Ode to Age by Pablo Neruda I don’t believe in age. All old people carry in their eyes, a child, and children, at times observe us with the eyes of wise ancients. Shall we measure life in meters or kilometers or months? How far since you were born? How long [...]
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Unglued-a over Neruda
Posted in Ode to Age, Pablo Neruda, Poems, Uncategorized, tagged culture, life, old age, poetry, random on October 21, 2011 | 4 Comments »
Sex ed for poets
Posted in Rabindranath Tagore, The Beginning, Uncategorized, tagged culture, life, motherhood, poetry, religion on October 6, 2011 | 2 Comments »
The Beginning “Where have I come from, where did you pick me up?” the baby asked its mother. She answered, half crying, half laughing, and clasping the baby to her breast- “You were hidden in my heart as its desire, my darling. You were in the dolls of my childhood’s games; and when with clay [...]
Porkies 2
Posted in Gerard Manley Hopkins, Gretel in Darkness, Louise Gluck, Porkies 2, Robert Hayden, Spring and Fall to a Young Child, Those Winter Sundays, Uncategorized, tagged michigan, nature, poetry on September 19, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Continuing with my previous post, here’s three more poems I left behind on a recent trip to the Porcupine Mountains in Michigan’s beautiful Upper Peninsula. Louise Gluck’s riveting “Gretel in Darkness” is a favorite poem of mine and I couldn’t resist putting it in these enchanted woods. Gluck imagines Gretel years after she has pushed [...]
File under strange, but true
Posted in Above the City, James Laughlin, Uncategorized, tagged 9/11, coincidence, culture, poetry on September 10, 2011 | 1 Comment »
In last Sunday’s New York Times former science reporter John Schwartz wrote an op-ed piece about the eerie accuracy of novels in predicting the future. I can’t make any such claims for poetry–-not least because the scope of my poetry reading is so small and for all I know there exists a tradition of science [...]
Goodbye, little boy
Posted in After the Children Leave Home, Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Uncategorized, tagged college, culture, family, poetry on September 6, 2011 | 4 Comments »
After the Children Leave Home by Maria Mazziotti Gillan Slowly, we settle into the quiet house. We almost grow accustomed to the noise of absence, that terrible stillness that slides along carpeted surfaces. “The house is so quiet without them,” you say, your voice husky [...]
Carrying love in a wallet
Posted in Czeslaw Milosz, Falling in Love, Uncategorized, tagged culture, life, love, poetry on July 9, 2011 | 1 Comment »
“Tomber amoureux. To fall in love. Does it occur suddenly or gradually? If gradually, when is the moment “already”? I would fall in love with a monkey made of rags. With a plywood squirrel. With a botanical atlas. With an oriole. With a ferret. With a marten in a picture. With the forest one sees [...]
may 21
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged culture, end of days, may 21, poetry, religion on May 21, 2011 | 1 Comment »
Life by Grace Paley Some people set themselves tasks other people say do anything only live still others say oh oh I will never forget you event of my first life I taped Paley’s poem to a post in front of a doomsday truck down on the national mall about a month ago. Swarms of [...]
Laissez les bons temps rouler!
Posted in Laissez les bons temps rouler!, Poetry found, Uncategorized, tagged culture, Mardi Gras, music, Pazcki Day, poetry on March 7, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Tomorrow, March 8, is Fat Tuesday, a single day of excess before forty days of sacrifice and deprivation. Here in Michigan the holiday is called Pazcki Day in honor of the jelly doughnuts everyone gobbles down. But not for me. The day I say It’s Pazcki Day! instead of Yes, I’m eating five Peppermint Patties [...]
Poems for the revolution
Posted in Poems for the revolution, Uncategorized, tagged culture, egyptian revolution, news, people, poetry on February 21, 2011 | 3 Comments »
The brutal assault on journalist Lara Logan during the Tahrir Square celebration of the Egyptian revolution shocks and repulses. (Surrounded by a mob of 200 men, Logan was separated from her crew, stripped and beaten. A group of Egyptian women and soldiers came to her rescue.) Some shocking and repulsive reactions to her ordeal [...]
