Poetry, History, Mythology
Watching all the arrivals for the funeral for George H. W. Bush on TV, there was a split second where I saw Al Gore talking with Dick Cheney. It was no big deal, and the camera found similar instances of supposed political enemies basically shooting the breeze. I’m not sure about other countries, but it’s … Continue reading The Sad Truth of Public Theater
For those who are out stampeding each other for flat-screen TVs, and for those forced to work so others can get their amazing deals, here’s my usual Black Friday post: When asked if the news of the day surprised him anymore, the poet Joseph Brodsky—who grew up in Soviet Russia and came to America in … Continue reading Happy Black Friday
Originally posted on Riggwelter:
Miller, Tim, Bone Antler Stone, High Window Press, 2018. ISBN: 9780-2440-0959-5. £9.99 As the title might suggest, (pre)history and nature feature strongly in Tim Miller’s collection Bone Stone Antler (The High Window Press), but also song, fire, life. The collection has four sections: Landscapes & Rituals, Burials (which I found particularly moving), Artefacts… Continue reading Review: Bone Antler Stone by Tim Miller
Two chapters from the Tao Te Ching, and each in three different translations, on the limitations of even the best words: Tao Te Ching #70 My sayings are very easy to recognize, and very easy to apply. But no one in the world can recognize them, and no one can apply them. Sayings have a … Continue reading The Great Myths #47: Sacred Language & the Limitation of Words (Taoism)
Thanks to the editors of The Wisdom Daily for publishing my essay on the Isidore of Seville, the seventh century Church Father, polymath, and compiler of an ur-Wikipedia. You can read it here. Continue reading New Essay at The Wisdom Daily: “The Loneliness of Isidore of Seville”
Here are two passages from Homer’s Odyssey featuring the common household bard of prehistoric Greece. The first poet, the description of which probably lent to the legend that Homer himself was blind, performs stories of the Trojan war before a disguised Odysseus, bringing him to tears. The second is the bard at Odysseus’ own home … Continue reading The Great Myths #46: Sacred Language & Homer’s Poets (Greek)
Four stories from the great Jewish tradition of the sacredness of the Torah, of Hebrew, and of the letters of the alphabet themselves: Creation by Word In the beginning a word was spoken by the mouth of God, and the heavens and the earth came into being, as it is said, By the word of … Continue reading The Great Myths #45: Sacred Language Creates the World (Jewish)
Rig Veda 10:71: The Origins of Sacred Speech Bṛhaspati! When they set in motion the first beginning of speech, giving names, their most pure and perfectly guarded secret was revealed through love. When the wise ones fashioned speech with their thought, sifting it as grain is sifted through a sieve, then friends recognized their … Continue reading The Great Myths #44: Sacred Language & Two Hymns to Speech (Hindu)
One of the longer myths I’ll post here, the following story is well worth it, and is indeed a master-class in mythology and folklore. Containing shape-changes, chase scenes, mysterious births, borrowed identities, and competitions of all kinds, it is in the best sense a holy mess, including its sudden and (to us) perhaps unsatisfying ending. … Continue reading The Great Myths #43 Sacred Language & the Story of Gwion Bach & Taliesin (Welsh)
I began this blog in earnest almost six years now, with a post called “Silence in London,” which offered a handful of photos from a recent trip to England. I only made that post, though, because during the trip I left a long comment on a poetry blog, and found that it made me want … Continue reading Silence in London II: The Internet will Get You Too
A brother of the monastery is found to possess God’s gift of poetry [A. D. 680] In this monastery of Streanaeshalch lived a brother singularly gifted by God’s grace. So skilful was he in composing religious and devotional songs that, when any passage of Scripture was explained by interpreters, he could quickly turn it into … Continue reading The Great Myths #42: Sacred Language & the Story of Caedmon (Christian)
…And Aegir went on: “How did this craft that you call poetry originate?” Bragi replied: “The origin of it was that the gods had a dispute with the people called Vanir, and they appointed a peace-conference and made a truce by this procedure, that both sides went up to a vat and spat their spittle … Continue reading The Great Myths #41: Sacred Language & the Mead of Poetry (Norse)
Originally posted on Amethyst Review:
Bone Antler Stone by Tim Miller: High Window Press, 80pp ISBN 9780244009595 The scope of this collection is extraordinary, and the depth of research admirable. But Tim Miller’s poetry wears its learning well enough to draw in a non specialist reader. Prehistory is a gift to the poet in that… Continue reading Review: Bone Antler Stone by Tim Miller
One of the greatest stories of a person “living in nature” becoming “civilized” is perhaps the earliest one. Also here is an intense ambivalence towards the role of women in civilization, as well as the gifts of urban life, such as bread and beer. By the time Enkidu encounters all of them, something has certainly … Continue reading The Great Myths #40: Enkidu Comes of Age (Mesopotamian)
Here are excerpts from the last book of Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude. Other excerpts are here. In one of these excursions, travelling then Through Wales on foot and with a youthful friend, I left Bethkelet’s huts at couching-time, And westward took my way to see the sun Rise from the top of Snowdon. Having reading … Continue reading Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude, Book 13: “The perfect image of a mighty mind, of one that feeds upon infinity”
Throughout the summer I hope to post my favorite bits from Wordworth’s 1805 Prelude. Book 12 continues his meditations in Book 11, which was titled “Imagination, How Impaired & Restored.” Other excerpts are here. Such benefit may souls of humblest frame Partake of, each in their degree; ’tis mine To speak of what myself … Continue reading Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude, Book 12: “making verse deal boldly with substantial things”
Excerpts from Book 11 of Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude, which he calls “Imagination, How Impaired and Restored.” Other excerpts are here. Long time hath man’s unhappiness and guilt Defained us: with what dismal sights beset For the outward view, and inwardly oppressed With sorrow, disappointment, vexing thoughts, Confusion of the judgement, zeal decayed – And … Continue reading Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude, Book 11: “Habits of devoutest sympathy”
