Newton Poetry

I only get political once in a while on Newton Poetry (here and here – much more on my personal blog), but tomorrow America has a choice between two qualified, patriotic, deserving Americans.

Considering the direction one campaign has gone (“a mash-up of Dixiecrat legatees and fellow travelers: prairie gunslingers, anti-tax fetishists, end times Rapturists, militiamen and Millenarians, jingoists and misanthropes, survivalists and skinheads, and the odd secessionist witch doctor” – via Andrew Sullivan), that choice becomes even more clear in my mind.

My own state, Michigan, is solidly blue, so tomorrow – on election day – I’ll be working at my local political office for a state senator running for Congress. I’m a political junkie, so tomorrow should be fun.

No matter who you support, get out and vote tomorrow, and let’s show the rest of the world that we Americans don’t take our right to vote for granted.

by Henry David Thoreau

Always the general show of things
Floats in review before my mind.
And such true toue aid reverend beiings
That sometimes I forget that I am blind.

[Read the original, from a much longer poem. I’m a big fan of Thoreau’s work, having read Walden a few years ago.]

by Emily Dickinson

Water, is taught by thirst.
Land, by Oceans passed.
Transport, by thoe
Peace, by its battles told
Low, bj Memorial Mold.
Birds, by the snow.

[Read the original.]

by Emily Dickinson

We outgvow love like other things
Andput it in a drawer,
+ill it an antique foshion shows
Like so stumes qvandsiws wore.

[Read the original. “Like other things” makes it seem so…inevitable, doesn’t it?]

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbors,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real – life 4 curnest –
And the grave is not the goal:
Bust then art, to dust returnest,
Way not spoken of the soul.

[Read the original. One of the American greats, especially in his day.]

by Annette Wynn

The pilgvims came across the sea,
And never thought of you and me;
And yet it’s very strange the wuy
We think of them Thanksiuinq Day.

[Read the original. Newton Poetry will be taking a well-deserved Thanksgiving break. May you cook your sweet potatoes with grit and splendor, and may you use your MessagePad for all your recipes.]