1. Poetry is expression, feelings, and emotions made into one literary work.
2. Who am I to judge what is and what is not poetry? If one tells me that this is there poetic work, so be it! However, I am able to tell the difference between good poetry and bad poetry.
3. Jose Lezama Lima: Was born December 19, 1910 in Havana, Cuba and also, died on August 9, 1976 in Havana, Cuba. He was a gay Cuban writer and poet who is considered one of the most influential figures in Latin American literature. He has a degree in Law; however, his passion was literature. Lezama Lima's first published work, a long poem called "Muerte de Narciso," released when he was only twenty-seven, made him immediately famous within Cuba and established Lezama's style and classical subject matter.
An Obscure Meadow Lures Me
by José Lezama Lima
Translated by Nathaniel Tarn
An obscure meadow lures me,
her fast, close-fitting lawns
revolve in me, sleep on my balcony.
They rule her beaches, her indefinite
alabaster dome re-creates itself.
On the waters of a mirror,
the voice cut short crossing a hundred paths,
my memory prepares surprise:
fallow dew in the sky, dew, sudden flash.
Without hearing I’m called:
I slowly enter the meadow,
proudly consumed in a new labyrinth.
Illustrious remains:
a hundred heads, bugles, a thousand shows
baring their sky, their silent sunflower.
Strange the surprise in that sky
where unwilling footfalls turn
and voices swell in its pregnant center.
An obscure meadow goes by.
Between the two, wind or thin paper,
the wind, the wounded wind of this death,
this magic death, one and dismissed.
A bird, another bird, no longer trembles.
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16960
Hon. Derek A. Walcott: Was born January 23, 1930 and is a Caribbean poet, playwright, writer and visual artist; born in Castries, Saint Lucia and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992.After studying at St. Mary's College in his native island and at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica, Walcott moved in 1953 to Trinidad, where he has worked as theatre and art critic. At the age of 18, he made his debut with 25 Poems, but his breakthrough came with the collection of poems, In a Green Night (1962). In 1959, he founded the Trinidad Theatre Workshop which produced many of his early plays.
A Far Cry From Africa
by Derek Walcott
A wind is ruffling the tawny pelt
Of Africa. Kikuyu, quick as flies,
Batten upon the bloodstreams of the veldt.
Corpses are scattered through a paradise.
Only the worm, colonel of carrion, cries:
"Waste no compassion on these separate dead!"
Statistics justify and scholars seize
The salients of colonial policy.
What is that to the white child hacked in bed?
To savages, expendable as Jews?
Threshed out by beaters, the long rushes break
In a white dust of ibises whose cries
Have wheeled since civilization's dawn
From the parched river or beast-teeming plain.
The violence of beast on beast is read
As natural law, but upright man
Seeks his divinity by inflicting pain.
Delirious as these worried beasts, his wars
Dance to the tightened carcass of a drum,
While he calls courage still that native dread
Of the white peace contracted by the dead.
Again brutish necessity wipes its hands
Upon the napkin of a dirty cause, again
A waste of our compassion, as with Spain,
The gorilla wrestles with the superman.
I who am poisoned with the blood of both,
Where shall I turn, divided to the vein?
I who have cursed
The drunken officer of British rule, how choose
Between this Africa and the English tongue I love?
Betray them both, or give back what they give?
How can I face such slaughter and be cool?
How can I turn from Africa and live?
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19973
The way these poems are an example of what poetry is to me is by the poets feelings, expressions, attitudes of what life on a certain perspective means to them. If I were to write some sort of poetry I feel I would write about the life that I am currently living in, have lived in, or the lives that people or research has taught me. To me this is good poetry alongside good history since they are true experiences and emotions.
