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National Poetry Month: Day Fourteen(ish), a Portrait of the Reader As an Adolescent
I spent a lot of time alone as a child. Most of that time, when I wasn't riding my bike, I was reading. Or performing interpretive dance to ABBA records, but I won't be covering those flights of fancy in this post ( Read more... ) -
National Poetry Month: Day Thirteen, Rust and Stardust
Before and beyond any character, what brought me to Nabokov (or was it Nabokov to me) were his images.
Wanted, wanted: Dolores Haze ( Read more... ) -
National Poetry Month: Day 16, a Dollar Short
When I said that Mercy
stood
Within the borders of the
wood,
I meant the lenient beast
with claws
And bloody, swift-dispatching
jaws.
-- Lawrence Spingarn
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National Poetry Month: Day 15, a Day Late
This is the first thing
I have understood:
Time is the echo of an axe
Within a wood.
--Philip Larkin
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National Poetry Month: Day 14, America
He wrote beautiful poems, sad poems, joyful poems, angry poems, black poems, love poems, hopeful poems, present poems, American poems.
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Let America be America again ( Read more... ) -
National Poetry Month: Day 13, Belated
Though it is now abandoned, St Elizabeth's Hospital, a mental institution, housed the Poet Ezra Pound for more than ten years. A favorite poet of mine, Elizabeth Bishop, reworked the House the Jack Built as a ode on Pound's commitment.
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This is the house of Bedlam ( Read more... ) -
National Poetry Month: Day Eleven, the Center of All Beauty
When I was a child
I played by myself in a
corner of the schoolyard
all alone.
I hated dolls and I
hated games, animals were
not friendly and birds
flew away.
If anyone was looking
for me I hid behind a
tree and cried out "I am
an orphan."
And here I am, the
center of all beauty!
writing these poems!
Imagine!
-Autobiographia Literaria, ( Read more... ) -
National Poetry Month: Day Ten, Bedlam
And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
Not shaking the grass
--Ezra Pound
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National Poetry Month: Day Nine, Awen*
Another suggestion by a friend, this poem is surely one of Dylan Thomas' better known, but it's none worse the wear for that.
Poetry was meant to be heard aloud. So listen if you like to a reading by the poet himself -- click here.
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Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs ( Read more... )