My falconry apprentice, Gary Moody of Santa Fe, (also Texas, Siberia not far north of Olgii, St John’s) has published his first book of poetry, at… let us say, my age. It is NOT an apprentice work; rather, the work of a seasoned poet who hadn’t published a book yet. My blurb gives a hint: …
Tag: Poetry
Weary Poem
“X” from Housman’s Last Poems (1922) Could man be drunk forever With liquor, love, or fights, Lief should I rouse at morning And lief lie down of nights. But men at whiles are sober And think by fits and starts, And if they think, they fasten Their hands upon their hearts.
Bill Haast dead at 100…
The legendary reptile man Bill Haast died in Florida last week at 100. According to the NYT: “Mr. Haast was bitten at least 173 times by poisonous snakes, about 20 times almost fatally. It was all in a day’s work for probably the best-known snake handler in the country, a scientist-cum-showman who made enough money …
Belated Answer
Too busy! But re “digs him up again” in Mesabi below: the ref is from Ezra Pound in his pre- Modernist period; from “Sestina: Altaforte”, his sketch of the warrior troubador Bertrans de Born. He prefaces the poem: “Dante Alghieri put this man in hell for that he was a stirrer up of strife. “Eccovi! …
The New World
Peculiar notes with approval a new edition of Frederick Turner’s first (!) epic, The New World, which takes place in a not too distant future. Nice cover too. Fred is one of the too-little- known wonders of our time. The breadth of his erudition and what he takes on for poetic subject matter (evolution, terraforming …
Aunt Eudora
Our friend Marilyn Taylor is the poet laureate of Wisconsin as well as mostly a formalist, a so- called “New Traditionalist”. Though hardly stuffy, as this excerpt from an old favorite about a retired midwestern lady totally in command of the situation, demonstrates. From “Aunt Eudora in Paris”: Somewhere in this vast and graceful city …
From the Commonplace Book
A poem by Gavin Maxwell. He doubtless did others but this one imagining wild Iceland from home is the only one I know. It resonates for this traveler stuck at home at least for the present… Slowly through a Land of Stone So although no ghost was scotchedWe were happy while we watchedRavens from their …
Autumn Poems
An exchange between blogger- neighbor Anna Lear and me (go to her Laughing Raven for exquisite photos of our country, often focused on the small rather than the large), starting with her reaction to the photo below, prompted me to reprint my favorite Autumn poems. Campbell’s was written when he lived in Provence near Marseilles …
Dennis Hopper RIP
He was never quite like anybody else— hipster visionary and “admittedly unorthodox Kansas Republican”; drug- addled loon and serious art collector; someone with more “second acts” than Scott Fitzgerald could have conceived; finally, gracefully stoic at his hard end. He was an archtypical American artist. (Rod Dreher goes a bit off- subject, but has some …
Philip Larkin…
… was a very serious poet, but he may be best known for his mordant “This be the verse”, with its famous NSFW first line that was even the theme for an issue of Granta. I was surprised and tickled to see a YouTube of Larkin photos over a reading of that poem at Carl …