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I’m in a Drayton mood
It’s so well known that it hardly needs posting… but I’m in a Drayton mood, I have posting privileges, and it should come as no surprise to anyone that I would spend my time doing things that hardly need doing. Idea, LXI by Michael Drayton Since there’s no help, come, let us kiss and part;…
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Les Yeux des pauvres
While reading about the devastation occasioned by Hurricane Katrina, I came across this prose poem by Baudelaire. It, of course, was written long before our southern cities and towns were ravaged, having been first published in 1864, and I’m not sure it has much to contribute to a discussion of the disaster (at any rate,…
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Things…
Nemerov’s quantification of the common man’s life brings this poem to mind. (Honestly, it doesn’t take much to bring this poem to my mind.) Though speech does not enter into it, living seems to be a collection of things, but those things are tricky. The Man on the Dump by Wallace Stevens Day creeps down.…
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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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Long Winded
Mike’s posting of the Masters poem “Silence” made up my mind to post this Nemerov poem that I just encountered. Life Cycle of Common Man by Howard Nemerov Roughly figured, this man of moderate habits, This average consumer of the middle class, Consumed in the course of his average life span Just under half a…
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Garden Yeats
Down by the Salley Gardens by W. B. Yeats Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet; She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet. She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree; But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree. In a…
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Silence; Lapis Lazuli
In speaking with Brian and Laura this evening, I decided I should post two of my favorite poems. I linked to them some time ago in a long-winded post with no discernible thesis, but they are good enough to be posted on their own. I started to write something up about each one, but I…
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Ave Atque Vale
Ave Atque Vale by Billy Collins Even though I managed to swerve around the lump of groundhog lying on its back on the road, he traveled with me for miles, a quiet passenger who passed the time looking out the window enjoying this new view of the woods he once hobbled around in, sleeping all…
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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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archy says
aesop revised by archy by Don Marquis a wolf met a spring lamb drinking at a stream and said to her you are the lamb that muddied this stream all last year so that i could not get a clean fresh drink i am resolved that this outrage shall not be enacted again this season…