Category: Poetry
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Patrick Kurp on Philip Larkin
A post that moves me to find Larkin's Letters to Monica. Kurp quotes Larkin: I seem to walk on a transparent surface and see beneath me all the bones and wrecks and tentacles that will eventually claim me: in other words, old age, incapacity, loneliness, death of others & myself . . . . Related:…
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Haiku
Mind and sense Matter and meat Together in man Mystery complete.
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Ow! An Ode to ObamaCare
Allen Ginsberg's Howl begins like this: I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, who poverty and tatters and…
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Bad Poetry
Some selections by my freshman English professor, Seamus Cooney. I recently corresponded with him, not that he remembers me. But I remember him.
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Captain of My Soul but not Master of my Fate
William Ernest Henley's Invictus ends as follows: It matters not how strait the gate,How charged with punishments the scroll.I am the master of my fate:I am the captain of my soul. Half-right, say I. I am the captain of the ship of soul, my soul; I control rudder and sails and chart my course. But I…
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Extremists
And then there are the conservatives (liberals) for whom a refusal to demonize liberals (conservatives) makes you one. Here is the first stanza of "The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats (1865-1939): Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is…
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To Hell With Modern Poetic Sensibility
Read something old and and meaningful and inspiring: A PSALM OF LIFE Tell me not in mournful numbers,Life is but an empty dream!For the soul is dead that slumbers,And things are not what they seem. Life is real! Life is earnest!And the grave is not its goal;Dust thou are, to dust thou returnest,Was not spoken…
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My Cat Zeno
For Zeno of EleaMy cat's namedSolvitur ambulandoIs his game.
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The Converse Does Not Hold
If you paid attention in Logic 101 you may remember that the immediate inference called 'conversion' is valid for the I and E forms of the traditional square of opposition but not for the A and O forms. Poetic illustration courtesy of Alexander Pope (1688-1744) where 'Every poet is a fool' is an A-proposition: Sir, I…
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Wise Man and Fool on Their Death Beds
Wise man: This world is a vanishing quantity. I am glad soon to be quit of it. It has nothing to offer in the end but bagatelles that can fool only the foolish and must leave the wise unsatisfied. Vanitas vanitatum; omnia vanitas. Fool: Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should…
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(Not) Another Aphorism
You actuallyCrawled out of bedCompromising your restTo write down anotherOf yourWretched aphorisms?
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Heidegger and Wittgenstein: 17 Syllables
One went off the deep endThe other off the shallowStrange century.
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Bukowski’s Juvenilia and Mine
Here are the first few lines of Charles Bukowski's one-page late poem "Zero" (You Get So Alone At Times it Just Makes Sense, Ecco 2002, p. 104, originally publ. 1986 by Black Sparrow Press): sitting here watching the second hand on the TIMEX go around andaround . . .this will hardly be a night to remembersitting…
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Anti-PC Haiku
Writing 'they' for 'he'They sacrifice grammarTo the god of PeeCee.
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Yiddish Haiku
Schmuck means penis in Yiddish Ornament in German. You see the link?