My favorite poem is “The Doves of Vasona” by Los Gatos Poet Laureate Parthenia Hicks. I particularly enjoy it when Parthenia reads it.
Denise Leffers
Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist
Los Gatos
The Doves of Vasona
the purple-throated doves sit
round and full
under the girders of Highway 17
undaunted by tons of steel
rushing over their nests
of nicks and nacks
sitting two by two
tucked along
the lips of green metal
one slim white mother
speckled with large black spots
stands out from the
smooth soft grey,
a spaniel of a dove,
she eyes me
warily, sizes me up, then
flies to her raftered nest,
lets me see the bobbing heads,
their peeps and pulls
here, she says, here
underneath the Avenue of the Larks
just off the freeway
we fly the same exit home
to the hidden cities beneath the city
beyond county lines
and sub-divisions
here, she calls, here
to the walkers and cyclists
the joggers and the hypnotized
drivers,
to the poets who stumble
in the dark following the symphony
of the roo-coo-coo
as it bounces off the steel
in the chilly, chilly night
I recently had the amazing opportunity to hear Maya Angelou speak where she revealed that this poem had great meaning for her and her son. At the time I was 7 months pregnant and decided then and there that my child would someday learn this poem and its very important message. I have had a few circumstances throughout my pregnancy that I was unable to control and this poem helped me gain some perspective. I appreciate the spirit of perseverance this poem represents and hope to instill that quality into my son Bo’s life through this poem.
Caroline Blackwood
Technical Writer
Cupertino
Invictus
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
When I first read this poem, I was brought back to the memory of listening to a rain stick in my mother-in-law’s house. I turned the stick over and over; each time the sounds were different, but they always sounded like water falling from the sky. I love how this poem describes sound, and how reading it evokes that motion of turning the stick to hear that sound again: a jungle rain, hard and wet, inside this dried-up thing.
Erica Goss
50 years old, Poet
Los Gatos
The Rain Stick
Up-end the rain stick and what happens next
Is a music that you never would have known
To listen for. In a cactus stalk
Downpour, sluice-rash, spillage and backwash
Come flowing through. You stand there like a pipe
Being played by water, you shake it again lightly
And diminuendo runs through all its scales
Like a gutter stopping trickling. And now here comes
a sprinkle of drops out of the freshened leaves,
Then subtle little wets off grass and daisies;
Then glitter-drizzle, almost-breaths of air.
Up-end the stick again. What happens next
Is undiminished for having happened once,
Twice, ten, a thousand time before.
Who care if all the music that transpires
Is the fall of grit or dry seeds through a cactus?
You are like a rich man entering heaven
Through the ear of a raindrop. Listen now again.
This poem speaks to me, and has done so since I came upon it in a small book of Zen poems I purchased in Santa Cruz several years ago. I was at the onset of a divorce, and full of anxiety about my future. Hanshan’s poem was a reminder to me that all that striving and worrying was pointless. I also had spent years playing “roles”: mother, wife, community leader, daughter, etc.. Recognizing this, I vowed to no longer block whatever feelings I experienced, but rather to be truthful with myself about who I really am.
Lisa Tam
Age 53, Poet
San José
Untitled
Man, living in the dust,
Is like a bug trapped in a bowl.
Alll day he scrabbles round and round,
But never escapes from the bowl that holds him.
The immortals are beyond his reach,
His cravings have no end,
While months and years flow by like a river
Until, in an instant, he has grown old.
Hanshan
(translated from the Chinese by Burton Watson)
It’s with much excitement that I announce the second public reading of Santa Clara County’s Favorite Poems Thursday, December 1, 7pm at Booksmart in Morgan Hill. I am looking for a second group of readers to participate in this south county reading. As many of you know, our first reading last month was a great success with over 60 in attendance to hear these memorable readings.
As before, each reader will be given 5 minutes each total to read both their previously submitted favorite poem contribution with personal comment. Time limits are strictly enforced. If you chose a lengthy poem, please time your reading and select a portion that will fit our limited schedule. Readers will be assigned a specific time slot in advance of the event.
Readers will be selected on a first-come, first-served basis, so if this is something in which you’d be interested in participating and you are able to commit to the December 1 date, do respond here asap. Include your full name and poem submitted. I will inform you of your selection.
Don’t worry if you can’t join us this time around or aren’t part of the first respondents. I will be holding one more reading in another location in the County in the first of the year.
Thanks again for your contributions and support of poetry in Santa Clara County! I look forward to hearing from you. Please email me at sally.ashton@zoho.com.
