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Poetry

Derek Walcott: poem and prayer

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Larry Johnson: poet and author of Veins and Alloy

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Octavio Paz: Mexican poet, teacher, and diplomat

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Two Joseph Brodsky poems for a socially distant May

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Poetry

Derek Walcott: poem and prayer

Pentecost Better a jungle in the head than rootless concrete. Better to stand bewildered by the fireflies’ crooked street; winter lamps do not show where the sidewalk is lost, nor ...

Poetry

Larry Johnson: poet and author of Veins and Alloy

Baroque Music I’m going through a Baroque music phase: Telemann, Handel are my latest craze, Along with Arne, Rameau, Rebel, Corelli, And though those centuries were rather smelly, The music ...

Poetry

Octavio Paz: Mexican poet, teacher, and diplomat

The Street Here is a long and silent street. I walk in blackness and I stumble and fall and rise, and I walk blind, my feet trampling the silent stones ...

Poetry

Two Joseph Brodsky poems for a socially distant May

May 24, 1980 I have braved, for want of wild beasts, steel cages, carved my term and nickname on bunks and rafters, lived by the sea, flashed aces in an ...

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Poetry

Seven Tanka for Creation by Joseph O’Brien

1 Photosynthesis Before there was anything To kiss or embrace, Before our bed was warm with You, me, soil, seed—or hunger. 2 Caress of plasma, Hydrogen and helium— Touching my face as My giddy hands ...

April 30, 2020

Poetry

Six Empress Jito poems from the Japanese anthology Man’yoshu

(Translation by Ian Hideo Levy) (28) Spring has passed, and summer seems to have arrived: garments of white cloth hung to dry on heavenly Kagu Hill. (76) I can hear the bowstrings twang on the ...

April 24, 2020

Poetry

April 16, 2020

Seven poems from the Man’yoshu

(Translation by Ian Hideo Levy) (40) On Ami Bay, the girls must now be riding in their boats. does the tide rise to touch the trains of their beautiful robes? (41) On Cape Tafushi, hung ...

Poetry

April 9, 2020

Five poems from the Man’yoshu

(Translation by Ian Hideo Levy) (7) I remember our temporary shelter by Uji’s Palace ground, when we cut the splendid grass on the autumn fields and sojourned under thatch. (8) Wanting to board ship in ...

Poetry

April 2, 2020

Six tanka by Andrew Hamlin

If you’ve thrown open the window in winter, stuck out your head to behold only whiteness... it still isn’t me He simmers, legs over arm of his chair and I took him first for a ...

Poetry

March 27, 2020

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Princeton poetry

The Staying Up All Night The warm fire. The comfortable chairs. The merry companions. The stroke of twelve. The wild suggestion. The good sports. The man who hasn’t slept for weeks. The people who have ...

Poetry

March 19, 2020

Ernest Hemingway: almost invariably satirical

Advice to a Son Never trust a white man, Never kill a Jew, Never sign a contract, Never rent a pew. Don’t enlist in armies; Nor marry many wives; Never write for magazines; Never scratch ...

Poetry

March 13, 2020

Novelist William Faulkner also wrote poetry

After Fifty Years Her house is empty and her heart is old, And filled with shades and echoes that deceive No one save her, for still she tries to weave With blind bent fingers, nets ...

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William Morris: a great influence on James Joyce, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien

The Message of the March Wind (excerpt) Fair now is the springtide, now earth lies beholding With the eyes of a lover, the face of the sun; Long lasteth the daylight, and hope is enfolding ...

March 6, 2020

Poetry

Hayden Carruth: used rural New England imagery like Jane Kenyon and Donald Hall

Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey Scrambled eggs and whiskey in the false-dawn light. Chicago, a sweet town, bleak, God knows, but sweet. Sometimes. And weren’t we fine tonight? When Hank set up that limping treble roll ...

February 27, 2020

Poetry

February 20, 2020

Donald Hall: 14th US Poet Laureate and husband to Jane Kenyon

Her Long Illness Daybreak until nightfall, he sat by his wife at the hospital while chemotherapy dripped through the catheter into her heart. He drank coffee and read the Globe. He paced; he worked on ...

Poetry

February 14, 2020

Valentine’s Day with Shakespeare

I From fairest creatures we desire increase, That thereby beauty’s rose might never die, But as the riper should by time decease, His tender heir might bear his memory: But thou contracted to thine own ...

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Poetry

Derek Walcott: poem and prayer

Larry Johnson: poet and author of Veins and Alloy

Octavio Paz: Mexican poet, teacher, and diplomat

Two Joseph Brodsky poems for a socially distant May

Poetry

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