Sunday Morning! The Bughouse
On Daniel Swift’s journey into Saint Elizabeth’s mental hospital with Ezra Pound.
Tagged: poetry
Poetry Should Hurt
Meaning and context take a backseat as the language police round up another suspect.
Poet Voice and Why it Grates
Picture, if you will, that you are not overly familiar with live poetry reading, and gave it a chance just to try it. But the speaker, using a monotone and slightly halting delivery, was as imposing as the meaning of the words themselves. Turns out that is common as @cjgiaimo writes in Atlas Obscura
In Defense of Poetry
Old poetry is laden with the baggage of centuries of hidden metaphor and archaic references. New poetry is prone to abstraction and whimsical laziness. But poetry deserves our consideration as an art form nonetheless. After all, all the music we love is poetry, and all the fun little things we can do with language are best done in poetic form.
Louise Glück and the Aspiration of Poetry
What do anthologies do to the experience of reading poetry? And what makes a poem a poem, anyway?
i thank You God for most this amazing by e e cummings
Jaybird reads “i thank You God for most this amazing” as he tries to tackle e e cummings.
Why the Goddess Weeps
An original poem, written by a lawyer during a particularly challenging day at court.
Translation as Commentary (or, Commentary as Translation?)
It is September, which means—inevitably—that I find myself thinking about Paul Celan’s “Todesfugue,” this time (the first time) as a teacher. It is hardly easy, in subject matter or in style—it is credited for...
Another from Edmond Rostand
Rostand’s second poem from Les Musardises, entitled “The Bedroom.” For my English translation I chose rhymed couplets, though I admit with BlaiseP that there’s a procrustean quality to some of them. Incidentally, the author...
History’s Lost, Part II: Sappho
“Euripides was eaten by dogs; Aeschylus killed by a stone; Sappho leapt from a cliff. We know no more of them than that. We have their poetry, and that is all.” – Virginia Woolf,...
A poem for Wednesday
The Old Fools by Philip Larkin What do they think has happened, the old fools, To make them like this? Do they somehow suppose It’s more grown-up when your mouth hangs open and drools,...
A Golden Age of American Poetry?
From the NYRBlog: In a country in which schools seem to teach less literature every year, where fewer people read books and ignorance reigns supreme regarding most issues, poetry is read and written more...
Poetic License Meets the War on Christmas
I hereby declare James Hanley this season’s poet laureate.
a poem for sunday
Japan ~by Billy Collins Today I pass the time reading a favorite haiku, saying the few words over and over. It feels like eating the same small, perfect grape again and again. I walk...
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