Tag Archives: Poetry

Happenings

Posted on December 16, 2019 by Lee

In W.H. Auden’s poems, there are “happenings” and there are “ways of happening.” Poets create ways of happening, and this is why such people are generally considered useless – at least by the practical people in our society who concern … Continue reading →

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Know Thyself

Posted on August 26, 2019 by Lee

Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “Know Thyself” seems to offer up two possible interpretations, and I wonder whether Coleridge believed self-knowledge was possible or not. The poet asks “Say, canst thou make thyself?” and urges his reader to “Learn first that … Continue reading →

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Book Review: Significant Other by Isabel Galleymore

Posted on July 22, 2019 by Lee

Isabel Galleymore’s Significant Other is about the modern human being and her relationship to nature. When the poet is “walking with the ocean below” she is walking with the ocean. She asks the ocean questions, to which “the ocean blinked” … Continue reading →

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Notes on Dante’s Paradise, Canto 3

Posted on May 3, 2019 by Lee

“… think carefully what love is and you’ll see …” This line hands you the key to the poem, if you haven’t picked it up already. The universe of Dante is a hierarchy, where every individual’s place in the order … Continue reading →

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Telling It

Posted on March 15, 2019 by Lee

“I see the boys of summer in their ruin “Lay the gold tithings barren, “Setting no store by harvest, freeze the soils …” Great store is set today by grit: telling it like it is, calling it as you see … Continue reading →

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Nostalgia

Posted on July 11, 2018 by Lee

The poem I’ve just read has the narrator reading a newspaper, “letting fall” the pages she has finished with, that rustle and crackle as they are shed. It’s a scene to stir nostalgia, as many of us now no longer … Continue reading →

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Notes on Charles Bukowski on Writing

Posted on March 5, 2018 by Lee

Charles Bukowski’s right: sometimes a poem just sounds too much like a POEM. You know it’s been worked up, affected, to make it sound like a poem should. Rather than being its own thing, an expression of something unique and … Continue reading →

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Flowers of Paradise: Life and Loss in Christina Rossetti

Posted on February 19, 2018 by Lee

Poetry means life, and life means purpose. A beating heart. But Christina Rossetti spent a lot of time contemplating what is dead and gone: death, and loss of the beloved. “Life is gone, the love too is gone …” says … Continue reading →

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From the Reading Diary: Kenneth Patchen’s Selected Poems

Posted on February 12, 2018 by Lee

Kenneth Patchen is interested in, among other things, the way the branches move on the trees to create visions and to scratch the surface of the stars in the night sky. He’s also interested in the cruelty that men – … Continue reading →

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Henry Miller and Doing More Work

Posted on January 8, 2018 by Lee

If you want to create – to paint, to write, to make music – you need to do so in the face of the pressures and demands of modern life. It’s about maintaining an inner equilibrium, carving out a space … Continue reading →

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