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Category Archives: Starting from Poetry
On Eloquence*
I don’t subscribe entirely to the notion that there is nothing new to say under the sun. Though the human predicament hasn’t changed much in the last ten thousand years – we suffer ourselves to be born, navigate through a … Continue reading
Posted in Starting from Poetry
Tagged "The Dead", Adam Penna, CG Jung, Cormac McCarthy, Eloquence, Emerson, Hamlet, Hart Crane, John Berryman, Joyce, Poems, Poetry, Shakespeare, The Road, Tim Miller
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An Essay on Risk Taking in the College Classroom and the Creative Writer’s Role in Fucking Shit Up*
An Introduction: Freshman writers have particular trouble with two aspects of writing, for which creative writers have answers. The first is revision. Still many composition professors assess product rather than process, and therefore stress editing rather than revision. Creative writers, … Continue reading
On Faith, Not-Faith, Poetry & Death*
A poet is constantly in a state of reassessment as long as he desires to be a vital presence, whether on the page or in the world. So I have continuously and obsessively turned the object, the diamond of poetry, … Continue reading
Posted in Starting from Poetry
Tagged death, Dickinson, divorce, Emerson, faith, grandparents, grief, Hamlet, hope, Li Po, life, literature, Pascal, philosophy, Poems, Poetry, Rilke, Schopenhauer, Shakespeare, Song of Myself, Tu Fu, Whitman, wisdom, Writing
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On Poetic Development*
Poets, perhaps unlike poems, are born not made, but they aren’t born in the womb so much as they are born in the world–maybe even as the result of the world. Stevens often referred to the world as the mother, … Continue reading
Posted in Starting from Poetry
Tagged animal fact, Christianity, D.H. Lawrence, flesh and blood, Jesus, pietas, Poetry, poets, Robinson Jeffers, The Lord's Prayer, Wallace Stevens, Walt Whitman
2 Comments
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
1 Comment
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
2 Comments
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
Posted in Starting from Poetry
5 Comments
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
Posted in Starting from Poetry
3 Comments
Adam Penna 