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Benjamin Claggart
Graduate of University of California (UCLA,1979). Minor in American Literature. Strong interest in classical music. Enjoy canoeing, camping. Current digs: Sedona, NM. |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Benjamin Claggart
The Steam Threshing Machine (With the Straw Carrier) By Charles Tennyson Turner Flush with the pond the lurid furnace burned At eve, while smoke and vapor filled the yard; The gloomy winter sky was dimly starred, The fly-wheel with a mellow murmur turned; While, ever rising on its mystic stair In the dim light, from secret chambers borne, The straw of harvest, severed from the corn, Climbed, and fell over, in the murky air. I thought of mind and matter, will and law, And then of him, who set his stately seal Of Roman words on all the forms he saw Of old-world husbandry; I could but feel With what a rich precision he would draw The endless ladder, and the booming wheel! |
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Preeti Shah
Preeti Shah has been writing poetry from a very young age. Her poetries focus on her unique life experiences of being raised as an Indian American in a small Pennsylvania suburb, while weaving with her deep love for nature. She has a poetry blog on Google +, where she has shared collections of her own personal journey. Her greatest inspiration for her work has been the love of her family. When she is not writing, Preeti works in the physical therapy field with the geriatric population, who has given her a lifetime worth of wisdom. She resides in Queens, NY. |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Preeti Shah
On Love By Kahlil Gibran When love beckons to you, follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings enfold you yield to him, Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you. And when he speaks to you believe in him, Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden. For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning. Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun, So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth. Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself. He threshes you to make you naked. He sifts you to free you from your husks. He grinds you to whiteness. He kneads you until you are pliant; And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast. . . . Read complete poem at at: http://www.katsandogz.com/onlove.html?fbclid=IwAR1tA8mkh7kA0BHwX2quXuDdbuVox9IAW8sjy6edN6Qq07d3bNeunLEIAZQ |
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Julie-ann Rowell
Julie-ann Rowell’s pamphlet Convergence (Brodie Press) won a Poetry Book Society Award. Her collection Letters North was nominated for the Michael Murphy Poetry Prize for Best First Collection in Britain and Ireland in 2011. Her latest collection, Voices in the Garden, about Joan of Arc, is published by Lapwing Publications, Belfast; she is currently working on her next book. She has been teaching and mentoring poets for nearly fifteen years. |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Julie-ann Rowell
Everyone Sang By Siegfried Sassoon Everyone suddenly burst out singing; And I was filled with such delight As prisoned birds must find in freedom, Winging wildly across the white Orchards and dark-green fields; on - on - and out of sight. Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted; And beauty came like the setting sun: My heart was shaken with tears; and horror Drifted away ... O, but Everyone Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done. |
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Julia Webb
Julia Webb has a BA (hons) in Creative Writing From Norwich University College of the Arts and an MA (poetry) from the University of East Anglia. She lives in Norwich, UK where she teaches creative writing, works for Gatehouse Press and is a poetry editor for Lighthouse, a journal for new writing. She has had work in various journals and anthologies including Magma, The Rialto, Ambit, Envoi, Oxford Poetry and Butcher's Dog. In 2011 she won the Poetry Society’s Stanza competition. Her poem “Sisters” was highly commended in the 2016 Forward Prize. In 2018 she won the Battered Moons Poetry Competition. Her first collection Bird Sisters was published by Nine Arches Press in 2016. Her second collection Threat will be published by Nine Arches in 2019. |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Julia Webb
The Guitar By Federico García Lorca The weeping of the guitar begins. Wineglasses shatter in the dead of night. The weeping of the guitar begins. It's useless to hush it. It's impossible to hush it. It weeps on monotonously the way water weeps, the way wind weeps over the snowdrifts. It's impossible to hush it. It weeps for things far, far away. For the sand of the hot South that begs for white camellias. Weeps for arrows without targets, an afternoon without a morning, and for the first dead bird upon the branch. Oh, guitar! Heart gravely wounded by five swords. |
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Christopher James
Christopher James was born in Paisley in 1975. Educated at Newcastle and UEA, he won the UK National Poetry Competition, the Oxford Brooks and Bridport Prize, and the Ledbury prize twice. His books include Farewell to the Earth (Arc, 2011) and The Penguin Diaries (Templar, 2017). He was the recipient of an Eric Gregory Award in 2002 and also writes Sherlock Holmes novels, including The Adventure of the Ruby Elephants. |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Christopher James
Ozymandias By Percy Bysshe Shelley I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal, these words appear: "My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!" Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away. |
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Tina Quartey
I am a percussionist from Sweden. I have been in the field of folk, world and jazz music for 30 years. I studied Afro Cuban and Brazilian music and have also been a teacher at Malmö Academy of Music for a couple of decades. I have also worked with theatre music and used my knowledge of ritual drum music in that context. In 2006 I made a journey to Kerala in South India with a theatre group and have since then been coming back to India regularly. Five years ago I went through a transformational experience which led me to writing poetry. A bit surprisingly, it came in the form of Shakespearian sonnets – in English (which is not my first language). There is a liberation in the creative limitation of the pentameter and the scheme of rhymes, and as a musician I feel very related to the rhythmical and sound aspects of poetry. I have written many sonnets and am in the process of putting them together in a collection. The theme is very much about the masculine–feminine; the transformational aspects of love, the dying of the self over and over… the transmuting of the old dysfunctional patterns and templates that have been ruling for millennia – and the coming into balance and true unconditional love. The divinity in us, as human beings. |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Tina Quartey:
The Waste Land By T.S. Elliot I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, feeding A little life with dried tubers. Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade, And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten, And drank coffee, and talked for an hour. Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch. And when we were children, staying at the archduke’s, My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled, And I was frightened. He said, Marie, Marie, hold on tight. And down we went. In the mountains, there you feel free. I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter. What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, You cannot say, or guess, for you know only A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, And the dry stone no sound of water. Only There is shadow under this red rock, (Come in under the shadow of this red rock), And I will show you something different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust. Frisch weht der Wind Der Heimat zu, Mein Irisch Kind, Wo weilest du? “You gave me hyacinths first a year ago; They called me the hyacinth girl.” —Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden, Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, Looking into the heart of light, the silence. Öd’ und leer das Meer. ( Excerpt. Complete poem: http://www.bartleby.com/201/1.html ) |
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Ian McCabe
Scotland. Artist, writer, and composer. Age 29 |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Ian McCabe:
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Mark Wagenaar
Mark Wagenaar’s books are Voodoo Inverso, and most recently, The Body Distances, winner of the Pollak Prize & the Juniper Prize, respectively. His poems appear or are forthcoming from The New Yorker, 32 Poems, Field, Southern Review, Image, & many others. He holds a PhD in English Literature from the University of North Texas, an M.F.A. from the University of Virginia, & an M.A. from the University of Northern Iowa. Last year he taught creative writing at both the University of Wisconsin--as the 2015-16 Halls Poetry Fellow--& at the University of North Texas as a doctoral fellow. This year he will serve as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Valparaiso University. |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Mark Wagenaar:
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Paul Stephenson
