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.
Tag: prosody
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.
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.