by phillipw | Jul 17, 2020 | LI, PL, SO, XA
The Ion, the Phaedrus, the Republic When someone else is all mixed up, we tend To sneer at what they have to say, so why Not Plato? Must we allow him to bend And contradict his arguments? Is high Philosophy supposed to work like that? He has the voices in two...
by phillipw | Jul 17, 2020 | AB, FE, FO, GE, PO
I Don’t Know which e-Company Tried to Abort my Poem, but I Won Anyhow (the Complacent Bastards) Today I found a sonnet I’d mislaid. In some brief crisis of a laptop sort. I’d e-mailed lines to me because afraid That in a crash a system glitch would thwart The still...
by phillipw | Jul 16, 2020 | BA
The Eternal Cry of Women about Men and Love “Your thoughtlessness in love, Orpheus, has wrecked us both.” ~ Virgil, in Robert Graves, The Greek Myths, p. 93 They never know, these men, including when They get the clearest orders. Even gods Are useless: Pluto gives...
by phillipw | Jul 16, 2020 | AR, GE
The Desert and Dementia “that fragmented legacy of ideas and figures, stories and histories which can be as real to us as our own more immediate past” ~ Michael Schmidt, The First Poets The Oxyrhynchus Papyri were trapped In desert sands for half a million nights And...
by phillipw | Jul 16, 2020 | OR, PO, TR
The Creed Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem “One mustn’t accuse Virgil or Ovid of originality, of wilfully making fictions of such importance. By the time of the Roman poets, everything was...
by phillipw | Jul 16, 2020 | AP, DI, GO, LI, ME, MU, PO, RH
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,...
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 16, 2020 | CO, EU, FL, HA, HE, OR, PL, RO
That Supreme Nazi, Plato, Sounded Off about Orpheus Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem He takes the poison of his courage and His love. He does not try to dazzle death With poetry: Romeo is not bland...
