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Category Archives: poetry
“There are those who believe they know – and those who hope they may yet know.”
Seven pages into the preface of his huge collection of poems, Carl Sandburg tells us that he will not pontificate on the art of poetry, which is what famous writers often do in that section. Instead, he says “A poet … Continue reading
Posted in poetry
Tagged Carl Sandburg, Complete Poems, leader as learner, learning, seeking, traveling
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Ten Years of Writing about Poetry Has Taught Me This
Poetry is the most textured form of writing. It attracts artists who weave sounds and images with mystery. They may be cranky (T. S. Eliot) or homesick (Heaney) or humorous (Billy Collins). They may believe that poetry is an instrument … Continue reading
“We get the Dialectic fairly well.”
Why would a poem written in 1940 be included in The Best American Poetry 2023? W. H. Auden’s brilliant poem about contradictions wasn’t published during his lifetime because he questioned its value. Auden was a great poet who doubted his … Continue reading
“…I see in the flashlight beam, a world of dust . . . massing, revolving back, splitting into twos and threes and lonely ones—”
The poet Rasma Haidri continues, “and I know I orchestrated this fugue of spheres.” I love the way hope infuses this poem – and many of the poems – in this collection. We see stories about people who are looking … Continue reading
Posted in poetry
Tagged a favorite author, Blue like Apples, poems infused with hope, Rasma Haidri, writing in Norway
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“I live on the boundary of the outside and the inside.”
I’ve always believed that the best way to take the pulse of a bookstore is to check out the display on the front table. Instead of best-sellers, this bookstore featured Czech poets – a treat for someone like me who … Continue reading
Posted in poetry
Tagged Czech Poets, Czechia literary traditions, distrust of boundaries, Zbyněk Hejda
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“Even as I write these words I am planning to rise from the chair as soon as I finish this sentence.”
We all know the feeling of being torn between wanting to take the time to think deeply and needing to get up to get something done. The tension between lofty ideas and everyday practicalities is a theme that runs through … Continue reading
Posted in poetry
Tagged coexistence of lofty and mundane, Marie Howe, The Kingdom of Ordinary Time
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“One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice –”
Mary Oliver’s poem “The Journey” continues, “though the whole house / began to tremble / and you felt the old tug / at your ankles . . .” The journey she describes didn’t stop, even though it was “a wild … Continue reading
Posted in poetry
Tagged Mary Oliver, Roger Housden, Ten Poems to Change Your Life, The Journey
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“Go north a dozen years on a road overgrown with vines to find the days after you were born.”
This remarkable first line of the poem “Sight” by Faith Shearin does three things: it provides a way to visualize a journey back in time along “a road overgrown with vines.” It includes an interesting slant rhyme with “vines” and … Continue reading
Posted in poetry
Tagged Faith Shearin, Orpheus, Sight, The past wants you back., Turning
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“Lately I’ve found myself reaching for the books of certain familiar writers, whose own zest and energy offer some kindly remedy to my condition.”
Perhaps you can relate to this: while I enjoy the holidays, I also am running low on the “zest and energy” that Mary Oliver describes in this essay. Her solution to this problem is to reconnect with familiar writers. Her … Continue reading
Posted in non-fiction, poetry
Tagged a favorite poet, Blue Pastures, Mary Oliver, Pulitzer Prize winner, remain curious
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“And you O my soul, where you stand, surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space . . .until the bridge you will need be form’d…”
And you, O my reader, where you sit, reading from a screen that holds more words than the mind can store, what do you do after reading Whitman’s poetry? Some respond by “Whitmanizing” in bold statements or expressive art. The … Continue reading
Posted in poetry
Tagged Great American poet, soul and spirit, Walt Whitman, Whitmanize
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“Any radical change in poetic form is likely to be the symptom of some very much deeper change in society and in the individual.”
What a crank T. S. Eliot must have been! He is the champion of contradiction. Consider this: his difficult and complex poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” revolutionized poetry, and many consider it to be a prime example … Continue reading
“I became a fine singer . . .in later years I was to be of great help to my husband with his song writing.”
As a fan of the Scottish poet Robert Burns, I was unaware of the role that Burns’ wife played with the development of his songs until I toured the home that he lived in at the time of his death … Continue reading
Posted in non-fiction, poetry
Tagged Jean Armour, Robert Burns, wife of Robert Burns
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“The man o’ independent mind / He looks an’ laughs at a’ that.”
Picture this: in the 1700s, a poet from Scotland united his fellow countrymen by showing them how to respond to the rich and powerful. He recommended laughter. Meet Robert Burns – known as the “ploughman poet” – who grew up … Continue reading
Posted in poetry
Tagged Greatest Ever Scot, independent minded, Robert Burns, Romantic era poet
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“I stand here coiled in orbits, head to foot, because this tilted world is where I live.”
The great poet Henry Taylor must have been in a cranky mood when he compiled this collection of 100 poems that span his 50-year career. Taylor chose not to follow the convention of inviting a respected peer to write an … Continue reading