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Category Archives: Starting from Poetry
On Poetry & Change
I fear that I’m not a very good friend sometimes. I can be thoughtless and absentminded, and even when I think to call the people I love–and I do love them–the phone seems suddenly to weigh ten tons, and I … Continue reading
Posted in Starting from Poetry
Tagged Auden, chance, Change, character, Emerson, family, fate, fortune, friendship, John Berryman, Love, luck, magnanimity, Poems, Poetry, shelter island, sore loser
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On Becoming a Poet
I’ve been meaning for weeks now to write a post here about becoming a poet and never was the urge more strongly felt than after reading a poem by Edward Thomas two weeks ago. The poem, called “Adlestrop,” ends like this: … Continue reading
Posted in Starting from Poetry
Tagged Borges, consciousness, Edward Thomas, literature, Poems, Poetry, poets, religion, Robert Frost, spirituality, Wallace Stevens, William Blake, Writing
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On the Lowly
A.R. Ammons’ poem “Still” reminds us that nothing in the world is lowly, and that everything is in “surfeit of glory.” And finally he concludes that even the most seemingly lowly things, from beggars to ticks, are “magnificent with being.” … Continue reading
On Poetry and Childlessness
Rilke speaks in his letters about the loneliness of childhood, and I think this Romantic notion of that state is generally accepted by most artists. And there is something to be said about the long stretches of boredom–at least, it … Continue reading
Posted in Starting from Poetry
Tagged childhood, childlessness, imaginative literature, Poetry, Rilke, romantic notion, Wordsworth
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It Must Be Time to Live
It’s been more than a year since my last post. It’s been a year and three months, almost to the day. This doesn’t mean I haven’t wanted to. I’ve tried. About a half-dozen drafts, begun and aborted, exist. But the … Continue reading
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Where Is Poetry Now?
I feel differently about poetry these days. It’s hard to say just how, except to say that I don’t feel the same. I wonder what that means, but I’m not sure it matters much. I write less, I think less, … Continue reading
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The Joy that Finds Us
My attitudes about poetry can leave my students a little confused. But I’m not sure this confusion is always genuine. It seems sometimes a kind of resistance, which insists on a holding fast to a belief long after it has … Continue reading
Posted in Starting from Poetry
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Some Notes on Wonder
Early this winter, I was startled by a flock of starlings. They had been nesting in the cypress tree which flanks the garage, and when I came around the corner with the trash cans they flew out from hiding. They … Continue reading
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Poetry & Prayer
As a child, I never learned how to pray. My parents aren’t religious, and I can’t remember a single instance, when my mother or father uttered the word God. And yet despite this fact, I have cultivated, through the art … Continue reading
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Revising Revision
A few years ago I wrote a long essay called “Why Poetry Doesn’t Matter.” I only remember now the gist of that argument. And the conclusion went something like this. When considering the uses of poetry, we ought not to … Continue reading
