Brecht 101 (NPM, 4.15.22)
Dear Ruthie, Have you ever read Brecht? He was one of my influences —I stole a couple of lines from “A Worker Reads History” and used them at the end of “A Mindful Rant for…
Category: Poets
Love Theme (NPM, 4.8.22)
Elizabeth I, When I Was Fair and Young When I was fair and young, then favor graced me. Of many was I sought their mistress for to be. But I did scorn them all and answered them…
Share the Wealth: It’s National Poetry Month
On Sunday 10 April I invite you to share a favorite poem or two with us, whether by a poet you love or one of your own poems. Or you can tell us a story involving poetry, as you…
Szym and Rez (NPM, 4.6.22)
Wislawa SzymborskaABC I’ll never find out nowWhat A. thought of me.If B. ever forgave me in the end.Why C. pretended everything was fine.What part D. played in E.’s silence.What F. had been expecting, if anything.Why…
4.4.22, National Poetry Month
Contemporary war is a bureaucratic and capitalistic enterprise that requires its bored clerks, soulless administrators, ignorant taxpayers, contradictory priests, and encouraging families. If we understood that a war machine is a pervasive system of complicity…
The Prescient and Prophetic Allen Ginsberg, 1956
America you don’t really want to go to war.America its them bad Russians.Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians. The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia’s power mad. She wants to…
Poem of the Week by Charles Reznikoff
I went to my grandfather’s to say good-bye:I was going away to a school out West.As I came in,My grandfather turned from the window at which he sat(sick, skin yellow, eyes bleary–but his hair still…
Not Flustered, Not Melancholy, Not Anxious
James Laughlin, Ezra Pound’s publisher, observed that “Pound’s translations of Confucian texts, beautiful as is their language, are seldom applauded by Sinologues.” But we common readers may appreciate such versions from the Analects, when they…
Quit Complaining!
Cold Mountain: 100 Poems by the T’ang Poet Han-shanTranslated and with an Introduction by Burton Watson I first learned of Han-shan 30 years ago when reading Jack Kerouac’s novel, The Dharma Bums, which starred Japhy…