Words

These words we read from some desire

. . that someone live

. . the this entire.

Read is our reach,

. . our grasp, our be

. . life that is know

. . wings that are free.

 

Copyright Stephen C. Boydstun 2016

 

 

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(To see text of these poems most clearly, click on the photo.)

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I took this evening photo a little after writing this poem, written lying on the living room floor beneath her. -2/4/19
The 'he' is Jerry (d. 1990).

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[Jim Henderson 1]

Beautiful! Consider the Helios Overture of Carl Nielsen.

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(Also Akhnaten's hymn to the sun in the opera by Glass.)

One natural sequence would be to begin with a sunrise and end with a sunset. In my poem, I wanted to lay first the simple passage of time in inanimate matter, then end with the dwelling of time by living things, especially mind. So I begin with the setting of the sun and that simple inanimate passage of time. Second line, to the human world with the stilling of working hands and going to sleep in night. Third line, with those of us who rise and resume before sunrise to the birds singing to the coming of the sun. Fourth line, the working (intellectual lights in my case) day to day. Fifth line, sharing the suns (literal days or intellectual gains), in the human dwelling of time. 

Edited March 25, 2020 by Boydstun

[dream_weaver 565]

In my case, the explanation helped. It was rather cryptic,. save for the intellectual lights.

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20 hours ago, Lawrence Edward Richard said:

I  was wondering if anyone else who follows Rand's work has come across any life affirming words that occurred to THEM rather than Rand? For example I occasionally come up with phrases that help my clients or I try to help clients with in Drug and Alcohol Addiction Services.

Do you have any you are proud of?

In my case, just some of my poetry.

 

The Song

The world and you are with me.

It and you make and move me.

I make and move in the world and you.

 

Now was will be it is.

It is pass we pace.

It is field we trace.

It is trait we lace.

We it we live, of it, of we.

 

The world and I are with you.

It and I make and move you.

You make and move in the world and me.        

[Lawrence Edward Richard 2]

That’s beautiful. You have obviously found love as I have. The one person who thinks with you and imagines, dreams, and does. It’s true too that sometimes people become binary minded. I was reading something privately today and then my wife came out with a keyword from it. I don’t think I believe in telepathy but shared values, experiences, and thinking perhaps?

When we are apart something is missing.

I have tried to write poetry myself but it was not good. I think the best poet of the last 100 years was R.S. Thomas. Maybe you have read some of his? I can only give a couple of his as examples of what I like but cannot create.

Evans

BY R. S. THOMAS

Evans? Yes, many a time

I came down his bare flight

Of stairs into the gaunt kitchen

With its wood fire, where crickets sang

Accompaniment to the black kettle’s

Whine, and so into the cold

Dark to smother in the thick tide

Of night that drifted about the walls

Of his stark farm on the hill ridge.

 

It was not the dark filling my eyes

And mouth apalled me; not even the drip

Of rain like blood from the one tree

Weather-tortured. It was the dark

Silting the veins of that sick man

I left stranded upon the vast

And lonely shore of his bleak bed.

 

R. S. Thomas, “Evans” from The Poems of R. S. Thomas. Copyright © 2001 by Kunjana Jaikin. Reprinted by permission of Kunjana Jaikin.

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I have been lucky enough to visit R.S. Thomas churches where he was a Vicar or Rector in North Wales. When he came to retire he thought the church would look after him in his old age. They didn’t. When he retired he burned his cassock on the beach in Aberdaron. I read some of his poetry on that beach and recorded myself doing it while our children played. 

Also his old church where his wife and son are buried has a nice little tribute room above it.

http://exploringnorthwales.blogspot.com/2016/07/opening-of-rs-thomas-room-at.html?m=1

 

Although R.S. was a clergyman I think he struggled to make sense of the point of life. I don’t know what would have happened if he’d met Rand. I mean seriously it would be like Hobbit getting together with Darth Vader and Ronald McDonald to make a tribute single.

 

Another piece of poetry I hugely enjoyed was the transliterated version of The Green Knight by Simon Armitage. I’m not such a fan of his own stuff but that book is a fantastic read and well worth the buy. Of course my hobbyhorse In Our Time did an episode about that poem and Armitage was one of the panel discussing it. It’s on YouTube.

Thank you for sharing your work, which always takes courage even when it’s good.

 

 

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Thanks, Richard for the poem 'Evans'. I'd not known of it or its author, and I like it.

Thanks also for the feedback on my poem 'The Song'. Your interpretation seems a natural one, now I think of it. My own meaning in that one was not concerning a romantic close relationship. It is rather about what I take for right about the human psyche and standpoint generally and the 'you' in the poem is only a pronominal one, a placeholder of any other human. I had begun writing a philosophy book in January 2014 because all of my years of independent studies of philosophy had come round into some sort of critical point of a formation of my own basic metaphysics and other theoretical areas, all gelling together. It is indebted to Rand's work in metaphysics and is a transfiguration of hers. The first and last verses of this poem were early-on in the book writing and were simply as first and last paragraphs for that book. I worked every morning on the book for six and three-quarters years, by which point (last fall) so much had stabilized and yet so many ramification remained to be worked out for the philosophy that I asked the editor of The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies if the basic, settled part might be appropriate scholarly material for that journal. He said yes indeed, and it's under review there now, most likely will appear this coming winter. That work, that paper, is the most important thing I have ever written by far. I forgot to mention in it that there is a fitting name for my system, and I'll say it here, noting that the first and third verses of the poem are some facets of what that name means: the philosophy of Resonant Existence. (The middle verse of the poem, by the way, refers [poetically, inexactly] to most of the fundamental categories in my system, category division of existence being one of four fundamental ways in which existence is naturally divided. Rand also had four ways of dividing existence, some of the elements in mine differ from hers, and this will have important ramifications for theoretical philosophy downstream.)

 

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(Click on photo)

Edited May 28, 2020 by Boydstun

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Some readings:

Placement

Is Love

The Song

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Those audio links are kaput, so here are some replacements, probably more durable:

We of Love

The Song

Placement