Year: 2005

  • Things Being Various

    Snow by Louis MacNeice The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was Spawning snow and pink roses against it Soundlessly collateral and incompatible: World is suddener than we fancy it. World is crazier and more of it than we think, Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion A tangerine and spit the pips and…

  • Though it is not Spring

    I am a huge fan of MacNeice now. Read this poem out loud. He is a poet who has such a mastery over sounds that I often care very little about his themes – though they are nothing to sneeze at, either. (It is almost embarrasing to love a poem so much that has “sunshine”…

  • 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…

  • Excelsior!

    Excelsior by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The shades of night were falling fast, As through an Alpine village passed A youth, who bore, ’mid snow and ice, A banner with the strange device,         Excelsior! His brow was sad; his eye beneath, Flashed like a falchion from its sheath, And like a silver clarion rung The accents…

  • Poeta Loquitur

    I haven’t had a chance to listen to much yet, and what I have listened to hasn’t really inspired me to listen to much more, but I figure some of you might be interested: I found a link over at Salon to several downloadable CDs worth of Dylan Thomas reading his and others’ poetry, with…

  • 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;…

  • 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,…

  • 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.…

  • 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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