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 “find.” And, it’s written as a command, in what English … Read More
Category: poetry
“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 book, which has been in my hands for thirty years, … Read More
“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 poet Czeslaw Milosz says that after reading Whitman, he experiences … Read More
“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 of social criticism. And yet, he wrote “To me … Read More
“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 in 1796. Jean, who by all accounts had a beautiful … Read More
“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 doing backbreaking field work during the day and learning French … Read More
“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 introduction; he selected a cover that makes it look like … Read More
“There was this air, this light, a day of thorough and forgetful happiness . . .”
How many Pulitzer-Prize winning poets write about happiness? I can think of only one, Henry Taylor, who is considered by some critics to be “deliberately, determinedly unfashionable.” Why? Perhaps it is because his “technically well-ordered style and leisurely reflections of life” (which are comparable to Robert Frost’s work) are “now … Read More
“Shall this leave us bitter? Or better? Grieve. Then choose.”
Best of 2021: Book Prescriptions
As we finish this difficult year, I’m wondering how I can thank my readers for sticking with me. Blogs can’t offer hugs, a place to go scream, a few extra hours of sleep, or stiff drinks. However, I can prescribe books that can help those who have this year’s Common … Read More
“A black dream weighs upon me like lead, / For my foreordained death is approaching, / and great wars and great fires lie ahead.”
The great Russian poet Alexander Block wrote these words in 1902, when he was 22 years old. It seemed as if he knew that in less than 20 years, he would die of heart failure brought on by malnutrition. He lived through Russian revolutions in 1905 and 1917; he … Read More
“. . . and I doze here, dreaming that something lies under a suburban lawn, waiting to change my life . . .”
Henry Taylor’s poem “The Muse Once More” continues: “…to draw me away from what I chose too long ago to forsake it now on some journey out of legend, to smuggle across the world’s best-guarded borders this token, whatever it is, that says I have risked my life for this … Read More
“We must accustom ourselves to talking without orating, and to writing without achieving Paradise Lost.”
It’s clear to me that times like these – frigid temperatures, fights in Washington, and February flatness — call for help from William Stafford. Why? He is a poet who knows what to do when times are hard. Press on, I think he’d say. He is known for … Read More
“The inexplicable is all around us. So is the incomprehensible.”
Are you as astonished as I am by the events in Washington this week? During uncertain times like this, I like to reach for the works of the wise poets who are drawn to things that they find inexplicable because they believe that the process of achieving clarity is a … Read More
“At the end of my suffering there was a door.”
It’s best to eat chocolate, I think, when reading the strong poetry of Louise Glück, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature this week. She goes for the jugular. Glück is known for her clarity and her interest in the abandoned, the punished and the betrayed. To be successful – … Read More