Three Incredible Poets and Their Journey
Poetry
Words stringed together to form an expression that can awaken the innermost feelings and touch places within you that you believed were far too deep. This is the beauty of poetry. There are some poets who have given their best with their profound literary skills, talked about nuances of life as we live, and have managed to touch people by giving words to thoughts deep rooted in the mind.
Invite your friends
and enjoy a shared experience
Here are some of the greatest pieces of art that have turned to classics and have become a shoulder to fall back on when everything else fails. Give it a read, get inspired to love, to live and to let go.
Pablo Neruda the Chilean poet awarded the Noble Prize for Literature has a reputation for being a fugitive, and is strongly devoted to verse that often talks about love. A line inked by Neruda has never gone unappreciated, but from his best works we picked the saddest lines he wrote. A poem about love and more so about loss. The emptiness left behind after he lost the love of his life, he finds solace in words and in reminiscence of nights gone by. He makes her the subject of his musings but chooses to make this verse the last one about her.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines-
Tonight I can write the saddest lines-
Write, for example, ‘The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'
The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
Through nights like this one I held her in my arms
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.
She loved me sometimes, and I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.
To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.
What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.
This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.
The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.
I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.
Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.
Her void. Her bright body. Her infinite eyes.
I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.
Check out the movie 'Neruda' directed by Pablo Narrain based on the poet’s life. A stunning masterpiece, thrilling and poetic- a unique blend resulting in masterful storytelling. Here’s a sneak peak for you.
Four times Pulitzer Prize Winner, Robert Frost talks about all things that a common man can relate to. Tough choices, austerity of life, simple metaphors that have a profound meaning in the modern world, the distinctiveness of man, man’s distinction from nature but a paradoxical binding connection-these are few of the themes that Frost’s verses talk about. “Stopping by the woods on a snowy evening” is the most famous and the simplest verse. It talks about a simple admiration for the woods, but a self-doubt about the same. A man on his travel stops by the woods because he is compelled to believe that there is something more to it. At the same time he fails to realize what it is or why he should be standing there. It’s as simple as that. Such is the uncertainty of life, where you just want to stand in admiration, but have places to go. You want to stop by the woods and yet question the decisions you make.
Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
'A lover’s quarrel with the world' is a documentary based on Robert Frost’s Life directed by Shirley Clark. It won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for 1963. Shirley captures the intimate moments from the poet’s life and his views on the world, politics, war and peace. Check out the trailer here.
Charles Bukowski is a prolific modern poet who in his works relied on imagination, downtrodden urban lives, emotions, sexual imagery and direct language. In his verses, Charles Bukowski does not romanticize life, his satire about alcohol abuse, violence, sex set him apart from others. He has authored over forty books on poetry, prose and novels that revolve around the theme of desolation and abandoned world. “Bluebird” is a verse about self-reflection. The struggle of being caged in, the struggle to feel free, the struggle of hiding this pain from others. It talks about emotions that a person is most likely to come across in his life. The feeling to set out and touch their true self, but this feeling is subdued and kept a secret by pouring whiskey over it and letting the pain disappear in thin air with the smoke of the cigarettes.
Bluebird
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the ****s and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he's
in there.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you?
'Born Into This' is a documentary based on Charles Bukowski’s life directed by John Dullahan chronicles the poet’s story about his struggles to make a living while he writes from the heart. Check out the trailer for the film that is a touching portrait and an expose of his sordid lifestyle.
