The Journey by Mary Oliver One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice– though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. ‘Mend my life!’ each voice cried. But you didn’t stop. You knew what you had to do,…
This poem is for anyone who has ever sat through a Shakespeare play and found it too long. Purgatory by Maxine Kumin And suppose the darlings get to Mantua, suppose they cheat the crypt, what next? Begin with him, unshaven. Though not, I grant you, a displeasing cockerel, there’s egg yolk on his chin. His seedy robe’s aflap, he’s got…
Subway Rush Hour by Langston Hughes Mingled breath and smell so close mingled black and white so near no room for fear. Hughes published Subway Rush Hour in 1951 part of “Montage of a Dream Deferred”. In “My Early Days in Harlem” 1963 he wrote of his arrival Harlem as a young man from the mid-West. On a bright September…
Coming by Philip Larkin On longer evenings, Light, chill and yellow, Bathes the serene Foreheads of houses. A thrush sings, Laurel-surrounded In the deep bare garden, Its fresh-peeled voice Astonishing the brickwork. It will be spring soon, It will be spring soon— And I, whose childhood Is a forgotten boredom, Feel like a child Who comes on a scene Of…
Here’s another wonderful old chestnut: Sea Fever by John Masefield I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by; And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking, And a grey mist on the sea’s…
“Fool and scoundrel guide the State.” That’s true enough. In the early 1930’s when this was written speeding traffic on a Californian freeway was still something new and probably pretty scary to many. Just as the rise of fascism was to those who could see it. Before Disaster by Yvor Winters Evening traffic homeward burns Swift and even on the…
Stalin’s Heirs by Yevgeny Yevtushenko Mute was the marble. Mutely glimmered the glass. Mute stood the sentries, bronzed by the breeze. Thin wisps of smoke curled over the coffin. And breath seeped through the chinks as they bore him out the mausoleum doors. Slowly the coffin floated, grazing the fixed bayonets. He also was mute- his embalmed fists, just pretending…
If you went to school in the UK anytime in the last sixty years then you will probably be familiar with this much anthologized poem. Timothy Winters by Charles Causley Timothy Winters comes to school With eyes as wide as a football pool, Ears like bombs and teeth like splinters: A blitz of a boy is Timothy Winters. His belly…
Muriel Rukeyser wrote this in 1968. Read it and tell me it doesn’t feel like she is writing for this moment in history. How many mornings recently have you been “more or less insane” as the news pours out of “various devices”? Poem (I lived in the first century of world wars) I lived in the first century of world…
What an intriguing idea: Reversing time to see your younger self moving forward in time as you move backward. What if everything that’s happening here has a reverse reality in an anti-world? Mueller’s poem plays with this idea of opposite motions. What would you need to have on hand to meet that self midway through life? The speaker of this…
Thaw by Edward Thomas Over the land freckled with snow half-thawed The speculating rooks at their nests cawed And saw from elm-tops, delicate as flowers of grass, What we below could not see, Winter pass. Thomas wrote all his poetry in a three-year burst of creativity between 1914 and 1917. He had enlisted in 1915 and embarked for France at…
Not a very effective way to get children to love school and enjoy math. But looks like it was an excellent method for teaching subversion, resilience and resistance to authority. Good work Miss Moran. Trouble with Math in a One-Room Country School by Jane Kenyon The others bent their heads and started in. Confused, I asked my neighbor to explain—a…
There’s a comfort in routines and familiar sounds. Some towns have a noon whistle. If you’ve lived near a school or a factory you’ll know a routine. If you’re close to a children’s playground you can tell the time of day as it fills up with voices when school gets out. My childhood had the Swindon railway works steam hooters to…
Wood On The Downs After Paul Nash by Martin Malone We have been here before. Uffington, Hackpen, Grim’s Ditch, Ogbourne St.George, Wayland’s Smithy, Sparshott Firs, Bishopstone and Barbury; all the trodden way from Overton to Beacon Hill. Each place its genius loci, a favourite colour: Ash-Blue, Ochre, Payne’s Grey, Terra-Verte, Lamp Black, Sienna. But today you ditch your winter…
March 25th marks the anniversary of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist fire. In Shirt Robert Pinsky weaves in the Triangle Factory fire as he broods over the purchase of a shirt. He dwells with careful loving attention on the technical terms for shirt-making. His lists of esoteric terms and trades lead to moral digressions on Asian sweatshops, the Triangle fire, Scottish…