Paul Stephenson was a winner in the 2014/2015 Poetry Business Book and Pamphlet competition judged by US poet Billy Collins. His first pamphlet "Those People" was published in May 2015 by Smith/Doorstop. His second pamphlet "The Days that Followed Paris", written in the wake of the 2015 terrorist attacks while he was living in Paris, was published by HappenStance in October 2016 and included as one of the Poetry School’s Books of the Year 2016. His third pamphlet "Selfie with Waterlilies" won the Paper Swans Press pamphlet competition and appeared in September 2017. Paul was born and grew up in Cambridge, England. He studied modern languages and linguistics then European Studies. He has published poems in journals including Magma, Poetry London, The Rialto, Bare Fiction and The Interpreter’s House, as well as the experimental anthology "Adventures in Form" (Penned in the Margins, 2012). He regularly interviews poets about their first collections on his blog at paulstep.com. |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Paul Stephenson:
A Shropshire Lad - IV - Reveille By A. E. Houseman (Reveille was published in Housman's collection of 63 poems in A Shropshire Lad (1896). Housman self-published the book after being turned down by several publishers. Themes tend to focus on unrequited love, pastoral beauty, fleeting youth, grief, death, and patriotism.) Wake: the silver dusk returning Up the beach of darkness brims, And the ship of sunrise burning Strands upon the eastern rims. Wake: the vaulted shadow shatters, Trampled to the floor it spanned, And the tent of night in tatters Straws the sky-pavilioned land. Up, lad, up, 'tis late for lying: Hear the drums of morning play; Hark, the empty highways crying "Who'll beyond the hills away?" Towns and countries woo together, Forelands beacon, belfries call; Never lad that trod on leather Lived to feast his heart with all. Up, lad: thews that lie and cumber Sunlit pallets never thrive; Morns abed and daylight slumber Were not meant for man alive. Clay lies still, but blood's a rover; Breath's a ware that will not keep Up, lad: when the journey's over There'll be time enough to sleep. |
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Christine Swanberg
Christine Swanberg’s books include TONIGHT ON THIS LATE ROAD (Erie St., 1984), INVISIBLE STRING (Erie St., 1990), BREAD UPON THE WATERS (UW:Whitewater, 1990), SLOW MIRACLE (Lake Shore, 1992), THE TENDERNESS OF MEMORY (Plainview Press, 1995), THE RED LACQUER ROOM (Chiron Press, 2001) WHO WALKS AMONG THE TREES WITH CHARITY(Wind Publications, KY, 2005) THE ALLELUIA TREE (Puddin’head Press, IL 2012), and most recently WILD FRUITION: SONNETS, SPELLS, AND OTHER INCANTATIONS (Puddin’head Press, 2017). Over 500 hundred of her poems appear in journals such as SPOON RIVER, WIND, LOUISVILLE REVIEW, BELOIT POETRY JOURAL and many others. Recently, GARDEN BLESSINGS, BACK TO JOY, GRATITUDE PRAYERS AND POEMS, and EARTH BLESSINGS (June Cotner anthologies) have included Christine’s poems. An interview appears with Christine in POET’S MARKET 2008. Recent essays appear in WOMEN ON POETRY and WRITING AFTER RETIREMENT. Her poems have received three Pushcart nominations, and she has received many literary and community awards as well as Arts Council Awards for various projects. Editing and contest judging have also been a big part of Christine’s literary career. Note: "One October Morning Past Your Prime" (appearing in the Winter 2017-18 Issue), has also appeared in Wild Fruition (Puddin'head Press). |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Christine Swanberg:
The Road Not Taken By Robert Frost Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim Because it was grassy and wanted wear, Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. |
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Helen Wickes
Bio: Helen Wickes grew up on a horse farm in Pennsylvania. She lives in Oakland, CA, where she used to work as a psychotherapist. "What Sharpens the Teeth" is from her unpublished manuscript "Transit of Mercury." Four books of her poems have been published: In Search of Landscape (Sixteen Rivers Press, Dowser's Apprentice, Moon over Zabriskie (both from Glass Lyre Press,) and World as You Left It (Sixteen Rivers Press.) |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Helen Wickes:
On First Looking into Chapman's Homer By John Keats Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne; Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He star'd at the Pacific—and all his men Look'd at each other with a wild surmise-- Silent, upon a peak in Darien. |
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James Brooks
James Brooks is a federal prosecutor in Chattanooga, Tennessee, an Army Reserve JAG officer, a veteran of the Iraq war, and an avid mountaineer. He is a graduate of Warren Wilson College, in Asheville, North Carolina. In 2008, while serving in Iraq, he began working on a collection of structured poems that is focused on the sonnet and villanelle. His sonnet "The morning greeting" was a 2016 Laureates' Choice in the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest. |
A favorite Public Domain poem of James Brooks:
When You Are Old by William Butler Yeats When you are old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim Soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face; And bending down beside the glowing bars, Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled And paced upon the mountains overhead And hid his face amid a crowd of stars. |
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Cordelia Hanemann
A native of Southwest Louisiana, but the daughter of an army officer and diplomat, I have lived in Japan and London as well as in the US. Professor emerita with a PhD from LSU, I have published in numerous journals, among which are Southwest Review, Mainstreet Rag, and Wild Goose Review; anthologies, The Sound of Poets Cooking and The Well-Versed Reader and, upcoming, Heron Clan IV; and in my own chapbook, Through a Glass Darkly. I was recently the featured poet for Negative Capability Press, and The Strand Project performed a monologue. A practicing artist and writer in Raleigh, North Carolina, I am currently working on a novel about my roots in Cajun Louisiana. |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Cordelia Hanemann:
There's a certain Slant of light by Emily Dickinson There's a certain Slant of light, Winter Afternoons-- That oppresses, like the Heft Of Cathedral Tunes-- Heavenly Hurt, it gives us-- We can find no scar, But internal difference-- Where the Meanings, are-- None may teach it--any-- "Tis the seal Despair-- An imperial affliction Sent us of the Air-- When it comes, the Landscape listens-- Shadows--hold their breath-- When it goes, 'tis like the Distance On the look of Death-- |
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Katie McMorris
Katie McMorris is a native of Ann Arbor, Michigan. She is currently finishing her last semester at Hope College, where she is studying Creative Writing and Dance. Her work has appeared in Opus, The Rusty Scythe, and Mosaic. Her work will also appear in Green Blotter later this year. |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Katie McMorris: Sojourn in the Whale by Marianne Moore Trying to open locked doors with a sword, threading the points of needles, planting shade trees upside down; swallowed by the opaqueness of one whom the seas love better than they love you, Ireland-- you have lived and lived on every kind of shortage. You have been compelled by hags to spin gold thread from straw and have heard men say: “There is a feminine temperament in direct contrast to ours, which makes her do these things. Circumscribed by a heritage of blindness and native incompetence, she will become wise and will be forced to give in. Compelled by experience, she will turn back; water seeks its own level”; and you have smiled. “Water in motion is far from level.” You have seen it, when obstacles happened to bar the path, rise automatically. |
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Natalie Crick
Natalie Crick, from the UK, has poetry published or forthcoming in a range of journals and magazines including Ink in Thirds, The Penwood Review, Interpreters House, The Chiron Review and Rust and Moth. This year her poem, 'Sunday School' was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Natalie Crick:
I Felt a Funeral, In My Brain by Emily Dickinson: I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, And Mourners to and fro Kept treading - treading - till it seemed That Sense was breaking through - And when they all were seated, A Service, like a Drum - Kept beating - beating - till I thought My mind was going numb - And then I heard them lift a Box And creak across my Soul With those same Boots of Lead, again, Then Space - began to toll, As all the Heavens were a Bell, And Being, but an Ear, And I, and Silence, some strange Race, Wrecked, solitary, here - And then a Plank in Reason, broke, And I dropped down, and down - And hit a World, at every plunge, And Finished knowing - then - |
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William Conelly
After military service, William Conelly took both Bachelor's and Master's Degrees in English under Edgar Bowers at UC, Santa Barbara. Unrelated post-grad work followed before he returned to academia in 2000. Since then, he’s served in both the US and the UK as an associate professor, tutor and seminar leader. With dual citizenship, he now resides primarily in the West Midlands town of Warwick. The Able Muse Press published assortment of his verse dating back four decades in 2015; it's titled Uncontested Grounds and may be reviewed at their website or via Amazon. Note: Mr. Conelly's poem "False Summons" appears in Uncontested Grounds and rode Boston's Red Line for several months in 2015 after being selected in an MTA reader response poll. The poster and poem can be viewed at: http://www.masspoetry.org/poetryonthet/ |
A favorite Public Domain poem of William Conelly:
