by phillipw | Sep 13, 2020 | BR, JA, JO, MO, PO, TH, WI, WO
Thoreau in His Worst Freudian Nightmares Could Not Have Imagined Pollock or de Kooning Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem Thoreau says nature does the better part Of work oak carpenters get credit for,...
by phillipw | Jul 23, 2020 | AN, DO, ED, FA, PA, WA, WI
Edward Wilson’s Uncompromising Painting in the Face of Doom … It is as if the realm of ghosts and shades Were painted in a watercolour of Pale blues and soft frost blacks, or like charades Performed behind auroras from above Antarctic twilights. ...
by phillipw | Jul 20, 2020 | PH, PL, PO, SO, WI
What We Drink Who wants thick wisdom first in poems? It Is ours for chewing in the pleasures of The scrolls of Plato, thinkers who permit The thought that pleasure proves the point of love, And stern philosophers with guts to kill All weakness, straight. The...
by phillipw | Jul 16, 2020 | CO, GO, JA, ME, OD, PE, SA, SO, WI
The Big Exceptions The women move in caged in places both In life and plays. In poetry they are Curtailed to Sappho and Corinna. Troth Constricts Penelope. It hems. No spar To take her seas away, she sits at loom, Is trapped at night unpicking her trapped work,...
by phillipw | Jul 13, 2020 | NU, OR, ST, WI
Pigs Would Fly if Their Sties Were Noble Poor Socrates. He thought that if the young Were wrapped in images of beauty, they Would take good in and then could climb each rung Of rightness. Lovelinesses would convey Them up and straight to healthiness of soul. Their...
by phillipw | Jul 11, 2020 | DE, LO, WI
Love that is Love “Then his folly is Pure madness, but his wisdom a philosopher’s” From the Phaedrus of Alexis, In Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae A giant book about gastronomy And wisdom—if such stuff can be combined— Pretends to touch on...
