Library Hotel Picks a Poetry Garden Winner!

Says the Library Hotel About the Poetry Garden Contest:

“Thank you all for the amazing poems you suggested for our new canvas scroll in the Poetry Garden! We’re so excited to announce that a poem has been selected: Notes on the Art of Poetry by Dylan Thomas, which was suggested by our Poet-in-Residence, Karen Clark.

It wasn’t easy to choose just one poem because we had a very close runner-up – Mr. Kevin Stotts. He nominated Emily Dickinson’s There is no frigate like a book, which also captured the spirit of the hotel and imagination of our guests. Kevin will receive Poetry at Work and an anthology of poems as a thank you and congratulations for being our first runner-up.”

Some Other Poems That Were Suggested

The Definitive Journey (recommended by Richard Maxon)

…and I will leave. But the birds will stay, singing:
and my garden will stay, with its green tree,
with its water well.

Many afternoons the skies will be blue and placid,
and the bells in the belfry will chime,
as they are chiming this very afternoon.

The people who have loved me will pass away,
and the town will burst anew every year.

But my spirit will always wander nostalgic
in the same recondite corner of my flowery garden.

—Juan Ramón Jiménez

The Guest House (recommended by Donna Falcone)

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

—Jelaluddin Rumi, translation by Coleman Barks

The Round (recommended by Nessa)

Light splashed this morning
on the shell-pink anemones
swaying on their tall stems;
down blue-spiked veronica
light flowed in rivulets
over the humps of the honeybees;
this morning I saw light kiss
the silk of the roses
in their second flowering,
my late bloomers
flushed with their brandy.
A curious gladness shook me.

So I have shut the doors of my house,

so I have trudged downstairs to my cell,

so I am sitting in semi-dark

hunched over my desk

with nothing for a view

to tempt me 

but a bloated compost heap, 

steamy old stinkpile, 

under my window;

and I pick my notebook up

and I start to read aloud

the still-wet words I scribbled

on the blotted page:

”Light splashed . . .”

I can scarcely wait till tomorrow

when a new life begins for me, 

as it does each day, 

as it does each day. 


—Stanley Kunitz, from Passing Through

The Journey (recommended by Sandra Heska King)

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.

—Mary Oliver, from Dream Work

Photo by Kiuko, Creative Commons, via Flickr.

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T.S. Poetry

Helping you get inspired. With poetry & poetic things.

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