Gives vain alarums to the inward sense,
Where fear stirred up with witty tyranny,
Confounds all powers, and thorough self-offense,
Doth forge and raise impossibility:

Such as in thick depriving darknesses,
Proper reflections of the error be,
And images of self-confusednesses,
Which hurt imaginations only see;

And from this nothing seen, tells news of devils,
Which but expressions be of inward evils.

Lord Brooke Fulke Greville

A Thorn or a Burr
She takes for a Spurre:
With a lash of a Bramble she rides now,
Through Brakes and through Bryars,
O’re Ditches, and Mires,
She followes the Spirit that guides now.

No Beast, for his food,
Dares now range the wood;
But husht in his laire he lies lurking:
While mischiefs, by these,
On Land and on Seas,
At noone of Night are working,

The storme will arise,
And trouble the skies;
This night, and more for the wonder,
The ghost from the Tomb
Affrighted shall come,
Cal’d out by the clap of the Thunder.

Robert Herrick

On the tombs that lie scatter’d below:
The moon fills the place with her silvery light,

And the churchyard like day seems to glow.
When see! first one grave, then another opes wide,
And women and men stepping forth are descried,

In cerements snow-white and trailing.

In haste for the sport soon their ankles they twitch,

And whirl round in dances so gay;
The young and the old, and the poor, and the rich,

But the cerements stand in their way;
And as modesty cannot avail them aught here,
They shake themselves all, and the shrouds soon appear

Scatter’d over the tombs in confusion.

Now waggles the leg, and now wriggles the thigh,

As the troop with strange gestures advance,
And a rattle and clatter anon rises high,

As of one beating time to the dance.
The sight to the warder seems wondrously queer,
When the villainous Tempter speaks thus in his ear:

“Seize one of the shrouds that lie yonder!”

Quick as thought it was done! and for safety he fled

Behind the church-door with all speed;
The moon still continues her clear light to shed

On the dance that they fearfully lead.
But the dancers at length disappear one by one,
And their shrouds, ere they vanish, they carefully don,

And under the turf all is quiet.

But one of them stumbles and shuffles there still,

And gropes at the graves in despair;
Yet ’tis by no comrade he’s treated so ill

The shroud he soon scents in the air.
So he rattles the door–for the warder ’tis well
That ’tis bless’d, and so able the foe to repel,

All cover’d with crosses in metal.

The shroud he must have, and no rest will allow,

There remains for reflection no time;
On the ornaments Gothic the wight seizes now,

And from point on to point hastes to climb.
Alas for the warder! his doom is decreed!
Like a long-legged spider, with ne’er-changing speed,

Advances the dreaded pursuer.

The warder he quakes, and the warder turns pale,

The shroud to restore fain had sought;
When the end,–now can nothing to save him avail,–

In a tooth formed of iron is caught.
With vanishing lustre the moon’s race is run,
When the bell thunders loudly a powerful One,

And the skeleton fails, crush’d to atoms.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Translation by Edgar Alfred Bowring, E. A. B. London, 1874
View the original: Totentanz

Das reckt nun, es will sich ergetzen sogleich,
Die Knöchel zur Runde, zum Kranze,
So arm und so jung, und so alt und so reich;
Doch hindern die Schleppen am Tanze.
Und weil hier die Scham nun nicht weiter gebeut,
Sie schütteln sich alle, da liegen zerstreut
Die Hemdlein über den Hügeln.

Nun hebt sich der Schenkel, nun wackelt das Bein,
Gebärden da gibt es vertrackte;
Dann klippert’s und klappert’s mitunter hinein,
Als schlüg’ man die Hölzlein zum Takte.
Das kommt nun dem Türmer so lächerlich vor;
Da raunt ihm der Schalk, der Versucher, ins Ohr:
Geh! hole dir einen der Laken.

