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THE TEN MOST OVERRATED POETS
William Cullen Bryant—he’s not on this list! TEN. Sir Geoffrey Hill (d. 2016) Starting in 2006 many in Great Britain and America said he was the greatest poet in the world. I don’t think he will be...
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THE TEN MOST UNDERRATED POETS
Elizabeth Oakes Smith—poet, women’s rights activist. Poe was murdered, she said. TEN. Sara Teasdale (d. 1933) There are hundreds of women poets better than H.D. and Marianne Moore and who certainly...
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YOU NEVER HAD TO SAY GOODBYE TO THINGS
You never had to say goodbye to things.Things never said goodbye to you.What a bunch of foolishness this loneliness bringsWhen what’s inanimate inanimately sings. You never had to be awake. Things are...
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YOU ARE
They can tell you are sad. But even your tears don’t know you. You are obsessed with yourself and care who hears you but you care a little too much about yourself so no one hears. The pebbles in the...
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POEM COMPOSED IN MID-SEPTEMBER
Fanning myself with the Selected Andrew Marvel, I had just decided Byron and Marvel were the same; if this sounds like the beginning of a novel, it’s because I should write a novel but I dare not put...
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TYRANNY AND CRITICISM
Does the good soul hate criticism? Or does the tyrant hate criticism? We speak, of course, of literature and art—but politics and art, as Plato, knew, are one. The tyrant is the “nice guy” who opposes...
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IT WASN’T ENGLAND—IT WAS THE WORLD.
George III—the monarch when England nearly owned everything. There is a new king on the British throne. Charles III (already disliked) has been an heir for a lifetime, since Chubby Checker and Little...
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COMMUTE, SUNDOWN
The swamp nonetheless has pools like mirrors which show the sky. Distant pink clouds. The heron is furtive but white—easy to spot from the fleeing train. I’m glued to the window. Up-close, bored...
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DARLING PARANOIA
My love is paranoid and exclusive— that’s why I love you so much. Love which is universal and inclusive never stays in touch. I am predatory but highly educated— I stalked you with poems. You judged...
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WE HEAR IT MUST BE FUN TO DIE
We hear it must be fun to die. The ground lying on the ground is the sky. The songs you hate do not make a sound. The sky is a cloak covering the ground. The words you spoke never get mentioned nor...
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IS THE SENTIMENTAL REALLY A BAD THING FOR POETRY?
The question is a simple one—but it gets complex when we try to answer it. If there is one thing which happened, beyond all else, to poetry, during the so-called revolution of Modernism in the early...
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THE OLD BOOK
Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; I am weary to bear them; yea, when ye spread forth your hands I will hide mine eyes from you; yea, when ye make many prayers I will not...
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I HAVE THE FLOWER
I have the flower which bloomed in the spring. I can visit my lost days—and everything. Whenever I wish, I can travel to the past. As long as I live, all I ever was shall last. And if I live forever,...
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ANTI-ROMANTICISM
I was able to read the following poem online (FB) this week, by the recently famous poet, Diane Seuss. Romantic Poet You would not have loved him,my friend the scholar decried. He brushed his teeth,if...
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THE PUBLIC SELF IS THE REAL ONE
When someone pulls you aside and says I need to speak to you, what do you do? You panic as your privacy boils off in the hot sun. You laugh when you hear a public cough; you snicker behind the...
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TWO SHADOWS
“I discovered to my amazement the phases of the moon were not the earth’s shadow.” There are two shadows— one from sun and one from shade— my body blocks the sun, but this shadow on the moon—how is...
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YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO LIKE THIS POEM
You’re not supposed to like this poem. Yikes—what I mean is, you must like me. I am gone soon. The nightingale sings here—for eternity. This poem makes the introductions, and in its learned wake, you...
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POETRY SUCCUMBS TO SCULPTURE AND FEAR
How wrong The New Yorker and the Moderns were, trying to saywhat poetry was. The symbol and the imageand a bit less rhyme, estrangement and the street lamp,a guy talking to himself on 33rd and Third....
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DIFFICULT
The Modernists said poetry should be “difficult,” (I think it was T.S. Eliot, handsome, yet somehow, not) which is to point out the obvious— scientifically, everything alive is difficult; how...
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I BLASPHEMED GOD BY BLAMING TIME
My rivals, the old poets, I cut loose the other day. I was too modern for them. I couldn’t believe it: overnight, things were new. Art became wildly self-conscious and strange. I laughed at “Home,...
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