In honor of National Poetry Month, the Academy of American Poets has been sending out a poem a day via email to subscribers. I’m enjoying them, but one of them just… Have you ever found the form of a poem to be so weird that it gets into the way of the meaning? I’m finding that […]
Poetry: Edna St. Vincent Millay
I wanted to do something different for today’s Thing-a-Day, and I signed up to be part of Live Readings a while back but hadn’t recorded anything yet, so I’m posting this is both (all three?) places. What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, and Where, and Why (Sonnet XLIII) by Edna St. Vincent Millay What lips my […]
Poetry: Michael Blumenthal
For my Sam A Marriage You are holding up a ceiling with both arms. It is very heavy, but you must hold it up, or else it will fall down on you. Your arms are tired, terribly tired, and, as the day goes on, it feels as if either your arms or the ceiling will soon collapse. But then, unexpectedly, something […]
R.I.P. Madeleine L’Engle
I started this post on September 7, the day after the grand lady moved on to find out what’s next. I find myself certain that she wasn’t afraid, that she looked forward to a reunion with her husband Hugh and others who had gone before. And yet I, who never even met her in person, was too upset to finish the post or even look at it again for two months.
Poetry: The Armful
The Armful For every parcel I stoop down to seize I lose some other off my arms and knees, And the whole pile is slipping, bottles, buns, Extremes too hard to comprehend at once. Yet nothing I should care to leave behind. With all I have to hold with hand and mind And heart, if need be, I will do […]
Poetry: Robert Frost
Originally published at Enemy of Entropy. Please leave any comments there. The Armful For every parcel I stoop down to seize I lose some other off my arms and knees, And the whole pile is slipping, bottles, buns, Extremes too hard to comprehend at once. Yet nothing I should care to leave behind. With all I have to hold […]
Poetry: Kryptonite
Kryptonite –Ron Koertge Lois liked to see the bullets bounce off Superman’s chest, and of course she was proud when he leaned into a locomotive and saved the crippled orphan who had fallen on the tracks. Yet on those long nights when he was readjusting longitude or destroying a meteor headed right for some nun, Lois considered […]
Poetry: We Bring Democracy To The Fish
We Bring Democracy To The Fish –Donald Hall From White Apples and the Taste of Stone It is unacceptable that fish prey on each other. For their comfort and safety, we will liberate them into fishfarms with secure, durable boundaries that exclude predators. Our care will provide for their liberty, health, happiness, and nutrition. Of course all creatures need to […]
Poetry: Kolmården Zoo
Kolmården Zoo by Bill Coyle Over our heads, trailing a wake of air and an enormous shadow as it passed, the falcon glided to its trainer’s fist and settled like a loaded weapon there. Then, while she fed the bird bit after bit of…what? rabbit? the trainer gave her talk: These birds, she said, prey on the small and weak, adding […]
Poetry: Change
That last was so dark that I had to post something a bit lighter. Change –Louis Jenkins From The Winter Road All those things that have gone from your life, moon boots, TV trays, and the Soviet Union, that seem to have vanished, are really only changed, dinosaurs did not disappear from the earth but evolved into […]