Tag Archives: Poetry

Earth a Flower

Posted on June 1, 2026 by Lee

Last week I compared the Earth to a flower hovering in the void of space. This is an image from a poem by Gary Snyder called “For Nothing”, the first five lines of which are as follows: “Earth a flower … Continue reading →

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May 1st, 1978, 6 A.M.

Posted on May 1, 2026 by Lee

Allen Ginsberg is on a neon-blue lit street corner at night thinking about human beings and how they rub along together. He remembers that here near the now padlocked refrigerator shop police found bodies about this time last year. Now … Continue reading →

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Conversation

Posted on January 20, 2026 by Lee

“Teach us to care and not to care / Teach us to sit still / Even among these rocks” (T. S. Eliot, from “Although I do not hope to turn again” in Ash-Wednesday.) The poet once again doesn’t know what … Continue reading →

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Dissembling

Posted on January 14, 2026 by Lee

“… And I who am here dissembled / Proffer my deeds to oblivion…” (T.S. Eliot, from “Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree,” in Ash-Wednesday.) “Dissembled” here seems to be intended to suggest “disassembled,” since the bones of the … Continue reading →

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Fog

Posted on December 31, 2025 by Lee

In “Morning at the Window,” T. S. Eliot is looking down at a foggy street and it’s the brown fog itself that seems to throw up to him “Twisted faces from the bottom of the street, / And tear from … Continue reading →

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Impatience

Posted on December 29, 2025 by Lee

“The conscience of a blackened street / Impatient to assume the world.” I’ve been thinking about these lines from T. S. Eliot’s “Preludes” over the past couple of days. The street is silent and empty at night, but we are … Continue reading →

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A little says a lot

Posted on July 6, 2023 by Lee

“In the chair / I decided to call Haiku / By the name of Pop” I like Jack Kerouac’s approach to haiku. As everyone knows, haiku means a poem of seventeen syllables. But Kerouac didn’t think the syllable restriction worked … Continue reading →

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Godspeed

Posted on June 6, 2023 by Lee

“This day winding down now / At God speeded summer’s end” are the first two lines of Dylan Thomas’s “Prologue.” William York Tindall points out how the “now” and “end” stand at the ends of the lines, giving these words … Continue reading →

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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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