The Emperor of Ice-Cream by Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) Call the roller of big cigars, The muscular one, and bid him whip In kitchen cups concupiscent curds. Let the wenches dawdle in such dress As they are used to wear, and let the boys Bring flowers in last month’s newspapers. Let be be finale of seem. The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream. Take from the dresser of deal, Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet On which she embroidered fantails once And spread it so as to cover her face. If her horny feet protrude, they come To show how cold she is, and dumb. Let the lamp affix its beam. The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream. |
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Charles Tarlton
I am a retired professor of political theory now living in Northampton, MA with my wife, Ann Knickerbocker, an abstract painter. Until 2006 I was writing mainly essays in political theory, but since retiring I have stuck to poems. I have over time published just enough to keep me in the game |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Charles Tarlton:
Morning at the Window (1920) by T.S. Eliot They are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens, And along the trampled edges of the street I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids Sprouting despondently at area gates. The brown waves of fog toss up to me Twisted faces from the bottom of the street, And tear from a passer-by with muddy skirts An aimless smile that hovers in the air And vanishes along the level of the roofs. |
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Sara T. Baker
Sara Baker’s fiction has been published in Cleaver,Confrontation, H.O.W. Journal, The China Grove Journal,The New Quarterly, and other venues, and has been shortlisted for the Bridport and Fish contests. Her novel, The Timekeeper’s Son, is forthcoming from Deeds Publishing November 2016. Her poetry has been published inStone, River, Sky: the Negative Capability Press Anthology of Georgia Poetry, The 2011 Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine TheApalachee Review, The Healing Muse, ArsMedica, and elsewhere.Her work has been shortlisted for the Eludia award, and she has been a finalist for the Gertrude Stein award, and the Hemingway Days First Novel Contest, among other awards. Sara lives in Athens, Georgia, with her husband, physicist and writer Todd Baker. When not writing or teaching, Sara is an avid gardener, dancer and dog lover. Her work in the field of expressive writing led her to blog about writing and healing at Word Medicine, https://saratbaker.wordpress.com . |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Sara T. Baker:
Holy Sonnets: Batter my heart, three-person'd God By John Donne Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend; That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new. I, like an usurp'd town to another due, Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end; Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend, But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue. Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain, But am betroth'd unto your enemy; Divorce me, untie or break that knot again, Take me to you, imprison me, for I, Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me. |
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MaryJo Thomas
MaryJo Thomas has published in The American Poetry Review, California Quarterly, Yarrow, the Roanoke Review, Appalachian Heritage, The Gettysburg Review, and in other literary journals. She has also worked as a freelance journalist, copy editor, and copy writer. For many years she was a college professor at a liberal arts college in Kentucky where she taught literature and creative writing. She now lives in Gainesville, Florida, with her sister, Betsy, and their rescued cats and dogs. |
A favorite Public Domain poem of MaryJo Thomas:
Taking Leave of a Friend by Li Po Blue mountains lie beyond the north wall; Round the city's eastern side flows the white water. Here, we part, friend, once forever. You go ten thousand miles, drifting away Like an unrooted water-grass. Oh, the floating clouds and the thoughts of a wanderer! Oh, the sunset and the longing of an old friend! We ride away from each other, waving our hands, While our horses neigh softly, softly. |
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Rachel Nathanson
Rachel Nathanson graduated from the University of Wisconsin–Madison with a B.A. in English and honors in creative writing. Her work appears in Silver Lining: Poets Against Violence, an anthology of poetry about overcoming violence in all its forms. Poems Rachel wishes she could honor here include “Still I Rise” by Maya Angelou and “Mock Orange” by Louise Glück. |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Rachel Nathanson:
Do not go gentle into that good night by Dylan Thomas Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night. Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. |
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David Morley
David Morley won the Ted Hughes Award for New Poetry in 2016 for The Invisible Gift: Selected Poems and a Cholmondeley Award for his contribution to poetry. His collections include The Gypsy and the Poet, a PBS Recommendation and Morning Star Book of the Year; Enchantment, a Sunday Telegraph Book of the Year; The Invisible Kings, a PBS Recommendation and TLS Book of the year. A dramatic poem The Death of Wisdom Smith, Prince of Gypsies has been published by The Melos Press. David is known for poetry installations within natural landscapes: ‘slow poetry’ sculptures and I-Cast poetry films. He was one of the judges of the 2012 T.S. Eliot Prize and the 2013 Foyle Young Poets. He is Professor at Warwick University and Monash University, Melbourne. ‘Like opening a box of fireworks; something theatrical happens when you open its pages, and a curtain is raised on a tradition that has been overlooked…Ted Hughes wrote about the natural magical and mythical world; The Invisible Gift is a natural successor…’. – Ted Hughes Award Judges ‘He holds our world up to a language mostly kept secret; the refraction of the familiar is dizzying and often moving.’ - Les Murray |
A favorite Public Domain poem of David Morley:
Out, Out-- by Robert Frost The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yard And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood, Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it. And from there those that lifted eyes could count Five mountain ranges one behind the other Under the sunset far into Vermont. And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled, As it ran light, or had to bear a load. And nothing happened: day was all but done. Call it a day, I wish they might have said To please the boy by giving him the half hour That a boy counts so much when saved from work. His sister stood beside them in her apron To tell them “Supper.” At the word, the saw, As if to prove saws knew what supper meant, Leaped out at the boy’s hand, or seemed to leap-- He must have given the hand. However it was, Neither refused the meeting. But the hand! The boy’s first outcry was a rueful laugh, As he swung toward them holding up the hand Half in appeal, but half as if to keep The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all-- Since he was old enough to know, big boy Doing a man’s work, though a child at heart-- He saw all spoiled. “Don’t let him cut my hand off-- The doctor, when he comes. Don’t let him, sister!” So. But the hand was gone already. The doctor put him in the dark of ether. He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath. And then—the watcher at his pulse took fright. No one believed. They listened at his heart. Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it. No more to build on there. And they, since they Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs. |
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Nels Hanson
Nels Hanson grew up on a small farm in the San Joaquin Valley of California and has worked as a farmer, teacher and contract writer/editor. His fiction received the San Francisco Foundation’s James D. Phelan Award and Pushcart nominations in 2010, 12, and 2014. Poems appeared in Word Riot, Oklahoma Review, Pacific Review and other magazines and received a 2014 Pushcart nomination, Sharkpack Review’s 2014 Prospero Prize, and 2015 and 2016 Best of the Net nominations. |
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Jonathan Edwards
Jonathan Edwards's first collection of poems, My Family and Other Superheroes (Seren, 2014) received the Costa Poetry Award and the Wales Book of the Year People's Choice Award. He lives in the village of Crosskeys, South Wales, and works as a teacher. 'Nun on a Bicycle.' appears in Mr. Edwards's collection, My Family and Other Superheroes (Seren): https://www.serenbooks.com/productdisplay/my-family-and-other-superheroes Note from the author regarding his favorite Public Domain poem at right: There's an excellent reading of "The Inquest" (1916) by Simon Armitage here: http://www.poetryarchive.org/poet/w-h-davies |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Jonathan Edwards:
The Inquest (1916) by W.H. Davies I took my oath I would inquire, Without affection, hate, or wrath, Into the death of Ada Wright – So help me God! I took that oath. When I went out to see the corpse, The four months’ babe that died so young, I judged it was seven pounds in weight, And little more than one foot long. One eye, that had a yellow lid, Was shut – so was the mouth, that smiled; The left eye open, shining bright – It seemed a knowing little child. For as I looked at that one eye, It seemed to laugh, and say with glee: ‘What caused me death you’ll never know – Perhaps my mother murdered me.’ When I went into court again, To hear the mother’s evidence – It was a love-child, she explained. And smiled, for our intelligence. ‘Now, Gentlemen of the Jury, said The coroner – ‘this woman’s child By misadventure met its death.’ ‘Aye, aye,’ said we. The mother smiled. And I could see that child’s one eye Which seemed to laugh, and say with glee: ‘What caused my death you’ll never know – Perhaps my mother murdered me.’ |
