This passage from T. S. Eliot’s poem The Dry Salvages is one of my favorite. There are many phrases in these lines that are analogous to an arrow striking dead center to the bulls eye. The poem overall is a meditation upon a seafaring way of life. The point of view offered proposes to be…
Dunbar By Anne Spencer Ah, how poets sing and die! Make one song and Heaven takes it; Have one heart and Beauty breaks it; Chatterton, Shelley, Keats, and I—Ah, how poets sing and die! Anne Spencer, born on February 6, 1882, on a plantation in Henry County, Virginia, was a poet from the Harlem Renaissance movement. She published…
My Love by Bruce Nugent My love has hair Like midnight, But midnight fades to dawn. My love has eyes Like starlight, But starlight fades in morn. My love has a voice Like dew-fall, But dew-fall dies at a breath. My love has love Like life’s all, But life’s all fades in death. Richard…
Eroticism differs from animal sexuality in that human sexuality is limited by taboos and the domain of eroticism is that of the transgression of these taboos. Desire in eroticism is the desire that triumphs over the taboo. It presupposes man in conflict with himself. Georges Bataille (1977). “Death and Sensuality: A Study of Eroticism…
One Girl by Sappho I. Like the sweet apple which reddens upon the topmost bough, A-top on the topmost twig, which the pluckers forgot, somehow,— Forgot it not, nay, but got it not, for…
Voyages V by Hart Crane Meticulous, past midnight in clear rime,Infrangible and lonely, smooth as though castTogether in one merciless white blade—The bay estuaries fleck the hard sky limits. —As if too brittle or too clear to touch!The cables of our sleep so swiftly filed,Already hang, shred ends from remembered stars.One frozen trackless smile……
Of all the nationsthe United States with veins full of poetical stuffmost need poets —and will doubtless have the greatestand use them the greatest. Of all mankind the great poet is the equitable man.Not in him but off from him things aregrotesque or eccentric or fail of their sanity.Nothing out of its place is…
ὁδὸς ἄνω κάτω μία καὶ ὡυτή The way upward and the way downwardis one and the same — Heraclitus V To communicate with Mars, converse with spirits,To report the behaviour of the sea monster,Describe the horoscope, haruspicate or scry,Observe disease in signatures, evokeBiography from the wrinkles of the palmAnd tragedy from fingers; release omensBy…
I was told that it is windy in New Mexico this time of year. For someone that lives in the Midwest, eighty degrees with a stiff, dry wind, is a hot day in April… On the way to Albuquerque New Mexico we glimpsed an abandoned structure, a wrecked shell, with a small parking lot…
Standing by a Shelf by Brandon D. Johnson for Reuben When he looks at the edges, The covers of books and records, He remembers when and where He got them, how it felt. Everything’s a testament To life lived on the fringe Of some sense of sanity. All the vehicles for imbibing These treasures…
