Poetry, History, Mythology
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
Originally posted on The Eclectic Light Company:
Not all images are intended to have a dual nature, and for a long time, prior to the Renaissance in Europe, many works of visual art appear to have been intended to be arrangements of flat symbols, closer to writing than to realist painting. Unknown, Rebecca and Eliezer,… Continue reading Seeing History: Is perspective learned or natural?
Originally posted on Melanie V Taylor:
The 15th century Flemish artists have long been referred to as ‘primitive’. You might ask why this idea that artists who hail from north of the Alps comes from and just who they are. My concept of primitive is not quite the level of sophisticted observation depicted on a… Continue reading Is the work of 15th century Flemish artists ‘primitive’?
Quotes from all over on art & creativity: [Leonardo] was always less concerned with the finishing of a picture than with its conception. His ideal would consist of imagining the picture and getting someone else to paint it: invention was what mattered most to him. Painting was above all “a thing of the mind.” As … Continue reading The Poet Speaks #2: Leonardo, Williams, Bishop, Meredith, Ashbery
Originally posted on Underfoot Poetry:
from the collection The Indifferent World Trigger This is where I held my breath— a stand of red pine, needles and snowdust scribed about my boot, cold crescent resisting a swollen finger itchy-numb with November. This is where a buck held its breath— mouth mid-meal amid the mast, a single… Continue reading Ken Craft (6 Poems)
& once in Chattanooga, a vision comes: & he sits there stunned among them: & he watches as families eat & drink or just laugh, as if life lasts forever—& then half drop off & disappear: he sees two men in front of a store, & then only one: two women at laundry or two … Continue reading The Great Myths #21: Families & Cities in Time of War (To the House of the Sun)
As a companion to my recent poem on the same journey, here is an astonishing walk from mainland Orkney to that tidal island, the Brough of Birsay, and the Pictish, Viking and Christian monastic ruins there. Continue reading Walking the Brough of Birsay, Orkney
Then anon they heard cracking and crying of thunder, that them thought the place should all to-drive. In the midst of this blast entered a sunbeam more clearer by seven times than ever they saw day, and all they were alighted of the grace of the Holy Ghost. Then began every knight to behold other, … Continue reading The Great Myths #20: The Holy Grail Appears (Middle English)
Originally posted on Daniel Paul Marshall:
∞ A green finch takes a liking to our Callistemon | already cozied up to sun & rain. The finch | itches its beak | nibbles insects & pollen dusts its feathers when it scoots from branch to branch— from this distance the blooms resemble lobster pincers | provide… Continue reading A green finch…
A new series of quotes from everywhere on writing and creativity: I was in the Navy, and I worked at a shore station in New York. Late in ’44, I was assigned to CINPAC – the Commander-in-Chief Pacific Ocean – at Pearl Harbor, and when that command moved to the Marianas, to Guam, I went … Continue reading The Poet Speaks #1: Fitzgerald, Larkin, Paz, Lowell, Aiken
Immense thanks to Barton Smock, who just published three of my poems at Isacoustic. You can read them here. They are among my favorites from the past few years, and so it’s wonderful to see them all together; whatever it is I’ve been trying to say with history and mythology, landscape and autobiography, are all there. … Continue reading Deep History & Old Childhood: 3 New Poems at Isacoustic
Many thanks to the editors of the Cider Press Review, who just published my poem “Old Man’s Shed.” You can read it here Continue reading “Old Man’s Shed” – New Poem at Cider Press Review
From a dialogue about the beginning of the world; at one point, a giant called Ymir is mentioned: “Where did Ymir live, and what did he live on?” “The next thing, when the rime dripped, was that there came into being a cow called Audhumla, and four rivers of milk flowed from its teats, and … Continue reading The Great Myths #19: The Sacrifice of Ymir Made into the World (Norse)
And it happened after these things that God tested Abraham. And He said to him, “Abraham!” and he said, “Here I am.” And He said, “Take, pray, your son, your only one, whom you love, Isaac, and go forth to the land of Moriah and offer him up as a burnt offering on one of … Continue reading The Great Myths #18: The Sacrifice of Isaac (Jewish)
The cow came in from the field, and the companions of great-hearted Telemachos came from beside their fast black ship, and the smith came, holding in his hands the tools for forging bronze, his handicraft’s symbols, the anvil and the sledgehammer and the well-wrought pincers with which he used to work the gold, and Athene … Continue reading The Great Myths #17: A Sacrifice for the Feast (Greek)
The first evening is devoted to preparation for the rite. The kam (shaman), having chosen a spot in a meadow, erects a new yurt there, setting inside it a young birch stripped of its lower branches and with nine steps (tapty) notched into its trunk. The higher foliage of the birch, with a flag at … Continue reading The Great Myths #16: A Siberian Horse Sacrifice, and the Shaman’s Ascent to the Sky (Altaic)
Rig Veda 1:162 – The Sacrifice of the Horse Mitra, Varuṇa, Aryaman the Active, Indra the ruler of the Ṛbhus, and the Maruts – let them not fail to heed us when we proclaim in the assembly the heroic deeds of the racehorse who was born of the gods. When they lead the firmly grasped … Continue reading The Great Myths #15: The Horse Sacrifice (Hindu)