After the Cheyenne had received their corn, and while they were still in the north, a young man and woman of the tribe were married. The woman became pregnant and carried her child in the womb for four years. The people watched with great interest to see what would happen, and when the woman gave … Continue reading The Great Myths #39: Arrow Boy (Cheyenne)
I’ve relied on many translators and scholars in the writing of To the House of the Sun, and over the years I’ve been lucky enough to correspond with a few of them. Their specialties vary widely—Greek religion, Hinduism/Indo-European studies, Egyptology, Arthurian romance, etc.—and it seems that their enthusiasm and love for language, history, and religion … Continue reading Cyril Edwards (Interview)
Two bits of old Norse, first poetry & then prose, on the death of Odin’s son, Baldr: All at once the gods were gathered, and all the goddesses came to speak, the mighty deities had a discussion, why Baldr’s dreams were foreboding. Odin rose up, the ancient sacrifice, and on the Sleipnir placed a saddle; … Continue reading The Great Myths #38: Baldr’s Dreams, Baldr’s Death (Norse)
Excerpts from Book 10 of Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude, where he concludes his story of being in France during the Revolution. Other excerpts are here. A poor mistaken and bewildered offering, Should to the breast of Nature have gone back, With all my resolutions, all my hopes, A poet only to myself, to men Useless, … Continue reading Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude, Book 10: “In the very world which is the world of all of us, the place in which, in the end, we find our happiness, or not at all “
But Daedalus was weary; by this time, he’d been exiled in Crete too long; he pined for his own land; but he was blocked – the sea stood in his way. “Though Minos bars escape by land or waves,” he said, “I still can take the sky – there lies my path. Though he owns … Continue reading The Great Myths #37: Icarus Falls (Ovid & Virgil)
Originally posted on Daniel Paul Marshall:
I’m aware this “review” could potentially end up as flat out extolment for a poet who has become my friend and whose poems I was fortunate enough to have read in their early drafts. Am I biased? Probably. But I am going to make an effort to evidence what… Continue reading Bone Antler Stone by Tim Miller, a review
The Maid’s Thought Why listen, even the water is sobbing for something. The west wind is dead, the waves Forget to hate the cliff, in the upland canyons Whole hillsides burst aglow With golden broom. Dear how it rained last month, And every pool was rimmed With sulphury pollen dust of the wakening pines. Now … Continue reading 5 Poems by Robinson Jeffers: “Lend me the stone strength of the past”
As an addition to my last post, here is George Orwell’s complete description of going down into the coal mines of northern England, taken from the second chapter of his 1937 book, The Road to Wigan Pier. The entire text of the book can be found here. *** When you go down a coal-mine it … Continue reading George Orwell in the Coal Mines
As usual, George Orwell says it better than anybody. Here he is in his 1937 book The Road to Wigan Pier, asking his readers not to give up using coal, but just to recognize whose labor is providing them with coal. Nowadays I would only add to the coal miner all the people behind all … Continue reading George Orwell & Empathy
CAULDRON & DRINK They love their honey and they love the vine, the wine and beer they engender with fire and the altered world each takes them to. They name their vessels like newborns, they name their goblets and flagons and mixing bowls and give titles to their cauldrons, those cornucopias of bronze or clay … Continue reading Cauldron & Drink (poem)
Originally posted on Underfoot Poetry:
To the Dead White-Throated Sparrow in my driveway: Would you at least do me the courtesy of an explanation? What’s with your belly-mound-cenotaph arisen from the stony gloom spiel? And why this exquisite bundle of yours, with its still-tender russets folded in the unbounded repose of a napping cherub, as… Continue reading Stephanie L. Harper (7 Poems)
The sad early life of Parzival is narrated here. His father having died while out on crusade, his mother, Herzeloyde, tries to keep all knowledge of knighthood from her Parzival’s awareness. She retreats to the woods with a small retinue, and of course all of her attempts are in vain. This lady [Herzeloyde] quick … Continue reading The Great Myths #36: Parzival Grows Up & Leaves Home
One of the great jazz standards of Medieval & Renaissance art, here’s only a selection of all the depictions of St. Jerome: either studying indoors or out, with or without his lion or skull, probably translating the Bible as he goes, reading or writing always. A good excuse for artists to place him in contemporary … Continue reading Images: The Saint & the Lion
Excerpts from Book 9 of Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude, where he begins his story of being in France during the Revolution. Other excerpts are here. ’Tis mine to tread The humbler province of plain history, And, without choice of circumstance, submissively Relate what I have heard. Book 9, 642-645 Oft then I said, And not … Continue reading Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude, Book 9: “I saw the revolutionary power toss like a ship at anchor”
With June finally done and the rush of bringing out two books behind me, let me thank everyone who has purchased copies. There are still a few of each book left from my initial batch; if anyone is interested, I’m selling them myself much cheaper than Amazon etc., & they will be signed. If you … Continue reading Books for Days
Originally posted on Underfoot Poetry:
Hollow Glasses clink and mouths smile and jewelry sparkles and eyes are hungry hawks. This dress is too tight. My smile is too tight. My stomach is too tight. I wish I could peel off my skin to stretch it out over the curve of the Earth. Maybe I would… Continue reading Hannah Rousselot (4 Poems)
Here’s a roll call for all the books & scholars I gained so much from, in writing the poems in Bone Antler Stone. For some reason a handful are wildly expensive now, so I’ve put an asterisk before those that are still reasonably priced. Although as I discovered in collecting them all (sometimes only being … Continue reading “Bone Antler Stone”: A Reading List for Ancient Europe
Originally posted on Underfoot Poetry:
The subject of these poems, Walter Anderson, a Mississippi Gulf Coast artist who died in 1965, spent most of his time on the Barrier Islands off the coast of Mississippi. The first 6 poems are reflections of that. The final four are set in China during the Cultural revolution. Anderson… Continue reading Richard Weaver (10 Poems)
