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MaryAnn, I was looking around and look what I found…..

I thought perhaps for your poetry class and the sharing of religious poems,

you would do well with this man.

Enjoy……….

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Although the poetry of Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) is not nearly as well known to the public as his sculpture, painting and architecture, it was an important facet of his creative life and appears to have been a passionate and somewhat private secondary form of expression for the artist (he was unpublished during his lifetime,

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And some works to be found herein

Far superior is a
sonnet written to Del Riccio upon the death of the youth, showing how
recent had been Michelangelo's acquaintance with Cecchino, and
containing an unfulfilled promise to carve his portrait:--

_Scarce had I seen for the first time his eyes,
Which to your living eyes were life and light,
When, closed at last in death's injurious night,
He opened them on God in Paradise.
I know it, and I weep--too late made wise:
Yet was the fault not mine; for death's fell spite
Robbed my desire of that supreme delight
Which in your better memory never dies.
Therefore, Luigi, if the task be mine
To make unique Cecchino smile in stone
For ever, now that earth hath made him dim,
If the beloved within the lover shine,
Since art without him cannot work alone,
You must I carve to tell the world of him._

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_As one who will re-seek her home of light,
Thy form immortal to this prison-house
Descended, like an angel-piteous,
To heal all hearts and make the whole world bright,
'Tis this that thralls my soul in love's delight,
Not thy clear face of beauty glorious;
For he who harbours virtue still will choose
To love what neither years nor death can blight.
So fares it ever with things high and rare
Wrought in the sweat of nature; heaven above
Showers on their birth the blessings of her prime:
Nor hath God deigned to show Himself elsewhere
More clearly than in human forms sublime,
Which, since they image Him, alone I love._

It was not, then, to this or that young man, to this or that woman,
that Michelangelo paid homage, but to the eternal beauty revealed in
the mortal image of divinity before his eyes.

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Thanks for looking around, BBBs, but in my course I'm sticking to British and American poets except for Holocaust poems agonizing over the existence of God or referencing religion in some way.

PSALM by Paul Celan (1920 – 1970)

No one moulds us again out of earth and clay,
no one conjures our dust.
No one.

Praised be your name, no one.
For your sake
we shall flower.
Towards
you.

A nothing
we were, are, shall
remain, flowering:
the nothing-, the
no one's rose.

With our pistil soul-bright,
with our stamen heaven-ravaged,
our corolla red
with the crimson word which we sang
over, O over
the thorn.

Translated from the German by Michael Hamburger

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Hi MaryAnn, maybe by being ‘ an American’ by war and osmosis, and the victims of a certain kind of holocaust, you might include Native American poems too. Just a thought.

I think your class is going to be terrific.

Perhaps you might make your syllabus and every poem available ( with pdf or something) You could even create a blog devoted to your class and teachings, which would allow for comments below the poems , kinda like Slate. It would last forever in cyberspace.

Well, cheers to you and your soon to be lucky ravenous poetry pupils…….lol

And happy 4th love………

An Indian Prayer

My grandfather is the fire
My grandmother is the wind
The Earth is my mother
The Great Spirit is my father
The World stopped at my birth
and laid itself at my feet
And I shall swallow the Earth whole
when I die
and the Earth and I will be one
Hail The Great Spirit, my father
without him no one could exist
because there would be no will to live
Hail The Earth, my mother
without which no food could be grown
and so cause the will to live to starve
Hail the wind, my grandmother
for she brings loving, lifegiving rain
nourishing us as she nourishes our crops
Hail the fire, my grandfather
for the light, the warmth, the comfort he brings
without which we be animals, not men
Hail my parent and grandparents
without which
not I
nor you
nor anyone else
could have existed
Life gives life
which gives unto itself
a promise of new life
Hail the Great Spirit, The Earth, the wind, the fire
praise my parents loudly
for they are your parents, too
Oh, Great Spirit, giver of my life
please accept this humble offering of prayer
this offering of praise
this honest reverence of my love for you.

(From the poetry list on the left )

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BBBs, at one point I was considering adding an Indian prayer or two, but decided to stick with Judeo-Christian poems.

I've toyed with the idea of having a blog for Slate poems and my critiques but really am not that interested. And as it is, I'm sure I'm breaking the copyright law by passing out copies of poems to my students rather than buying a book. So I defintely wouldn't advertise my law-breaking by putting up all the poems on a website.

Here are the courses I've taught at the local U so far, plus this fall's --

What Makes a Poem Great
Contemporary American Poetry
Sonnets: a 500-year Tradition
Classical Chinese Poetry
Modern Polish Poetry
Maryland Poets
Plain-language Poets (Whitman, Dickinson, Frost)
Four Seasons of Poetry
Poetry’s Changing Approach to Religion

BBBs, can't remember if I posted this before, but here's another poem that I'll teach this fall which you might like. It makes an ironic comment about the Puritans thinking they can take over the Indians' land by relating it to Joshua and ancient Jews taking over Caanan with God's approval.

THE STORY OF JOSHUA* by Alicia Ostriker (b.1937)

The New Englanders are a people of God settled in those which were once the devil’s territories.
- Cotton Mather, The Wonders of the Invisible World, 1692

We reached the promised land
Forty years later
The original ones who were slaves
Have died
The younger ones are seasoned soldiers
There is wealth enough for everyone and God
Here at our side, the people
Are mad with excitement.
Here is what to do, to take
This land away from the inhabitants:
Burn their villages and cities
Kill their men
Kill their women
Consume the people utterly.
God says: is that clear?
I give you the land, but
You must murder for it.
You will be a nation
Like other nations,
Your hands are going to be stained like theirs
Your innocence annihilated.
Keep listening, Joshua.
Only to you among the nations
Do I also give knowledge
The secret
Knowledge that you are doing evil
Only to you the commandment:
Love ye therefore the stranger, for you were
Strangers in the land of Egypt, a pillar (Deuteronomy 10:19)
Of fire to light your passage
Through the blank desert of history forever.
This is the agreement.
Is it entirely
Clear, Joshua,
Said the Lord.
I said it was. He then commanded me
to destroy Jericho.

*According to the Bible, after Moses' death, Joshua, who had previously been appointed Moses' successor, received from God the command to cross the Jordan River. When Joshua and his troops reached the river, a miracle caused the river to dry up, so the warriors could cross into Canaan, the land promised to Abraham. Joshua won the battle of Jericho and went on to conquer the rest of the land for the Israelites.

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wow. nice list...........

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Mmmmmm…………….lol

Maybe you’ll like this.

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And before you open the following , I betcha

( even though I have the unfortunate habit of losing whenever I do this with you)

That you’ll never guess who penned the following………...lol

Whatever Spiteful fools may Say —
Each jealous, ranting yelper —
No woman ever played the whore
Unless She had a man to help her.

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