When our oldest child was in elementary school, he was required to memorize a poem. We pulled out a collection of poems illustrated by Eric Carle and decided on “The Barracuda.” I spent some time reading the poem with my son and pretty soon we were reciting it in the car and at the dinner table. This poem is one of my favorites because each time I recite it to my students, I think back to the times our family has recited the poem together and how we have placed this poem in our family history.
Kelly Harrison
Instructor, SJSU
San José
The Barracuda
Slowly, slowly, he cruises
And slowly, slowly, he chooses
Which kind of fish he prefers to take this morning;
Then without warning
The Barracuda opens his jaws, teeth flashing,
And with a horrible, horrible grinding and gnashing,
Devours a hundred poor creatures and feels no remorse.
It’s no wonder, of course,
That he really ought, perhaps, to change his ways.
“But,” (as he says
With an evil grin)
“It’s actually not my fault, you see:
I’ve nothing to do with the tragedy;
I open my mouth for a yawn and —ah me!—
They all
swim
in.”
It brings tears to my eyes even now as I read it, remembering the young woman (not yet twenty) that I was when I first encountered it. I wanted a life characterized by adventure, not necessarily risk. This poem gave me permission to take the roads that gave me pause. Those that made me feel like, if I did not venture down them I would be missing out. And yet just as true for some of the roads I did not take. Few regrets and yet I sigh. The road less traveled by has made all the difference.
Felicia Larson Associate Certified Coach, Speaker, & Writer
Los Gatos
* * *
This poem describes my life and the decisions I’ve had to make. The more I grow, the more decisions I need to make for myself and sometimes I panic and wonder if I made the right one, if I took the right road. During elementary school I had to memorize this poem and ever since then it stuck with me, and as I grew up I found it described my growing up perfectly. The end of the poem is what I love the most, because the decision I have made “has made all the difference.” So much is said with this poem, definitely a favorite of mine.
Beverly Perez
Student San Jose State University
The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
I love Robert Frost’s poem Nothing Gold Can Stay because of the simple language and the description of how time comes and goes so quickly. Frost uses the essence of time captured in the description of nature’s greenness an how it never stays long. The greenness is the “golden age” of nature.
Angelique Mabanglo, 21
Student
San Jose
* * *
I first read this poem in middle school, from the classic novel “The Outsiders”, a bildungsroman story detailing a young boy’s transition from childhood to adolescence. I am aware of the biblical allusions and the intricate analysis of synecdoche in this poem, yet to me it simply symbolizes how youth, success, or goodness never last forever. This poem encompassed the reality of growing up for me, and my bitter parting from Disney happily-ever-afters, the tooth fairy, princess themed birthday parties, and ultimately, my naivety. Although I am still young, my pure innocence is nevertheless my “hardest hue to hold” (Frost).
Moniyka Sachar
High School Student
Fremont
(Note from Poet Laureate: Though Moniyka resides just outside our county, I’m including her comments to this County submission to support High School students anywhere as readers of poetry. Thanks, Moniyka)
When I considered what my favorite poem would be, the first one that
came to mind was “Journey of the Magi,” by T.S. Eliot. It is one of
those poems that allowed me to discover myself, who I would have been
in that place of dirty cities and unfriendly towns. It put me into a
different landscape and taught me how emotions could be objectified,
and how an experience of great historical significance could be
revisited, reinterpreted and made immediate.
Stephanie Pressman
Poet, Graphic Designer and small press publisher
Cupertino
Journey of the Magi
‘A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For the journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.’
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.
Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins,
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory
All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death,
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot has been my favorite poem since high school. There are countless interpretations of the text, but to me, the poem has always been about coming to terms with aging, as well as the tragic deconstruction of a socially awkward man’s mind. The imagery is beautiful and the text flows smoothly. It almost reads like a sophisticated rant. One cannot help but pity Prufrock and his tendency to overthink things that are so simple and irrelevant, as so many people do. He created his own hell in his insecurities.
Sophia Zohdi
20 years old; Student SJSU
German and English Literature
Morgan Hill
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse A persona che mai tornasse al mondo, Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero, Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question…
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea. Continue reading →
Mighty Mike McGee is a funny stand-up poet from San José, California. He’s performed his comedic storytelling and poetry in thousands of cities and towns for millions of ears throughout the U.S., Canada and Europe. McGee won all of the most coveted U.S. poetry slam titles and is one of the best known and liked people in the world of chatty writers. He was appointed Poet Laureate of Santa Clara County (Silicon Valley) for 2018 & 2019. He’s been featured on CBC, NPR and HBO multiple times and takes pride in making people laugh and cry from the stage.
Santa Clara County Poet Laureate Blog 