Jen Campbell will be writing 100 poems this weekend in an effort to raise money for EEC International, which is researching a cure for Ectodermal dysplasia. Read about it, watch the video, and consider buying one of her poems on a postcard.
Category Archives: Poetry
Poems on Violence
Tom Nolan quotes Philip Dacey on his poetic depiction of a poisoned Russian agent poisoned in “With or Without Milk”: “I drank a tea not made in front of me. / Beware tea brewed in ways you cannot see.”
“The poetry of violent death,” he says, “spans hundreds of years.” (via Books, Inq.)
Irony of Academic Distance
Mindy Withrow talks about Poet Billy Collins:
He delights in paradoxes. In “Table Talk,” a dinner companion “asked if anyone had ever considered / applying the paradoxes of Zeno to the maryrdom of St. Sebastian.” All during the meal, pondering Zeno’s theory that no moment ever really arrives but only draws closer by half, Collins “kept thinking of the arrows forever nearing / the pale, quivering flesh of St. Sebastian, / a fleet of them forever halving the tiny distances / to his body, tied to a post with rope, / even after the archers had packed it in and gone home.” But then he wryly observes that “my fork continued to arrive at my mouth / delivering morsels of asparagus and crusted fish.”
"The Perfection of Beauty"
And now, a bit of performance poetry from rapper shai linne with Blair Linne presenting.
shai linne – “The Perfection of Beauty” ft. Blair Linne (Official Trailer) from Lamp Mode Recordings on Vimeo.
A Poem by Debora Greger
“Theory of the leisure class”
Gold leaf, ground sapphire:
in the English book of hours,
the longest day of the year turns a page
in the season of spending
no sumptuary law can curb—
but today’s meditation has been interrupted
by a panicked feathery clatter:
a wood pigeon, ungainly in rosy waistcoat,
distracted on the way to Ascot
by an ornamental cherry at my window.
Lowell's "The Shepherd of King Admetus"
Here are few verses to sooth your soul this afternoon. Put down that third martini and read this from James Russell Lowell:
There came a youth upon the earth,
Some thousand years ago,
Whose slender hands were nothing worth,
Whether to plow, to reap, or sow.
Upon an empty tortoise-shell
He stretched some chords, and drew
Music that made men’s bosoms swell
Fearless, or brimmed their eyes with dew.
Then King Admetus, one who had
Pure taste by right divine,
Decreed his singing not too bad
To hear between the cups of wine
And so, well-pleased with being soothed
Into a sweet half-sleep,
Three times his kingly beard he smoothed,
And made him viceroy o’er his sheep.
Praise for Dappled Things
Lost: Of Man's First Disobedience
Of Man’s First Disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat,
Sing Heav’nly Muse, that on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed,
In the Beginning how the Heav’ns and Earth
Rose out of Chaos: Or if Sion Hill
Delight thee more, and Siloa’s Brook that flow’d
Fast by the Oracle of God; I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventrous Song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th’ Aonian Mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime.
And chiefly Thou O Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all Temples th’ upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for Thou know’st; Thou from the first
Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread
Dove-like satst brooding on the vast Abyss
And mad’st it pregnant: What in me is dark
Illumin, what is low raise and support;
That to the highth of this great Argument
I may assert Eternal Providence,
And justifie the wayes of God to men.
But That Was Before
The Believable with the Unbelievable
Alissa Wilkinson blogs about poet Donald Hall’s rich moments in his memoir, Life Work