MONDAY NIGHT POETRY
June 24, 2006
SAN GABRIEL VALLEY QUARTERLY #31
Inside the back room of the SANTA CATALINA BRANCH OF THE PASADENA PUBLIC LIBRARY on 999 E. Washington Blvd. in Pasadena, last Monday night, Don Kingfisher Campbell again gathered his poetic flock.
Some cool white swans came to Don's reading on Monday. He was in swan form himself, here preparing for flight.
Kathy Wilson brought some white homeade clay to illustrate her poem
"She Had a Flair For Excess"
and its origins, and then offered clay to other poets to get the feel.
Poet Lynn Allgood and her handmade swan.
Lynn found the true bliss of the swan!
Swan and poets.
Swan almost eaten by Lynn's dog.
Calokie and others read poems that had nothing to do with swans.
Read Kathy's Swan Poem, She Had a Flair for Excess"
Read Deborah Kolodji's swan poem, written after the reading in Deborah's Live Journal Page (see Monday July 24 entry)
The Wild Swans at Coole
by William Butler Yeats
The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine and fifty swans.
The nineteenth Autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.
I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.
Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold,
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.
But now they drift on the still water
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake’s edge or pool
Delight men’s eyes, when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?
— W.B. Yeats
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