Poet Marjorie Saiser continues “…and since then I’ve been bobbing in the deep, splashing, coughing, water in my throat at times, learning to swim.” What would you pick for a title of a poem about that describes a wedding day and then the fact that everything changed when the “boat … Read More
Category: poetry
“The power of poetry is, by a single word perhaps, to instill that energy into the mind which compels the imagination to produce the picture.”
The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge gave a series of lectures on Shakespeare in 1811-1812. In this particular lecture, Coleridge says that he considers The Tempest to be “among the ideal” plays because it “appeals to the imagination.” Coleridge believes that Shakespeare does this by inserting “some touch or other which … Read More
“For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.”
The poet Mary Oliver died this week, and I’m convinced that if we all would take a break to read her poetry, we would be strengthened by it. The level of anger – about the shut-down, the bickering, the brutal weather – is remarkably high right now. Mary Oliver believed … Read More
“Whether teaching or writing, what I really am doing is shepherding revelation; I am the midwife to epiphany.”
It’s the dead of winter, which is a hard time to begin something new. And yet, that’s exactly what those of us who are preparing to start a new semester must do. That’s why this is a perfect time for help from poets. This poetry collection comes from The Courage … Read More
“I see the point of poets now. They notice things.”
This is what the poet Ruth Padel’s mother said after she was “dragged” to her first poetry reading. The truth is that many have to be “dragged” to poetry because of the technical issues with rhyme and rhythm or with the way ideas are compressed in poetry. To help … Read More
“There is something missing in our definition, vision, of a human being: the need to make.”
Frank Bidart, who won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, explores this “need to make” in the twenty-part poem “Advice to the Players.” Yes, that’s right: twenty parts. He’s known for psychological complexity and paradoxical observations, and this poem provides both. For example, he writes, “Horrible is the fate … Read More
“I learned that the poem was made not just to exist, but to speak – to be company.”
“Without my voice, and spirit, I am dust, / This is not what I want, but what I must.”
In these memorable lines from Mike Bartlett’s play King Charles III, the lead character explains his decision to oppose a law the parliament has passed. He knows his actions will throw the modern British system of government into chaos. People will revolt, and tanks will roll into London. … Read More
“It should not simplify.”
Up and down and up again – the changes in the temperature this spring have caught me off balance more than once. Uncertain times call for poetry, I think, and for contemplating the purpose of poetry. Seamus Heaney’s book The Redress of Poetry shows how poetry should repair or … Read More
“Is the soul solid, like iron?”
The poet Mary Oliver continues: “Or, is it tender and breakable, like the wings of a moth in the beak of the owl?” With these questions, Oliver opens the poem “Some Questions You Might Ask,” which has inspired artists, videographers, and hundreds of bloggers. During this Thanksgiving weekend, … Read More
“There is a great deal of poetry written and published today that turns its back (sometimes with apparent disdain) upon the reader.”
Who is poetry for? What is its purpose? If you like fist fights and barroom brawls, go ahead and ask poets and professors these questions. You’ll see two sides emerge: One will agree with “the noted American poet” who said “it is the responsibility of readers to educate themselves … Read More
“The secret of all art, also of poetry, is, thus, distance.”
Czeslaw Milosz, recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature, continues, “Thanks to distance the past preserved in our memory is purified and embellished.” We can consider the past “without our former passions” so we can find “details that had escaped our attention.” Rather than creating art “in the moment,” … Read More
“My call is the call of battle, I nourish active rebellion.”
That the poet Walt Whitman was a rebel who celebrated democracy, nature, love and friendship is well known. What isn’t well known is that Gavrilo Princip, the Bosnian Serb who assassinated the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, felt inspired by Whitman. Let’s think about that. Could it be that poetry played a … Read More
“The world is too much with us.”
Two-hundred years ago, when William Wordsworth published the poem that begins with the line quoted above, critics were not impressed. In fact, they ridiculed him for using the words “of the common man” instead of using a scholar’s proper poetic diction. Wordsworth sparked a revolution. It took many years, … Read More
“To look closely with the attention of questioning changes everything.”
“It is,” Jane Hirshfield writes in this collection of essays about poetry, “if undertaken fully, revolutionary.” More stimulating than a triple-shot of espresso, these essays show what can happen when a great poet sets out to describe how poetry is primarily “an instrument of investigation and a mode of perception.” … Read More