Seeking, Finding Through Poetry

“All my life I have lived and behaved very much like the sandpiper - just running down the edges of different countries and continents, 'looking for something'.” – Elizabeth Bishop

Born in Massachusetts on this date in 1911, Bishop was both a poet and short-story writer, often called by some critics “one of America’s most gifted 20^th century poets.”   A Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, she won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and was named for the Neustadt International Prize for “the breadth and entirety” of her life’s work.  

A writer from her early teens, Bishop had her first poems published while still in high school, but the first of her 10 award-winnng poetry collections, North & South, did not appear until 1946.    For Saturday’s Poem, here is Bishop’s, 

                        I Am In Need Of Music

I am in need of music that would flow
Over my fretful, feeling fingertips,
Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips,
With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow.
Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low,
Of some song sung to rest the tired dead,
A song to fall like water on my head,
And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow!

There is a magic made by melody:
A spell of rest, and quiet breath, and cool
Heart, that sinks through fading colors deep
To the subaqueous stillness of the sea,
And floats forever in a moon-green pool,
Held in the arms of rhythm and of sleep.

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