Li Bai was one of China’s most important poets. Read about his intriguing life and experience one of his insightful, even subtly witty, poems.
Image-ine: Red Shoes
A girl can dream of stepping out on the High Road, a flame in heels that’ll steel no beau’s heart. What laces each ankle in place she’ll turn to take his fancy and he, blood pressure rising, will let her lead and whirl. “Red Shoes, ” acrylic on board, by Nicola Slattery. Used with permission. […]
This Week’s Top 10 Poetic Picks
The best in poetry (and poetic things), this week with Seth Haines. 1 Art Brian Hirschy is a good friend and a grand photographer. Last weekend we were discussing the state of photography and how the iPhone has become a useful tool in the photographer’s gear bag. With its high resolution capabilities and the development of […]
Poet’s Penance (Part 2)
Angela Alaimo O’Donnell concludes the essay she began last week, seeking to answer the question, “What is a poet?“ My Many-Minded-Ness, or “One of These Things is Not Like the Other” Poets are many and multiple, each unique in his or her own peculiar ways. No two of them are alike—so much so that there […]
“Finding My Elegy” by Ursula Le Guin
Le Guin has pulled together some of her favorite poems and included new ones as a kind of possible life or work summary, including “Finding My Elegy”…
THIS WEEK’S TOP 10 POETIC PICKS
The best in poetry (and poetic things), this week with Seth Haines. 1 Art In case you haven’t heard, which is to say in case you live under a rock, the iPhone 5 launched yesterday. Apple’s newest version of their popular telephone/personal computing device is reportedly thinner, lighter, and at twenty times as awesome as […]
Poet’s Penance (Part 1)
Poet: Bless me, Father, for I am a poet, and I have no idea what that means. Priest: I absolve you from your sin. […]
Thomas Gray and the Elegy
Thomas Gray and the Elegy: From the beginning to the epitaph at the end, the poem is shot through with meditations, reflections and allusions to death and the end of life…
September: Tea for Two (the diary of a coffee quitter)
I am a helpless, habitual coffee drinker. For the most part, I don’t drink yuppie, frothy coffee. No, I drink the black stuff, the kind that tastes like ash. I drink it like it’s a badge of American masculinity, I guess. My grandpa used to say, “real men take their coffee the way God intended […]
image-ine: tribes
tribes save me from the little tribes the us and them tribes that say who can’t marry who that make you take up a gun to defend them give me those sisters and brothers in the bigger family to link arms with to cluck and strut together to head off somewhere not knowing precisely where […]
This Week’s Top Ten Poetic Picks
The best in poetry (and poetic things), this week with Seth Haines. 1 Art Is nothing left sacred? Evidently an elderly townswoman in Spain failed to ask this question before attempting to “touch up” a nineteenth century fresco of Christ, the “ecce homo.” Painted by famous Spanish artist Elias Garcia Martinez in the sanctuary of […]
August Rain: Morose Mother Goose
Nursery rhymes are often our first introductions to poetry. You’d be hard-pressed to find a youngster who was unaware of Jack’s broken crown, the shoe-dwelling woman with more children than the Duggars, or everyone’s favorite fall-on-your-bum game, “ring around the rosie.” But despite the sing-song rhythms and lyrical use of end rhyme, many of Mother […]
Speak Like Rain
1. “Mama, ” my five-year-old calls from the back of the minivan, “can you make up a poem?” “A poem?” I ask. “Yes. A poem about words. A poem that rhymes.” I look out the window. Well, crap. A rhyming poem about words? “It might take me awhile, ” I say. “That’s okay, Mama. Whenever […]
This Week’s Top Ten Poetic Picks
The best in poetry (and poetic things), this week with Will Willingham. 1 Art As an insurance adjuster, I find the term “perfect storm” an unfortunate combination of words, unless we simply mean the sort of storm which generates a lot of business for me but in which no one is hurt and only easily […]
The Silence and Violence of Rain
Few things sneak past my Ozark grandmother—and that includes the wonder, mischief, and brutality of Mother Nature. Born in 1924, Granny Hollis remembers horse and wagon (I kid you not) that her father drove. Down gravel roads, he maneuvered the horses to carry wife and children to a small town, not much more than a […]
The Poet of the Workplace
I generally had fine English teachers in high school and college, teachers who emphasized poetry as much as they did other literary forms. From The Iliad through Beowulf and Chaucer, and then on to Romantics, Victorians and Moderns, I likely read as much poetry as I did anything else. And then, for close to a […]
This Week’s Top Ten Poetic Picks
The best in poetry (and poetic things), this week with Seth Haines. 1 Art Since my introduction to Bottle Rocket, I have been a shameless apologist for Wes Anderson. His unabashed use of obscure music, vibrant color, and awkward, character-driven storytelling has led to some of the most artistic film-making in recent memory. His latest release, Moonrise […]
Poetry for Isaac and Ishmael
This is not the poetry of Mideast politics but the poetry of people – peoples – caught up in Mideast politics, whether the scene is set in the Auschwitz death camp or the Aida refugee camp.
This Week’s Top Ten Poetic Picks
The best in poetry (and poetic things), this week with Will Willingham 1 Art What would you do if a mystery artist left exquisite sculptures on literary doorsteps all over your city? Well, if you’re Edinburgh, City of Literature, you put them all on display in a national tour. Last year, an unknown artist crafted […]
Poetry in the Sunken Garden
Madeleine did not want to go to the poetry festival in July, because no one else’s mother forces children to go to poetry festivals. She lowered her hat down over her forehead, leaving only a glower visible. No one. Else. She wanted to know why. Not a promising conversation in which to explore the ineffable […]