Search Results for: poetry at work

Poetry Classroom: Hard Road by Li Bai

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.

The Poet of the Workplace

By Glynn Young 10 Comments

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 […]

Poetry in the Sunken Garden

By Denise Frame Harlan 5 Comments

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 […]

August Rain: Introduction (and a bit of spiny poetry)

By Seth Haines 47 Comments

The heartland is ablaze. The five-o’clock news anchor tells us that Tower Mountain was kissed by lightning, that it went up like a harvest bonfire before emergency crews responded. “There have been more than 1, 000 wildfires in Arkansas this year, ” he says, “mostly in rural portions of the state.” He makes some awkward […]

Book Spine Poetry

By Glynn Young 30 Comments

Wander around your basement or upstairs in your room. You’re sure to find a Cento Poem. We did.

July Mosaics: Concrete Poetry

By Seth Haines 15 Comments

In the summer of 2008, the local Barnes & Noble invited Geoffrey Brock to read from his first book of Poetry, Weighing Light. Metal folding chairs were placed between the do-it-your self section and the clearance picture-book aisle. I’m not sure whether it was the ideal spot for a poetry reading, what with patrons whizzing through […]

Journey into Poetry: Matthew Kreider

By Matthew Kreider 11 Comments

So much of life depends upon the lighting. Under the fluorescent bulbs of Grade 9 English, I turned to page 646, or something like that, and discovered poetry. Unit VII probably had a catchy and alliterative title, but I don’t remember it. I remember seeing bold-faced words, eerie line breaks (though I didn’t know the […]

The Poetry Alcove

By Glynn Young 12 Comments

I live in an older suburb of St. Louis, the oldest suburb, in fact, incorporated in 1857. Just a few blocks from our house are four used bookstores, kept well supplied no doubt, by local state sales and the numerous used book fairs held every year. The oldest of the four, and the one with […]

Patchwork: A Story

By Karen Swallow Prior 8 Comments

Our theme for July is The Cento—a put-together poem, a patchwork if you will, of words from others. What follows is not a Cento and will not tell you what a Cento is, but we’re okay with that. We tell our writers to “be creative, ” and that’s what Karen Swallow Prior has been by […]

On Writing Poetry: Crafting Bells from Twigs

By Anne M. Doe Overstreet 8 Comments

As winter diminishes, there is, always, a flourish of up notes in untended orchards, fierce and insistent as Mozart’s “Jagdsinfonie, ” though this is not a vigor that will result in the largest fruit, the highest productivity. Those trees are marvelous in their spindled wildness. A first draft, if you will, quilled and unruly. Wavering […]

The Poetry of the Tree

By Karen Swallow Prior 10 Comments

Karen Swallow Prior considers the poetry of the tree, from Joyce Kilmer’s ‘Trees’ to ‘The Dream of the Rood.’

Journey into Poetry: Richard Berlin

By Richard Berlin 9 Comments

I didn’t start writing poetry until I was in my mid-forties. Growing up, I wasn’t the kind of kid who wrote poetry or holed up in his room writing a journal. As a teenager, I loved the singer-songwriters of the sixties — Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell – and I […]