by phillipw | Apr 17, 2020 | AE, AG, AN, BE, ES, PE
Peonies, Agamemnon, and the Iliad The peonies hold on in night-time dark. They fade and slacken to another kind Of loveliness. They do not know the stark Fate bearing down on them. Their pinks are blind, As blind as Homer in the palace of A king condemned by...
by phillipw | Apr 15, 2020 | AE, AP, DI, ES
Volcanic Balance Cleanliness is what we need in the art, In music, and in poetry. The heats Of passion and the pulsing of the heart And other organs, lungs, are best when beats Become subdued by breezy parts of mind, The temperate regions. Coolness enters in...
by phillipw | Apr 10, 2020 | AE, ES
The Poetic Kind of True “The stories begin in kinds of truth. As events recede in time, they grow not smaller but larger in language. The ancestor who fought locally becomes a hero in a battle which assumes the scale of the epic.” ~ Michael Schmidt, The First...
by phillipw | Apr 9, 2020 | AE, BE, ES
Critiquing Beauty Your beauty reasons truer than the truth. It throbs a thoughtful feeling where a mere Veracity of judgement yields to youth And freshest irises. Your pupils peer Past plain philosophy. Where liquid lies On lenses, they give entrance...
by phillipw | Mar 17, 2020 | AE, BE, ES, PO
Glory, not the Mundane Why let the facts invade the realm of beauty? The truth is not the point, or rather Truth Is sovereign. It is the poet’s duty To cut through ugliness to regal youth And highest glories, not to serve glib facts. The loveliness of lively...
by phillipw | Mar 15, 2020 | AE, BE, ES, MA
Troy in New Orleans, Manhattan, or London So I found “Helen” sitting in a streetcar; the Dionysian revels of her court were transferred to a Metropolitan roof garden with a jazz orchestra;and the katharsis of the fall of Troy I saw approximated in the recent World...
