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It isn’t merely love that’s blind. The love poet, too, can be heard stumbling and blundering about, sightless and ecstatic, as another Valentine’s Day dawns…
In honor of Valentine’s Day, Brad Leithauser reads the love poetry of Robert Graves: http://nyr.kr/12Mp2pb
(Source: newyorker.com)
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Poetry for Presidents
Ian Crouch looks at a brief history of Inaugural poems, from Robert Frost to Elizabeth Alexander, and tells us what we should listen for when Richard Blanco reads his poem on Monday: http://nyr.kr/13MvxHv
Photograph by B. Anthony Stewart/National Geographic/Getty.
(Source: newyorker.com)
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"One reason people’s aversion to poetry sometimes passes over into strong annoyance, or even resentment, is that poems steal our very language out from under us and return it malformed, misshapen, hardly recognizable…"
— Dan Chiasson on poet David Ferry’s beautiful thefts: http://nyr.kr/WtVe8C(Source: newyorker.com)
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"Greetings, Friends!"→
The power’s back on! Let’s dry our socks,
And turn the volume down on Fox,
Mix up a vat of eggnog, brandied,
And fling a last Bronx cheer at Sandy.
Kick out the jams! Swing wide the gates!
Yeah, everybody—celebrate!
Come on in, friends. Pull up a chair,
Or hunker by the fireplace there…
Continue reading Ian Frazier’s holiday poem: http://nyr.kr/UosJKl
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Pondering the flowers this week—with their complex shadings of blue—in all the flower shops of Paris, I have been reminded of how short life is but also of how tough and durable we are as humans…
Henri Cole’s Paris Diary, Part III: http://nyr.kr/SaHHnp -
"Suitcase," A Poem→
James Longenbach has published several books of poetry, and his work has been featured in the magazine since 2007. He has also written books of literary criticism, including “The Resistance to Poetry.” His latest poem, “Suitcase,” which you can hear him reading here, explores our restive pursuit of the fleeting comforts of home.
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Mumblecore Meets Dumbledore: The Results of Our Rhyme Contest
For our second episode of “Questioningly,” a Twitter-based game show, we asked readers to create Clerihews— four-line poems designed to lightly mock a famous personage. For our purposes, we cut the clerihew down to two-lines ending in the name of a famous figure. For example:
His memory’s so bad it’s scary/Rick Perry
He doesn’t always win big game/LeBron James
She took Jay-Z as her fiancé/Beyonce
There were so many entries that picking a favorite wasn’t easy, but our judge had nerves of steel. See his top picks here.
