The sonnet never written
This is one of the longest and most entertaining chapters in Machado de Assis' novel Don Casmurro, a fictional memoir...
Love bade me…
One of the most beautiful English poems, of great simplicity and generosity, by George Herbert. Much of his poetry is...
Pebble pusher
Keats, known as a poet, was also one of history’s great letter writers. He loved life and seized it even...
Poetry as a boat
Another maritime metaphor in Heaney's introduction to a poem set in a sea-world. The ‘big quay’ of language and literature can...
Of words, wording and eternity
Part of my blogophyte journey has been to learn about some of the technical workings of the online world, among...
A voice answering a voice?
More than just the writing of poetry, isn't writing in general often 'a voice answering a voice'?
This touching quotation...
To see at a distance
Thoreau has many striking things to say about poets, and even if I can't seize on them as definitive or...
Time and poets
This summary of where Mandelstam places the poet versus the ‘man of letters’ on the time spectrum intrigues me. Yes,...
Poetry as connector
Since good poetry (good writing, for that matter) transcends time, I liked this phrase of Molly Peacock, a Canadian poet,...
Poetry as a ship at sea
The sea flows through Beowulf's culture as much as any Greek epic, and its warriors are likewise mariners. Heaney uses...
A fair request
In an age where you are expected to shout, tweet, bluster and generally blather about everything you do, it is...
A poem begins
This lovely comment by one of America’s finest and most beloved poets, Robert Frost, on the origins of poems –...
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