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Brett Mertins
Brett Mertins lives with his wife, Becky, and two sons, Joe and Will, in Omaha, Nebraska, where he teaches Writing and Literature classes at Metropolitan Community College. A public domain poem whose artistry and meaning always resonates with him in new (and strikingly modern) ways is "Mending Wall" by Robert Frost. |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Brett Mertins:
Mending Wall by Robert Frost. Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, And spills the upper boulders in the sun; And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. The work of hunters is another thing: I have come after them and made repair Where they have left not one stone on a stone, But they would have the rabbit out of hiding, To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean, No one has seen them made or heard them made, But at spring mending-time we find them there. I let my neighbour know beyond the hill; And on a day we meet to walk the line And set the wall between us once again. We keep the wall between us as we go. To each the boulders that have fallen to each. And some are loaves and some so nearly balls We have to use a spell to make them balance: "Stay where you are until our backs are turned!" We wear our fingers rough with handling them. Oh, just another kind of out-door game, One on a side. It comes to little more: There where it is we do not need the wall: He is all pine and I am apple orchard. My apple trees will never get across And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours." Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder If I could put a notion in his head: "Why do they make good neighbours? Isn't it Where there are cows? But here there are no cows. Before I built a wall I'd ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offence. Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him, But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather He said it for himself. I see him there Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed. He moves in darkness as it seems to me, Not of woods only and the shade of trees. He will not go behind his father's saying, And he likes having thought of it so well He says again, "Good fences make good neighbours." |
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Matthew Babcock
Matthew James Babcock teaches writing and literature at BYU-Idaho in Rexburg, Idaho. His debut poetry collection, Points of Reference, was released by Folded Word in March 2016. He received the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Award, and his scholarly work can be found in The Journal of Ecocriticism and Private Fire: The Ecopoetry and Prose or Robert Francis (U. of Delaware Press). |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Matthew Babcock:
The Unforgiven by Edwin Arlington Robinson When he, who is the unforgiven, Beheld her first, he found her fair: No promise ever dreamt in heaven Could have lured him anywhere That would have nbeen away from there; And all his wits had lightly striven, Foiled with her voice, and eyes, and hair. There's nothing in the saints and sages To meet the shafts her glances had, Or such as hers have had for ages To blind a man till he be glad, And humble him till he be mad. The story would have many pages, And would be neither good nor bad. And, having followed, you would find him Where properly the play begins; But look for no red light behind him-- No fumes of many-colored sins, Fanned high by screaming violins. God knows what good it was to blind him Or whether man or woman wins. And by the same eternal token, Who knows just how it will all end?-- This drama of hard words unspoken, This fireside farce without a friend Or enemy to comprehend What augurs when two lives are broken, And fear finds nothing left to mend. He stares in vain for what awaits him, And sees in Love a coin to toss; He smiles, and her cold hush berates him Beneath his hard half of the cross; They wonder why it ever was; And she, the unforgiving, hates him More for her lack than for her loss. He feeds with pride his indecision, And shrinks from what wil not occur, Bequeathing with infirm derision His ashes to the days that were, Before she made him prisoner; And labors to retrieve the vision That he must once have had of her. He waits, and there awaits an ending, And he knows neither what nor when; But no magicians are attending To make him see as he saw then, And he will never find again The face that once had been the rending Of all his purpose among men. He blames her not, nor does he chide her, And she has nothing new to say; If he was Bluebeard he could hide her, But that's not written in the play, And there will be no change to-day; Although, to the serene outsider, There still would seem to be a way. |
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Rajendra Sharma
The author has worked as a senior professor at universities in India, Middle East, USA. He has travelled widely through India, Nepal, Pakistan, Middle East as well as USA. Over a hundred travel articles have appeared in leading Indian papers and magazines. Twenty stories have also appeared in leading Indian magazines. Other published work includes a collection of short stories, IN MY ARMS. Correspondence for publication of a novel, a second volume of stories and a volume of poems is going on presently. In addition, forty poems and stories have appeared in US magazines like: SN REVIEW, THE MONARCH REVIEW, GREY SPARROW, FOLLY, SOUTH JERSEY UNDERGROUND, JD REVIEW, THE FINE LINE, TWJ MAGAZINE, THE MISSING SLATE, EXERCISE BOWLER, ROCK AND SLING, ASCENT ASPIRATIONS (Canada), Dr TJ ECLKEBURG REVIEW, NEW MERCURY MAGAZINE etc. FAVOURITE POEMS: W.B, Yeats : “The Wild Swan at Coole” (1919); Thomas Hardy: “Going and Staying” (1922); Ezra Pound: “Lament of the Frontier Guard” (1915) |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Rajendra Sharma:
The Wild Swan at Coole by W.B, Yeats The Trees are in their autumn beauty, The woodland paths are dry, Under the October twilight the water Mirrors a still sky; Upon the brimming water among the stones Are nine and fifty swans. The nineteenth Autumn has come upon me Since I first made my count; I saw, before I had well finished, All suddenly mount And scatter wheeling in great broken rings Upon their clamorous wings. I have looked upon those brilliant creatures, And now my heart is sore. All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight, The first time on this shore, The bell-beat of their wings above my head, Trod with a lighter tread. Unwearied still, lover by lover, They paddle in the cold, Companionable streams or climb the air; Their hearts have not grown old; Passion or conquest, wander where they will, Attend upon them still. But now they drift on the still water Mysterious, beautiful; Among what rushes will they build, By what lake’s edge or pool Delight men’s eyes, when I awake some day To find they have flown away? |
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Claude Clayton Smith
Claude Clayton Smith, Professor of English Emeritus at Ohio Northern University, is the author of eight books and co-editor/translator of two others, the second of which—MEDITATIONS After the Bear Feast: The Poetic Dialogues of N. Scott Momaday and Yuri Vaella—is forthcoming in 2016 from Shanti Arts Publishing. His own work has been translated into five languages, including Russian and Chinese. He holds a DA from Carnegie-Mellon, an MFA in fiction from the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa, an MAT from Yale, and a BA from Wesleyan. He lives in Madison, WI, with his wife of 40 years. Recent Publication: Contributor/Editor: MEDITATIONS After the Bear Feast The Poetic Dialogues of N. Scott Momaday and Yuri Vaella |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Claude Clayton Smith:
Into My Own by Robert Frost One of my wishes is that those dark trees, So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze, Were not, as 'twere, the merest mask of gloom, But stretched away unto the edge of doom. I should not be withheld but that some day Into their vastness I should steal away, Fearless of ever finding open land, Or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand. I do not see why I should e'er turn back, Or those should not set forth upon my track To overtake me, who should miss me here And long to know if still I held them dear. They would not find me changed from him they knew-- Only more sure of all I thought was true. |
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Krikor Der Hohannesian
Krikor Der Hohannesian lives in Medford, MA. His poems have been thrice-nominated for a Pushcart prize and have appeared in many literary journals including The Evansville Review, The South Carolina Review, Atlanta Review, Louisiana Literature, Connecticut Review, Natural Bridge and Comstock Review. He is the author of two chapbooks,“Ghosts and Whispers” (Finishing Line Press, 2010) and “Refuge in the Shadows” (Cervena Barva Press, 2013). “Ghosts and Whispers” was a finalist for the Mass Book awards poetry category in 2011. |
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Donal Mahoney
Nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart prizes, Donal Mahoney has had poetry and fiction published in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Some of his work can be found at http://eyeonlifemag.com/the-poetry-locksmith/donal-mahoney-poet.html |
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Elisabeth Sharber
