INLAND People that build their houses inland, People that buy a plot of ground Shaped like a house, and build a house there, Far from the sea-board, far from the sound Of water sucking the hollow ledges, Tons of water striking the shore — What do they long for, as I long for One salt […]
Three snippets from my reading this week, two online and one in a book I stumbled across at the library. They really wanted to speak together. So, here they are. 1. On Poetry and Archiving This first is a quirky little piece that’s half profile and half musing on the intersection of two very different […]
Reading notes on a section of God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism by Abraham Joshua Heschel, the section titled: “The Disparity of Experience and Expression”. I’m having fun reading Heschel alongside one of my favorite poem sequences ever, T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. All unattributed quotes are from the Heschel. “. . […]
My sister asked: “what is the literary structure/form of the Our Father?” A friend of hers uncovered the following article: Inquiry into the Form of theLord’s Prayer: Structure and Poetic Form I’ve written before about my fascination with the structure of Hebrew poetry. I was therefore delighted by this question and answer. I had never […]
Flowers by the Sea When over the flowery, sharp pasture’s edge, unseen, the salt ocean lifts its form—chicory and daisies tied, released, seem hardly flowers alone but color and the movement—or the shape perhaps—of restlessness, whereas the sea is circled and sways peacefully upon its plantlike stem –William Carlos Williams This poem was […]
Assault Edna St. Vincent Millay I had forgotten how the frogs must sound After a year of silence, else I think I should not so have ventured forth alone At dusk upon this unfrequented road. I am waylaid by Beauty. Who will walk Between me and the crying of the frogs? Oh, savage Beauty, suffer […]
Time does not bring relief; you all have lied Who told me time would ease me of my pain! I miss him in the weeping of the rain; I want him at the shrinking of the tide; The old snows melt from every mountain-side, And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane; But […]
And the days are not full enough And the nights are not full enough And life slips by like a field mouse Not shaking the grass –Ezra Pound I’ve posted this short poem before. Every time I stumble across it, it’s like finding it for the first time. A thrill of excitement, […]
Sea Fever by John Masefield I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by; And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking, And a grey mist on the sea’s […]
The kids and I have been reading Padraic Colum’s The Golden Fleece and the Heroes Who Lived before Achilles. It’s a beautiful literary retelling of the story of Jason and the Argonauts for children (the edition we have is gorgeously illustrated by Willy Pogany). Padraic Colum was a poet of the Irish Literary Revival […]