I was a typical awkward teenager, with no confidence about the way I looked or dressed. I kept a small journal during this time with quotes and poems on beauty. Here are some of my favorite quotes.
Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.ConfuciusBeauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.Kahlil GibranThink of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.Anne FrankThough we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.Ralph Waldo EmersonBeauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty.David Hume
As I hear everyone talk about how beautiful the snow is, I'm reminded that we all see beauty in different things and different ways. So, let's write about beauty, shall we?
Leave me a note about your poem and I'll post the results here later this week.
Leave me a note about your poem and I'll post the results here later this week.
I have to leave this quote:
ReplyDelete"Truth and beauty ain't the same thing, after all
The things I've been reading on the restroom walls
Are often true, but seldom beautiful."
--Judy Henske, "Tin Star", from her album Loose in the World
I don't have a poem but I did want you know I love your quotes. Beauty has always been a prized thing in societies, but I am lucky to have grown up in one that values hard work and academia just as much. Or at least that was my perception, which is why I grew up relatively unscarred by the issue of not being considered beautiful.
ReplyDeleteBut as a parent of two young children starting to think about such things in the current society, which seems a lot more beauty-conscious than mine when I grew up, I have to be prepared to introduce perspective and wisdom to them.
Write a Poem about Beauty
ReplyDeleteWhat isn't beautiful?
Self-pity, cruelty,
bodily excretions
(except those of oysters),
the hungry sound
of a dentist's drill,
office cubicles
filled with grayness,
most souvenirs—
especially plastic ones
in insincere colors,
printed with place names.
Just about everything
else is beautiful.
But the greatest beauty
is the lively surprise
of the singular universe
behind human eyes.
--Kate Coombs, 2010
Mirrors
ReplyDeleteAll mirrors lie,
showing me as I am,
ravaged by age and gravity,
by time and tears and loss.
Here’s the scar on my chin
from my tumble onto the concrete
from the height of my skates,
on Rosh Hashanah.
There’s the mole I am too vain
to have removed.
The breasts sucked dry by three babies.
The slash across my stomach muscles
to mark where a fetus
locked in the tube,
had to be cut out.
The frown lines that came
from nursing my late husband,
the smile lines from laughing at his jokes.
The fingers crabbed with time.
The toes twisted from ballet.
The white slash where the new knee was inserted.
The mark like an X on a treasure map
where the doctor found my burst appendix.
All mirrors lie, missing the me
that husband, children, grandchildren see.
Perhaps beauty does not reflect.
Or we do not reflect upon beauty.
©2010 Jane Yolen all rights reserved
STEPS TOWARD A FULL-MOON MACHINE
ReplyDeleteBy Steven Withrow
First, believe in glories,
in satellites and sorceries of sky.
Any meddler in moonstuff
who's punched enough holes
in night will tell you:
Doubt's the thing to lose.
Certitude's essential
in cleaving the celestial.
Nothing grounds a moon deeper
than doomy howls of gloom.
Instead proceed as a boy
might shape a ball of snow,
mittens sugared with sweet cold,
confident it will fly.
Remember, all that is, is glory.
Now look up.
See the high, bright world you made.
Jane and Steve--Wow!
ReplyDeletefield of snow...
ReplyDeletethe sparkle of the sun
and the strutting crow
No poem but the saying I heard all the time from my mom growing up: "Pretty is as pretty does."
ReplyDeleteMy mother used to say, "One must suffer for beauty." She was, I think, talking about diet, haircuts, and makeup. I heard it differently.
ReplyDeleteJane
Here's one of mine about beauty - or, more precisely, the loss of it:
ReplyDeleteDAPHNE’S MICRO-MORPHOSIS
She likes her skin to be skin,
likes only a thin tip of change,
likes the shift sub-dermal,
likes the inward gist of that.
Change that's Meta is not her style.
Why should people know?
Why would Apollo chase her
once the bark began to show?
"once the bark began to show.. . " Shivers, Julie. The sign of a poem absolutely working for me.
ReplyDeleteJane
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteRose Window
ReplyDeleteby Liz Korba
I see through glass
A solid thing
Invisible
Like beauty
When it's there
A verb
Unbound