April--National Poetry Month

Too much textbook prose during the end-of-semester cramming is enough to deaden our imaginations. Rob Gray, the library's in-house poet [and PETAL director], has agreed to help with satisfying our collective need for evocative language. Here are the first two poems he's selected to "priketh" our language palate.

April 1
From The Prologue of The Canterbury Tales
by Geoffrey Chaucer

Whan that Aprill with his its shoures soote
The droghte, dryness of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour,
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired into hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halve cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open yeeye
(so priketh hem Nature in hir corages),
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
To ferne halwes, kow in sondry londes;
And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen them whan they were seeke.

From http://pages.towson.edu/duncan/chaucer/index.htm
For a modern version, go to http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/webcore/murphy/canterbury/



April 2
from The Wasteland
by T. S. Eliot

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke's,
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

To continue, go to http://www.bartleby.com/201/1.html