by phillipw | Jul 13, 2020 | BE, FL, HE, WH, WO
Deer-tongue The smell of deer-tongue came to me today From decades past. I mean the fragrance of The dried out leaves, as dried out as the splay Of decades since my father taught us love, His sons, beneath the Florida sun, leaves That called up beauty...
by phillipw | Jul 13, 2020 | AE, AN, BE, CH, ES, PH, PL
Philopoiêtai, Poetry Lovers from Time Immemorial “Plato’s Symposium shows how Plato deploys dramatic irony to undermine the philopoiêtai’s use of poetry. Elizabeth Belfiore (“Poets and the Symposium”) argues that the dialogue’s first five symposiasts, in their poetic...
by phillipw | Jul 12, 2020 | BE, EY, LI, PI, TH
Pindar on Theoxenus The poet Pindar focuses on love Derived from burning rays from flashing eyes Of young Theoxenus. They are above All others. Love in any other guise Is dimness at its best. The sun can melt The wax of bees, can sting it with its heat....
by phillipw | Jul 12, 2020 | BE, IM, MA
Not for Conquering to Crush and Make a Cruel Empire but for Unforgotten Beauty “Hystaspes had a younger brother whose name was Zariadres: and they were both men of great personal beauty” ~ Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae, XIII, 919 So what if you exist in words alone In...
by phillipw | Jul 12, 2020 | AE, AN, BE, ES, HE, PO
No Room for Unholiness not Cleansed “ ‘What would a man not give,’declares Plato in the Apology, ‘to engage in conversation with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer?’ Can we do something of the sort? If not to engage in conversation, then at least to glimpse...
by phillipw | Jul 12, 2020 | AE, BE, ES, FR, NI, PH, PL
Nietzsche vs. Plato Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem Nietzsche said that Plato was “the greatest enemy of art Europe has yet produced.” This Plato spoke in imagery so far Removed from Heidegger...