Poetry
-
The most widely-known as well as the most notorious poem of the second half of the twentieth century is Philip Larkin's "This Be the Verse." For those of you who don't know the poem by heart, here it is in its brief and startling entirety. They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They…
-
The poem that might entrance you when you're young might not be the poem for your older years. In my "mature" phase, poems that I earlier ignored take on new significance. I'm now quite taken with Tennyson's "Ulysses,'" a dramatic monologue that meant nothing to me until a few years ago. "Ulysses" celebrates perseverance, a…
-
We're still cleaning out and throwing away (as I reported a couple of days ago). Today I discovered, in amongst a small cache of books that I inherited from my father, a volume of poems called Earthbound. I'd never heard of the poet, Helene Mullins, but I traced her via a 2001 The New York Times…
-
Your cat comes on silent haunches. It shits, polluting both arbor and garden with catty scat, and then goes home.
-
I know that I shall meet my fateSomewhere among the clouds above;Those that I fight I do not hate,Those that I guard I do not love;My country is Kiltartan Cross,My countrymen Kiltartan's poor,No likely end could bring them lossOr leave them happier than before.Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,A…
-
Your “mature” brain has mind of its own. It is intermittently balky and stubborn, reluctant to yield up its stored data. Many years ago I memorized a few of John Milton’s sonnets. These poems are not only noble and politically engaged, they are also reflective, immaculately crafted, challenging, and melodious — as good as any…
-
This pretty six-line poem is not nearly as naive as it first appears. But it's a poem to savor and one that has richly earned its place in the anthologies. It's often, mistakenly in my opinion, listed among the best "love poems" in the English language. Whenas in silks my Julia goes, Then, then, methinks,…
-
At age seventeen, awash in hormones, I took a serious shine to the sensuous words with which, in Marlowe's play, Faustus addresses Helen of Troy. Oh, thou art fairer than the evening airClad in the beauty of a thousand stars;Brighter art thou than flaming JupiterWhen he appeared to hapless Semele;More lovely than the monarch of…
-
Here are two excellent poems, of different eras and origins, that are at heart surprisingly similar. The first, "Politics," written in the pre-World War 30s, is by W. B. Yeats. How can I, that girl standing there, My attention fix On Roman or on Russian Or on Spanish politics? Yet here's a traveled man that…