Getan wie gedacht! und er flüchtet sich schnell
Nun hinter geheiligte Türen.
Der Mond, und noch immer er scheinet so hell
Zum Tanz, den sie schauderlich führen.
Doch endlich verlieret sich dieser und der,
Schleicht eins nach dem andern gekleidet einher,
Und, husch, ist es unter dem Rasen.

Nur einer, der trippelt und stolpert zuletzt
Und tappet und grapst an den Grüften;
Doch hat kein Geselle so schwer ihn verletzt,
Er wittert das Tuch in den Lüften.
Er rüttelt die Turmtür, sie schlägt ihn zurück,
Geziert und gesegnet, dem Türmer zum Glück,
Sie blinkt von metallenen Kreuzen.

Das Hemd muß er haben, da rastet er nicht,
Da gilt auch kein langes Besinnen,
Den gotischen Zierat ergreift nun der Wicht
Und klettert von Zinne zu Zinnen.
Nun ist’s um den armen, den Türmer getan!
Es ruckt sich von Schnörkel zu Schnörkel hinan,
Langbeinigen Spinnen vergleichbar.

Der Türmer erbleichet, der Türmer erbebt,
Gern gäb er ihn wieder, den Laken.
Da häkelt – jetzt hat er am längsten gelebt –
Den Zipfel ein eiserner Zacken.
Schon trübet der Mond sich verschwindenden Scheins,
Die Glocke, sie donnert ein mächtiges Eins,
Und unten zerschellt das Gerippe.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

View the English translation: Dance of Death

Nationality: United States

Magnum Opus: Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ‘Fore I Die (1971)

Influences: Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare, Edger Allan Poe, James Weldon Johnson, Frances Harper, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Anne Spencer, and Jessie Faucet

How she started: At a young age, Miss Johnson was a dancer. She changed her name because it didn’t capture her Calypso dance performances. Then, she toured Europe with a production of the opera Porgy and Bess (she played Ruby). Maya Angelou danced on TV variety shows and recorded an album titled, “Miss Calypso”. She moved to San Diego to act in off-Broadway productions where she met active members in the Civil Rights Movement. She held the position of Northern Coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference at the request of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. After, then moved to Cairo, Egypt and was an associate editor for the weekly newspaper, “The Arab Observer”. She later moved to Ghana and became an assistant administrator at the University of Ghana’s School of Music and Drama while being a feature editor for “The African Review”. She met Malcolm X while in Ghana and returned to the US to help build a new Civil Rights organization, the Organization of African American Unity. After Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated (on her birthday, no less), she dealt with the grief by writing her first autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, which gave her international recognition and acclaim.

Writing Ritual: Maya Angelou gets up at 5 o’clock in the morning, checks into a hotel room (where there is no pictures on the wall) and writes on legal pads while laying in bed drinking a bottle of sherry, playing solitaire with a deck of cards, and with a Roget’s Thesaurus and the Bible before leaving in the afternoon. She averages 12 pages per day, but edits them to 3 or 4 in the evening.

Accomplishments:

• National Book Award for I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
• Pulitzer Prize nomination for Just Give Me A Cool Drink of Water ‘Fore I Die.
• Tony Award nomination for acting in Look Away.
• 3 Grammys for her spoken word albums.
• She served on 2 presidential committees.
• Presidential Medal of Arts (2000).
• Lincoln Medal (2008).
• 30 honorary degrees.

The grossness ranges from orgies to pedophilia to incest. Obviously, not all poets indulge themselves in the life of strange sexuality, but the numbers seem overwhelmingly disturbing.

I know what you’re thinking, Langston Hughes and Maya Angelou are normal, but indeed they aren’t. Langston Hughes spent many months at sea and is a known homosexual. You can’t tell me some crazy, funky stuff didn’t go on during that period of his life. And Maya Angelou? Perhaps she isn’t nasty, but the amount of trauma in her life had to create at least a period of weirdness, like the five years she refused to speak.

Maybe it is just my luck at finding these individuals or, just maybe, there is something to this theory.

