Recently I've become fascinated by very short poems. They seem to embody in such a stark way one of the defining characteristics of poetry - that it should be difficult and look easy. Also, because of their length they stay in my memory almost without effort - gaining my affection through familiarity, so to speak.

Here are two of my favourite very short poems. They're extremely different in style - one is funny and one isn't - but I think that both authors are rather underrated as poets.

1. GOD'S LOVE

God loves us all, I'm pleased to say -
Or those who love him anyway -
Or those who love him and are good.
Or so they say. Or so he should.

Vikram Seth


2. AFTER PRAGUE (FOR MARIA TSVETAYEVA)

He went. You said
you didn't want to live -

but there were other cities,
sixteen years,

before you reached the end,
alone in Yelabuga.

Hope is a long leash,
drawn in slowly.

Wendy Cope

How to define "very short"? Shorter than a sonnet perhaps?

One of my favorites:

Love Without Hope

Love without hope, as when the young birdcatcher
Swept off his tall hat to the squire's own daughter,
Thus letting the imprisoned larks escape and fly,
Singing about her head as she rode by.

--Robert Graves

I first encountered it as a "poem on the Underground" many many years ago in London, and it stuck with me instantly.

There's a newish zine out that specializes in only very short poems--Blink, I think it is called.

One of my favourites by Maori poet, Hone Tuwhare:

Haiku

Stop
your snivelling
creek-bed

come rain hail
and flood-water

laugh again

My current favorite metrical short:

Gwendolyn Brooks

We Real Cool

<UL TYPE=SQUARE>THE POOL PLAYERS,
SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL.[/list]
We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin grin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.


And, my current favorite, non-met:

Rihaku (Li T'ai Po)

The Jewel Stairs' Grievance

The jewelled steps are already quite white with dew,
It is so late that the dew soaks my gauze stockings,
And I let down the crystal curtain
And watch the moon through the clear autumn.

Translated by: Ezra Pound

Ammons wrote this one, quoted from my memory. It has the delightful virture not only of being short but of actually making use of its own form.
Richard Wakefield

THEIR LOVE LIFE

One failure
on top of another.

FURTHER REFLECTIONS ON PARSLEY
Ogden Nash

Parsley
Is gharsley.

[This message has been edited by Chris Childers (edited November 27, 2003).]

He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in Eternity's sunrise.

--William Blake


A man said to the universe: "Sir, I exist!"
"However," replied the universe, That
fact has not created
in me a sense of obligation."

--Stephen Crane

And my favorite short poem of all, one of the best poems I know of any length:


Fire and Ice
Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire;
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

**
Richard, I love the Ammons you quoted. So much that I've committed it to memory!

[This message has been edited by Roger Slater (edited November 27, 2003).]

I love all of the above. Roger, I thought I owned "Fire and Ice". Do we all feel like that about some of these essence poems?

I know I'm not alone in loving William Blake's:

The SICK ROSE

O Rose, thou art sick:
The invisible worm
That flies in the night
In the howling storm,

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy,
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

Lalla Rookh, Thomas Moore ends,

I never nurs'd a dear gazelle
To glad me with its soft black eye,
But when it came to know me well,
And love me, it was sure to die!

H.S. Leigh:

I've never had a piece of toast
Particularly long and wide,
But always fell upon the sanded floor,
And always on the buttered side.

And let's not forget Nash's

Candy
is dandy
but liquor
Is quicker.

[This message has been edited by RCL (edited November 28, 2003).]