POETS’s Day: The e.e. cummings Edition
e.e.cummings makes arguments as to why you should ride the wave of passion, but the arguments are based in logic and there is a pleading tone
Author: Ben Sears
Wonderful Cruelty: It’s Not Funny Until Someone Gets Hurt
I think that timing is a requirement in comedy, but it’s cruelty that matters. The cruelty is the point. I should note that that’s wonderful.
POETS Day: Ozymandias
Ozymandias is cast as a reflection on the passage of time and the mortality of effort, fame, and completion. It is that. But there’s also a dig at a de facto King…
POETS Day: Sailing to Byzantium by WB Yeats
“That is no country for old men.” begins Yeats in “Sailing to Byzantium.” It is a stark statement that breaks before the line is over.
POETS Day and I’m Just Not Sure: Strickland Gillilan
Not a nice thing to think about but Strickland Gillilan may have comforted your aunt in a mauve puffy envelope after her cat met a Cadillac.
Tim Tebow, Burgeoning and Established Credentials. and The Little Baby Rhino
Like Tim Tebow to the NFL, I think that the enfants terrible’s metaphorical passing motion…Maybe it doesn’t translate to being a grown up
POETS Day: Robert Graves and the Brilliance of Failure
Despite my Robert Graves obsession this poem stands out. It is clarity. It is release. It is surrender. It is awful in the full sense.
POETS Day! Raymond Carver and a Clarifying Rain
This week’s poem comes from Raymond Carver, arguably America’s greatest short story writer and frankly, if Andre Dubus never wrote I’d remove that “arguably” in a second.
POETS Day: Wilfred Owen and The Old Lie
I first read this week’s poem in seventh or eighth grade. It’s “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen. I think it’s the most famous of the “War Poets” poems and deserving.
POETS Day: The King of Sandusky, Ohio and RIP PJ O’Rourke
PJ O’Rourke wasn’t a favorite author. He was a doorway to understanding what thinking could be and what humor can do to the way you perceive the world.
Maybe Culpa: Adventures In Outrage Email
The email stylings of Neil Young, Whoopie Goldberg, Joe Rogan, Clay Travis, and Joy Ried on the pressing issues of the day
POETS Day: The Second Oxford Expedition by W.H. Auden
Today’s poet is named W.H. Auden because his full name is Wystan Hugh Audan and he should begin each line with a curse to his parents for naming him Wystan and then urinating on the ground they are buried in.
POETS Day: Gerard Manley Hopkins and Near Perfection
I write this as a dilettante fan of poetry claiming no expertise, but in this case I scream that Gerard Manley Hopkins is brilliant.
Maus and The “Ban”
I’d be interested to know what the Maus fans will say about the book that replaced Maus if Maus gets reinstated.
POETS Day: Poe, Poe, Pitiful Me
If you play Wordle and started with Poe you’d be more than half an Edgar Allen towards success if the word was actually “poetry.”
You Think You Know A Band: Observations On The Beatles and Peter Jackson’s Get Back
This is not a review of The Beatles: Get Back, This is more of an observation that I thought I knew that band. I misunderstood the dynamics.
POETS Day: Let’s Talk About Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson: an insane Miss Habersham-type peeking out from a pantry wearing all white and thinking that but for an em dash go I.
We Should Unfix the College Football Postseason: A Rebuttal
The fear among my stamp of college football fans is that the tournament awards the game and not the campaign, and makes everything worse
POETS Day!: Remaindered, the Clive James Fury Edition
This week’s poem comes from an acclaimed writer and notable Australian, Clive James. It’s a remarkable work in that it is swimming in contagious hatred.
POETS Day, The Shakespearean Sonnet Edition, #XIX
It was a three paragraph lead in to a punch line that required knowing that Shakespeare spelled his own name fourteen different ways that we know of…
