by phillipw | Aug 8, 2022 | AE, BE, ES, PR
Yearnings White clouds are lovelier or much more bright Than high blue domes. The sky above them both, And clouds and Orthodox cathedral, write A trinity of beauty, God’s own oath. A prayer for monks to chant these three compete. A shape of...
by phillipw | May 4, 2022 | AE, BE, ES, HE, JU, LI, MA, PH
Junge Männer, a Sonnet Sequence on the photographs in Herbert List’s Junge Männer [Each sonnet is about at least one of the sonnets in List’s book. Before the title of each sonnet is the number of the photograph the poem is about, as in (#1). Often (or...
by phillipw | Mar 14, 2022 | AE, BR, EC, RU, SE
Rupert Wanted Surrender “Love is a breach in the walls, a broken gate. Love sells the proud heart’s citadel to fate.”~ Rupert Brooke Would women be as likely as a man To write such sentiments, to think of love As breaching...
by phillipw | Sep 27, 2021 | AE, ES, PO, RE, SE, TR
What Poetry Should Be and Never Be Too many people think that poetry Should be like this one photo of a dusk. They think that poetry should only be Pink, lavender, and fuzzy clouds. No musk Of malenesss, armpit smell, and not, not, not A waft of crotch sweat from a...
by phillipw | Sep 26, 2021 | AE, DE, EM, PR, RA, WA, WH
Barbaric Yawp His “poetry” is not so much a thing Of barbarism as it is bad Greek Or Roman oratory. In its ring It has the sound of bombast. No, not sleek, But more like overstated prose tricked out As verse on pages. Rhetoric high-flown Quite...
by phillipw | Aug 7, 2021 | AE, BE, ES, PH
Gemmed Jeremiah Vituperating in Japan The pheasant screeches on the village roof. The startled hamlet is transformed, not by The gorgeousness or by his squawk; the proof That transcendental beauty needs the cry Of ugliness to set a splendor far Apart is shown by this...