Excerpts from Book 8 of Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude, which he titles “Love of Nature Leading to Love of Mankind.” Other excerpts are here. With deep devotion, Nature, did I feel In that great city what I owed to thee: High thoughts of God and man, and love of man, Triumphant over all those loathsome … Continue reading Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude, Book 8: “A weight of ages did at once descend upon my heart”
“Our prehistory now has its poet laureate.” – Barry Cunliffe, Oxford University Download readings from the book below, or read an essay about the book. US readers can order copies directly from me here: UK and worldwide readers, order directly from The High Window Press here Passing through more than thirty thousand years of history, … Continue reading “Bone Antler Stone” now available
My poetry collection Bone Antler Stone—a panorama of ancient Europe from the painted caves of Lascaux to contact with Greece and Rome—comes out on Thursday. You can order it here. Below are readings of three of those poems, inspired by a tidal island, a museum, and a Viking cathedral on the island of Orkney, all … Continue reading The Island, the Museum, the Church: 3 Readings from “Bone Antler Stone”
My poetry collection Bone Antler Stone—a panorama of ancient Europe from the painted caves of Lascaux to contact with Greece and Rome—comes out on Thursday. You can order it here. Here’s an essay on how it came to be written: The poems of Bone Antler Stone go way back, as a book about ancient history … Continue reading On “Bone Antler Stone”: Ancient Europe, the Narrow Book & Finding Poetry Again
Excerpts from Book 7 of Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude, on his time living in London. Other excerpts are here. Above all, one thought Baffled my understanding, how men lived Even next-door neighbours, as we say, yet still Strangers, and not knowing each other’s names. Book 7, 117-120 Shall I give way, Copying the … Continue reading Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude, Book 7: “This parliament of monsters”
Originally posted on Underfoot Poetry:
At the Grave of Randall Jarrell The clunk and rasp of building a wood fire distracts but warms me. You love the grunt and groan of chores, talking to the cats, paying bills we can’t afford to pay. Meanwhile I’m picturing a pair of cypress almost doubled over with ice… Continue reading William Doreski (2 Poems)
Excerpts from Book 6 of Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude, on his friendship with Coleridge. Other excerpts are here. There is no grief, no sorrow, no despair, No languor, no dejection, no dismay, No absence scarcely can there be, for those Who love as we do. Book 6, 253-256 I too have been a wanderer, but, … Continue reading Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude, Book 6: “No absence scarcely can there be, for those who love as we do.”
From Bearing the Names of Many/The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, just as illness and war are spreading: People are committing suicide all over the place. I am enjoying this in part because the people killing themselves were the type, only a year ago, most likely to condemn suicides as evil, as cowards, as cruel … Continue reading Sympathy for Suicide
Originally posted on Underfoot Poetry:
Nothing of Me on the Moon The moon where I live sucks up all darkness, it’s a pond upside down. The moon that I know casts a circle of brightness, a Chinese lantern in the sky. Like a pot of honey never falling, she just sits there, waiting for my… Continue reading Irene Hergottova (7 Poems)
Back when I used to do a lot of readings, I would start out by sharing somebody else’s work, and I realize that I should do the equivalent of that with the release of my book of stories, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old. The person that comes to mind is the late William … Continue reading Speaking of Short Stories
I usually don’t feel like I’m a dirty liberal at all while reading The New Criterion, a conservative version of those magazines that seem to see themselves as the preserver of what might be called “high” culture, curating it almost as if for a future age that will care about it a little more. Recently … Continue reading Reading Behind Enemy Lines: Peering in at “The New Criterion”
Here are only some of the songs and pieces of music that meant the most to me when writing the stories for The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old: While I only saw it after many of the stories were finished, the documentary Kurt Cobain: About a Son captures what I hoped to do with … Continue reading A Playlist for “The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old”
My book of short stories, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, is now available. My essay on the book is here. Order it directly from the publisher, Square, Small Press Distribution, and Amazon. Ebook links here. Please consider ordering directly from the publisher or Square. Each of the twelve stories is told by an … Continue reading “The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old” now available
There are a lot of lonely people out there, and with my collection of stories The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old coming out on Monday (you can order it directly from the publisher, Square, Small Press Distribution, and Amazon), I want to write for a moment about why I devoted an entire book to … Continue reading There are a lot of lonely people out there, & they deserve a book of stories
Check out the poet Tom Laichas’s review, here, of my 2011 book Hymns and Lamentations, a collection poems on the unsolvable religious problems of suffering and joy. It’s an immensely generous and thorough look at the book, probably the best it’s gotten so far. You can still order the book here. Continue reading Review of Hymns & Lamentations
Back when my long Civil War poem To the House of the Sun first came out in 2015, I sent a copy to somebody that’s pretty well-known in the field—if a field it is—of those who popularize mythology, on TV and elsewhere. (If I say much more somebody might figure out who I mean, and … Continue reading Defending One’s Strangeness: on “To the House of the Sun”
Excerpts from Book 5 of Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude, on his love for books. Other excerpts are here. And yet it seems That here, in memory of all … Continue reading Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude, Book 5: “Stirred to ecstasy by glittering verse”
Excerpts from Book 4 of Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude, on his time home from college. Other excerpts are here. Why should I speak of what a thousand hearts Have felt, and every man alive can guess? Book 4: 33-34 Delighted did I take my place again At our domestic table; and, dear friend, Relating … Continue reading Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude, Book 4: “Need I say, dear friend, that to the brim my heart was full?”
