by phillipw | Apr 12, 2020 | OR, PO
Victim of Women Perhaps the chest of Orpheus alone, Or half a shoulder, half a curled head Would be enough for man. They might atone Among the rocks and olives where the dead Bereaved lie torn to shreds because of love By women. There a man might pick him...
by phillipw | Apr 11, 2020 | AN, PO
Before the Internet in the Ancient World “Hellenistic culture was of necessity a culture of the book . . . : the age of the reader had arrived, and a poet was often a man speaking to a man, not to men.” ~ Michael Schmidt, The First Poets, 13...
by phillipw | Apr 10, 2020 | PO
Transmigration for the Spirit “poetry—that most portable of arts” ~ Michael Schmidt, The First Poets, 13 The most portable of arts, a poem rides The waves and centuries, right across our hearts And in them, through them. The oceanic tides Are what they sometimes feel...
by phillipw | Apr 10, 2020 | AN, PO
Heroes, Victims, and Poseidon The metre of ancient Greek poetry succeeds in “achieving a length and complexity that are unusual in the heroic verse of other literature.” ~ Michael Grant, The Rise of the Greeks, 325, as quoted in Michael Schmidt, The First Poets, 16....
by phillipw | Apr 9, 2020 | DE, MO, PO
Centuries before Sappho Praised Men and Women Pre-echoes of that verse, ancient Greek In poetry, go back so far that lost Verbs, Indo-European ones, can almost squeak Through Sappho. It is like they are embossed Behind her blond papyrus. Her inked lines Were written...
by phillipw | Apr 9, 2020 | PO
A Purpose of Poetry “For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d” The hands of poets are encircled by A ring of gold—or rings of gold and life. Such hands know much of wrinkled clouds and sky, Of thorns, and of the after rains of strife. The...