We, as poets, need to create nastiness parties across the world. At these parties we will throw ourselves at each other and wear the weirdest, most uncomfortable costumes possible. Only after having sex with a kangaroo ninja will we truly, truly be masters of word.

With this pen I thee write
with notes and words which are never right
this paper lasts a hundred years
my heart pumps a thousand tears
when dusk has come and I am gone
I wish for you another dawn

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Sugar is sweet;
And so are you

The origins of the poem is unknown, however it may be traced back to the epic The Faerie Queene (Book Three, Canto 6, Stanza 6) by Sir Edmund Spenser (1590):

She bath’d with roses red, and violets blew,
And all the sweetest flowres, that in the forrest grew.

A nursery rhyme even closer to the modern cliche Valentine’s Day poem can be found in Gammer Gurton’s Garland, a collection of English nursery rhymes (1783):

Roses are red, diddle, diddle
Lavender’s blue
If you will have me, diddle, diddle
I will have you.

Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables contains a character, Fantine, contains the lines:

Les bleuets sont bleus, les roses sont roses,
Les bleuets sont bleus, j’aime mes amours.

Which translates to:

Violets are blue, roses are red,
Violets are blue, I love my loves.

Although the origins are unknown, it is now part of modern Valentine’s Day in classic Mother Goose style. As a tribute, here are other “Roses are red” poems for you to enjoy:

“Roses are red,
I am blue,
I can’t wait
until i see you”

“Roses were read,
and violets blew,
as time went on
i still loved you”

“Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Peanutbutter’s great
and so is honeydew”

Poems by Gary R. Hess

10. Wanting You
9. Our Moment
8. Feeling
7. Everlasting Love
6. One Kiss
5. Without You
4. The Day We Met
3. Thinking About You
2. You’re the One
1. Why I Love You

There are many great poetic works, but here is a list of the top 10 must read poetry collections that have had an impact on society by either the language, art, or just by giving us a look into the past.

10. Shakespeare’s sonnets. One of the most famous poets of all time, Shakespeare’s sonnets hold many iconic lines but also give a rare insight into his personal life.
9. Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake. The poems were written during a time of political turmoil and embody radical sympathies and anti-dualist ideas.
8. Collected Poems by W. B. Yeats. The poetry was considered the force that revived Irish literature. The poems topics include youth, love, nature, art and war.
7. Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri. The Divine Comedy is an epic tale of one man’s journey into the afterlife. It is considered Italy’s finest literary export, even today.
6. John Keats’ Odes. Keats’ odes raise many profound philosophical questions and hold many sensuous descriptions of nature’s beauty. The poems were written during a particularly harsh time of Keats’ life when he was stricken with tuberculosis and melancholy.
5. The Prelude by William Wordsworth. A posthumous published work about an autobiographical journey showing a fragment of history from the revolutionary and post-revolutionary years.
4. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman. At the time of publication, Leaves of Grass was considered trashy, profane and obscene due to its controversial overt sexuality, including prostitution. This collection of poems was Whitman’s first. Although Leaves of Grass wasn’t the first collection written in free verse, the work helped earn Whitman the title of father of free verse.
3. Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. These funny tales about fictional pilgrims became a turning point for English work during a time when Anglo-Norman or Latin was the court poetry.
2. Dark Night of the Soul by St. John of the Cross. The title of this work soon became an expression to describe a person’s spiritual life and a metaphor for loneliness and desolation. It is referenced by spiritual traditions throughout the world and widely considered one of the greatest poetic works ever written in Spanish. The texts tell of the Saint’s mystical development and the stages he is subjected to on his journey towards union with God.
1. Aeneid by Virgil. Written in the 1st century BC between 29 and 19BC, The Latin epic poem connected Rome to the legends of Troy and glorified traditional Roman virtues and legitimized the Julio-Claudian dynasty as descendants of the founders, heroes, and gods of Rome and Troy.