Originally posted on Underfoot Poetry:
Flowers of Dawn A yellow moon over the rooftops—striking in silence—blue sky, dark and twinkling—stars meld into street light—alleyways cluttered with bottles clink | a cat howls in summer heat— water washes away the smear | bleary-eyed and broken, I stumble among dust bins and sediment of the living—crowned with… Continue reading Pablo Cuzco (5 Poems)
Excerpts from Book 3 of Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude, on his years at Cambridge. Other excerpts are here. Things they were which then I did not love, nor do I love them now: Such glory was but little sought by me, And little won. But it is right to say That even so early, from … Continue reading Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude, Book 3: “Unknown, unthought of, yet I was most rich”
Originally posted on Underfoot Poetry:
Named and Nameless In the midst of the naming, the boy asks: What’s your name? The Voice remembers: years in the future, others will ask this question. The reply is the same: I am what I am. The boy: That’s not an answer. We’re all what we all are, nameless… Continue reading Tom Laichas: 9 Poems from “Naming the Animals”
I’ve tried submitting this to many prestigious journals of Ancient Near Eastern history, but no one seems to believe that the following pretty much a word-for-word translation from some dusty cuneiform tablets: Nobody on the road Cuz roads ain’t been invented yet I feel it in the air Babylon stinkin like a bitch Inundated river, … Continue reading Don Henley’s Mesopotamian Connection: “The Boys of Sumer”
Excerpts from Book 2 of Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude. Other excerpts are here. Thus the pride of strength And the vainglory of superior skill Were interfused with objects which subdued And tempered them, and gradually produced A quiet independence of heart. And to my friend who knows me I may add, Unapprehensive of reproof, that … Continue reading Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude, Book 2: “The self-sufficing power of solitude”
The Figured Wheel The figured wheel rolls through shopping malls and prisons, Over farms, small and immense, and the rotten little downtowns. Covered with symbols, it mills everything alive and grinds The remains of the dead in the cemeteries, in unmarked graves and oceans. Sluiced by salt water and fresh, by pure and contaminated rivers, … Continue reading Robert Pinsky, “The Figured Wheel”
Originally posted on Underfoot Poetry:
104 The river’s in constant re-set mode, sighting by its hand against the banks what’s up and what’s down. It has the tattoo of the sky in its eye. Two girls, leaning against the wall, ignore it, choosing instead to contemplate : hills and the warmth of each other’s shoulder,… Continue reading Marie Marshall (3 Poems)
Originally posted on Amethyst Review:
Two Gods I. Esus with an Axe As if he were winter itself Esus goes at the willow tree, goes to prune it back for a time, promising a spring without blades. And as if they were winter itself, the egrets in the willow tree consider how the cold must… Continue reading Two Gods – poems by Tim Miller
Scroll through this selection of preliminary studies & photos of the canvas as it was worked on & completed. Pretty astonishing, & all done in about five weeks. Continue reading Images: Watch Picasso’s “Guernica” Emerge
Excerpts from Book 1 of Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude. Other excerpts are here. Time, place, and manners, these I seek, and these I find in plenteous store, but nowhere such As may be singled out with steady choice – No little band of yet remembered names Whom I, in perfect confidence, might hope To summon … Continue reading Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude, Book 1: “Invigorating thoughts from former years”
From the second of Virgil’s Georgics, translated by David Ferry: It’s spring that adorns the woods and groves with leaves; In spring the soil, desiring seed, is tumid, And then the omnipotent father god descends In showers from the sky and enters into The joyful bridal body of the earth, His greatness and her greatness … Continue reading “the shining days when the world was new”: Virgil Greets the Spring
Taken from John Richardson’s biographies of Picasso: Continue reading Images: Picasso Mostly in Pencil
The Austrian artist Egon Schiele’s bizarre and brutal self-portraits, many dating from before World War One, seem to presage all the carnage and atrocity and alienation that were to come. And even as the more famous artists from the period, and their perhaps “better” work still feels dated and rooted to the time they were … Continue reading Images: Egon Shiele Predicts the 20th Century
Originally posted on Real Free – Flowing Words:
Welcome readers to another entry on “Voices behind the words: An interview series with words. This is the 2nd time I’ve had a trifecta of writer interviews on this series. The other time was in February. I digress, this time around I spoke with the poet Tim… Continue reading Voices behind the words : An interview series with writers (Interview #12, Jonah Finn of Crime Poetry)
Crow’s Song about God Somebody is sitting Under the gatepost of heaven Under the lintel On which are written the words: “Forbidden to the living.” A knot of eyes, eyeholes, lifeless, in the life-shape A rooty old oak-stump, aground in the ooze Of some putrid estuary, Snaggy with amputations, His fingernails broken and bitten, His … Continue reading Ted Hughes – “Crow’s Song about God”
Originally posted on Amethyst Review:
RISKING THE SACRED Many years ago now, while living in California, I was sitting in a mostly-empty university library, surprised to find a literary manifesto in a fairly prominent US magazine. Seeing almost immediately that it was just a lot of posturing and attitude, I gave up. Turning, I saw… Continue reading Risking the Sacred – an essay by Tim Miller
