As a fan of the Scottish poet Robert Burns, I was unaware of the role that Burns’ wife played with the development of his songs until I toured the home that he lived in at the time of his death in 1796. Jean, who by all accounts had a beautiful … Read More
Category: poetry
“The man o’ independent mind / He looks an’ laughs at a’ that.”
Picture this: in the 1700s, a poet from Scotland united his fellow countrymen by showing them how to respond to the rich and powerful. He recommended laughter. Meet Robert Burns – known as the “ploughman poet” – who grew up doing backbreaking field work during the day and learning French … Read More
“I stand here coiled in orbits, head to foot, because this tilted world is where I live.”
The great poet Henry Taylor must have been in a cranky mood when he compiled this collection of 100 poems that span his 50-year career. Taylor chose not to follow the convention of inviting a respected peer to write an introduction; he selected a cover that makes it look like … Read More
“There was this air, this light, a day of thorough and forgetful happiness . . .”
How many Pulitzer-Prize winning poets write about happiness? I can think of only one, Henry Taylor, who is considered by some critics to be “deliberately, determinedly unfashionable.” Why? Perhaps it is because his “technically well-ordered style and leisurely reflections of life” (which are comparable to Robert Frost’s work) are “now … Read More
“Shall this leave us bitter? Or better? Grieve. Then choose.”
Best of 2021: Book Prescriptions
As we finish this difficult year, I’m wondering how I can thank my readers for sticking with me. Blogs can’t offer hugs, a place to go scream, a few extra hours of sleep, or stiff drinks. However, I can prescribe books that can help those who have this year’s Common … Read More
“A black dream weighs upon me like lead, / For my foreordained death is approaching, / and great wars and great fires lie ahead.”
The great Russian poet Alexander Block wrote these words in 1902, when he was 22 years old. It seemed as if he knew that in less than 20 years, he would die of heart failure brought on by malnutrition. He lived through Russian revolutions in 1905 and 1917; he … Read More
“. . . and I doze here, dreaming that something lies under a suburban lawn, waiting to change my life . . .”
Henry Taylor’s poem “The Muse Once More” continues: “…to draw me away from what I chose too long ago to forsake it now on some journey out of legend, to smuggle across the world’s best-guarded borders this token, whatever it is, that says I have risked my life for this … Read More
“We must accustom ourselves to talking without orating, and to writing without achieving Paradise Lost.”
It’s clear to me that times like these – frigid temperatures, fights in Washington, and February flatness — call for help from William Stafford. Why? He is a poet who knows what to do when times are hard. Press on, I think he’d say. He is known for … Read More
“The inexplicable is all around us. So is the incomprehensible.”
Are you as astonished as I am by the events in Washington this week? During uncertain times like this, I like to reach for the works of the wise poets who are drawn to things that they find inexplicable because they believe that the process of achieving clarity is a … Read More
“At the end of my suffering there was a door.”
It’s best to eat chocolate, I think, when reading the strong poetry of Louise Glück, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature this week. She goes for the jugular. Glück is known for her clarity and her interest in the abandoned, the punished and the betrayed. To be successful – … Read More
“This was when I was sailing close to the shore of my life. That boat capsized, thank my lucky stars…”
Poet Marjorie Saiser continues “…and since then I’ve been bobbing in the deep, splashing, coughing, water in my throat at times, learning to swim.” What would you pick for a title of a poem about that describes a wedding day and then the fact that everything changed when the “boat … Read More
“The power of poetry is, by a single word perhaps, to instill that energy into the mind which compels the imagination to produce the picture.”
The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge gave a series of lectures on Shakespeare in 1811-1812. In this particular lecture, Coleridge says that he considers The Tempest to be “among the ideal” plays because it “appeals to the imagination.” Coleridge believes that Shakespeare does this by inserting “some touch or other which … Read More
“For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.”
The poet Mary Oliver died this week, and I’m convinced that if we all would take a break to read her poetry, we would be strengthened by it. The level of anger – about the shut-down, the bickering, the brutal weather – is remarkably high right now. Mary Oliver believed … Read More
“Whether teaching or writing, what I really am doing is shepherding revelation; I am the midwife to epiphany.”
It’s the dead of winter, which is a hard time to begin something new. And yet, that’s exactly what those of us who are preparing to start a new semester must do. That’s why this is a perfect time for help from poets. This poetry collection comes from The Courage … Read More