Under the Moonlight: a poetry collection

Ten of the best examples of moon poetry

---

While there, he met and married Lillian Steichen whom he called Paula , sister of the photographer Edward Steichen. A Socialist sympathizer at that point in his life, Sandburg then worked for the Social-Democrat Party in Wisconsin and later acted as secretary to the first Socialist mayor of Milwaukee from to Harriet Monroe had just started Poetry: A Magazine of Verse , and began publishing Sandburg's poems, encouraging him to continue writing in the free-verse, Whitman-like style he had cultivated in college.

Monroe liked the poems' homely speech, which distinguished Sandburg from his predecessors. He established his reputation with Chicago Poems , and then Cornhuskers , for which he received the Pulitzer Prize in Soon after the publication of these volumes Sandburg wrote Smoke and Steel , his first prolonged attempt to find beauty in modern industrialism. With these three volumes, Sandburg became known for his free verse poems that portrayed industrial America. In the twenties, he started some of his most ambitious projects, including his study of Abraham Lincoln.

From childhood, Sandburg loved and admired the legacy of President Lincoln. For thirty years he sought out and collected material, and gradually began the writing of the six-volume definitive biography of the former president. These later volumes contained pieces collected from brief tours across America which Sandburg took each year, playing his banjo or guitar, singing folk-songs, and reciting poems. The War Years , for which he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. He received a second Pulitzer Prize for his Complete Poems in Lift my head and see the moon Lower my head and I miss my home.

Li drew inspiration for the poem through personal experiences as a Confucian scholar detached from his hometown. In the times of Imperial China , scholars and artisans affiliated with the court were often detached from their hometowns for extended periods of times as part of their duties and loyalties as courtiers or worthy subjects to the Emperor of China. While it was expected in traditional Confucian ritual to remain a loyal subject to the Emperor and abide by the Emperor's wishes, filial piety also formed one of the foundations of Confucian thought, and emphasised upon the importance of embracing and honouring one's ancestry and roots.

However, the Emperor was also considered the "Father" of all his subjects, and so his courtiers were also required to express their filial duties to the Emperor. Through the poem, Li Bai fulfils responsibilities of filial piety to both Emperor and his ascendants as he expresses his yearning for his hometown, in accordance with Confucian values, as well as obedience towards the obligation of remaining loyal to imperial edict, again in accordance to Confucian values of filial piety.

Indeed, the poem alludes to the August moon and therefore the Mid-Autumn Festival. The Mid-Autumn Festival serves as a highly important festival in Chinese culture for its adherence to Chinese family values, and is traditionally associated with family reunion. Li is therefore lamenting over the impossibility of family reunion due to the importance of imperial edict, yet stresses the importance of valuing one's origin even amidst the impossibility of reunion.

The poem is one of Li's shi poems, structured as a single quatrain in five-character regulated verse with a simple AABA rhyme scheme at least in its original Middle Chinese dialect as well as the majority of contemporary Chinese dialects. It is short and direct in accordance with the guidelines for shi poetry, and cannot be conceived as purely a personal poem, but as a poem relatable to all those detached from their hometowns out of obligation.

There is no need to encourage them. Those willing to work and live fully alive lives are the ones who change the world. This then is how I came to share my words. I wrote in my day book the book that I write in every day. Do you not think the words that come from you are the same unexplainable unfolding that stretched out the stars and galaxies? You must let them go so others may see new stars. Control is an abandoned well. Jump from water falls, each droplet a star, an entire universe parting for you.

I wrote other things like this and they always make the connection between the larger universe, the unfolding creator and the perceived smaller you which is in no way small and so much a part of everything. Your body is the universe to a cell. You are a cell to the universe. You have a task. You know you must open and close when you are ready.

Stars shine and cannot help sharing their light. We shine by sharing what we write. The answer is we decided and each has their reasons that what we have is not what others can value. Now it is true that many people do not listen. They are blunted or stunted or in such a hurry they cannot hear.

Poems about moon. You can read the best moon poems. Browse through all moon poems.

This is not your concern as a poet or writer. From the very beginning you were made to make an offering. This is your destiny and from it comes forth the life that is in you.

This is why anyone can and should read in public to strangers and after you read you will find friends. This is the end of the short telling of how I came to read to strangers in public. By high school nearly all sharing was eclipsed by posing. This would change in my junior year after the student walk out. Before this was an art teacher Mr.

Teibolt who encouraged us to share and one English teacher who said I should write more in a way that made me think I could write. I do not remember her name. I remember the high cheek bones of her face her smoky alto voice and thick raven hair. She was so wise tender and kind. Her presence is still with me quite clear. Her name is a blank. We meet people like that whose name does not fit them. If I gave her a name it would be either Diana or Sofia. The high school years before the big protest walk out were a time when most all of us had become mirrors of each other.