Ahead of the publication of my book of stories (The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old) in June, the Seattle Book Review just published this essay of mine, on “generous chance encounters in publishing…” Continue reading New Essay On Writing & Publishing at the Seattle Book Review
The way I heard it, Salvador Dali saw a reproduction of Millet’s The Angelus in his classroom during childhood, and it became one of his great personal images: Continue reading Images: The Painting Salvador Dali Couldn’t Get Away From
Some poetry can become so much a part of our own personal scripture that its status as “literature” is pretty much irrelevant. This is near the top for me: From “East Coker” I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in … Continue reading T. S. Eliot hits the highest notes
from 21 Love Poems: 1 Whenever in this city, screens flicker with pornography, with science-fiction vampires, victimized hirelings bending to the lash, we also have to walk . . . if simply as we walk through the rainsoaked garbage, the tabloid cruelties of our own neighborhoods. We need to grasp our lives inseparable from those … Continue reading Adrienne Rich: 4 Love Poems
Inscription for a Gravestone I am not dead, I have only become inhuman: That is to say, Undressed myself of laughable prides and infirmities, But not as a man Undresses to creep into bed, but like an athlete Stripping for the race. The delicate ravel of nerves that made me a measurer Of certain fictions … Continue reading 2 Poems by Robinson Jeffers that shoot straight into eternity
Six Young Men The celluloid of a photograph holds them well – Six young men, familiar to their friends. Four decades that have faded and ochre-tinged This photograph have not wrinkled the faces or the hands. Though their cocked hats are not now fashionable, Their shoes shine. One imparts an intimate smile, One chews a … Continue reading Ted Hughes: 2 War Poems
From childhood through old age: Continue reading Images: Dürer’s Self-Portraits
Emily Dickinson, #975 The Mountain sat upon the Plain In his tremendous Chair – His observation omnifold, His inquest, everywhere – The Seasons played around his knees Like Children round a sire – Grandfather of the Days is He Of Dawn, the Ancestor – Wallace Stevens, “How to Live. What to Do” Last evening the … Continue reading Emily Dickinson & Wallace Stevens Climb a Mountain
Here is how James Merrill begins his 560 page poem, The Changing Light at Sandover, published between 1976 and 1982; it being the record of his conversations with a Ouija board, & with the spirits of W. H. Auden & many many others: Admittedly I err by undertaking This in its present form. The baldest prose … Continue reading James Merrill: A Poem to Begin Things
#1142 The Props assist the House Until the House is built And then the Props withdraw And adequate, erect, The House support itself And cease to recollect The Augur and the Carpenter – Just such a retrospect Hath the perfected Life – A Past of Plank and Nail And slowness – then the scaffolds drop … Continue reading Emily Dickinson Affirms a Soul
Many thanks to Sarah Law over at Amethyst, a journal focusing on poetry and the sacred, for publishing my poem on the sanctuaries of the Gauls in ancient France. You can read it here. Continue reading “the wordless, most unassembled spread of oak”: new poem at Amethyst
Three different but marvelous ways of getting it done: Continue reading Images: 3 Impressionist Street Scenes
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower The force that through the green fuse drives the flower Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees Is my destroyer. And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose My youth is bent by the same wintry fever. The force that drives … Continue reading Dylan Thomas: “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower”
Paterson What do I want in these rooms papered with visions of money? How much can I make by cutting my hair? If I put new heels on my shoes, bathe my body reeking of masturbation and sweat, layer upon layer of excrement dried in employment bureaus, magazine hallways, statistical cubicles, factory stairways, cloakrooms of … Continue reading Allen Ginsberg, “Paterson”
“Out, Out – ” The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood, Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it. And from there those that lifted eyes could count Five mountain ranges one behind the other Under the sunset far into Vermont. And the saw … Continue reading Robert Frost: “Out, Out – ”
For anyone who has ever worked retail and customer service, you’ll recognize the look on the face of this barmaid from Édouard Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère: Continue reading Images: Manet Does Customer Service
One of the great characters in Greek myth who never actually speaks is Astyanax, the son of Hector and the grandson of the king and queen of Troy. Below are two stories: he first appears in the Iliad as an infant, terrified when he sees his father in full armor, in one of the great … Continue reading The Great Myths #35: A Child During the Trojan War (Greek)
My Grandmother’s Love Letters There are no stars tonight But those of memory. Yet how much room for memory there is In the loose girdle of soft rain. There is even room enough For the letters of my mother’s mother, Elizabeth, That have been pressed so long Into a corner of the roof That they … Continue reading Hart Crane: “My Grandmother’s Love Letters”
After finishing To the House of the Sun, a poem mostly reliant on translations of ancient poetry (and in some ways the book now feels like something I translated), I had to find my way back to English poetry. One way was through the Penguin anthologies of Renaissance, Metaphysical, Romantic and Victorian poetry. They included … Continue reading Mary Robinson’s Poem “A London Summer Morning”