Elisabeth Sharber is an English teacher at Crossland High School in Temple Hills, Maryland. She has taught 10th-11th grade English, drama, International Baccalaureate World Literature, and Research Practicum. Before that, she worked with traveling scholars at JrNYLC in Boston and DC, and taught Irish Step Dancing at Ridgewood Irish Dance. She graduated from Messiah College in 2009 with a BA in English, minoring in politics and psychology. An emerging writer, she enjoys weekend saunters through forests, where she will usually encounter a new muse to write about. |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Elisabeth Sharber:
Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed: And on the pedestal these words appear: ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.” |
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Eugene Goldin
Eugene Goldin is a poet living in New York. He is a professor at LIU Post in Brookville, NY. His poetry has appeared in The Fredericksburg Review and will soon be published in Aji Magazine. |
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Linda Wojtowick
"Linda Wojtowick grew up in Montana. She now lives in Portland, Oregon, where she can easily indulge her cinematic obsessions without restraint. She's a Pushcart Prize nominee, & her work has most recently appeared in Abramelin, Sooth Swarm, Calamus Journal, Visitant, Noble/Gas Quarterly and Occulum.” |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Linda Wojtowick:
Buffalo Bill's by E.E. Cummings. Buffalo Bill ’s defunct who used to ride a watersmooth-silver stallion and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat Jesus he was a handsome man and what i want to know is how do you like your blueeyed boy Mister Death |
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Michael Mira
Michael Mira is a writer and photographer based in Houston. He was born in Manila, and grew up in New York and Texas. His writings have appeared in various online and print magazines, such as Identity Theory, The Nervous Breakdown, Newfound Journal, Gravel Literary Journal, among others. He's currently working on a poetry chapbook titled, "Close Proximity". You can view his work at www.michaelmira.com. |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Michael Mira:
If wrecked upon the Shoal of Thought By Emily Dickinson If wrecked upon the Shoal of Thought How is it with the Sea? The only Vessel that is shunned Is safe—Simplicity-- |
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Micaela Donabella
Micaela Donabella is a native of Syracuse, NY. She currently studies Sociology and Creative Writing at the State University of New York at Oswego. Her book review for Ali Smith’s How to be Both has been featured on The Hub (http://oswegohub.wix.com/thehub#!Featured-Book-ReviewHow-to-Be-Both/cu6k/5644a7a10cf2708e00175715). |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Micaela Donabella:
A Pact By Ezra Pound I make a pact with you, Walt Whitman - I have detested you long enough. I come to you as a grown child Who has had a pig-headed father; I am old enough now to make friends. It was you that broke the new wood, Now is a time for carving. We have one sap and one root - Let there be commerce between us. |
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Michelle Brooks
Michelle Brooks has published her work in Alaska Quarterly Review, Threepenny Review, and elsewhere. Her poetry collection, Make Yourself Small, was published by Backwaters Press and her novella, Dead Girl, Live Boy, was published by Storylandia Press. |
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Kerryanne A. Bell
Kerryanne Mayers (as poet, Kerryanne A. Bell )is a recent graduate from The City College of New York's English/Creative Writing program. She began writing poetry at the age of 12 starting with Japanese poetry "Haiku's." When she isn't scribbling on a Starbucks napkins or playing "trains" with her sons she is watching marathons on the Food Network. In between all mentioned Kerryanne enjoys steamy hot bubble baths while eating grilled cheese. She often says: "If it makes me cry, sweat or bleed it is worth writing about." Kerryanne lives in the Bronx with her husband and two sons. |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Kerryanne A. Bell:
We Wear the Mask By Paul Lawrence Dunbar WE wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,-- This debt we pay to human guile; With torn and bleeding hearts we smile, And mouth with myriad subtleties. Why should the world be over-wise, In counting all our tears and sighs? Nay, let them only see us, while We wear the mask. We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries To thee from tortured souls arise. We sing, but oh the clay is vile Beneath our feet, and long the mile; But let the world dream otherwise, We wear the mask! |
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Catherine Harnett
I'm a poet and fiction writer originally from New York, now living in northern Virginia. My work has appeared in a number of magazines and anthologies (print and online).The Washington Writers Publishing House published two books of poetry--Still Life and Evidence, and recently my work has appeared in a number literary magazines and anthologies. My fiction is primarily coming-of-age stories: how characters, mostly young girls, navigate a complex and strange world. I retired from the government as a Senior Executive after 33 years of service on Capitol Hill and the Department of State and Justice. During my career I oversaw public outreach programs at home and abroad. |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Catherine Harnett:
THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK by: T.S. Eliot Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question ... Oh, do not ask, “What is it?” Let us go and make our visit. In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo. The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes, Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening, Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, And seeing that it was a soft October night, Curled once about the house, and fell asleep. And indeed there will be time For the yellow smoke that slides along the street, Rubbing its back upon the window-panes; There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; There will be time to murder and create, And time for all the works and days of hands That lift and drop a question on your plate; Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea. In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo. And indeed there will be time To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?” Time to turn back and descend the stair, With a bald spot in the middle of my hair -- (They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”) My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin, My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin -- (They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”) Do I dare Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. For I have known them all already, known them all: Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; I know the voices dying with a dying fall Beneath the music from a farther room. So how should I presume? And I have known the eyes already, known them all-- The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase, And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, Then how should I begin To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways? And how should I presume? And I have known the arms already, known them all-- Arms that are braceleted and white and bare (But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!) Is it perfume from a dress That makes me so digress? Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl. And should I then presume? And how should I begin? Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? ... I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! Smoothed by long fingers, Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers, Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me. Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter, I am no prophet — and here’s no great matter; I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, And in short, I was afraid. And would it have been worth it, after all, After the cups, the marmalade, the tea, Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me, Would it have been worth while, To have bitten off the matter with a smile, To have squeezed the universe into a ball To roll it towards some overwhelming question, To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead, Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”-- If one, settling a pillow by her head Should say: “That is not what I meant at all; That is not it, at all.” And would it have been worth it, after all, Would it have been worth while, After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets, After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor-- And this, and so much more?-- It is impossible to say just what I mean! But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen: Would it have been worth while If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl, And turning toward the window, should say: “That is not it at all, That is not what I meant, at all.” No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two, Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use, Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculous-- Almost, at times, the Fool. I grow old ... I grow old ... I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me. I have seen them riding seaward on the waves Combing the white hair of the waves blown back When the wind blows the water white and black. We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown Till human voices wake us, and we drown. |
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John Davis Jr.
