I have my partisan convictions, you may have them too. And yes, our particular governmental and economic institutions are imperfect instruments. Natural forces only partially in our control and as small as a virus and as large as a changing atmosphere are still arrayed against not just our nation, but our planet. Proud racial and … Continue reading O honey-bees, come build in the empty house of the stare
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
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
As we continue our countdown toward the most popular piece of this ending winter, we come to a section coincidentally that’s all poets known by three names. You can’t plan something like that, but your listens and likes counted up that way. 4. “The Stare’s Nest at My Window” by William Butler Yeats. This poem … Continue reading Winter 2020 Parlando Top Ten, numbers 4-2
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
Let’s return today to the English mystic and poet William Blake, but continue on a thought that is inherent with the last two pieces, one by Yeats and the other by a long-winded guy who writes this. Poetry, just like other writing can, within its levels, do any number of things. One can seek to … Continue reading from The Book of Urizen, Chapter 9
