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Swinburne on Swinburne
Swinburne has long been my favorite poet, and on winter nights like tonight, I love to curl up with a small glass of some choice intoxicating liquor and read some intoxicating Swinburne verse. But I am aware that there are some who do not think, as I do, that Swinburne was the greatest English poet…
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Reading Poetry
Excerpt from Adam’s Curse by William Butler Yeats We sat together at one summer’s end, That beautiful mild woman, your close friend, And you and I, and talked of poetry. I said, ‘A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought, Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.…
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Plus ça change…
Penned some 18 years ago: Juvenalia/Juvenilia by a much younger Michael Hoke My thoughts unfold, the air grows cold As if it knows I’ll need the snows To quench my mental fire: My future turns—ignites and burns Through hope and fear—but leaves me here, Alas, with no desire!
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Boredom
The other day, I decided to try my hand at composing a more modern piece of poetry, but the results were dismal: A Meta-Analysis of Free Verse in Free VerseorOde on Itself by Michael Hoke Imagine how beautiful this poem could have been had you but written it Yourself I was struck today, however, when…
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The Poet of Ceder St.
Never mind the long silence, I have enjoyed Hoke’s posts and thoughts on Nietzsche. I plan to take some time with him and his solitudes and renunciations. I have recently been spending some evenings with a fine poet named Warren Carrier, father of Wintry-Minded Ethan. Conversations with him have inspired me to try again to…
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epic verse
Words uttered by Heidi after she has begrudgingly agreed to lend her husband a pen: Goodbye noble pen! Ah me, your purchase was bitterness! Why did I, with such dutiful care, select you from among the many inscribers of ink that rested in their caps upon the shelf? If only you could live out your…
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Just Saying
I recently sent the following email: This is just to say I have put the program organdon_input.sas into the directory U:\TIS-Access\SAS Programs\HRSA Grant and modified the program to use the file All Surveys – Round One.txt in the same directory. And then I thought of Jon. And then I thought of Hoke. And then I…
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Memory
from Rococo by Algernon Charles Swinburne Remembrance may recover And time bring back to time The name of your first lover, The ring of my first rhyme; But rose-leaves of December The frosts of June shall fret, The day that you remember, The day that I forget. Some weeks ago Alan posted a pair of…
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A long swat
Brian’s post about the early bird, lovely post that it was, left a small, very nasal fly inside my head who has been buzzing away, demanding a good swatting. This little essay is meant to be a rolled up piece of paper with which to do away with him. Brian began by pointing out that…
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Thaw; Kooser
I have been gone from this page for a long time and it makes me quite sad to look at the lovely things that have been written months ago and gone unanswered, unacknowledged, unheard by me. Can I respond after such a wintry absence? Do comments in cyberspace keep their flavor when thawed? Mike, your…