Blogs Posts in Poems category; 143 blog posts

Abraham Lincoln’s Favorite Poem

On Feb. 20, 1862, 150 years ago, young William Wallace Lincoln, third son of President Abraham Lincoln and his wife Mary, died. He was just 11 years old and the likely cause was typhoid fever. You have to wonder if the president in his gr [...]

Posted On : Feb, 22 2012 | Comments : 0

Poem of the week: The Blacksmiths

This week's marvellously cacophonous poem, usually known as "The Blacksmiths," was written some time around the middle of the 15th century. As shown by William Langland's The Vision of Piers Plowman, the Old English alli [...]

Posted On : Feb, 21 2012 | Comments : 0

“The Assumption,” by Bryan D. Dietrich (WordFarm, 84 Pages, ...

In spite of the title, these are not religious poems. ... Or are they? Though Dietrich doesn’t use the word “Assumption” to mean clearly the taking into heaven of the Virgin Mary, he does seem to have in mind the taking- [...]

Posted On : Feb, 20 2012 | Comments : 0

Bush poet pens rhyme for Bombing

Waldo the bush poet has released a new work called The Bombing of Darwin 19th February 1942 to remember the events that unfolded during the attack. The poem reads in part: "The bombs rained down on Darwin, what a sad and sorry day. & [...]

Posted On : Feb, 16 2012 | Comments : 0

Victorian poets in love: Barrett and Browning letters go onl...

Forget the chocolates this Valentine’s Day. Candles? Dinner? Clever repartee? That’s all so, well, 20th century. For a truly 21st century celebration of love, you have to go back to the 19th -- and the Web has supplied a [...]

Posted On : Feb, 15 2012 | Comments : 0

Makoni publishes “healing” poems

Entitled “A woman, Once A Girl - Breaking Silence”, the book comes after women and girls asked the activist to share her inspirational story. “I started writing poetry when I was in Grade 7, as a way to take out the p [...]

Posted On : Feb, 09 2012 | Comments : 0

The Poetry of a Classroom

There is something terribly troubling in the media and political discourse about education in our time. We so urgently need critical thinking to gauge what measures we can engage so we might inspire our children to study and invent their [...]

Posted On : Feb, 08 2012 | Comments : 0

A Poem May Get a Writer Jailed In China

Chinese writer and activist Zhu Yufu was charged with publishing a provocative poem this past week (the official charge was "inciting subversion of state power"). Zhu's poem is entitled "It's Time," and here it [...]

Posted On : Jan, 23 2012 | Comments : 0

Poem of the week: Philosophy by Amy Levy

Amy Levy was the first Jewish woman to attend Newnham College, Cambridge. Still more impressively, she published her first collection of poems, Xantippe and Other Verse, at the age of 20 (in 1881). She went on to produce three novels, two [...]

Posted On : Jan, 18 2012 | Comments : 0

Poem of the week: They Are All Gone into the World of Light!...

Henry Vaughan, born in Breconshire in 1621, began his literary career as a bright young secular poet of the Tribe of Ben. And then, after two unremarkable collections, a transformation occurred. His next book, Silex Scintillans, reveals a [...]

Posted On : Jan, 12 2012 | Comments : 0

Chinese Poetry

As defined by Watson (1986), poetry is a creative understanding of knowledge uttered through meaning sound and musical language choices in order to evoke an emotional reaction. Since times immemorial, poetry has been credited for its appl [...]

Posted On : Dec, 29 2011 | Comments : 0

Poem for a Birthday

I still can't get over that lousy conjurer, All thirty quids' worth of rank incompetence. It wasn't yesterday. Eleven years since, Almost to the hour. That slipshod sorcerer, Butter-fingered wizard … Remember, whe [...]

Posted On : Nov, 19 2011 | Comments : 0

Imaginary poem, imaginary king

A dead poet, a questionable editor, a 1000-line poem and an epic tale of escape meet in Vladimir Nabokov's 1962 novel "Pale Fire." Despite a wide array of critical acclaim (both praising and condemning), "Pale Fire" [...]

Posted On : Nov, 18 2011 | Comments : 0

Carol Rumens's poem of the week

DH Lawrence wrote that, in New Mexico, a "new part" of his soul "woke up suddenly" and "the old world gave way to a new". In Native American religion he discovered there were no gods, because "all is god [...]