No, really–every situation, such as “Ten Poems to Read When You Get Stuffed in Your Locker.”
Category Archives: Poetry
“Feeble may be the scanty phrase”
Poet, shall this be all thy word?
Blow on us with a bolder breeze,
Until we rise, as having heard
The sob, the song of far-off seas.
By Henry Cuyler Bunner
Knockout, a New Literary Mag
Coming this October, a poetry magazine called Knockout. Co-founding Editor Brett Ortler says “we’re donating half the money we get from our first issue to Sudanese relief organizations. Our lineup for #1’s pretty good — it’s all poetry, and it includes a number of former US Poets Laureate, National Book Award winners, in addition to unpublished writers.”
3 School Girls
THREE school-girls pass this way each day:
Two of them go in the fluttery way
Of girls, with all that girlhood buys;
But one goes with a dream in her eyes . . . (from a poem by Hazel Hall)
Lately, I worry about nurturing the dreams in my little girls. I seem so naturally harsh and distant. I don’t want to be, but it’s like swimming against the current to change.
From “This Morning,” by Charles Simic
I’m just sitting here mulling over
What to do this dark, overcast day?
It was a night of the radio turned down low,
Fitful sleep, vague, troubling dreams.
I woke up lovesick and confused.
I thought I heard Estella in the garden singing
And some bird answering her,
But it was the rain. . . .
Taken from “This Morning,” by Charles Simic
Together in the Dark
They sit together on the porch, the dark almost fallen, the house behind them dark. . . .
Perfect Poetry
The Guardian is seeking nominations for great lines of poetry.
The Six Hundred
“Who hath a book
Hath friends at hand . . .” quoth Sherry about a mysterious league of 600.
“Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred. . . .
When can their glory fade?”
We have no shelter from our sin
When penitential grief has wept
O’er some foul dark spot,
One only stream, a stream of blood,
Can wash away the blot.
Lift up Thy bleeding hand, O Lord,
Unseal that cleansing tide;
We have no shelter from our sin
But in Thy wounded side.
(a modern hymn by Cecil Alexander)
A Nursery Rhyme
For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.