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 →
EppsNet Archive: Poetry
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 →
You’re as Old as You Feel
Sometimes I feel really old . . . I’m not getting any younger I’m not getting any smarter I’m not getting any healthier Sometimes I feel like 45 would be a pretty good age to die . . . Related Links “Men at Forty” by Donald Justice Read more →
I Sit By The Window
A loyal subject of these second-rate years, I proudly admit that my finest ideas are second-rate, and may the future take them as trophies of my struggle against suffocation. I sit in the dark. And it would be hard to figure out which is worse; the dark inside, or the darkness out. — Joseph Brodsky, “I Sit By The Window” Read more →
Concord Hymn
On this date in 1775, the first shots in the Revolutionary War were fired at Lexington and Concord . . . By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood And fired the shot heard round the world. The foe long since in silence slept; Alike the conqueror silent sleeps; And Time the ruined bridge has swept Down the dark stream which seaward creeps. On this green bank, by this soft stream, We set to-day a votive stone; That memory may their deed redeem, When, like our sires, are sons are gone. Spirit, that made those heros dare To die and leave their children free, Bid Time and Nature gently spare The shaft we raise to them and thee. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Read more →
Zelda Fitzgerald
Nobody has ever measured, even the poets, how much a heart can hold. . . . When one really can’t stand anymore, the limits are transgressed, and one thing has become another; poetry registers itself on the hospital charts, and heart-break has to be taken care of. — Zelda Fitzgerald On this date in 1948, she and eight other patients died in a fire at the Highland Mental Hospital in Asheville, NC. Because they had been locked in their rooms for the night, the patients were unable to escape the flames. Read more →
Happy Valentine’s Day
What do you seek, so pensive and silent? What do you need, Camerado? Dear son! do you think it is love? — Walt Whitman, “Starting from Paumanok” Read more →
Dead Poets
For after all Humboldt did what poets in crass America are supposed to do. He chased ruin and death even harder than he had chased women. He blew his talent and his health and reached home, the grave, in a dusty slide. He plowed himself under. Okay. So did Edgar Allan Poe, picked out of the Baltimore gutter. And Hart Crane over the side of a ship. And Jarrell falling in front of a car. And poor John Berryman jumping from a bridge. For some reason this awfulness is peculiarly appreciated by business and technological America. The country is proud of its dead poets. It takes terrific satisfaction in the poets’ testimony that the USA is too tough, too big, too much, too rugged, that American reality is overpowering. And to be a poet is a school thing, a skirt thing, a church thing. The weakness of the spiritual powers… Read more →
Small Consolations
Who possesses the wherewithal for labor or love without small consolations? Who can live? — Jeredith Merrin, “Downtown Diner” Read more →
The Way We Are Living
The way we are living, timorous or bold, will have been our life. — Seamus Heaney, “Elegy” Read more →
Fun With Obituaries
Several ordinary life stories, if told in rapid succession, tend to make life look far more pointless than it really is, probably. — Kurt Vonnegut Is that a fact? Let’s try it and see! Here are some excerpts from this week’s obituaries in the Irvine World News: Read more →
Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson was born on this date in 1830. Happy Birthday, Emily! I died for beauty, but was scarce Adjusted in the tomb, When one who died for truth was lain In an adjoining room. He questioned softly why I failed? “For beauty,” I replied. “And I for truth,—the two are one; We brethren are,” he said. And so, as kinsmen met a night, We talked between the rooms, Until the moss had reached our lips, And covered up our names. Let’s party! Read more →
So Much Trash
On this date in 1851, Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick was published. The book, considered by modern scholars to be one of the great American novels, was dismissed by Melville’s contemporaries and belittled by reviewers as “so much trash belonging to the worst school of Bedlam literature.” Melville took bad reviews pretty hard and gave up writing fiction a few years later. He died in New York on September 28, 1891, at the age of 72, almost completely forgotten. Read more →
That is You
The earth keeps some vibration going There in your heart, and that is you. — Edgar Lee Masters, “Fiddler Jones” There’s a balance to be struck between providing a kid with some direction in his life, and thinking that he should like certain things because I like them, or dislike certain things because I don’t like them, or that he should do things a certain way because that’s the way I would do them, the danger being that even though my way is, of course, the best way, the way he does it is what makes him him . . . Read more →
Wrought by Prayer
I have lived my life, and that which I have done May He within Himself make pure! but thou, If thou shouldst never see my face again, Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer Than this world dreams of. — Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Morte d’Arthur” Tennyson has said that more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of, but he has wisely refrained from saying whether they are good things or bad things. It might perhaps be as well if the world were to dream of, or even become wide awake to some of the things that are being wrought by prayer. — Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh Read more →
Introducing a 10-Year-Old to Poetry
Me: (reading aloud from syllabus for UC Irvine Young Writers class, in which my kid is enrolled) “We are going to be doing a variety of activities, including a facade poem, a four season poem, journal writing, and a memory snapshot story.” Him: Poems blow. Read more →
Yowzah!
O to be yielded to you whoever you are, and you to be yielded to me in defiance of the world! O to return to paradise! O bashful and feminine! O to draw you to me, to plant on you for the first time the lips of a determin’d man! — Walt Whitman, “One Hour to Madness and Joy” Read more →