Scotland’s, favorite son, poet and songwriter is turning 251 today. Robert Burns is most remembered for the song Auld Lang Syne but has had over 368 of his poems recorded in song. Almost all of his works were written in the Scottish dialect of his day and have been translated into English for our benefit. He’s [...]
By Naomi Shihab Nye A man told me he had calculated the exact number of books he would be able to read before he died by figuring the average number of books he read per month and his probable earth span, (averaging how long his dad and grandpa had lived, adding on a few years [...]
By Pablo Neruda Ah you don’t want to, you’re scared of poverty, you don’t want to go to the market with worn-out shoes and come back with the same old dress. My love, we are not fond as the rich would like us to be, of misery. We shall extract it like an evil tooth [...]
by Kevin Young What we love will leave us or is it we leave what we love, I forget— Today, belly full enough to walk the block after all week too cold outside to smile— I think of you, warm in your underground room reading the book of bone. It’s hard going— your body a [...]
by Ted Kooser A flower needs to be this size to conceal the winter window, and this color, the red of a Fiat with the top down, to impress us, dull as we’ve grown. Months ago the gigantic onion of a bulb half above the soil stuck out its green tongue and slowly, day by [...]
by Bianca Rossini with photographs by Michael Kenna
by Angela Shaw They don’t wade in so much as they are taken. Deep in the day, in the deep of the field, every current in the grasses whispers hurry hurry, every yellow spreads its perfume like a rumor, impelling them further on. It is the way of girls. It is the sway of their [...]
by Floyd Skloot My wife wears headphones as she plays Chopin etudes in the winter light. Singing random notes, she sways in and out of shadow while night settles. The keys she presses make a soft clack, the bench creaks when her weight shifts, golden cotton fabric ripples across her shoulders, and the sustain pedal [...]
by Sharon Chmielarz All those years–almost a hundred– the farm had hard water. Hard orange. Buckets lined in orange. Sink and tub and toilet, too, once they got running water. And now, in less than a lifetime, just by changing the well’s location, in the same yard, mind you, the water’s soft, clear, delicious to [...]
by Wendell Berry They sit together on the porch, the dark Almost fallen, the house behind them dark. Their supper done with, they have washed and dried The dishes–only two plates now, two glasses, Two knives, two forks, two spoons–small work for two. She sits with her hands folded in her lap, At rest. He [...]
by Kathleen Adcock Sitting on the moon’s rim all that can be seen is her mountains, flatland, a pale asphalt. Tonight you pull me from my poems. We view a new crescent from our roof. You tweak the lens of your telescope, steer me into the ocular where in the black velvet void, the moon’s [...]
by Mark Strand; read by Mary Louise Parker. And when you done watching and listening take some time to browse all the nooks and crannys of PBS’s Poetry Everywhere.
By Rita Dove – The first African-American woman to be named Poet Laureate of the United States After all, there’s no need to say anything at first. An orange, peeled and quartered, flares like a tulip on a wedgewood plate Anything can happen. Outside the sun has rolled up her rugs and night strewn salt [...]
by Roger Mitchell “Since why to love I can allege no cause,” I will love instead, leaving reasons to better minds than mine, those for whom laws create allowance for the seasons of feeling. I cannot create what creates me, unless in loving, love begets love, though in begetting that, what first mates with love [...]
by H. PALMER HALL “Tell me something,” she says. “Do any flowers look just like that, those blossoms of black, orange, red?” She points at the screen, napalm flowering in the dawn. “Some strange beauty from far enough not to feel or smell, riots of deep embers glowing like fierce clouds?” He nods, cannot find [...]
by Madeleine L’Engle I, who live by words, am wordless when I try my words in prayer. All language turns To Silence. Prayer will take my words and then Reveal their emptiness. The stilled voice learns To hold its peace, listen with the heart To silence that is joy, is adoration. The self is shattered, [...]
by John Donne Let mans Soule be a Spheare, and then, in this, The intelligence that moves, devotion is, And as the other Spheares, by being growne Subject to forraigne motion, lose their owne, And being by others hurried every day, Scarce in a yeare their naturall forme obey: Pleasure or businesse, so, our Soules [...]
