Tag Archives: poetry

Etheridge Knight was a Black poet who lived 1931-1991. His rise to poetic prominence came via a book of poems he wrote while incarcerated for robbery, Poems from Prison. This ended up being a theme in Knight’s work, as he produced … Continue reading →

I’m just going to get out of the poem’s way today. Listen to Loreena McKennit’s classic setting afterward! “The Highwayman”, by Alfred Noyes PART ONE The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees. The moon was a ghostly … Continue reading →

In honor of yesterday’s anniversary of the establishment of the Library of Congress, a poem about libraries by Nikki Giovanni. A LIBRARY (for Kelli Martin) a Library Is: a place to be free to be in space to be in … Continue reading →

William Shakespeare was supposedly born right around this day: his actual date of birth is not known, but his baptism date is. Shakespeare was baptized April 26, 1564–if in fact that is his real name!!! Um, sorry about that. We’ve … Continue reading →

One of the pieces we played in the concert band in my first year of college was a piece by Elliot Del Borgo, called Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night. It was a dramatic work, sometimes atonal, with a … Continue reading →

In 8th grade, I was skeptical about all the stuff my English teachers the last few years had been saying about things like meaning and symbolism and all the rest of it. I would read a work, be it a … Continue reading →

One of my favorite collections is An Anthology of World Poetry, edited by Mark Van Doren, a poet and scholar who lived in the 20th century. Van Doren’s collection is an extensive gathering of poems in translation from all over the … Continue reading →

Poetry, like all art, must reflect and address all matters within the mess we call The Human Condition, which means that poetry can’t only be focused on positive matters or on beauty. Poetry must also look unflinchingly at the awfullest … Continue reading →