Why are some poems easier to learn by heart than others? It cannot be simply a matter of simplicity and regular rhythms and rhyming, for sometimes the latter are the hardest of all to master. I found this out a few years ago when I set out to learn Robert Lowell’s poem “Mr. Edward and […]
Anything That Burns: The Poetry of Lola Ridge
The New York Times obituary would describe Lola Ridge as one of the “leading poets of America,” and in 2011, former poet laureate Robert Pinsky called her “[a]n early, great chronicler of New York life.” She was a chronicler, too, of the working class throughout the industrial Northeast: Charge the blast furnace, workman. . . […]
Poet and Scholar Annie Finch in Conversation
A poet’s poet, Annie Finch is known for her original blending of formalist and free verse styles in her poems, and her activism on behalf of other poets, particularly women. With all her degrees from Stanford and Yale, and her rich literary and scholarly ancestry, Finch is far from elitist, promoting the literary voices of […]
Marianne Moore’s Poem “I Like a Horse. . .”
Obstinacy as Hedge against Feelings of Nothingness Is Marianne Moore’s poem a war poem in disguise? Horses are beautiful, sleek, graceful. Mules are obstinate and onerous–and useful. As a personality the poet Marianne Moore was nothing if not pragmatic; I’ve always liked Moore’s meditative poem on human and animal obstinacy, on inflexibility as means of […]
Dog Poems by Cleopatra Mathis
Cleopatra Mathis’s marvelous Book of Dog (Sarabande Books, 2012) really is a book of dog poems. The book has three parts: “Canis” [wild dogs], concerns the painful end of a marriage; the second, most interesting title section, itself a series of numbered poems, explores animal and dog consciousness; and “Essential Tremor,” the third, refers to […]
Notes on a Week with the Frost Place
Notes on My Week at the Frost Place, Franconia, New Hampshire, August through August 9, 2014. Here I am at the Frost Place near Franconia, New Hampshire deep into poetry with a few dozen other participants. A kind of low-key Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference with Patrick Donnelly as the organizer. Donnelly gave his talk last […]