In celebration of National Poetry Month the Jasper Project invited several artists, writers, and leaders in the Columbia arts community to share with us their favorite poems and most of them generously accepted.
We’ve put together this collection of our favorite poems and will be sharing them with you, poem by poem, day by day, over the month of April. Some of the poems are old and traditional, others are new and inventive. Some are whimsical, others are insightful. Some rhyme. Some don’t.
What they all have in common is that someone you know loves that poem – and this gives us such lovely insight into the soul of our community.
Thank you to everyone who shared their poetry with us.
And Happy National Poetry Month from Jasper.
~~
Today we feature a Columbia-based visual artist who goes by the moniker Abstract Alexandra.
One of my favorite poems by Dorothy Parker represents, to me, an understanding of pure sadness due to the walls of poverty that force creatives into a life of unhappiness. That was the pain I felt having to leave school. Alone in the world, with no one to care. Giving up dreams of creating wonderful beauty and expression due to poverty is heartbreakingly painful.
A dream lies dead here.
By Dorothy Parker
A dream lies dead here.
May you softly go
Before this place, and turn away your eyes,
Nor seek to know the look of that which dies
Importuning Life for life. Walk not in woe,
But, for a little, let your step be slow.
And, of your mercy, be not sweetly wise
With words of hope and Spring and tenderer skies.
A dream lies dead; and this all mourners know:
Whenever one drifted petal leaves the tree-
Though white of bloom as it had been before
And proudly waitful of fecundity-
One little loveliness can be no more;
And so must Beauty bow her imperfect head
Because a dream has joined the wistful dead!
Abstract Alexandra is a visual artist.
Abstract Alexandra