Category Archives: Poetry
Richard Dawkins Reads A.E. Housman
Richard Dawkins Reads A.E. Housman From Poems that Make Grown Men Cry, Anthony and Ben Holden, ed., Simon and Schuster, Limited (2015) This video was for the UK’s National Poetry Day in 2014: https://nationalpoetryday.co.uk/previous-years/ (external link) Turn on the close captioning. … Continue reading
More From A.E. Housman
Confoundingly beautiful, brilliant and cynical, Housman’s poetry compares to little else. (internal link) It is a tragic world he sings of but his song is so sweet that we must listen. The following are random snippets, you can find his … Continue reading
Posted in Poetry, Thoughts on writing, Uncategorized, Writing by others
Tagged a shropshire lad, A.E. Housman, Housman, Poetry
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How A Poet Looks at The World
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) A poet looks at the world as a man looks at a woman. — A poem should be part of one’s sense of life. — A poem is a meteor. — The world is a force, not … Continue reading
Posted in art, Poetry, Thoughts on writing, Uncategorized, Writing by others
Tagged elsie stevens, liberty dime, Poetry, the blue guitar, wallace stevens
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The Power of The Dog
Their short lives demand that we go through love and loss more often with pets than with people. But what can we do? As with all love, we are torn into it and torn apart by it. The Power of … Continue reading
Posted in non-fiction writing, Poetry, Thoughts on writing, Uncategorized, Writing by others
Tagged Kipling, loss love, pets, Poetry, the power of the dog
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Back to The Song of Roland
The Song of Roland Back to the Song of Roland, that “anonymous old French epic, dating perhaps as early as the middle 11th century.” If you’ve been turned off by old poetry, you may just be reading the wrong translation. … Continue reading
A Visit To The East
Basho wrote a favorite poem of mine, once translated as, “Sitting here quietly doing nothing, the grass comes and grows by itself.” The best and most traditional haiku always contains a seasonal reference. Like springtime above. Instructors rarely mention seasons … Continue reading
Posted in art, editing writing, organizing writing, Poetry, Thoughts on writing, Uncategorized, video, Writing by others, Writing tips
Tagged basho, haiku, michael duffet, Poetry
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The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll
The only poem Lewis Carrol published that had an unhappy ending. Make no mistake, this is a happy and sometime joyous poems that revels in the English language. Some say this is the most extended example of nonsense poetry in … Continue reading
The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot
The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot Mistah Kurtz—he dead. A penny for the Old Guy I We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when We whisper together … Continue reading
Prufrock
Miranda Hale delivers a slower and better paced reading than most video tellings. She reads with a smile in her voice for the first minutes but then settles down. The epigraph recalls Dante’s travel through the Underworld. Seeing that Dante … Continue reading
Posted in art, Poetry, Uncategorized, video, Writing by others
Tagged miranda hale, Poetry, prufrock, the love song of j alfred prufrock, ts eliot
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Revised My Page on Eliot’s The Waste Land
I’ve added the full text of The Waste Land to my page on that poem. (internal link) Now you can read along as Sir Alec Guinness delivers a masterful recitation of this fine poem and all of its deliciously obscure … Continue reading
Posted in Poetry, Thoughts on writing, Uncategorized, video, Writing by others
Tagged Alec Guinness, eliot, full text, Obi Wan Kenobi, Poetry, t.s. elite, the waste land
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