Continuing our National Poetry Month celebration, here’s another poet’s love poem, loved by other poets, William Butler Yeats’ “He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven.” If Millay’s “Rosemary” portrays a relationship turned cold, “He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven” is more at the wooing stage. The speaker in Yeats poem begins by saying that … Continue reading Yeats’ “He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven” for National Poetry Month
Readers often hear different poems when reading the same text. It’s unavoidable, even though it causes some authors to despair at how they are misread. So, it should be no surprise that it is possible in performance to recast poetry considerably without changing a word. Around 1902 Irish poet William Butler Yeats wrote a poem … Continue reading The Folly of Being Comforted
My time and energy is short tonight, so this post will reflect that, but I wanted to present this supple poem by William Butler Yeats written near the end of the 19th century, but, I think, applicable in our American year 2020. How many of us as couples, as friends, as families this year have … Continue reading He Bids His Beloved Be At Peace
I’ll often choose a piece to present here from an instant impression. I’ll be reading another blog, looking at a writer connected with something else I’m looking for, or paging through an anthology and there’ll be this poem that strikes me as more interesting than the one before or the next one after. Somewhere last … Continue reading The Poetry of a Root Crop
Are there people today still falling in love, or not falling in love together, or remembering love and almost love? Seems like a silly or rhetorical question doesn’t it. So, yes, I suspect there are, as there have been before. People fall in love on marches, at the barricades. Policemen fall in love. People fall … Continue reading The Most Popular Parlando Piece, Spring 2020
It should have been just a throw-away line in Modernist novelist Ernest Hemingway’s first novel. A character describes how he went bankrupt: “Two ways. Gradually and then suddenly.” That line, or the concept of it: gradually, then all at once, has persisted because it encapsulates something that occurs more broadly than the accumulation of debt … Continue reading Murmuration
Continuing on with our countdown of the most popular pieces here this past spring, I find a few things that break the usual patterns. So let’s get on with it and see what we find that were the most liked and listened to since March 1st. The bold-face titles are links to the original post … Continue reading Spring 2020 Parlando Top Ten, numbers 4-2
For Heidi It’s been a rough series of days in the Twin Cities. Other than no great new loss of life (only fear of it) there’s not been much accomplished in my home or in my city. I have a few new pieces in various stages of completion, and ordinarily I’d be working on additional … Continue reading The Stare’s Nest at My Window revisited
A few months back I presented a series of poems about old age that turned out to be written by young poets. Here’s another one written by the great Irish poet William Butler Yeats when he was in his 20s. “When You Are Old” is generally considered to be written about Yeats’ love for Maud … Continue reading When You Are Old
I’ve done a number of William Butler Yeats poems here over the years as part of this project. We might agree that occurred because his words on the page just demand to be sounded. But there’s another side to Yeats that attracts too. He can write about political subjects with that same lyrical voice.* One … Continue reading The Stare’s Nest at My Window
Frank Hudson 