The St Lawrence used to freeze.
Without offense my forebears crossed
And didn’t get shot by a vigilante
Or have to pretend they were lost.
Category: Poetry
MacNeice–> Kooser
Nebraskan poet Ted Kooser had to have read Louis MacNeice. He takes paradox for granted and devotes himself to rhythm in a lovely way that some will consider retrograde.
Discovery: Paul Muldoon
I very much admire Seamus Heaney, whose translations of Beowulf and the Aeneid excel the others that I’ve read. He led me to another Irish poet, Paul Muldoon, who’s perhaps equally attracted to using traditional (especially Gaelic) forms in non-traditional ways. Muldoon’s acute sense of place and history naturally play into his “Irish poems,” but… Continue reading Discovery: Paul Muldoon
The “old-fashioned” Mary Oliver
In her early poems, Mary Oliver was quite competent at writing in the allegedly defunct form of a sonnet — a lovely one.
After After Rain
The earthworm sings to the soil,
The tulip invokes the worm,
The fawn conjures the tulip
And together they soothe the moon…
Twelve Words After Rain
“The earthworm’s song to the soil…”
Vox populi
As someone who has taken decades to find his voice, I think a lot about the word. Though its etymological origin lies in human utterance, we musicians speak of the voicing of an instrument, which means its tone color as well as the way a given chord is “spelled” (e.g., in its first, second, and… Continue reading Vox populi
Warren Zevon as poet
I recently sounded out a wise man of letters (and my friend) Jake Burnett about poetry as musical lyric, preoccupied as I have been in forecasting the headaches my poems would occasion a composer. Happily he did not send me to Sidney Lanier. At Jake’s suggestion I dived into Warren Zevon’s “My Ride’s Here,” the… Continue reading Warren Zevon as poet
Frederick Seidel, Compassion Artist?
I find Seidel’s “To My Friend Anne Hutchinson” to be skillful, gentle, and touching.
In Closing
Frank Kermode’s book The Sense of an Ending has had a persistent effect on how I write.