We wished to be larger than what we saw in the mirror. All the while the child and the wild within was shrinking barely able to be heard.

Autumn Moonlight - Poem by Matsuo Basho

This was that way we were until the day we all walked out. Students protesting the Vietnam War were shot by their own countrymen. We all saw it on the television evening news one night in May. The National Guard killed four in Ohio and two black students farther South. All shot for being who they were. The television pictures made us all know we could die so we all or most all of us got ready to die. A few days later the word traveled in the hallways and soon we were all marching around the school.

The principal had a bullhorn telling us we would be suspended. This we thought silly. This was happening all over the country too. We were ready to take some risks even die now and being kept from school was no threat. After school one of the janitors asked me what I was doing out there today. I said marching to stop the killing and bring my brother home from the war.

He was a nice man who did not and could not understand what we were doing. He was a gentleman though and said well good luck to you then. We learned a lot in those days. We learned about authority that day more than we learned during a whole lifetime at school. We learned the power of numbers and agreement too. We even found that some of the teachers were on our side. We came back the next day and I do not think one student was suspended. We grew that day and the days after and many of us went on to other protests later in Washington D.

Anyway our voices were now sometimes heard so some of us could begin to share all the things we never shared before about who we were and the world and its wars. This was another way of sharing. It might even be the most important kind of sharing at that time. It was about us not really all about us and that made it different than what we were doing prior to the shootings. It was in that tumultuous time we learned to live with uncertainty in the world and in our hearts. Yet this would take a long time for some of us to write about.

Poets were already writing about the movement to end the war and change policies supporting dictators around the world. College was a mixed bag. College classes were larger than high school. Vast lecture halls in enormous and new office buildings coupled with story dormitories with buffet food made me feel sometimes like a steer in a cattle drive. We sharing among students and a few teachers but college was mostly the same as high school only more independent reading. I like reading on my own. New book and new ideas were everywhere.

I identified with teachers who were slightly older than ourselves and the ones much older than ourselves really seem to care.

Under the Harvest Moon by Carl Sandburg - Poems | www.farmersmarketmusic.com

We talked more than in high school about what was happening in the world not only in class but after in restaurants and bars and in their homes and apartments long into the night. This was the sharing in college. We learn more about the Viet Nam War. The propellants of economics and politics driving the war. Was not only in our street protests here and in Washington. The war was in our schools our institutions and even in ourselves.

He appeared in a colorful poncho and sombrero carrying books and papers. He paced the large room removing hat and cloak. He began by thanking everyone for attending then asked that all the recording devices be tuned off.

Moon Quotes

There was a groan from the audience. No one wanted them turned off. This was at the height and power of television. This is wonderful you want everything recorded but some things can not be recorded. I remember when he said that a hush went over the audience. There was a sudden understanding. This was something amazing because the crowds in Ann Arbor were always verbal and hissing when they thought they were right about something and they always thought they were right about everything they thought.

Everyone was for freedom and filming everything. This was what freedom meant to them. Today it is called transparency but transparency is another story entirely. I never forgot that line. In that wonderful moment we understood technology was distortion because there is no heart or art in machines. We understood all that within that one line.

This is an example of how powerful a line of poetry can be. So all the cameras monitors went dark. This was a new kind of sharing. Communion without the church schedule. This was not that at all. In fact I am sure he would have loved to read his poetry to any government official. He read many Spanish and South American poems rich in living under the boots and guns of oppression. Bly and they would rather write and die then not write and live dead.

I have been reading them all ever since. He danced around the audience while reading.

The Last Poem I Loved: “Under the Maud Moon” by Galway Kinnell

He was never still. I never saw someone so animated while reading. He asked others to read poems.

We heard their voices too. He encouraged us to hear our own voices when reading. That our own voices bring something to each poem. He was an unlimited spring of ideas. He made us aware we all had voices and that it is the most beautiful thing to use. A poem is foremost a voice. I think that night turned my heart forever toward poetry. I saw what great good power poems had.

Reading poetry is astonishing. Part three of five tells of some experiences that influenced me and the poetry I read and write. This sharing was reading from your seat to the class. This we all knew was trouble with the threat of getting the paddle with holes in it swung hard down on our bare butts but some preferred this to remaining in the class attempting to read something they could not read. Most of the kids in my class were poor readers.

They did not read books on their own. And even for some of us who did read on our own Great Expectations was difficult. Dickens did not write like we spoke or anything we read. He was really of another country and another century. I was never taken into the hall.

• The Emerald Storm: An Ethan Gage Adventure (Ethan Gage Adventures)
• Three Songs, Op. 83, No. 2: Die Blume der Ergebung
• A Gringo Guide to: Throwing a Fiesta (Gringo Guides Book 11)
• House Of 7s: We come into your lives when something profound happens.
• MOMumental: Adventures in the Messy Art of Raising a Family
• Into the Woods: Tales from the Hollows and Beyond