John Davis Jr. is the author of Hard Inheritance (Five Oaks Press, 2016), Middle Class American Proverb (Negative Capability Press, 2014), and two other poetry collections. His work has appeared in dozens of literary journals, including Nashville Review, The American Journal of Poetry, One, and Deep South magazine. He holds an MFA from University of Tampa. |
A favorite Public Domain poem of John Davis Jr.:
Fabliau of Florida by Wallace Stevens Barque of phosphor On the palmy beach, Move outward into heaven, Into the alabasters And night blues. Foam and cloud are one. Sultry moon-monsters Are dissolving. Fill your black hull With white moonlight. There will never be an end To this droning of the surf. |
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Doug Bolling
My poetry has appeared in Redactions, The Aurorean, Kestrel, Water-Stone Review, Sierra Nevada Review, Bluestem, Tribeca Poetry Review, Agave, Slant and many others. I have received several Pushcart nominations and a Best of the Net nomination and am at work on a collection of poems for publication early next year. Live in the greater Chicago area. |
favorite Public Domain poem of Doug Bolling:
God’s Grandeur By Gerard Manley Hopkins The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod? Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod. And for all this, nature is never spent; There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; And though the last lights off the black West went 0h, morning at the brown brink eastward springs--- Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings. |
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Jae Rossi
Jae Rossi is a nomadic foreign language teacher currently residing in Saratoga Springs, New York. She earned her BA in French Literature from Skidmore College, and is co-founder of the Colorwolf Artist Collective in Taipei. |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Jae Rossi:
Queen-Anne's-Lace by William Carlos Williams Her body is not so white as anemone petals nor so smooth—nor so remote a thing. It is a field of the wild carrot taking the field by force; the grass does not raise above it. Here is no question of whiteness, white as can be, with a purple mole at the center of each flower. Each flower is a hand’s span of her whiteness. Wherever his hand has lain there is a tiny purple blemish. Each part is a blossom under his touch to which the fibres of her being stem one by one, each to its end, until the whole field is a white desire, empty, a single stem, a cluster, flower by flower, a pious wish to whiteness gone over-- or nothing. |
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Maxfield Lydum
Maxfield Lydum is an English major at the University of Oregon. His current interests include Object-Oriented Ontology and the American novel. |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Maxfield Lydum:
The Tyger by William Blake Tyger Tyger, burning bright, In the forests of the night; What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies. Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand, dare seize the fire? And what shoulder, & what art, Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand? & what dread feet? What the hammer? what the chain, In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? what dread grasp, Dare its deadly terrors clasp! When the stars threw down their spears And water'd heaven with their tears: Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee? Tyger Tyger burning bright, In the forests of the night: What immortal hand or eye, Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? |
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George Moore
George Moore's recent collections are Saint Agnes Outside the Walls (FurureCycle 2016) and Children's Drawings of the Universe (Salmon Poetry 2015). Poems have appeared in The Atlantic, Poetry, North American Review, Stand, Orion, Arc, Valparaiso, and Colorado Review. Poems were shortlisted for the 2017 Bailieborough Poetry Prize and long-listed for the Gregory O'Donoghue Poetry Prize. |
A favorite Public Domain poem of George Moore:
The Second Coming By William Butler Yeats Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? (first published in The Dial, 1920, then included in Michael Robartes and the Dancer, 1921) |
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Rosa Walling-Wefelmeyer
Rosa Walling-Wefelmeyer lives in the North East of England. Her work has appeared in, amongst other things, Allegro, Cadaverine Magazine, Fear of Monkeys and The Journal. Her forthcoming publications will be featured in Ink Sweat and Tears, Iris Brown Lit Mag, Kindred Spirit and Lavender Review. |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Ela Meyer:
The Lake Isle of Innisfree By William Butler Yeats I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade. And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet’s wings. I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, I hear it in the deep heart’s core. |
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Lucas Smith
Lucas Smith was born in 1989, and grew up in Orange County, California and the Gippsland region of Australia. His work has appeared in Cordite Poetry Review, Australian Book Review and The Lifted Brow, among others. |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Lucas Smith:
The Maldive Shark By Herman Melville About the Shark, phlegmatical one, Pale sot of the Maldive sea, The sleek little pilot-fish, azure and slim, How alert in attendance be. From his saw-pit of mouth, from his charnel of maw They have nothing of harm to dread, But liquidly glide on his ghastly flank Or before his Gorgonian head; Or lurk in the port of serrated teeth In white triple tiers of glittering gates, And there find a haven when peril’s abroad, An asylum in jaws of the Fates! They are friends; and friendly they guide him to prey, Yet never partake of the treat-- Eyes and brains to the dotard lethargic and dull, Pale ravener of horrible meat. |
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John Stocks
I am a poet who aspires to write poetry that is both challenging and yet accessible to a wide audience. Over the last few years I have had to honor of sharing a page with Maya Angelou in the anthology, 'Heart Shoots.' as well as appearing in anthologies in Europe, Canada and Africa. I have twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and forthcoming work is to appear in an International anthology for Seamus Heaney. I am the co author of a novel, 'Beer, Balls and the Belgian Mafia.' and I am poetry editor for Bewildering Stories magazine. |
A favorite Public Domain poem of John Stocks: Ode To A Nightingale By John Keats My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: 'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, But being too happy in thy happiness,--- That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees, In some melodious plot Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, Singest of summer in full-throated ease. O for a draught of vintage, that hath been Cooled a long age in the deep-delved earth, Tasting of Flora and the country green, Dance, and Provencal song, and sun-burnt mirth! O for a beaker full of the warm South, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, And purple-stained mouth; That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, And with thee fade away into the forest dim: Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget What thou among the leaves hast never known, The weariness, the fever, and the fret Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs, Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies; Where but to think is to be full of sorrow And leaden-eyed despairs; Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, Or new love pine at them beyond tomorrow. Away! away! for I will fly to thee, Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, But on the viewless wings of Poesy, Though the dull brain perplexes and retards: Already with thee! tender is the night, And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne, Clustered around by all her starry fays; But here there is no light, Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways. I cannot see what flowers are at my feet, Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet Wherewith the seasonable month endows The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild; White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine; Fast-fading violets covered up in leaves; And mid-May's eldest child, The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves. Darkling I listen; and for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death, Called him soft names in many a mused rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath; Now more than ever seems it rich to die, To cease upon the midnight with no pain, While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad In such an ecstasy! Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain--- To thy high requiem become a sod Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! No hungry generations tread thee down; The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown: Perhaps the self-same song that found a path Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, She stood in tears amid the alien corn; The same that oft-times hath Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. Forlorn! the very word is like a bell To toll me back from thee to my sole self! Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well As she is famed to do, deceiving elf. Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades Past the near meadows, over the still stream, Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep In the next valley-glades: Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music:---do I wake or sleep? |
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Sara Karim
Sara Karim is a rising Junior in high school. She is originally from Astana, Kazakhstan, but currently resides in Washington DC. |
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Ken W. Simpson
An Australian poet whose latest collection, Patterns of Perception, was published by Augur Press (UK) last January and who has had fifty poems accepted for publication this year. He lives with his family at Lysterfield, a Melbourne suburb, in the state of Victoria. |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Ken W. Simpson:
The Waste Land By T.S. Elliot I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, feeding A little life with dried tubers. Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade, And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten, And drank coffee, and talked for an hour. Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch. And when we were children, staying at the archduke’s, My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled, And I was frightened. He said, Marie, Marie, hold on tight. And down we went. In the mountains, there you feel free. I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter. What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, You cannot say, or guess, for you know only A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, And the dry stone no sound of water. Only There is shadow under this red rock, (Come in under the shadow of this red rock), And I will show you something different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust. Frisch weht der Wind Der Heimat zu, Mein Irisch Kind, Wo weilest du? “You gave me hyacinths first a year ago; They called me the hyacinth girl.” —Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden, Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, Looking into the heart of light, the silence. Öd’ und leer das Meer. ( Excerpt. Complete poem: http://www.bartleby.com/201/1.html ) |
