I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing. — T.S. Eliot, “East Coker” Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Poetry
High School Seniors Do Not Appreciate 17th Century Metaphysical Poetry
“Have you read ‘Break of Day’ by John Donne?” my son asks. “I haven’t,” I reply, “but that’s more of a failing on my part than a reflection on the greatness of John Donne.” “John Donne sucks.” “You can’t talk about metaphysical poetry without giving it up for John Donne.” “I don’t want to talk about metaphysical poetry. How is that ever going to help me?” “Someday you’ll quote a snippet of Andrew Marvell in a status meeting and people will be very impressed. Verrry impressed.” Read more →
Tiger, Tiger
Henderson the Rain King
“There is that poem about the nightingale singing that humankind cannot stand too much reality. But how much unreality can it stand? Do you follow? You understand me?” “Me unnastand, sah.” “I fired that question right back at the nightingale. So what if reality may be terrible? It’s better than what we’ve got.” “Kay, sah. Okay.” “All right, I let you out of it. It’s better than what I’ve got. But every man feels from his soul that he has got to carry his life to a certain depth. Well, I have got to go on because I haven’t reached that depth yet. You get it?” “Yes, sah.” — Saul Bellow, Henderson the Rain King Read more →
Nothing But the Night
Now hollow fires burn out to black, And lights are guttering low: Square your shoulders, lift your pack, And leave your friends and go. Oh never fear, man, nought’s to dread, Look not to left nor right: In all the endless road you tread There’s nothing but the night. — A. E. Housman, “A Shropshire Lad” Read more →
Angered by Trivia
people are strange: they are constantly angered by trivial things, but on a major matter like totally wasting their lives, they hardly seem to notice . . . — Charles Bukowski, “wandering in the cage” Read more →
Ode to a Nightingale
Already with thee! tender is the night . . . . . . But here there is no light, Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways. — John Keats, “Ode to a Nightingale’” Read more →
Best Picture
(well, it might be that people see so many movies that when they finally see one not so bad as the others, they think it’s great. an Academy Award means that you don’t stink quite as much as your cousin.) — Charles Bukowski, “in and out of the dark” There are 10 nominees now for Best Picture?! I had no idea. The best movie of the year was Up. The other nine I didn’t see. If any of them were better than Up, then why didn’t I see them? Answer that one for me. Read more →
In and Out of the Dark
of one hundred movies there’s one that’s fair, one that’s good and ninety-eight that are very bad. . . . . . . millions of dollars spent to create something more terrible than the actual lives of most living things; one should never have to pay an admission to hell. — Charles Bukowski, “in and out of the dark” Read more →
The Eternal Footman Held My Coat and Snickered
Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, a longtime fixture on the House subcommittee that oversees Pentagon spending, died after complications from gallbladder surgery, according to his office. He was 77. The Democratic congressman recently underwent scheduled laparoscopic surgery at National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, to remove his gallbladder. The procedure was “routine minimally invasive surgery,” but doctors “hit his intestines,” a source close to the late congressman told CNN. — CNN.com OMG I HAD THAT SAME OPERATION I COULD HAVE DIED!!! On a lighter note, how ironic is it that the president loses a pro-ObamaCare vote due to medical error in a government-run hospital? Read more →
Twitter: 2010-01-21
RT @capricecrane: T.S. Eliot: "The world ends not with a bang, but a whimper." Sadly, so do most of my dates. # Read more →
Twitter: 2009-10-15
For nothing in the white hotel but love / Is offered at a price we can afford — D.M. Thomas # RT @HiltonHB Waterfront – Come decked out in USC gear & colors this Sat. to watch the game at Shades Lounge and get 10%off your bill 🙂 # Read more →
Haiku on The Myth of Sisyphus
Master of his days, Could Sisyphus be happy? Camus says he is. Read more →
Hockey Haiku
Northwood wins 3-2 IHF Finals next week May the best team win Grammatically incorrect — “best” should be “better” — but it’s okay because I’ve got a poetic license! It’s right here in my wallet . . . Read more →
Haiku
Outside my window Somewhere in the big pine tree A bird is singing. Read more →
The Learn’d Astronomer
When I heard the learn’d astronomer; When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me; When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them; When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick; Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars. — Walt Whitman My son has an assignment to read this poem and answer some questions about what Whitman was trying to say. The academic answer is that he was exploring the tension between romanticism and science in the late 19th century, and acknowledging sadly, based on “much applause in the lecture-room,” that the romantic worldview was dying out. But just between you and me, he was… Read more →
Then Wear the Gold Hat
Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her; If you can bounce high, bounce for her too, Till she cry “Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover, I must have you!” — Thomas Parke D’Invilliers This is the epigraph to The Great Gatsby, which my son is reading for school. So beautiful, so sad . . . (Thomas Parke D’Invilliers is a character in Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise, used by him here as a nom de plume.) Read more →
The Renaissance Man
I’m looking at these last few posts where I’ve strung together W.H. Auden, John Dewey, Meat Loaf and Franz Kafka, not with any sense of purpose, just things I’ve read or listened to on my winter break. What a renaissance man I am! Why, if you were here, we could talk about poetry, education, philosophy, sex, drugs, rock ‘n roll, existentialism . . . and we’d have a good time too, considering we’re all going to die . . . Read more →
Lullaby
Certainty, fidelity On the stroke of midnight pass Like vibrations of a bell And fashionable madmen raise Their pedantic boring cry: Every farthing of the cost, All the dreaded cards foretell, Shall be paid, but from this night Not a whisper, not a thought, Not a kiss nor look be lost. — W.H. Auden, “Lullaby” Read more →
Winter Haikus
Outside the window, snow, A woman in a hot bath Overflowing. — Nobuku Katsura See the river flow In a long unbroken line On the field of snow. — Boncho Confined within doors A priest is warming himself Burning a Buddha statue. — Natsume Soseki Through snow, Lights of homes That slammed their gates on me. — Buson Read more →