Winter is officially over, but I’m not ready to say goodbye. I plan to hang on by my toes ’til there’s nothing left but mud. With the fading snow on my mind, I drove up to Nederland on the first day of spring to try out my new snowshoes. (They’re Crescent Moons, made here in […]
Tag Archives: poetry
The Cruelest Month
Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, feeding A little life with dried tubers. The Waste Land is not an easy poem to teach, but I’ve always liked teaching it anyway. There’s so much to contend with, even in that overly familiar opening stanza. I love that phrase–“forgetful snow.” We got 12 inches […]
To the sea I went
To the sea I went, my heart full sore For the Norns, whose wrath I would now escape; But the lofty billows bore me undrowned, Till to land I came, so I longer must live. –from Guðrúnarhvöt (Bellows 1923 translation) One of my favorite passages about the sea, Gudrun’s Lament is from The Poetic Edda. […]
Going home again
And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. T. S. Eliot Four Quartets I grew up on a sheep farm outside of Fargo, and that city, on the edge of the North Dakota prairie, is my home. I say this even […]
Poetry Fix: W.S. Merwin
Another Merwin poem, this one filled with visionary longing. Vision What is unseen flows to what is unseen passing in part through what we partly see We stood up from all fours far back in the light to look as long as there is day and part of the night.
Poetry Fix: Robin Robertson
Since it’s been snowing back home in Wisconsin, here’s a Robin Robertson poem about snow. It comes from “Swithering,” the Scottish poet’s recent collection. The Park Drunk He opens his eyes to a hard frost, the morning’s soft amnesia of snow. The thorned stems of gorse are starred crystal; each bud like a candied fruit, […]
Poetry Fix: Hugh MacDiarmid
The shifting voice, along with MacDiarmid’s use of “Lallans” Scots, makes this a magical and moving poem. “The Bonnie Broukit Bairn” Mars is braw in crammasy, Venus in a green silk goun, The auld mune shaks her gowden feathers, Their starry talk’s a wheen o blethers, Nane for thee a thochtie sparin’ Earth, thou bonnie […]
Poetry Fix: W.H. Auden
I teach this poem every spring. I love how clearly Auden sees the loneliness that’s inherent in human suffering: so much of the world’s pain takes place “in a corner, some untidy spot,” while the rest of humanity is too busy to take notice. “Musée des Beaux Arts” About suffering they were never wrong, The […]