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Woodrow Hightower
Woodrow Hightower is a native of West Point, California. He is a poet currently producing a first collection of poems, loosely titled “So Low.” His work has recently been accepted for publication by The Axe Factory, Bitchin’ Kitsch, Belle Reve Literary Journal, Indiana Voice Journal, IthicaLit and Olentangy Review. Hightower resides in Sacramento’s Mid-Town District with roommate Twyla Wyoming and two Tibetan spaniels. |
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Geoffrey Heptonstall
A regular reviewer for The London Magazine. Poetry in magazines including International Literary Quarterly, Pacific Review and The Write place at the Write Time. Plays include 1915 for London fringe company Stand Up Tragedy. |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Geoffrey Heptonstall:
Look, Stranger By W.H. Auden Look, stranger, on this island now The leaping light for your delight discovers, Stand stable here And silent be, That through the channels of the ear May wander like a river The swaying sound of the sea. Here at a small field's ending pause Where the chalk wall falls to the foam and its tall ledges Oppose the pluck And knock of the tide, And the shingle scrambles after the suck- -ing surf, and a gull lodges A moment on its sheer side. Far off like floating seeds the ships Diverge on urgent voluntary errands, And this full view Indeed may enter And move in memory as now these clouds do, That pass the harbour mirror And all the summer through the water saunter. |
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Cory Howell
I grew up in upper East Tennessee in the small town of Erwin. I attended East Tennessee State University where I graduated with a Bachelors in English. I published two poems in the University publication, "The Mockingbird." I currently reside in Johnson City, Tennessee where I live with my wife, Hannah, our dog, and three cats. I also teach 11th grade English at Sullivan Central High School in Blountville, Tennessee. |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Cory Howell:
On the Beach at Night Alone By Walt Whitman On the beach at night alone, As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song, As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought of the clef of the universes and of the future. A vast similitude interlocks all, All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets, All distances of place however wide, All distances of time, all inanimate forms, All souls, all living bodies though they be ever so different, or in different worlds, All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes, the fishes, the brutes, All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages, All identities that have existed or may exist on this globe, or any globe, All lives and deaths, all of the past, present, future, This vast similitude spans them, and always has spann’d, And shall forever span them and compactly hold and enclose them. |
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Kika Dorsey
I am a poet and professor from Boulder, Colorado. My poetry has been published in numerous journals and books, including The Comstock Review, Between the Lines, The Denver Quarterly, The California Quarterly, The Columbia Review, among many others. In 2011, I published a chapbook of my poetry, Beside Herself, with Flutter Press, and my book, Rust, is coming out this year with Word Tech Editions. I have a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Washington in Seattle and have taught writing, film, and literature at the University of Washington, the University of Colorado in Boulder, and Metropolitan State College in Denver. I’ve taught poetry at Naropa University and currently teach composition, literature, and creative writing at Front Range Community College. When not crafting poetry out of my dreams, my body, my travels, myths, and teaching students to write, I run and hike in the plains and mountains of Colorado. |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Kika Dorsey:
Do not go gentle into that good night By Dylan Thomas (1914 - 1953) Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night. Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. |
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Oliver Cotting
Oliver is a 26 year old studying what it means to be a human; an aboveboard, brazen, thriving human. He lives in Tucson, Arizona with a typewriter and a stray cat. |
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Bud Berkich
Bud R. Berkich was born in Somerville and raised in Bound Brook, New Jersey. He has been writing creatively since the age of eight. Bud has had poetry, short stories, plays and book reviews published at a number of different publications, including Five 2 One, The Idiom, The Rockhurst Review, Exit Strata, Verse-Virtual, The Screech Owl (UK), Litbomb (UK) and Bareback Magazine. From 2004-2008, Bud was the liaison for poets and booksellers at the Dodge Poetry Festival. He is the co-founder and director of the Somerset Poetry Group in Bridgewater, NJ. Bud currently resides in Manville, NJ. |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Bud Berkich:
The Great Figure By William Carlos Williams Among the rain and lights I saw the figure 5 in gold on a red firetruck moving tense unheeded to gong clangs siren howls and wheels rumbling through the dark city. |
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Linda Hegland
Linda H.Y. Hegland is a short story, creative non-fiction, and poetry writer who lives and writes in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada. Her writing most often reflects the influence of place, and sense of place, and one’s relationship with it. She has published in several literary and art journals including the Prairie Journal of Canadian Literature, ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal, Bricolage Magazine, Sassafras Literary Magazine, Hermeneutical Chaos Literary Journal, and Penumbra Review. |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Linda Hegland:
When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer By Walt Whitman WHEN I heard the learn’d astronomer; When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me; When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them; When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick; Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars. |
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R. W. Haynes
R. W. Haynes lives and writes in Laredo, Texas, where he teaches at Texas A&M International University. |
A favorite Public Domain poem of R. W. Haynes:
Essay on Criticism By Alexander Pope 'Tis with our Judgments as our Watches, none Go just alike, yet each believes his own. In Poets as true Genius is but rare, True Taste as seldom is the Critick's Share; Both must alike from Heav'n derive their Light, These born to Judge, as well as those to Write. Let such teach others who themselves excell, And censure freely who have written well. Authors are partial to their Wit, 'tis true, But are not Criticks to their Judgment too? |
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Bud Faust
Bud Faust is a writer, poet and playwright from New Orleans. He writes at the direction of Jack Kerouac; from (Kerouac's) Tristessa: "I'll write long sad tales about people in the legend of my life - This part is my part of the movie, let's hear yours." |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Bud Faust:
Hap By Thomas Hardy If but some vengeful god would call to me From up the sky, and laugh: “Thou suffering thing, Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy, That thy love's loss is my hate's profiting!” Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die, Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited; Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I Had willed and meted me the tears I shed. But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain, And why unblooms the best hope ever sown? —Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain, And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan. . . . These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain. |
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Hristo Kovatliev
I'm a graphic designer! I write short poems in which I try to convey in a few words the things that inspire me. |
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Kate Wisel
Kate Wisel lives in Boston. Her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in The Drum, The Mad Hatters' Review, SmokeLong Quarterly, and Fiction Southeast. Her poetry has appeared in Breadcrumb Scabs magazine and elsewhere. She has attended writing workshops in New Hampshire and Guatemala and was awarded a scholarship to attend the Wesleyan Writers Conference. |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Kate Wisel:
Sin (I) By George Herbert Lord, with what care hast thou begirt us round! Parents first season us; then schoolmasters Deliver us to laws; they send us bound To rules of reason, holy messengers, Pulpits and Sundays, sorrow-dogging sin, Afflictions sorted, anguish of all sizes, Fine nets and stratagems to catch us in, Bibles laid open, millions of surprises, Blessings beforehand, ties of gratefulness, The sound of glory ringing in our ears, Without, our shame, within, our consciences, Angels and grace, eternal hopes and fears. Yet all these fences and their whole array One cunning bosom-sin blows quite away. |
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Brandyn Johnson
Brandyn Johnson's poetry has appeared in The Puritan, The Hartskill Review, Coe Review, Dunes Review, and others. His poem, "Express Lane" was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He is an adjunct English instructor at Black Hills State University. He live in Rapid City, South Dakota with his wife, Anna. They expect their first child in March. |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Brandyn Johnson:
Chicago By Carl Sandburg Hog Butcher for the World, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler; Stormy, husky, brawling, City of the Big Shoulders: They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys. And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again. And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger. And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them: Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning. Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities; Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness, Bareheaded, Shoveling, Wrecking, Planning, Building, breaking, rebuilding, Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth, Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs, Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle, Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse, and under his ribs the heart of the people, Laughing! Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation. |
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George Stratigakis
George Stratigakis’s work has appeared in Contemporary American Voices, The Tipton Poetry Journal, The Innisfree Poetry Journal, and Quiddity. |
A favorite Public Domain poem of George Stratigakis:
