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Line from Woodnotes I

Line from Woodnotes I Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem Bing Videos The weakness of “departed lover” in The line is maybe only slightly weak, Not weak enough to be condemned as sin, But weak is weak.  When...

A Beam in the Eye

          A Beam in the Eye   It’s quite a botheration to admit That critics, gifted though they are, can slip Up.  One that I can reverence and sit And read for years and decades easily can strip Away respect with one remark on Keats. The critic maybe had an insight...

Binfield’s Baddest Bantam Boy

Binfield’s Baddest Bantam Boy Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse  modern poem  contemporary poem When Pope devised heroic couplets, they Were like the weapons of the day men walked With by their thighs.  Their rapiers’ display Was...

The Cavern Leading to the Muses

The Cavern Leading to the Muses When Linus first invented rhythm with A melody in song, the beauty came Ideal — so lovely that a sacred myth Could not compete.  Apollo could not tame A thing so perfect, so he had to kill The poet.  Deity must never lose With humans,...

I Have Looked upon the Face of Jolliness

I Have Looked upon the Face of Jolliness The ancient Greeks in poetry were lewd As limericks, playful, silly as a stand Up joker on a comic’s platform, rude And crude, yep, far more rude than Russell Brand. Emitted from these ancient rhythmic throats Were poems...

Heroes, Victims, and Poseidon

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 literatures.”  ~ Michael Grant, The Rise of the Greeks, 325, as quoted in Michael Schmidt, The First Poets, 16....