POETS Day Turns 100: William Logan
William Logan has a sharp sense of humor, is capable of barbed comments, and isn’t afraid of outright insults.
Author: Ben Sears
POETS Day! Fugglestone St. Peter’s own, George Herbert
Herbert’s talent was immense and it’s astonishing what impact he was able to make in his short thirty-nine years, but Donne remains Donne.
Farrah Fawcett and Grilled Spaghetti Sauce
Given the choice between abandoning an imprinted notion of sexuality and this grilled spaghetti sauce, I chose the sauce.
POETS Day! Thanks for God, Girls, and Growing Old
Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday” doesn’t really resonate when so many have a long Thanksgiving weekend anyway.
POETS Day! Thumbing Through Dylan Thomas’s Collected Poems 1934-1952
Frustration with the connection between birth and death is a theme that shows itself frequently while reading Dylan Thomas.
Money’s on the Nightstand, Jimbo Fisher
Texas A&M loved Jimbo Fisher to the tune of $95.6m dollars, and within two years loathed him so much they’ll give him $77.5m to just go away.
POETS Day! William Empson’s “Aubade”
An aubade is a song sung at daybreak, usually about lovers going their separate ways before getting caught. Many poets have a poem titled “Aubade.”
POETS Day! Amy Lowell
Amy Lowell is not as widely remembered as an early twentieth century reader might expect she would be.
POETS Day! Henry Vaughan and The Yellow King
True Detective mentions a few things from The Yellow King but it’s window dressing…Thankfully, Vaughan delivers what Warren does not.
POETS Day! Fourteeners
“Fourteeners” is what you call iambic heptameter when it’s at home. It’s a fourteen-syllable poetic line divvied up into seven feet of paired syllables, unstressed followed by stressed.
POETS Day! Emily Dickinson, The Myth
She’s iconic and unavoidable so I girded myself and waded into her body of work. She only published ten poems in her lifetime
POETS Day! On James Joyce’s Ulysses with a Few Poems Thrown In
I’ve been fascinated by James Joyce’s Ulysses ever since I thumbed through my father’s college copy and a Uriah Heap concert ticket fell out.
Rigatoni Capricciosi
Considering the ingredients, that should elicit a “Lé Fresca, Sherlock,” but given the hindsight obviousness of the combination, it was better than expected.
POETS Day! CS Lewis
The real stuff that can hurt you is more dangerous than the imaginary that can scare you, so his inventions cling to familiar things. In the same vein, CS Lewis’s conception of beauty is simply grounded.
POETS Day! Laura Riding, Poet/Muse
Laura Riding is important among minor poets as her ideas set others thinking in ways that had consequence for later movements.
Fumigating with Coq au Vin
Over the last couple of decades I’ve played around with various versions of coq au vin, but I’ve always kept dominance over nature in mind.
POETS Day! A Few from Hart Crane
I love Hart Crane, but in fractions. Crane, for me at least and I’m a bit slow on various uptakes, requires a different mindset.
POETS Day! Revisiting Clampitt with Cummings In Mind
There’s a valid complaint about poetry written beginning somewhere in the middle of the last century that claims modern poetry is written for a smaller and smaller audience of attuned readers
POETS Day! Thomas Hardy
Biographer Claire Tomalin claims the death of his wife signals “the moment when Thomas Hardy became a great poet,” and calls the Emma poems the “finest and strangest celebrations of the dead in English poetry.”
POETS Day! Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg has a lot of fans. I’m not among them. I’m also not certain if many of his proclaimed fans have read his poetry.
