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 →
EppsNet Archive: Poetry
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 →
Autumn Haikus
Originally uploaded by ahp_ibanez On a withered bough A crow alone is perching, Autumn evening now. — Basho The wild geese take flight Low along the railroad tracks In the moonlit night. — Shiki Read more →
Epigram
On love, on grief, on every human thing, Time sprinkles Lethe’s water with his wing. — Walter Savage Landor [Lethe is the river of forgetfulness. — Ed.] Read more →
Randy Pausch, 1960-2008
Brick walls are there for a reason: they let us prove how badly we want things. — Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture If I could only give three words of advice, they would be, ‘Tell the truth.’ If I got three more words, I’d add, ‘All the time.’ — Ibid. All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier. — Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself” Randy Pausch was lucky in that, thanks to the worldwide fame he achieved from his lecture and book, he died knowing that things he did and said would not be forgotten after he was gone. Without the pancreatic cancer, he couldn’t have achieved that. Let’s face it, you can’t peddle the kind of pabulum cited above as “wisdom” in the absence of a terminal illness. We own this book because my mom sent… Read more →
Our Deepest Fear
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. — Marianne Williamson Read more →
The Competition: A Sonnet
“Get off,” my wife says — but the pug Just looks at her and doesn’t move. He’s lying in his favorite spot Beside his master on the couch. “Off,” she says — the dog just stares; He could win a test of wills But when she moves to pick him up He concedes defeat and jumps. “I want to sit there,” she explains. He looks at her, he looks at me Then jumps up from the other side, Lying down across my lap Sideways, facing down his foe As if to say “Your move.” Read more →
Don’t Waste Your 15 Minutes of Fame
[Heath] Ledger’s ex-fiancée Michelle Williams and their two year old daughter Matilda flew from a film set in Sweden to their home in Brooklyn following the tragedy. . . . Her father Larry Williams said: “It has just broken everybody’s heart in my family. I think Tennyson got it right in the poem he described someone as having died at a young age but burning the candles at both ends. And oh what a beautiful flame he made. That was Heath. “The saddest thing is his daughter whom he just loved dearly. The Tennyson poem is just so true. His years were few but he left a beautiful legacy.” — Daily Mail Okay . . . Tennyson?! Tennyson did write In Memoriam A.H.H. about a friend who died young, but the candle poem was written by Edna St. Vincent Millay: My candle burns at both ends; It will not last… Read more →
What is the Use of Knowing the Evil in the World?
And often you asked me, “What is the use of knowing the evil in the world?” I am out of your way now, Spoon River, Choose your own good and call it good. For I could never make you see That no one knows what is good Who knows not what is evil; And no one knows what is true Who knows not what is false. — Edgar Lee Masters, Spoon River Anthology, “Seth Compton” Read more →
One Grows Out of That Kind of Thing
‘Now it might be a very romantic sight to some chaps, a light burning in a tower window. I knew a poem about a thing like that once. Forgot it now, though. I was no end of a one for poetry when I was a kid — love and all that. Castle towers came in quite a lot. Funny how one grows out of that kind of thing.’ — Evelyn Waugh, Decline and Fall Read more →
UCLA 13, USC 9
I am reminded of the lines from “The Hollow Men” by T.S. Eliot: Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow. FIGHT ON! Read more →
“One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop
The art of losing isn’t hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. [Read more . . .] Read more →
“Yesterday” by W.S. Merwin
My friend says I was not a good son you understand I say yes I understand [Read more . . .] Read more →
Father’s Day Poems
“The Gift” by Li-Young Lee To pull the metal splinter from my palm my father recited a story in a low voice. [Read more . . .] “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold [Read more . . .] “In Dreams” by Kim Addonizio After eighteen years there’s no real grief left for the man who was my father. [Read more . . .] Read more →
The Algebra of Poetry
If poetry is reduced to an algebraic equation with one meaning, and only a teacher has the meaning, and you can’t figure it out without the teacher, it’s no fun. And when you become an adult, when you see a poem in The New Yorker, you’ll turn the page and look for a cartoon. You’ll say, ‘I don’t have to work for a good grade anymore.’ — Ted Kooser Read more →
Icarus
Icarus by Edward Field Icarus by Christine Hemp Landscape with the Fall of Icarus by William Carlos Williams Musee des Beaux Arts by W. H. Auden To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Triumph by Anne Sexton Waiting for Icarus by Muriel Rukeyser Read more →
Dark, Ironic Frost
My son was asked to memorize “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost for a 6th grade assignment: Read more →
Things That Might Have Been
I think about things that might have been and never were. The treatise on Saxon myths that Bede omitted to write. The inconceivable work that Dante may have glimpsed As soon as he corrected the Comedy’s last verse. History without two afternoons: that of the hemlock, that of the Cross. History without Helen’s face. Man without the eyes that have granted us the moon. Over three Gettysburg days, the victory of the South. The love we never shared. The vast empire the Vikings declined to found. The globe without the wheel, or without the rose. John Donne’s judgment of Shakespeare. The Unicorn’s other horn. The fabled Irish bird which alights in two places at once. The child I never had. — Jorge Luis Borges, “Things that might have been” Read more →
Instants
[Ed. Note: The unusual spellings are from the original source.] If I could live again my life, In the next – I’ll try, – to make more mistakes, I won’t try to be so perfect, I’ll be more relaxed, I’ll be more full – than I am now, In fact, I’ll take fewer things seriously, I’ll be less hygenic, I’ll take more risks, I’ll take more trips, I’ll watch more sunsets, I’ll climb more mountains, I’ll swim more rivers, I’ll go to more places – I’ve never been, I’ll eat more ice creams and less (lime) beans, I’ll have more real problems – and less imaginary ones, I was one of those people who live prudent and prolific lives – each minute of his life, Offcourse that I had moments of joy – but, if I could go back I’ll try to have only good moments, If you don’t know… Read more →
This Date in History
On this date in 1884, the cornerstone was laid for the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. (We got the statue for free — the pedestal we had to pay for.) One of the most historic fundraisers was the Pedestal Art Loan Exhibition, to which Walt Whitman, Mark Twain and others donated manuscripts for auction. Emma Lazarus donated a poem called “The New Colossus,” which sold for $1,500, but was mostly forgotten until 1945, when it was inscribed over the main entrance at the base of the statue. Read more →