EARLY ONE SUMMER Years from now someone will come upon a layer of birds and not know what he is listening for these are the days when the beetles hurry through dry grass hiding pieces of light W.S. Merwin from Migration: New and Selected Poems, Copper Canyon Press, 2005 My friend Jordan Hartt, who helps […]
Yearly Archives: 2016
The Bigness of Small Poems – # 27 in a Series – W.S. Merwin, American Master of Small Poems!
December 31, 2016 – 9:34 pm
Poetry – How you bleed! A Window Thrown Open! – Mark Frutkin and Gwendolyn MacEwen
December 27, 2016 – 7:12 pm
There is music in the poem but the poem is not music. There may be meaning in the poem but the poem is not simply its meaning. There may be a cascade of language in the poem but the poem is not simply language. The poem is all of these and none of these. The […]
The Bigness of Small Poems – # 26 in a Series – Patrick Lane – On Christmas Eve – And Still We Sing!
December 24, 2016 – 7:11 pm
God Walks Burning Through Me When I sleep the birds come to the garden With their gifts of seeds. Out of ice last year’s leaves of grass lift into night. All my songs have been one song. The palm of my hand and the sole of my foot remember everything I have forgotten. The old […]
The Bigness of Small Poems – # 25 in a Series – In Praise of the Unfinished by Julia Hartwig
December 23, 2016 – 10:43 pm
Feeling the Way The most beautiful is what is still unfinished a sky filled with stars uncharted by astronomers a sketch by Leonardo a song broken off from emotion A pencil a brush suspended in the air Julia Hartwig (1921 – ) from In Praise of the Unfinished, trans. John and Bogdana Carpenter, Alfred A. […]
The Bigness of Small Poems – #24 in a Series – The Poetic Wisdom of John O’Donohue
December 22, 2016 – 8:08 pm
Fluent I would love to live Like a river flows, Carried by the surprise Of its own unfolding John O’Donohue from Conemara Blues, HarperCollins, 2001 Short and sweet! This poem! And too short and so sweet: the life of poet who wrote this poem. John O’Donohue (1956-2008), poet, non-fiction writer, philosopher, priest ( who gave […]
The Bigness of Small Poems – # 23 in a Series – Heidi Garnett’s Poetry of Witness
November 27, 2016 – 12:29 pm
Hatchling A TV screen flickers blue in a darkened living room. A man sits on a back stoop with his dog. He scans the sky for signs of thinning cracks, something chipping in the sky’s brittle shell with its egg tooth. A night heron, rune for soul, pierces a minnow with its sharp eye. The […]
The Bigness of Small Poems – # 22 in a Series – Cohen and Zwicky
November 26, 2016 – 6:46 pm
SUMMER HAIKU for Frank and Marion Scott Silence and a deeper silence when the crickets hesitate Leonard Cohen from Leonard Cohen: Selected Poems 1956-1968, McClelland & Stewart, 1968 I am home now from my two weeks away in the U.S. and Calgary reading from my new book and leading retreats and workshops. I am so […]
Gone So Quietly, Unexpectedly – But Listen! Her Poems Still Sing! Brigit Pegeen Kelly (1951-2016)
October 24, 2016 – 12:19 pm
The Leaving My father said I could not do it, but all night I picked the peaches. The orchard was still, the canals ran steadily. I was a girl then, my chest its own walled garden. How many ladders to gather an orchard? I had only one and a long patience with lit hands and […]
Intimate Poetry That Sells – And Sells – The Poetry of Toronto-based Rupi Kaur
October 2, 2016 – 12:25 pm
When my mother opens her mouth to have a conversation at dinner my father shoves the word hush between her lips and tells her to never speak with her mouth full this is how the women in my family learned to live with their mouths closed Rupi Kaur (1992 – ) from milk and honey, […]
The Bigness of Small Poems – #21 in a Series – Poem as Mirror and Solace
October 1, 2016 – 9:30 pm
ON THE TABLE IN THE ROOM IN THE DARK house lies the book you didn’t know you were looking for, opened to the page with the poem about solace you didn’t know you needed; at first the letters, then the words, little by little the lines disappear as you read them in the light of […]