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.
Category Archives: Poetry
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
Fog by Amy Clampitt
“…houses
reverting into the lost
and forgotten; granite
subsumed, a rumor
in a mumble of ocean.”
Read all of Amy Clampitt’s poem, “Fog.” Perhaps this doesn’t describe your day or what you could have seen this morning. My area is bright and sunny, high of 93. This quiet moment is what I wanted after the last post.
Anne Overstreet's "Surviving the Open Heart"
Jeffrey Overstreet’s wife, Anne, has a debut volume of poetry on the shelves at all the best bookstores near you. It’s called Delicate Machinery Suspended: Poems
The hotel fan’s one long drawn exhalation
disturbing the heat that has settled like dust
across the room, the square-cornered chair
the unsteady spool of table. You are broken
into pieces and lie scattered …
Speaking the Simple Truth
The next U.S. Poet Laureate has been announced. It’s Detroit-native Philip Levine.
John Thomas reports: “On the announcement of his being named U.S. Poet Laureate, Librarian of Congress James Billington said, ‘Philip Levine is one of America’s great narrative poets. His plainspoken lyricism has, for half a century, championed the art of telling The Simple Truth — about working in a Detroit auto factory, as he has, and about the hard work we do to make sense of our lives.'”
Here’s a bit of Levine’s work:
The new grass rising in the hills,
the cows loitering in the morning chill,
a dozen or more old browns hidden
in the shadows of the cottonwoods
beside the streambed. I go higher
to where the road gives up and there’s
only a faint path strewn with lupine
between the mountain oaks. (Read on …)