ClimbingSky

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POETRY REVIEW

  • POETRY REVIEW: “Eagle Poem” by Joy Harjo

    Joy Harjo (b. 1951) was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She was the 23rd United States Poet Laureate from 2019 to 2022, the first Native American to hold that honor. Her poetry is generally characterized by: Here is one of my favorite Harjo poems, “Eagle Poem.” Enjoy! EAGLE POEM by Joy HarjoTo pray you open your Read more

  • POETRY BOOK REVIEW: Chief Joseph of the Nez Pearce by Robert Penn Warren

    “A strange land we wandered to eastern horizonsWhere blueness of mountains swam in their blue–In blue beyond name.” Robert Penn Warren is probably remembered more today as a novelist than as a poet. While it is true that he did win the Pulitzer Prize in 1946 for his famous novel All the King’s Men, he actually Read more

  • POETRY REVIEW: “What Kind of Times are These” by Adrienne Rich

    Adrienne Rich (1929–2012) was an American poet, feminist, and lesbian activist. Her early poetry, which was greatly admired by W.H. Auden, was quite formal. However, as she struggled with the repressiveness of the 1950s and patriarchal society, she broke away from formalism to free verse. She is one of the few poets I can think Read more

  • POETRY REVIEW: “For What Binds Us” by Jane Hirshfield

    Jane Hirshfield was born in 1953 in New York City. She is an ordained lay Zen Buddhist and a well-regarded translator; she is also one of my favorite contemporary poets. I have heard Hirshfield described as the poet of “presence.” Her work is often described as a bridge between the Western lyrical tradition and the meditative depth Read more

  • POETRY 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 BOOK REVIEW: Poetry and Ambition by Donald Hall

    The best way to learn about poetry is to read poetry, and to read poets talking about it. With that in mind, over the next month I will be highlighting a number of books that feature poets talking about poetry, beginning with the book Poetry and Ambition: Essays 1982–88 by Donald Hall. The greatest challenge in reviewing Read more

  • POETRY REVIEW: “Long-Legged Fly” by W.B. Yeats

    There is no poet that I have spent more time with than W.B. Yeats. I have read and reread his Collected Poems more times than I can count. If I had to get rid of all the books I own but one, his Collected Poems is the book I would keep. To my mind, there Read more

  • 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

  • On Re-writing Poems

    Years ago I remember reading that Yeats would constantly re-write and re-work even his most famous published poems. At the time I read that, it sounded like the most insane thing I had ever heard. Why go to all the work to make a poem, to get it right, have it set into type and Read more

  • Poetry Review: “Memorabilia” by Robert Browning

    I have been spending a little time of late again with Robert Browning, reading Chesterton’s biography of Browning and re-reading for the first time in a couple of decades his poetry in a serious and more formal way. I have never been far from Browning (who incidentally, shares my birthday) because certain Browning poems and Read more