[stylist] A poem that I'm sure needs much work to look like its subject matter

[Jackie Williams]

Barbara,
Indeed, I think you have written a poem well worthy of olden times. Your words are beautiful and timeless, your rhythm is true, and you and Myrna have both written poems giving color its rightful place in nature, and in memory.
Your gift is obviously in rhyming, but do not close out free verse for your reading. Perhaps, for you, they will at some point converge.

Jackie Lee

Time is the school in which we learn.
Time is the fire in which we burn.
Delmore Schwartz	 

-----Original Message-----
From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Barbara Hammel via stylist
Sent: Monday, October 06, 2014 6:42 AM
To: stylist at nfbnet.org
Subject: [stylist] A poem that I'm sure needs much work to look like its subject matter

Here’s a poem that I have incorporated most of my favorite words from a word list I’ve had for years been keeping.

   WOULD THAT I
    By Barbara Hammel

Would that I could write a rhyme
With language that of olden time,
I'd write of fragrant roses blown
And violets by a mossy stone,

I'd write of gentian's bluest eye --
A smallest bit of cerulean sky --
Of columbines all purple dressed
And how the lilacs are the best,

Of hyacinths purple and white and blue,
And how they're kissed by the morning dew.
I'd write of the zephyr that gently blows
And how the rainbow brightly glows,

Would that I could write as they,
The poets of an earlier day.
The words they chose are flowers fair,
They are the spice of mountain air,

They are the fire in precious stones,
And the melodies within twelve tones,
They are the star's eternal flame,
They are Beauty by every name.

A freshly-fallen coat of snow,
The calm of ocean's ebb and flow,
They're constant as a running stream
And faithful as the soft moonbeam.

Would that I were gifted so,
As Bryant, Shelley, Longfellow,
As Riley, Whittier, Dunbar, Keats
As Emerson, Lowell, Guest and Yeats.




Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.--Robert Frost
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