poetry - Encouragement (Page 6)

poetry

Boris Pasternak, "The Wind"

I'll try to speak to the past but there doesn't seem to be much of it. It won't speak back.

poetry

Linda Norton, "Monk"

What happens when you pick up a hobby you left behind as a kid, 22 years ago?

poetry

Emily Dickinson, "To fill a Gap" (546)

I believe it is possible to speak of loss as lasting without completely exonerating those who are greedy, panicked, or paranoid.

poetry

Robert Frost, "Bond and Free"

...it is a challenge to show not how philosophy engages particular issues in detail, but that it does so at all.

poetry

Kobayashi Issa, "the butterfly I passed"

There are moments when we're more than we are, and they're not necessarily moments of triumphant heroism.

poetry

W.H. Auden, "Domesday Song"

Reality itself can't explain reality.

poetry

Emily Dickinson, "Perception of an object costs" (1071)

Did Dickinson send something so elaborate just to say "get out of my life?"

poetry

Kay Ryan, "Lime Light"

The more one has to deal with, the more one has to take seriously.

poetry

Seamus Heaney, "Lightenings viii"

It's exciting to declare you're exploring Plato, stumbling upon problems few have seen or will see. It's tempting to believe there must be wisdom in such a rarified activity.

poetry

Rae Armantrout, "Influence"

I do not believe the classics will be lost, unread and thrown aside, because things I don't like are popular.

poetry

Kobayashi Issa, "[the snow is melting]"

I should say, the first time I read this poem, I thought Issa was in "grouchy old man" mode, bemoaning the noisy, shouty kids disturbing his peace.

poetry

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "The Eagle"

Alfred, Lord Tennyson's "The Eagle" is, as the kids say, "metal."

poetry

Emily Dickinson, "This is my letter to the World" (J 441, F 519)

Vendler allows this lyric to resonate with moral force, and I have no doubt some will commit this poem to memory because of her interpretation.

poetry

Donald Hall, "The Sea"

Some readers want to see how others live, how they process their experience, and how they wrestle with a changing sense of importance.

poetry

Kyla Houbolt, "bad idea"

That the Colosseum can be humane, peaceful, and fun for us may be a fitting tribute, though far more fitting if all colonial and imperial endeavors ceased.

poetry

Matsuo Bashō, "The temple bell stops..."

...I spend considerable time trying to explain my relevance, even when talking about my own life.

poetry

Yosa Buson, "The morning breeze..."

Clarity, then, is seeing things stand distinct. It’s the knowledge something, someone, can be whole and independent.

poetry

Kay Ryan, "Things That Have Stayed In Position"

Should a writer be toxic? Raising the stakes, erasing the past, undoing social bonds?

poetry

Tom Snarsky, "Opera"

Feeling unloved, one could say, isn’t having a free mind. Strictly speaking, it’s having a mind that “doesn’t feel like anything.”

poetry

Rainer Maria Rilke, "Closing-piece"

I am consistently impressed by Rilke’s ability to build with profundity, not just to profundity

poetry

Ezra Pound, "In a Station of the Metro"

I am scared to talk about the years in which I had all the awareness of a really useless rock.

poetry

William Butler Yeats, "When Helen Lived"

“Beauty that we have won / From bitterest hours” threatens to give war a glamour it should not be given.

poetry

Kyla Houbolt, "Gold"

...good love poetry is good poetry, expanding sensitivity’s range.

poetry

Paul Celan, "You may"

The simultaneity of horror and happiness emerges in Celan's lyric through the semblance of gesture.

poetry

Emily Dickinson, "In the name of the Bee" (J 18, F 23)

What seems to be at stake for Dickinson is as much as a bee, a butterfly, and a breeze. Why can’t she just have her say and be left alone?