Calgary-based poet Rosemary Griebel The poem I want to write is impossible. A stone that floats. Charles Simic (1938 – ) from The Monster Loves His Labyrinth: Notebooks, Ausable Press, 2008 Short poem: Be brief and tell us everything. Charles Simic, ibid On this the last day of 2015 I wanted to share the […]
Yearly Archives: 2015
Is This Really Meant To Make Me Feel Better On Christmas Eve? A Feel-Good Poem by Hans Magnus Enzenberger
December 24, 2015 – 5:36 pm
Astronomical Sunday Sermon Speaking of our misery – hunger, war, murder etcetera quite so! Bedlam! Agreed! Still may I remind you, with all due modesty, that the planet on which we have landed up, is by and large rather comfortable. Strewn with roses, you might say, compared with Neptune (two hundred and twelve degrees subzero, […]
Yuletide Traditions – A Poetic Celebration By Penelope Shuttle!
December 24, 2015 – 12:53 am
Yule On the tall green tree we have hung the little golden masks of Bacchus, the many little grins glinting and sparkling, ‘oscilla ex alta suspendent mollia pinu’, waving amulets from the tall pine, as did the roman soldiers, revering ‘the cedar in its bravery’, the sacred, ever-green, ever-living pole, recalling in winter dark that […]
The Annunciation Story – A Feminine Perspective in Paint and Words by Enjeong Noh and Jeanne Murray-Walker
December 20, 2015 – 11:31 pm
Canadian/American poet Heather McHugh describes the quality of a great poem as being one that finds the unexpected in the over known. Well, hats off to painter Enjeong Noh, born in Seoul, South Korea and now resident in Pasadena California! A poet in paint, she has found the utterly unexpected in the Christian story of […]
There Will Be Trembling – And, Thank God, The Poetry of Adrienne Rich
December 17, 2015 – 7:40 pm
Turbulence There’ll be turbulence. You’ll drop your book to hold your water bottle steady. Your mind, mind has mountains, cliffs of fall may who ne’er hung there let him watch the movie. The plane’s supposed to shudder, shoulder on like this. It’s built to do that. You’re designed […]
Enlarged By Desire – The Poetry of Mark Doty
December 7, 2015 – 5:24 pm
from Messiah (Christmas Portions) Aren’t we enlarged by the scale of what we’re able to desire? Everything, the choir insists, might flame; inside these wrappings burns another, brighter […]
Happy Birthday Tony Hoagland – Two Days Late!
November 21, 2015 – 1:06 pm
from Faulkner That is what I learned from Faulkner: there is evil in the world like a virus, or a lingering disease that sleeps inside the rivers and the trees— the reason for suffering isn’t some bad choice you made, or something you did wrong, it […]
Poetry-As-Prayer – Calgary Nov. 27th and 28th, 2015
November 6, 2015 – 10:46 pm
Dedication I sing for you. I am made for song. It is my purpose, to invent new music, as a kind of prayer that everything is, a cane tapping, a child running, the […]
“THE ACHE” – The Delicious Peril of the Poetry of Sara Eliza Johnson
November 3, 2015 – 5:19 pm
From View From the Fence, On Which I Sit and Dangle My Legs The horses are beating inside the field. The horses are the night’s blood congealed. Moon-whipped horses, frost-spun, clicking their teeth against dead grass. Horses with stomachs full of dust, how the flies pick at their eyes, in love. Sara Eliza Johnson from […]
One Poet Out of Five – Terrance Hayes Makes the National Book Awards Short List
October 15, 2015 – 11:06 pm
from How To Draw A Perfect Circle ………..Before that day the officer had never fired his gun In the line of duty. He was chatting with a cabdriver Beneath the tracks when my cousin circled him holding a knife. The wound caused no brain damage though […]