By Rhina P. Espaillat I tie my Hat—I crease my Shawl— Life’s little duties do—precisely As the very least Were infinite—to me— —Emily Dickinson, #443 My mother’s mother, widowed very young of her first love, and of that love’s first fruit, moved through her father’s farm, her country tongue and country heart anaesthetized and mute [...]
Worth the watch! Poetry Out Loud
by Donald Hall In October of the year, he counts potatoes dug from the brown field, counting the seed, counting the cellar’s portion out, and bags the rest on the cart’s floor. He packs wool sheared in April, honey in combs, linen, leather tanned from deerhide, and vinegar in a barrel hoped by hand at [...]
Jane Kenyon is another favorite poet of mine. Her poems are usually short often touching someplace personal within the reader’s own psyche: or at least this readers psyche. I love all three of these poems but the third poem presented here, titled Otherwise, strikes a melancholic tone that always resonates with me no mater how [...]
by Jon Pineda A basket of apples brown in our kitchen, their warm scent is the scent of ripening, and my sister, entering the room quietly, takes a seat at the table, takes up the task of peeling slowly away the blemished skins, even half-rotten ones are salvaged carefully. She makes sure to carve out [...]
Poetry has always had an oral side to it’s history, now with video added we have a third way of receiving poetry.This poem by Billy Collins incorporates the written text, the spoken word and the visual images for a different way to take in poetry. Billy Collins, former US Poet Laureate and one of America’s [...]
by James Deahl O taste and see that the Lord is good. –Psalm 34: 8 These feet that have carried me over switchback trails in Appalachian darkness I give up; they are left in tall grass by the Baltimore and Ohio right of way where steel rails cut close to the orange creek. And these [...]
Here are two very different ways of visualizing poetry. Click on the pictures to be taken to the websites to find out how they were created.
by Hiram Larew Pretend for a minute That you’re a duck In muddy water And that whatever’s teasing your legs Is starting to make you nervous Pretend that you’re around sixty And you’re not so sure if you want to know What’s in the message Even though someone who’s skipping And smiling Just handed it [...]
by WILLIAM AARNES Like you, both the man and the woman who soon followed have sorted through and rejected the dated magazines that somehow got puffed with paging. And, like yours, their eyes keep roaming around the waiting room as if it’s not comforting exactly but more like reassuring to know others suffer. You exchange [...]
Also posted in Poetry
|
Tagged Kindly, WILLIAM AARNES
|
April 1st begins this blogs most active time of the year. April is National Poetry Month and as always it’s my excuse to encourage the reading of poetry by the masses. This is my chance to prove that poetry isn’t as painful as what your teachers made it out to be. Here is a very [...]
As our culture changes, Walter Brueggemann has observed, we must restate eternal truths in order for them to remain truthful. For the faithful, the artistic imagination can safeguard the strangeness and newness of the gospel, preserving it from domestication by our ideologies and culture. This year, the Trinity Arts Conference theme urges us to curiosity [...]
The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life…. To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair. –Walker Percy
Not because of victories I sing, having none, but for the common sunshine, the breeze, the largess of the spring. Not for victory but for the day’s work done as well as I was able; not for a seat upon the dais but at the common table. by Charles Reznikof
A line of peace might appear if we restructure the sentence our lives are making, revoked it’s reaffermation of profit and power, questioned our needs, allowed long pauses . . . Denise Levertov
The Mathew’s House Project (MHP) mission statement is simple and short laying down a challenge to listen differently: I include the entire mission statement below. “Since 1999, The Matthew’s House Project has sought to develop places in which faith and culture can be explored. We seek to promote a different sort of listening. This sort [...]
Although April 30th signals the end of National Poetry Month I sincerely hope you have enjoyed the poems and are inspired to pursue some on your own. I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world. I may not complete this last one but I give myself to it. -Rilke
The Day Is Gone, And All Its Sweets Are Gone The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone! Sweet voice, sweet lips, soft hand, and softer breast, Warm breath, light whisper, tender semitone, Bright eyes, accomplished shape, and lang’rous waist! Faded the flower and all its budded charms, Faded the sight of beauty [...]
Refractions: A Journey of Faith, Art, and Culture by Makoto Fujimura