Bobby Delano The labor to breathe that younger, rawer air: St. Mark’s last football game with Groton lost on the ice-crust, the sunlight gilding the golden polo coats of boys with country seats on the Upper Hudson. Why does that stale light stay? First Form hazing, first day being sent on errands by an oldboy, … Continue reading 3 Poems of Adolescent Love & Hazing by Robert Lowell
The Shampoo The still explosions on the rocks, the lichens, grow by spreading, gray, concentric shocks. They have arranged to meet the rings around the moon, although within our memories they have not changed. And since the heavens will attend as long on us, you’ve been, dear friend, precipitate and pragmatical; and look what happens. … Continue reading Elizabeth Bishop, “The Shampoo”
As usual with such stories, childhood is synonymous with the dangers of being children: The Swahili version of a very popular story runs as follows: Some girls had gone down to the beach to gather shells. One of them picked up a specially fine cowry, which she was afraid of losing, and so laid it … Continue reading The Great Myths #34: A Hausa and Swahili Story of Childhood (African)
Many thanks as always to David Cooke over at The High Window, who just published four new poems of mine in their spring issue, and are the last batch before The High Window Press brings out my entire collection of poems from ancient Europe, Bone Antler Stone. Please also consider following them on WordPress, Twitter, and Facebook, … Continue reading “The sun sets into the sea to simmer”: 4 poems at The High Window
Back in the late nineties when a place called Borders Outlet still existed and Amazon was only a few years old, that was about the only store I could find – and afford – to buy brand new poetry books by that elusive species, The Poet Who Wasn’t Long Dead. Of all the books I … Continue reading Laurie Sheck’s poem “The Stockroom”
When Culand the smith offered Conchubur his hospitality, he said that a large host should not come, for the feast would be the fruit not of lands and possessions but of his tongs and his two hands. Conchubur went with fifty of his oldest and most illustrious heroes in their chariots. First, however, he visited … Continue reading The Great Myths #33: The Child Cúchulainn Gets His Name (Celtic)
A young Seamus Heaney recalls a blacksmith from his boyhood, while a much older Seamus Heaney illustrates the sometimes excessive power of retributive force (he says he was inspired by the U. S. military response to 9/11) by the swinging of a sledgehammer. The Forge All I know is a door into the … Continue reading “All I know is a door into the dark”: 2 Poems by Seamus Heaney
While always a political poet in some way, Yeats shows at the end of his life where his priorities were, essentially with love & the occult. & amazing too to see how his use of rhyme, which went from the glittering ornamentation of his youth to the simplicity of these poems, is always stunning: … Continue reading “The harlot and the child”: 2 Late Poems from W. B. Yeats
Walt Whitman, early 1863, looking on the Civil War dead: A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim A sight in camp in the daybreak gray and dim, As from my tent I emerge so early sleepless, As slow I walk in the cool fresh air the path near by the hospital tent, … Continue reading Walt Whitman, “A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim”
Here are some bits from Kafka’s Diaries, trying & failing to harmonize his writing life with his family and work life. All writers have been to some version of this, but few things are as heartbreaking as reading Kafka’s version of it. The first entry is one of the few moments of real elation he … Continue reading The Poet Speaks #14: Kafka Tries Again & Again
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas 2:1-6: When this boy, Jesus, was five years old, he was playing at the ford of a rushing stream. He was collecting the flowing water into ponds and made the water instantly pure. He did this with a single command. He then made soft clay and shaped it into twelve … Continue reading The Great Myths #32: The Childhood of Jesus (Christian)
Here’s the twenty-third psalm of American poetry, & the place where Wallace Stevens brought so much of his complexity (despite his usual high-falutin title) to a stunning simplicity. It’s also a great love poem: Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour Light the first light of evening, as in a room In which we rest … Continue reading Wallace Stevens, “Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour”
Originally posted on Underfoot Poetry:
While William Wordsworth is rightly known for his longer poems – whether on the poor and destitute, or his immortality ode, or the book-length Prelude – his sonnets are also something to be reckoned with. Here are a handful of them; if you know of others, do note them in… Continue reading Wordsworth’s Sonnets (Forerunners)
One day when Rāma and the other little sons of the cowherds were playing, they reported to his mother, “Kṛṣṇa has eaten dirt.” Yaśodā took Krishna by the hand and scolded him, for his own good, and she said to him, seeing that his eyes were bewildered with fear, “Naughty boy, why have you secretly … Continue reading The Great Myths #31: The Child Krishna & the Universe in His Mouth (Hindu)
Even though I’ve never read a word of his poetry, John Berryman has been haunting me lately. Two friends who are also poets that I admire deeply have both praised his work, and recently I’ve come across remarks from a handful of Berryman’s peers, reflecting on his life and his suicide in 1972. Here are … Continue reading The Poet Speaks #13: Richard Wilbur & John Berryman: “The artist is extremely lucky who is presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him”
