Poetry

While quoting last week from a novel by Toni Morrison, I was reminded of this poem. An old favorite of mine. You must forgive - even, I think, accept - the occasional use of language we don't like to use today. Benet died in the year that I was born, not quite a month later actually. No wonder I feel a connection. Read more about American Names

I didn't know my friend Hall's father, Jim Lovell, as well as I might have liked to. I know that he liked birding - we went together, he and I and Hall and his wife, Hall's mother, she in a wheelchair. She counted off more birds than any one of us. The too few times I visited Pete and Hall on my own, Jim would take us all out to dinner. He was a nice man. He was a learned man. He was an English professor, in his working days, and we might have had some delightful conversations had time and chance allowed. But not too long ago, time ran out. Read more about For Jim Lovell

Robin Coste Lewis drew on a multitude of sources for her Voyage of the Sable Venus: and Other Poems . These lines remind me vividly of captions in National Geographic of years past. Read more about Captions

Titus Lucretius Carus was not religious in the usual sense of the word, and yet he opens De Rerum Natura

with an invocation to Venus, whom Lucretius addresses as an allegorical representation of the reproductive power. (from the Wiki)

Spring is nearly here and it seems that Lucretius, much like myself, is sometimes in it for the metaphor: Read more about The Nature of Things

This month's full moon is still two weeks away, but I care not a rap.

Full Moon
Victoria Sackville-West

She was wearing the coral taffeta trousers
Someone had brought her from Ispahan,
And the little gold coat with pomegranate blossoms,
And the coral-hafted feather fan;
But she ran down a Kentish lane in the moonlight,
And skipped in the pool of the moon as she ran.

She cared not a rap for all the big planets,

by Emily Bronte Read more about Love and Friendship

I'm one of those besotted souls with a weakness for English period drama, and one of my favorites for a few seasons was Lark Rise to Candleford. I think it was in Series 3, Episode 4, when the villagers go out to gather in the wheat, that Alf (John Dagleish) leads the men into the field with The Keeper. I was so taken with it that I memorized it. I bet you will be too. Read more about Sing Ye Well

Earlier this year, I wrote about Italo Calvino's novel, If on a winter's night a traveler... and mentioned that there was yet another Calvino book on my shelf. Invisible Cities , however, isn't so much a novel as an epic poem. Read more about Invisible Cities

THE SPIDER AND THE FLY

'Will you walk into my parlour?' said the Spider to the Fly,
''Tis the prettiest parlour that ever did you spy;
The way into my parlour is up a winding stair,
And I have many curious things to show when you are there.'
'Oh no, no,' said the little Fly, 'to ask me is in vain,
For who goes up your winding stair can ne'er come down again.'

'I'm sure you must be weary, dear, with soaring up so high;
Will you rest upon my little bed?' said the Spider to the Fly.
'There are pretty curtains drawn around, the sheets are fine and thin;

Ilka Blade O' Grass Keps Its Ain Drap O' Dew

Confide ye aye in Providence, for Providence is kind,
And bear ye a' life's changes, wi' a calm and tranquil mind,
Though pressed and hemmed on every side, ha'e faith and ye 'll win through,
For ilka blade o' grass keps its ain drap o' dew.

Gin reft frae friends or crest in love, as whiles nae doubt ye've been,
Grief lies deep hidden in your heart or tears flow frae your een,