Poetry

Reading: Taking off Emily Dickinson’s clothes by Billy Collins
Billy Collins (b. 1941) is 'the most popular poet of America' according to some. He was poet laureate of the US several times and won a prize or something for the America's funniest home poetry - he manages to tell a good joke without destroying the poetic wager. I fell in love with this poet, ...
Reading: A motel in the hotel of time by Dale Houstman
Dale Houstman is an extraordinary poet from America and I am his friend on the Internet. Today, I want to read a poem from his collection 'A dangerous vacation'. There is a lot of extraordinary stuff but I stick to a not so long poem that has an enigmatic metaphor as a title: A motel ...
Reading: After Love by Sara Teasdale
Today I discover a short gem written by Sara Teasdale (1884-1933), who wrote a lot of love poetry and committed suicide at the age of 48. I came across this timeless poem about passion:
Reading: My Madonna by Robert W. Service
Robert W. Service (1874-1958) was known as the bard of Yukon, because a lot of his poetry was inspired by his time as a cowboy in Canada. He is also a war poet, having been a reporter of the Balkan war of 1912-13 and an ambulance driver during World War One. I read a funny ...
Reading: The Reckoning by Theodore Roethke
Theodore Roethke (1908-1963), a sickly boy who transformed into a bear of a man with father issues, was according to many critics the greatest of the American poets. While browsing a collection of his poetry on the Internet, I stumbled upon a poem about reckoning. I understand from his biography that he sought for redemption ...
Reading: Sad steps by Philip Larkin
I browsed a digital collection of Larkin (1922-1985) to get an idea of his poetry. Returning appears to be the theme of aging, or in the words of this biography, "A sense that life is a finite prelude to oblivion underlies many of Larkin's poems". The man himself said "Deprivation is for me what daffodils ...
Reading: Attack by Siegfried Sassoon
Famed British war poet Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967) from a family that was called the "Rothschilds of the east", wrote acclaimd poetry about the trenches of the first world war, so we put the fellow in our anthology. Later in life, he converted to catholicism, a mental swift that also produced some poetic residu, albeit not ...
Reading: Stagnant water by Wen Yiduo
Chinese poet Wen Yiduo (1899-1946) was assassinated by the Kuomintang. According to many, he was an important figure in Chinese intellectual life. He "Wen never resolved the conflicts that existed within him: The elitist and the proletarian, the scholar and the activist, the traditionalist and the innovator, the personal man and the public man, fought ...
Reading: La fausse morte by Paul Valéry
Paul Valéry (1971-1945) I found a short poem in a remarkable translation by Nathaniel Rudavsky-Brody: The Faux Death Humble, tender, against the charming tomb, ______Unfeeling monument That out of shadows, leavings, offered love ______Conjures your weary grace, I fall, dying against you, dying — Yet, No sooner fallen across the low grave Whose lawn littered ...