Ekphrasis: “Description” in Greek. An ekphrastic poem is a vivid description of a scene or, more commonly, a work of art. Through the imaginative act of narrating and reflecting on the “action” of a painting or sculpture, the poet may amplify...
Stumbling Stone Not really a stone. A little bronze plate the size of a cobblestone, flush with the pavement. No one could trip over it except the way the eye catches on something bright and the mind cannot let it go, that idea that stays with you...
Bonne Maman In the dim room she has a light to read by. One foot rocks the cradle as she turns the pages of her book. The lamp burns more brightly than you’d think and she’s covered the cot with a blanket to block the lamp’s light and...
I will put Chaos into fourteen lines And keep him there; and let him thence escape If he be lucky; let him twist, and ape Flood, fire, and demon — his adroit designs Will strain to nothing in the strict confines Of this sweet order, where, in...
The Lost Words: A Spell Book by Robert Macfarlane, illustrated by Jackie Morris. The premise of this book is intriguing. Someone noticed that 40 nature words– like fern and heather and kingfisher–were dropped from the Oxford Junior...
The Castle All through that summer at ease we lay, And daily from the turret wall We watched the mowers in the hay And the enemy half a mile away They seemed no threat to us at all. For what, we thought, had we to fear With our arms and provender...
There’s a certain Slant of light, Winter Afternoons – That oppresses, like the Heft Of Cathedral Tunes – Heavenly Hurt, it gives us – We can find no scar, But internal difference – Where the Meanings, are – None may teach it – Any – ‘Tis...
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
–Carl Sandburg
To Any Reader by Robert Lewis Stevenson As from the house your mother sees You playing round the garden trees, So you may see, if you will look Through the windows of this book, Another child, far, far away, And in another garden, play. But do not...
I In the islet’s museum there is a twisted wine bottle, crusted with fool’s gold from the iron- cold depth below the redoubt. It has been listed variously by experts: one, that a galleon blown by a hurricane out of Cartagena, this far...