I’m stunned every time I read this: one of Wordsworth’s best short poems (& that’s saying something), & perhaps one of the great poems period: St. Paul’s Pressed with conflicting thoughts of love and fear I parted from thee, Friend! and took my way Through the great City, pacing with an eye Downcast, ear sleeping, … Continue reading Wordsworth & Eternity at St. Paul’s
If the Negro, or any other writer, is going to do what is expected of him, he’s lost the battle before the takes the field. I suspect that all the agony that goes into writing is borne precisely because the writer longs for acceptance – but it must be acceptance on his own terms. Perhaps, … Continue reading The Poet Speaks #12: Ralph Ellison, Anthony Burgess, James Dickey
autographed copies of To the House of the Sun are always available directly from the publisher at 40% off (includes shipping), by clicking here SELRES_1bdcfa3c-300a-48ef-b10e-893100acd61SELRES_1bdcfa3c-300a-48ef-b10e-893100acd& the mountain I ascended came from heaven: & the rock I walked on broke away once long ago from the vault of heaven— & so as I walked, I … Continue reading The Great Myths: Climbing the World Mountain (To the House of the Sun)
The story of the Holy Grail’s appearance to a young man named Perceval/Parzival/Parsifal, is told in many places, and goes something like this: he comes by chance upon the Grail Castle, and is introduced to a wounded man, the Fisher King; during a feast that night, the Grail appears, and if only Parzival would ask … Continue reading The Great Myths #30: The Holy Grail Appears (Middle High German)
…here is a section (from a small book of essays) that one reader has asked me to post here, as I work on revising the entire thing… Like many of us, as a lonely and vaguely unhappy teenager I justified a natural tendency towards silence and social awkwardness with the thought, Why would I want … Continue reading In Praise of Imperfection: Adolescent Whining, the Black Death, & How We Live Today
George Eliot, on empathy: The greatest benefit we owe to the artist, whether painter, poet, or novelist, is the extension of our sympathies…. Art is the nearest thing to life; it is a mode of amplifying experience and extending our contact with our fellow-men beyond the bounds of our personal lot. The only effect I … Continue reading The Poet Speaks #11: George Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, Philip Levine, Stephen King, Seamus Heaney: “struggling erring human creatures”
Many thanks to Tom Zimmerman and the editors of the Big Windows Review, who just published my poem “The Seeress of Vix” on the website. It will also appear in issue 11 of BWR, and you can find subscription info on their page. For more information on the c. 480 BC French burial and archaeological site the … Continue reading “Let my crooked face fall on you in life”: new poem at the Big Windows Review
A random scattering, some barely aphorisms, from the first two volumes of the notebooks of Albert Camus. They are gold: One must not cut oneself off from the world. No one who lives in the sunlight makes a failure of his life. My whole effort, whatever the situation, misfortune or disillusion, must be to make … Continue reading The Poet Speaks #10: Albert Camus: “Dissolve in love”
The poet/shaman Väinämöinen, in need of new poems and spells in order to build a boat, goes through an ordeal within the belly of a giant, the keeper of those stories. Here, the giant/ogre figure is more primordial and wise and not simply uncivilized and destructive: Steady old Väinämöinen when he got not words from … Continue reading The Great Myths #29: Learning Poetry in the Giant’s Stomach (Finnish)
Here’s a reader favorite I like to re-post now & then for those who may have missed it: 1. When Derek Jeter retired from baseball in the fall of 2014, those who followed his last season heard the unsurprising story that he’d wanted to be shortstop for the New York Yankees since he was a … Continue reading There is Only the Trying: Some Thoughts on Fame & Failure
Odysseus and friends land on the island “of the lawless outrageous Cyclopes,” one-eyed giants who know nothing of planting and harvesting, and who live in caves. They find their way to one of these caves: Lightly we made our way to the cave, but we did not find him there, he was off herding on … Continue reading The Great Myths #28: Odysseus Outsmarts the Cyclops
On the supposed “difficulty” of his poetry: We are difficult. Human beings are difficult. We’re difficult to ourselves, we’re difficult to each other. And we are mysteries to ourselves, we are mysteries to each other. One encounters in any ordinary day far more real difficulty than one confronts in the most “intellectual” piece of work. … Continue reading The Poet Speaks #9: Geoffrey Hill, Robert Frost, Allen Ginsberg, James Merrill, Ursula K. Le Guin: “We are difficult”
As even “nerd culture” and all the rest just becomes another snobby fad and pop culture corner to hide in, Patti Smith suggests where the real “next” actually is, out of view completely:…when people ask me Who’s the new people?, well to me the new people are the unknown people. The new people that I … Continue reading The Poet Speaks #8: Patti Smith, Toni Morrison, T. S. Eliot, Hart Crane: “I shall make every sacrifice toward that end”
From the Miwok tribe of California, who are now “practically extinct”: Bear’s sister-in-law, Deer, had two beautiful fawn daughters. Bear was a horrible, wicked woman, and she wanted the fawns for herself. So this is what she did. One day she invited Deer to accompany her when she went to pick clover. The two fawns … Continue reading The Great Myths #27: The Monster Bear & the Making of Thunder (Miwok)
At an antique store a few years ago, I spent $10 on an envelope of old photos. I love to imagine their stories, and thought others might too. And perhaps someone out there knows them? Click on the slideshow to begin: Continue reading Who are These Faces & What are Their Stories?
