Fictional Favorites, Divergent: Dauntless & Erudite

This series of posts considers What would fictional characters' favorite poets/poems be?

I'm "diverging" from my regular Fictional Favorites and offering poems for the five factions in Divergent by Veronica Roth. Do you know what faction you would join? Maybe these Fictional Favorites will help you decide... (Don't worry -- no spoilers!)

Today poems are for ERUDITE, the scholarly faction and for DAUNTLESS, the audacious faction:


For ERUDITE:

photo by Hash Milhan
An Afternoon in the Stacks
by William Stafford

Closing the book, I find I have left my head
inside. It is dark in here, but the chapters open
their beautiful spaces and give a rustling sound,
words adjusting themselves to their meaning.
Long passages open at successive pages.

read the rest here.

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There Is No Frigate Like A Book
by Emily Dickinson

There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!

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from Little Gidding (last of the Four Quartets)
by T.S. Eliot

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

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photo by Ma1974
For DAUNTLESS:

Risk
by Anaïs Nin

And then the day came,
when the risk
to remain tight
in a bud
was more painful
than the risk
it took
to Blossom.

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from Vierge Moderne
by Edith Södergran
translated by Stina Katchadourian

I am a laughing streak of scarlet sun...
I am a net for all voracious fish,
I am a toast to every woman's honor,
I am a step toward luck and toward ruin,
I am a leap in freedom and the self...
I'm the whisper of desire in a man's ear,
I'm the soul's shivering, the flesh's longing and denial,
I'm an entry sign to new paradises.
I am a flame, searching and brave,
I am water, deep yet bold only to the knees,
I am fire and water, honestly combined, on free terms...

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First Fig
by Edna St Vincent Millay

My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends--
It gives a lovely light!