In her early poems, Mary Oliver was quite competent at writing in the allegedly defunct form of a sonnet — a lovely one.
Category: Writing
After After Rain
The earthworm sings to the soil,
The tulip invokes the worm,
The fawn conjures the tulip
And together they soothe the moon…
Twelve Words After Rain
“The earthworm’s song to the soil…”
Vox populi
As someone who has taken decades to find his voice, I think a lot about the word. Though its etymological origin lies in human utterance, we musicians speak of the voicing of an instrument, which means its tone color as well as the way a given chord is “spelled” (e.g., in its first, second, and… Continue reading Vox populi
Warren Zevon as poet
I recently sounded out a wise man of letters (and my friend) Jake Burnett about poetry as musical lyric, preoccupied as I have been in forecasting the headaches my poems would occasion a composer. Happily he did not send me to Sidney Lanier. At Jake’s suggestion I dived into Warren Zevon’s “My Ride’s Here,” the… Continue reading Warren Zevon as poet
Frederick Seidel, Compassion Artist?
I find Seidel’s “To My Friend Anne Hutchinson” to be skillful, gentle, and touching.
In Closing
Frank Kermode’s book The Sense of an Ending has had a persistent effect on how I write.
W.S. Merwin’s “Rain Travel”
Here’s a clever and beautiful poem from 1993. I’ve added line numbers for convenience. Setting: a dark bedroom in the speaker’s home. Visual gloom—dark, black, night, sightless—characterizes the first 11 lines, and after a transformation we return to darkness at the end, but now with a tremendous shout. From the outset the diction suggests passivity… Continue reading W.S. Merwin’s “Rain Travel”
How I Came to Cross the Jabbok
By midafternoon we’d come to the river beyond which Esau’s henchmen lay, The banks bright with chittering poplars and a vista of wild olives and tulips, pines and reeds. Gazelles nibbled the grass while larks and finches fiddled with their fledglings. I stayed behind my entourage, sent them all across in groups by different routes… Continue reading How I Came to Cross the Jabbok
The other I
I think I mentioned my Biblical work-in-progress. I’m still circling and circling like a hawk watching Jacob and the angel brawling below me, but I need to get closer in order to finish the poem so my talented friend Simon Kaplan can perform it in a couple weeks. Well, if not “finish” then “bring to… Continue reading The other I