by phillipw | Jun 25, 2020 | CO, FR, MO, TR
Defeat in Battle ………. True beauty is allowed to lapse to make Some room for what is novel, just the new, As if by definition modish ache Is better than the perfect pain. This skew Along to holiness of fashion runs The flopping risk of...
by phillipw | Jun 25, 2020 | AN, NA, PH, PL
Cave versus Agora That Plato thug looms; just pathetic, though, Pretending that he’s thinking straight about Ideals. He doesn’t have a clue. The glow Of solitary thought, that drought, Is all he cares to focus on. Supreme And dictatorial his brain but in A...
by phillipw | Jun 24, 2020 | AL, GA, HI, IS
Sacred Incenses The fragrance of the orange groves comes down From paradise, whatever God you know. A Christ, Ganesha—or an Allah frown . . . Yes, even that—must carry with it glow Of perfect redolence from heaven. White Perfection flows out from the...
by phillipw | Jun 21, 2020 | MA, PE
Peacock Feather You might just say it’s only maleness ramped Up fret-like, gold and turquoise blue, each fret Of thousands, iridescent maleness, vamped Up frilliness, masculinity jet Propelled in delicacy. Don’t ignore That other color in the eyes, that...
by phillipw | Jun 19, 2020 | AN, LE
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....
by phillipw | Jun 19, 2020 | AN, EP, Ho, IL
Homeric Similes “These similes serve to take the reader away from the battlefield for a brief while, into the world of pre-war peace and plenty. Often, they occur at a moment of high action or emotion, especially during a battle. In the words of Peter Jones,...
by phillipw | Jun 19, 2020 | AL, AN, Ho, MA, SC
Imperfection as Perfection Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem The eyes are white and wide. They look as spare As Orpheus’s when he lost his wife. Yet Alexander never knew such bare And sand-dune...
by phillipw | Jun 17, 2020 | AL, BA, PA
Instinct and Alexander the Hateful Achilles, after many years of war, And after losing Patroklus to death, Reacted vilely, more like smelly whore Than man of Greek-sky principles. Blue death And anguish overwhelming him like sea Wave, catastrophic, made by monsters,...