What is the reason for gold being called otter-payment? It is said that when the Aesir went to explore the whole world – Odin and Loki and Haenir – they came to a certain river and went along the river to a certain waterfall, and by the waterfall there was an otter and it had … Continue reading The Great Myths #26: Sigurd Kills the Monster Fafnir & Understands the Language of Animals (Norse)
On why he turned from more specialized to more popular writing on science and culture: Because of that [the use of scientific knowledge in the making of atomic bombs] I wanted to be sure that what I had to say would not be confined to a small circle of specialists but would touch people where … Continue reading The Poet Speaks #7: Bronowski, Bloom, Munro, Gilbert, Trevor
Originally posted on Mythology:
This post you are about to view contain some nude photographs. If you are offended by nudity, if you are younger than 18 years of age, or if viewing nude images is not legal where you live, please go back. Cesar Santos, (b. 1982) Three Graces (aka the Charities) Oil on linen… Continue reading 12 Contemporary Interpretations, Olympian deities in classical Greek and Roman religion, with footnotes
Originally posted on Dutch Anglo-Saxonist:
A great portion of the extant Old English corpus survives between the lines of Latin manuscripts, as interlinear glosses. Generally, these glosses provide a simple word-for-word Old English translation of the Latin text in order to aid the reader, but various alternative glossing methods existed. This blog post takes a… Continue reading Reading between the lines in early medieval England: Old English interlinear glosses
Some great quotes from W. B. Yeats and William Blake, chosen almost at random from two good biographies of them; there are no doubt thousands more, & should you have other favorites, do add them in the comments: From a young W. B. Yeats: …my ever multiplying boxes of unsaleable MSS – work too strange … Continue reading The Poet Speaks #6: Yeats & Blake
Originally posted on Underfoot Poetry:
Snowless Woods In snowless winter woods, tree trunk skeletons raise brown branches toward grey skies suspended softly inches above. Oaks cling to their few remaining dry dead leaves, like a mother, aware too soon her children will be lost. Under foot, crunch of leaves mold into the feel of soft… Continue reading Melissa Rendlen (6 Poems)
The Indian legend of the “Face of Glory” begins, like that of the Man-Lion, with the case of an infinitely ambitious king who through extraordinary austerities had gained the power to unseat the gods and was now sole sovereign of the universe. His name was Jalandhara, “Water Carrier,” and he conceived the impudent notion of … Continue reading The Great Myths #25: The Monster Kirttimukha & the Face of Glory (Hindu)
I’m not sure who the equivalent is for you, but Albert Camus was one of the first authors I found outside of Stephen King and Dean Koontz. The high school teacher who introduced me to him also laid an egg it took years to get over: the apparently insurmountable gulf between “popular” and “serious” literature; … Continue reading Go Ahead and Fuck Up
Many thanks to David Cooke at The High Window, who has published four of my poems here. I‘m also pleased to note that the post officially announces that the High Window Press will be publishing my full collection of poems from ancient Europe, Bone Antler Stone, later this year. The four poems posted today come from the … Continue reading “build it well, to bury it well, and wait”: Four New Poems at the High Window
In one of the great gymnastic feats of world literature, Dante and Virgil climb the body of Satan, located as it is in the center of the earth. Travelling upside down and changing hemispheres as they go, they emerge to see the Mountain of Purgatory, which was created by the crash of Lucifer’s body as … Continue reading The Great Myths #24: The Monster Satan (Dante)
On why he wrote about animals so much: I suppose because they were there at the beginning. Like parents. Since I spent my first seventeen or eighteen years constantly thinking about them more or less, they became a language – a symbolic language which is also the language of my whole life. It was not … Continue reading The Poet Speaks #5: Hughes, Auden, Hall, Pinsky, Collins
Originally posted on tucked away churches:
Visibly seen off the main road A143, going through the small village of Toft Monks is St Margaret’s Church. Another fine example of a stunning Norfolk church. I have been here 4 times before deciding to write a post about it. Its set around a quiet and peaceful area,… Continue reading St Margaret’s Church, Toft Monks
Originally posted on Awake & Asleep:
View from my desk, at this hour 25 March 2017 1:26 AM Manila, Philippines Dear M., What a holy mess, my desk is, at this hour. And every day, I suppose, looks like this. I sit at my desk and write and work, and somehow, without looking, the days… Continue reading How daily my life.
Flannery O’Connor responds to questions from academics and their students about her short stories: Week before last I went to Wesleyan and read “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” After it I went to one of the classes where I was asked questions. There were a couple of young teachers there and one of … Continue reading The Poet Speaks #4: O’Connor, Campbell, Merwin, Walcott, van Gogh
Originally posted on Underfoot Poetry:
While some of Emily Dickinson’s more well-known lines had been in my head for years, I didn’t sit down with all of her poems until a flight from Atlanta ages ago, to attend my grandmother’s funeral back home. As Dickinson says, time does not assuage; but her strange words and… Continue reading Emily Dickinson (Forerunners)
Then from the moor under misty hillsides, Grendel came gliding girt with God’s anger. The man-scather sought someone to snatch from the high hall. He crept under clouds until the caught sight of the king’s court whose gilded gables he knew at a glance. He … Continue reading The Great Myths #23: The Monster Grendel (Anglo-Saxon)
Should anyone tell you that the primary duty of art (and of life) is to be political, to constantly choose sides and to turn one another into mere categories and the most minute identities, here are a few replies by Jean Guéhenno, written while living in Nazi-Occupied Paris. All come from his Diary of the … Continue reading Art Must Be Political
Gilgamesh and his companion Enkidu face Humbaba, the guardian of the cedar forests of Lebanon. The tablets where the story is found contain many breaks, indicated throughout with an ellipsis; and the translation used here fills in some gaps by integrating other versions of the story. Also, in our day and age, the story can … Continue reading The Great Myths #22: The Monster Humbaba (Mesopotamian)
Advice to aspiring poets: If you can, get out. Everything else in the world pays better. Everything else in the world costs less, not only in terms of money but in terms of damage to your life. Everything else in the world is more justly rewarded. If you can be happy doing something else, the … Continue reading The Poet Speaks #3: Snodgrass, Beethoven, Hollander, Kunitz, Milosz
