I was at Kenyon College when James Wright's papers were given to the college in a special celebration, and got to see Galway Kinnell read this poem.

The poem my March tagline came from (which you've already seen if you read my LJ):

DID I MISS ANYTHING?
Tom Wayman

Question frequently asked by
students after missing a class

Nothing. When we realized you weren't here
we sat with our hands folded on our desks
in silence, for the full two hours

Everything. I gave an exam worth
40 percent of the grade for this term
and assigned some reading due today
on which I'm about to hand out a quiz
worth 50 per cent

Nothing. None of the content of this course
has value or meaning
Take as many days off as you like:
any activities we undertake as a class
I assure you will not matter either to you or me
and are without purpose

Everything. A few minutes after we began last time
a shaft of light suddenly descended and an angel
or other heavenly being appeared
and revealed to us what each woman or man must do
to attain divine wisdom in this life and
the hereafter
This is the last time the class will meet
before we disperse to bring the good news to all people on earth

Nothing. When you are not present
how could something significant occur?

Everything. Contained in this classroom
is a microcosm of human experience
assembled for you to query and examine and ponder
This is not the only place such an opportunity has been gathered

but it was one place
And you weren't here

I'm just down on poetry as Mood Dump. I also dislike Garden Poetry which gets all riled up about anglo saxon plant names and the juiciness of fecundity.

(biting tongue because I do not not not want to get into "again with the absolutes?" argument with David)

Instead, my own favourite of the evening, which is All About Feelings, and which is 17th century, so deal with it:

Since There's No Help
Michael Drayton

Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part,
Nay, I have done: you get no more of me,
And I am glad, yea glad with all my heart,
That thus so cleanly I myself can free.
Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows,
And when we meet at any time again
Be it not seen in either of our brows
That we one jot of former love retain.
Now at the last gasp of Love's latest breath,
When his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies,
When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And Innocence is closing up his eyes

Now, if thou wouldst, when all have given him over,
From death to life thou might'st him yet recover.

Clean, simple, beautiful, unadorned, elegant and in my eyes, damned near perfect. And it makes me cry. And that's one of the places the poets I love best always take me.

because I do not not not want to get into "again with the absolutes?" argument with David

For the record, and because we've had this conversation, there are plenty of moody poems and gardeny poems I love. So let me qualify, I don't prefer poetry unless it bothers to put those feelings into striking language. If it's not vivid, then I don't really care about the feelings dumped. True of any literary effort, I think.

And I dislike poetry that never gets out of the garden. It was a very widespread fad in my college years, as profs settled into their cozy tenures and rattled on about jack-in-the-pulpit and foxglove and let all the anglo saxon word lists substitute for prosody. Undoubtedly a British gardening catalog scans beautifully as language, I just found it a very lazy kind of poetry for all the tenured profs and their tidy little thoughts about sprouting.

I don't prefer poetry unless it bothers to put those feelings into striking language

Now we can shake hands. I'm all for that. (edit: but I maintain that this definition is completely subjective to each person. I don't think poetry can be rated; I can only love it or loathe it or shrug at it, but I can't ssay "this is bad", just because it doesn't ping me.)

Actually, I don't think we've discussed poetry at all, in the past. Fiction, yes. Music, certainly. Not poetry, though, not that I remember.

Also? I've never come across the garden-catalog variety you're talking about - not ever. For me, "English garden" means 18th century pastoral, which in the right head space makes me smile like a loon.

My college years were full of pseudo-mystical Heinlein junkies, alas. Not sure I wouldn't have preferred a few cozy little mentions of white campion and calendula.

Deb, that poem was lovely.

I don't read enough poetry. Not a lot of it speaks to me, but when it does, hoo boy. Faves include From the Passionate Shepherd to His Love and Hatred by Gwendoyn Bennett:

I shall hate you
Like a dart of singing steel
Shot through still air
At even-tide,
Or solemnly
As pines are sober
When they stand etched
Against the sky.
Hating you shall be a game
Played with cool hands
And slim fingers.
Your heart will yearn
For the lonely splendor
Of the pine tree
While rekindled fires
In my eyes
Shall wound you like swift arrows.
Memory will lay its hands
Upon your breast
And you will understand
My hatred.

Katie M - thank you for that poem! I haven't seen it before, but I think I will appropriate it for my college-freshman class I am teaching next semester. This past fall semester was my first class, and that question drove me to distraction. Of course what killed me even more were the students who did not even bother to ask....

Someone, I can't recall who, posted Wild Geese quite a while ago and I used part of it as a tag. I want more. I'll have to request some Mary Oliver from the library.

Not to steal thunder from Java, but it could have been me as well. "Wild Geese" was one of the things that saved my life last summer. It still can move me to tears. Just the simplicity and gentle reminder in the first line

You do not have to be good

Sigh....

Another favorite is Mary Dorcey:

In Your Shoes
When you were gone
I found a pair of shoes

you had left behind
under the bed.

I put them on, wanting
to know how they felt.

The leather was worn
and intimate,

loose across the instep.
I walked to the window

and then to the door.
My heel slipped free

but the toes pinched.
I wanted to see how

it felt in your shoes --
constrained or easy.

I wanted to see
how it felt to be you --

when you wore them and
walked free of me.

Oooh, thanks for all of the poems! I love well-done poetry.

Katie M - thank you for that poem! I haven't seen it before, but I think I will appropriate it for my college-freshman class I am teaching next semester. This past fall semester was my first class, and that question drove me to distraction. Of course what killed me even more were the students who did not even bother to ask....

Heh. I'm glad you liked it--it makes me smile too.