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"Earth Never Grieves"
Today was -- I'm afraid there is no other way to put it -- A Glorious Autumn Day. Not a cloud in the sky. The barest wisp of a wind. The trees are half-empty, save for the Japanese maples, which are...
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A Lost World, Part Three: "Grave Sweet Ancestral Faces"
The following poem by Kathleen Raine has its source in a painting by Samuel Palmer. I'm guessing that the painting she has in mind is the one that appears immediately below. However, any number of...
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"I Tread On Many Autumns Here"
Over the weekend we had a strong wind-storm, and the trees have now lost most of their leaves. I'm not inclined to hear voices when I am out and about in the World. Today, however, as I walked...
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"Every Day The World Grows Noisier; I, For One, Will Have No Part In That...
I have written before in praise of idleness. One of my favorite apostrophes to idleness appears in George Gissing's The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft:"More than half a century of existence has...
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Remembrance Day: "The Silver Thrush No More Crying Canada -- Canada For The...
For all of the heartbreaking personal anguish evident in Ivor Gurney's war poetry, what moves me most deeply in the poetry is his compassion for, and his ever-enduring memory of, those who were with...
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"Who Has Seen The Wind?"
In terms of reading poetry, I've barely scratched the surface. I'd guess I've read about 1% of the poetry that I would have liked to have read by this point in my life. But I'm not concerned. I'm...
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Swedes
When I was young -- and innocent of both the world of agriculture and the world of vegetables (as I still mostly am) -- I believed that a "swede" was someone who hailed from Sweden. Eventually, my...
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"How It Rained! . . . How It Snowed! . . . How It Shone!"
Please bear with me: I have decided to get these swede poems out of my system. The two poems that follow have to do with the "docking" of swedes, which consists of cutting away soil and fibers from...
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"That Ringed-in Hour Of Pines, Stars, And Dark Eminence"
This week has been clear and cold. The night sky seems deeper, and the stars seem sharper. That winter look. No doubt things seem that way by dint of emotion, not by virtue of scientific fact.Of...
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"For 'Tis November"
It is time, dear readers, to pay our annual visit to "The Region November." This is the fourth time ("Time's winged chariot hurrying near!") the poem has appeared here, for which I beg your indulgence....
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Mangels
We have previously considered the poetic possibilities of the humble swede. It is now time to turn our attention to the mangel (also known as the mangel-wurzel and the mangold). Those who are...
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Furniture
Poetry can help us to appreciate the homely and the commonplace. This is as it should be: the homely and the commonplace World -- where we spend our days -- is also a miraculous and a wondrous World....
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The Dream Of The Butterfly
The older one gets, the more life begins to take on a dreamlike aspect. Why is this? First, one's awareness of the transience of all things (including oneself) assumes a more concrete presence. Mind...
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Winter Moon, With Planet
I am ignorant of the seasonal progress of the moon and the other heavenly bodies across the night sky. I really ought to make a study of these things, especially since time is running out on ventures...
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"Constellated Daisies"
Before I return to dust I intend to read all 947 of Thomas Hardy's poems. (James Gibson has numbered them for us in his 1976 edition of Hardy's Complete Poems.) Mind you, I say this with a sense of...
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Night Thoughts
At the beginning of winter, I tend to be drawn to Chinese and Japanese poetry. Perhaps the spareness and the directness of the poetry match the look of the world at this time of year. But spareness...
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Signposts
Once, long ago, I drove through the rolling fields of the Virginia countryside at dusk in autumn, searching for the site of a somewhat obscure Civil War cavalry skirmish. In those days, GPS navigation...
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Chimeras
As I have noted here before, I do my best to keep the news of the world out of my life. However, by some sort of media osmosis, reports of, say, a president being caught in an oft-repeated bald-faced...
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Christmas, Part Eight: "A Merry Christmas, Friend!"
A Thomas Hardy ghost story:"He saw a ghost in Stinsford Churchyard on Christmas Eve, and his sister Kate says it must have been their grandfather upon whose grave T. H. had just placed a sprig of holly...
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Perspective, Part Twelve: Distance
Today, I've had two poems circling around each other. I've been doing my best not to pin them down. I have no desire to concoct an "explanation" for why they have appeared beside one another....
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