by phillipw | Apr 19, 2020 | BU, EN, SA
How to be a Buddha Just walk along and pay attention to The brutal facts around you. Notice them. Enlightenment is waiting in the stew Of life. If Jesus passes, touch his hem. If not, take note of ordinary things And see if they will cure you. They just might. A...
by phillipw | Apr 15, 2020 | DU, GE, SA
Long after Chopin’s Death George Sand, It Seems, Destroyed 200 Letters Returned to her by Chopin’s Sister, Letters Sand had Sent to Him The problem with bone china is how heart- Breaking in its loveliness it tends to Be, the beauty of the finest fragile part Of...
by phillipw | Apr 15, 2020 | AN, SA
Sappho Wrote about Twelve Thousand Lines of Poetry Twelve thousands lines of poetry were torched By time and Christians. Piety increased The ravages, all this because she scorched With love for girls. The bishops made a feast Of male disgust that Sappho caused by fire...
by phillipw | Apr 11, 2020 | SA
The Most Secret Poetry “Haydn whose decidedly un-musical wife apparently used his manuscripts as hair curlers” Try not to think of all the poems lost In time. Eternity must hold them in Some hidden and immortal bank, not tossed Away completely. Yet for us the twin Of...
by phillipw | Apr 10, 2020 | SA
Sappho of Eressus: Where Poetry Comes From “There is a variety of dialects, and this is one reason it was always considered important to give a poet, almost as a patronymic, his or her town of origin, and why Didymus’ pedantries in seeking the actual birthplaces of...
by phillipw | Mar 21, 2020 | AN, GR, PO, SA
Seance from Vellum “When we listen to the verse phrases and whole poems that have made that hard journey through time, space and language, … we are enthralled as much by what we cannot know as by what we hear.” ~ Michael Schmidt, The First Poets We read...
