ClimbingSky

Why Baseball, Books, and the Grateful Dead matter

POETRY REVIEWS

  • BOOK REVIEW: Tales from Ovid by Ted Hughes

    At first blush, the marriage between Ovid, that most latin of poets, and Ted Hughes would seem as unlikely a match as any you could imagine. Not in ability, of course, but in language and temperament. Hughes as a poet has always seemed to me one of the most earthy, physical, and Anglo-Saxon of all Read more

  • POETRY REVIEW: “After Long Silence” by Jane Hirshfield

    Silence is where poetry is born. I have long wondered if my preference for books and poetry is based in part on the fact that I was born with hearing defect and something called Central Auditory Processing Disorder. A number of surgeries and hospital stays when I was young, fixed the hearing defect. The Central Read more

  • POETRY REVIEW: “Another” by Hayden Carruth

    Poetry moves on a pendulum of influence, between nature and the political (Poetry of Beauty/Poetry of Justice). A few great poets like Yeats can inhabit and influence both dialectical poles, moving from pole to pole one poem at a time. Most poets are most comfortable, most at home, toward one end of the long pendulum swing or the other. A prolific Read more

  • POETRY REVIEW: “In Bleak Midwinter” by Christina Rossetti

    After a brown Christmas, winter has come again to the North Country. The past two winters have not been the kind of winter we are used to here in the North Country. Though it is difficult today to say what a “typical” winter in Minnesota really is now, deep snow is what remember. Climate change Read more

  • Poetry Review: “The Poet and the Bird” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

    Elizabeth Barrett Browning was a great influence on Emily Dickinson. Not, of course, in language or style but more in temperament. Certainly the wordiness of Barret Browning bears little in common with the spareness of a typical Dickinson poem. It is easy to see why Dickinson would have gravitated to Barret Browning. Her playfulness of Read more

  • Poetry Review: Matsuo Basho

    Matsuo Basho was the most famous poet of his day (1644-1694). He is considered the greatest master of the haiku form. His haikus may be the most well-known and most-translated. For those of us who do not read Japanese, we can only read him in translation. The subtle differences in translating his small poems from Read more

  • Poetry Review: “Consolation” by Wislawa Szymborska

    Wislawa Szymborska won the Noble Prize for literature in 1996 “for poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality.” The irony of such an academic description of Szmborska’s poetry, that is anything but academic and imprecise is, I am guessing, completely lost on the Read more

  • Friday’s Food For Thought: Auden on Poetry

    [Those who complain about the ambiguity or obscurity of modern poetry] “should first examine their consciences and ask themselves with how many people and on how many occasions they have genuinely and profoundly shared some experience with another.” ~ W. H. Auden Read more

  • Poetry Review: “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity” by John Milton

    Milton wrote this poem in 1629 at the age of 21. It is often considered his first great poem in English. It is poetically and theologically pure Milton. It is also the best Christmas poem ever written. For 40 years now, I have re-read this poem on Christmas Eve. It is as close to a Read more

  • Poetry Review: “Christmas Party at South Danbury Church” by Donald Hall

    I have not gone to many poetry readings. Those few I have attend have left me cold. Bothered invariably by the demeanor of the poet and/or of the audience. Poetry should be read aloud, but poets and audiences should be matched carefully. Only those who know the poet for the bag-of-gas he or she truly Read more