Category Archives: Favorite Poem

Poem # 112
by Emily Dickinson

Orion Petitclerc
Age 21, Full-time student
San José

Poem #112

[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]
by E. E. Cummings

Carolyn Donnell
Writer
Santa Clara

[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]

Lanyard
by Billy Collins

Pushpa MacFarlane
Healthcare Representative
San Jose

In 2002, my wife and I went to the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in New Jersey. Having only read some of my wife’s poetry, I had never done anything with poetry except in high school and that says it all. The first poet we heard at the festival was Billy Collins. The poem was so well written, catchy in its presentation and really funny in its exaggeration, I was not ready for the ending when it hit me. So poignant, with a few tears in my eyes, I knew I would read and write poetry from that day on and, indeed, I wrote my first poem the next morning.

Dennis Richardson
Retired Math Teacher
San José

Lanyard

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor. Continue reading →

Freeway 280
by Lorna Dee Cervantes

Imelda Gonzalez
Human Resources Manager
San José

Freeway 280

Las casitas near the gray cannery,
nestled amid wild abrazos of climbing roses
and man-high red geraniums
are gone now.The freeway conceals it
all beneath a raised scar.

But under the fake windsounds of the open lanes,
in the abandoned lots below, new grasses sprout,
wild mustard remembers, old gardens
come back stronger than they were,
trees have been left standing in their yards.
Albaricoqueros, cerezos, nogales . . .
Viejitas come here with paper bags to gather greens.
Espinaca, verdolagas, yerbabuena . . .

I scramble over the wire fence
that would have kept me out.
Once, I wanted out, wanted the rigid lanes
to take me to a place without sun,
without the smell of tomatoes burning
on swing shift in the greasy summer air.

Maybe it’s here
en los campos extraños de esta ciudad
where I’ll find it, that part of me
mown under
like a corpse
or a loose seed.

Lorna Dee Cervantes

Jabberwocky
by Lewis Carroll

Mary Matlack
Mother
San Jose

Jabberwocky

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

‘Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!’

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought —
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood a while in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One two! One two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

‘And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
Oh frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!’
He chortled in his joy.

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Lewis Carroll
(1832-1898)

Contemplations
by Anne Bradstreet

Karen English
Professor of English, San Jose State University
San Jose

Contemplations

from “Auguries of Innocence”
by William Blake

Jim Mehl
Retired IBM computer scientist and software engineer
Los Gatos

from “Auguries of Innocence” 

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.

William Blake
(1757-1827)

The Arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel
John Betjeman

I find that modern poets can’t manage folk ballads, except John Betjeman.  His “The Arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel” develops a complete narrative in only nine terse verses.  There is an epigram worthy of Wilde himself:  “Approval of what is approved of/ Is as false as a well-kept vow.”  There is irony in the repeated line “This is the Cadogan Hotel” first by Wilde as a comment on the staff and then by the police as a comment on Wilde.  With Wilde now the vanguard of a civil rights movement, the poem still manages to be relevant.

Ed Sams
Lecturer, San Jose State University

The Arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel

He sipped at a weak hock and seltzer
As he gazed at the London skies
Through the Nottingham lace of the curtains
Or was it his bees-winged eyes?

To the right and before him Pont Street
Did tower in her new built red,
As hard as the morning gaslight
That shone on his unmade bed.

“I want some more hock in my seltzer,
And Robbie, please give me your hand–
Is this the end or beginning?
How can I understand?

“So you’ve brought me the latest Yellow Book
And Buchan has got in it now:
Approval of what is approved of
Is as false as a well-kept vow. Continue reading →

Rags for Heaven
by Clem Bascar

This poem to me is one of the most powerful, deeply moving, and beautiful poems that I’ve ever read. It caused goosebumps, stayed in the brain like forever….and made me feel closer to heaven.

Marilyn Manzo, Inpatient Pharmacy Department, SCVMC
Milpitas

Rags for Heaven

It isn’t the exercise of power that one gains strength
but in its constant restraint;
the greatest being that ever lived
won eternity in his stillness.

It isn’t in the arrogant display of authority
that one begets respect,
but how fairly and humbly one dispenses it;
Justice isn’t giving someone what he needs
but what he truly deserves.

No one acquires dignity in the sufferings of others
nor nobility at the expense of the slaves;

Heaven comes closer to one
who gives up the best part of himself
to fill
the emptiness of others.

Clem Bascar
from Fragments of the Eucharist

The Unknown Citizen
by W.H. Auden

This is a poem, which when I first read it five years ago, spoke loudly to me, and it seems to still speak loudly about the human condition of today. It seemed to say everything that I and many people I knew had gone through growing up, especially when you meet a person who speaks and acts just like this “Unknown Citizen” and you get that eerie feeling during and after the encounter. This is a poem for any “Modern Man/Woman” who questions and observes the times in which he lives.  This poem makes you wonder about the direction we are heading in as “people.”

Greg Hawkins, 24
Tutor/Student, San Jose

The Unknown Citizen

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn’t a scab or add in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on the Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Installment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of the year;
When there was peace, he was for peace, when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education.

Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

W.H. Auden
(1907-1973)