April 14, 2014
…in 1648! University of Chicago Press editor Levi Stahl came across this Robert Herrick poem and wondered about the punctuation at the end of the second line. One wonders: was this an intentional play on the “smiling yet” line? Or a printing error? Heather N.
April 14, 2014
For the second year in a row, Dav Pilkey’s series Captain Underpants topped the American Library Association’s list of most-challenged books. Pilkey commented that he was surprised “that a series with no sex, no nudity, no drugs, no profanity and no more violence than a Superman cartoon has caused such an uproar.” Other “vilified” books […]
April 14, 2014
Danse Russe by William Carlos Williams If when my wife is sleeping and the baby and Kathleen are sleeping and the sun is a flame-white disc in silken mists above shining trees,– if I in my north room dance naked, grotesquely before my mirror waving my shirt round my head and singing softly to myself: […]
April 13, 2014
I Write by Larrinita Starks As I sit down on the bed and cut off the lights I think about my life and begin to write I write for the families dying on the streets I am scared to lay down because of the gunshots in my sleep I write because I am hurting, there […]
April 12, 2014
Check out this rare footage of New York School poet Frank O’Hara reading “Having a Coke with You.” Enjoy! [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDLwivcpFe8]
April 12, 2014
Ode to My Socks by Pablo Neruda (translated by Robert Bly) Mara Mori brought me a pair of socks which she knitted herself with her sheepherder’s hands, two socks as soft as rabbits. I slipped my feet into them as if they were two cases knitted with threads of twilight and goatskin, Violent socks, my […]
April 11, 2014
Insomniac by Maya Angelou There are some nights when sleep plays coy, aloof and disdainful. And all the wiles that I employ to win its service to my side are useless as wounded pride, and much more painful. This poem was selected by Lesley W. (Head of Adult Services) Poetry Copyright Notice
April 10, 2014
“To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.” — Robert Frost
April 10, 2014
Song of Myself (excerpt) by Walt Whitman 1 I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass. My tongue, every atom […]
April 9, 2014
Author and naturalist Peter Matthiessen died Saturday at his home in Sagaponack, New York at age 86. According to this fascinating NYT article, Mr. Matthiessen ” was a man of many parts: litterateur, journalist, environmentalist, explorer, Zen Buddhist, professional fisherman and, in the early 1950s, undercover agent for the Central Intelligence Agency in Paris.” He […]
