Category: Poetry
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Wonder and Nonentity
George MacDonald: An Anthology, ed. C. S. Lewis, Macmillan 1960, #169: We must not wonder things away into nonentity. An occupational hazard of a certain sort of philosopher. My haiku commentary on MacDonald's epigram: Beginning in wonderWisdom runs the riskOf ending in das Nichts.
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John Updike, Seven Stanzas at Easter
Seven Stanzas at Easter Make no mistake: if He rose at allit was as His body;if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the moleculesreknit, the amino acids rekindle,the Church will fall. It was not as the flowers,each soft Spring recurrent;it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddledeyes of the eleven apostles;it was…
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Anti-Pyrrhonian Haiku
The truth we needWe cannot know.So we must believeThat it is so.
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Shakespeare on Lust
Sonnet 129: Th'expense of spirit in a waste of shame Th' expense of spirit in a waste of shame Is lust in action; and till action, lust Is perjured, murd'rous, bloody, full of blame, Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust, Enjoyed no sooner but despisèd straight, Past reason hunted; and, no sooner had…
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The Horror of Death and its Cure
There is dying, there is being dead, and there is the momentary transition from the one to the other. While we rightly fear the suffering and indignity of dying, especially if the process is drawn out over weeks or months, it is the anticipation of the moment of death that some of us find horrifying.…
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Summer She’s Come
Summer she's come in these partsAs Trump takes IndianaAnd Cruz departs.
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Haiku for Hugh
Young spring leaves are greenOutside the dead man's windowHarbingers of hope.
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Vanity Invisible to the Vain
Being out of his line of sight,The peacock's pluming and preening'sInvisible in the best of light.
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Haiku
The perfect little white cloudDissolves before my gaze.The sky remains.
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Unsuccessful in Love
The Collected Poems and Epigrams of J. V. Cunningham, Chicago, The Swallow Press, 1971. Epigram 57 Here lies my wife. Eternal peaceBe to us both with her decease. Epigram 59 I married in my youth a wife.She was my own, my very first.She gave the best years of her life.I hope nobody gets the worst.…
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Two 17-Syllable Shorts
How real to eachHis problems seemWhile those of othersAre like a dream. Unjust we areAnd will remainUnless we work freeOf ego's game.
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Monkish Haiku
Avoid the near occasionOf unnecessary conversation.
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Philip Larkin’s “Continuing to Live”
Whatever you think of his message, you have to admit that Philip Larkin is a very good poet. "Continuing to Live" was written in April, 1954, and was published in Collected Poems 2003. First the poem and then a bit of commentary. Continuing to live — that is, repeatA habit formed to get necessaries…
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When Did Sex Begin?
In 1963. Or at least so we hear from Philip Larkin in his Annus Mirabilis. It was indeed a wonderful/remarkable year. I was but a boy in grade school, but old enough to remember all those wonderful songs and not so wonderful events such as the Profumo scandal in Britain. What ever happened to sex…
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A is A: Monism Refuted
This from The Collected Poems and Epigrams of J. V. Cunningham, Swallow Press, 1971, p. 118, epigram #47: This Monist who reduced the swarmOf being to a single form,Emptying the universe for fun,Required two A's to think them one. Notes 1. The title is Cunningham's own. 2. Poetic license extends to use-mention confusion. 3. It…