The City By C.P Cavafy You said: “I’ll go to another land, I’ll go to another shore I’ll find another city better than this. My every effort a written condemnation is; And my heart – like a corpse – buried How long my mind will remain harried. Wherever I turn, wherever I gaze I see my life’s black remains, Which for years I’ve ruined and wasted and bore.” You will not find new places, nor will you find other shores. The city will always follow you. These same streets You’ll walk. You’ll grow old in these districts; And in the same houses your hair will whiten. You will always arrive at this city. For others – do not hasten – There is no ship for you, no thoroughfare. Just as you’ve ruined your life here, In this small corner, you’ve ruined it on every shore. (Translation by George Stratigakis.) |
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Pedro Marrero
Pedro Marrero was born and raised in New York City, and currently lives in Pennsylvania. He has been reading and writing poetry for over 16 years, and has dedicated the last two years in editing some 34,000 words worth of his poetic output. He is an ardent admirer of both Rimbaud and Camus. |
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Sarah Brown Weitzman
A Pushcart nominee, Sarah Brown Weitzman has been widely published in numerous journals including ART TIMES, THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, RATTLE, MID-AMERICAN REVIEW, EKPHRASIS, ABRAXAS, THE WINDLESS ORCHARD, POET LORE, POTOMAC REVIEW, POET & CRITIC, etc. Sarah received a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. A departure from poetry, her latest book, HERMAN AND THE ICE WITCH, is a children’s novel published by Main Street Rag. |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Sarah Brown Weitzman:
Dover Beach By Matthew Arnold 1822–1888 The sea is calm tonight. The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits; on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Come to the window, sweet is the night-air! Only, from the long line of spray Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land, Listen! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand, Begin, and cease, and then again begin, With tremulous cadence slow, and bring The eternal note of sadness in. Sophocles long ago Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow Of human misery; we Find also in the sound a thought, Hearing it by this distant northern sea. The Sea of Faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world. Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night. |
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Jonathan R.K. Stroud
Jonathan R.K. Stroud, a patent attorney, litigates and counsels on patent, trade secret, copyright, trademark, and contract disputes. He regularly speaks and writes on emerging issues in intellectual property law, and has published in several legal publications. A former journalist, Mr. Stroud has published in weeklies and dailies, magazines, and blogs. He loves to write. He enjoys literature, particularly Cormac McCarthy, David Foster Wallace, Virginia Woolf, Jonathan Franzen, and Graham Greene. His favorite poets include Robert Lowell, Kay Ryan, Louise Gluck, Anne Sexton, Robert Bly, and Shel Silverstein. He plays the violin and basketball. And he knows what it means to miss New Orleans. |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Jonathan R.K. Stroud:
Lines Composed A Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey By William Wordsworth William Wordsworth, Composed "Lines Composed A Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye During a Tour" (Full Tittle) on July 13, 1798. Below is an excerpt (lines 138-150). Therefore let the moon Shine on thee in thy solitary walk; And let the misty mountain-winds be free To blow against thee: and, in after years, When these wild ecstasies shall be matured Into a sober pleasure; when thy mind Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms, Thy memory be as a dwelling-place For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then, If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief, Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts Of tender joy wilt thou remember me, And these my exhortations! |
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Dave Iasevoli
Dave Iasevoli, Ed.D., grew up in Brooklyn and now lives and teaches in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York. He studied at Amherst College with Guru Bob Thurman and received his doctorate from Columbia University. The poets who were central to his dissertation are Donne, Stevens, Jorie Graham, and Gwendolyn Brooks. He has traveled through all 50 States and loves the deserts of the Southwest, especially White Sands and Death Valley. He has published both poetry and non-fiction, and studied at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference with Natasha Trethewey. |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Dave Iasevoli:
Boy Breaking Glass by Gwendolyn Brooks To Marc Crawford from whom the commission Whose broken window is a cry of art (success, that winks aware as elegance, as a treasonable faith) is raw: is sonic: is old-eyed premiére. Our beautiful flaw and terrible ornament. Our barbarous and metal little man. “I shall create! If not a note, a hole. If not an overture, a desecration.” Full of pepper and light and Salt and night and cargoes. “Don’t go down the plank if you see there’s no extension. Each to his grief, each to his loneliness and fidgety revenge. Nobody knew where I was and now I am no longer there.” The only sanity is a cup of tea. The music is in minors. Each one other is having different weather. “It was you, it was you who threw away my name! And this is everything I have for me.” Who has not Congress, lobster, love, luau, The Regency Room, the Statue of Liberty, runs. A sloppy amalgamation. A mistake. A cliff. A hymn, a snare, and an exceeding sun. |
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Emily Strauss
Emily Strauss has an M.A. in English, but is self-taught in poetry. Nearly 200 of her poems appear in over 100 online venues and in anthologies. The natural world is generally her framework; she often focuses on the tension between nature and humanity, using concrete images to illuminate the loss of meaning between them. She is a semi-retired teacher living in California. |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Emily Strauss:
Hurt Hawks By Robinson Jeffers I The broken pillar of the wing jags from the clotted shoulder, The wing trails like a banner in defeat, No more to use the sky forever but live with famine And pain a few days: cat nor coyote Will shorten the week of waiting for death, there is game without talons. He stands under the oak-bush and waits The lame feet of salvation; at night he remembers freedom And flies in a dream, the dawns ruin it. He is strong and pain is worse to the strong, incapacity is worse. The curs of the day come and torment him At distance, no one but death the redeemer will humble that head, The intrepid readiness, the terrible eyes. The wild God of the world is sometimes merciful to those That ask mercy, not often to the arrogant. You do not know him, you communal people, or you have forgotten him; Intemperate and savage, the hawk remembers him; Beautiful and wild, the hawks, and men that are dying, remember him. II I’d sooner, except the penalties, kill a man than a hawk; but the great redtail Had nothing left but unable misery From the bones too shattered for mending, the wing that trailed under his talons when he moved. We had fed him for six weeks, I gave him freedom, He wandered over the foreland hill and returned in the evening, asking for death, Not like a beggar, still eyed with the old Implacable arrogance. I gave him the lead gift in the twilight. What fell was relaxed, Owl-downy, soft feminine feathers; but what Soared: the fierce rush: the night-herons by the flooded river cried fear at its rising Before it was quite unsheathed from reality. |
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George Desmond Clark-Walker
I was born in Malaya in 1938 where my father ,from New Zealand, had a job as a surveyor in the British public service. From the age of 3 I grew up in Perth, Western Australia, where I obtained BSc and MSc degrees from the University of Western Australia. In 1961 I was awarded a Hackett Studentship that enabled me to study in the Biochemistry Department at the University of Oxford where I was enrolled through Balliol College. I graduated with a D.Phil. degree in1965 and returned to Australia to a post Doctoral Fellowship at Monash University in Melbourne. After 20 months at Monash, I spent the next 2 years in the Department of Bacteriology as a Post Doctoral Fellow, University of California at Los Angeles. In December 1968 I returned to Australia to a Research Fellow position at the newly-formed Research School of Biological Sciences at the Australian National University, Canberra. In 2006 after 37 years in the Research School I retired as Professor of Molecular Genetics and moved to the Research School of Chemistry as an Emeritus Professor where I have been undertaking research. While at U.W.A I joined the Western Australian Speleological Group. Highlights included discovering a complete Thylacine skeleton in an unexplored part of the August Jewel Cave and the first exploration of a cave containing the world’s longest straw stalactites. In 1965 I married Jan Oscar in Sydney. Our son Adrian, was born in Los Angeles in1968 and our two daughters, Kate and Roz,were born in Canberra in 1969 and 1972. My wife and I enjoy travel both in Australia and far-flung places including the Antarctic and Arctic regions, the Galapagos, Madagascar, China ,Japan, New Guinea and Alaska. We also like walking and have trekked in Nepal, the Pyrenees and Peru as well as New Zealand and Tasmania. We have made several trips to European Countries often combining these with a conference I had been attending. Recently we travelled overland in the Northern Territory and Kimberley and to Ningaloo Reef where I had the chance to swim with Whale Sharks- a great thrill! For a number of years I have been a member of the Canberra Ornithology Group. Editor's Note: Des Clark-Walker's poem "Interfaces" was published in the Balliol College Annual Record (2013, page 95). His latest poem, "The Rainbow Serpent’s secret", will also be published in the Balliol College Annual Record in the near future. |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Des Clark-Walker:
My Country By Dorothea Mackellar (1885 - 1968) The love of field and coppice, Of green and shaded lanes. Of ordered woods and gardens Is running in your veins, Strong love of grey-blue distance Brown streams and soft dim skies I know but cannot share it, My love is otherwise. I love a sunburnt country, A land of sweeping plains, Of ragged mountain ranges, Of droughts and flooding rains. I love her far horizons, I love her jewel-sea, Her beauty and her terror - The wide brown land for me! A stark white ring-barked forest All tragic to the moon, The sapphire-misted mountains, The hot gold hush of noon. Green tangle of the brushes, Where lithe lianas coil, And orchids deck the tree-tops And ferns the warm dark soil. Core of my heart, my country! Her pitiless blue sky, When sick at heart, around us, We see the cattle die - But then the grey clouds gather, And we can bless again The drumming of an army, The steady, soaking rain. Core of my heart, my country! Land of the Rainbow Gold, For flood and fire and famine, She pays us back threefold - Over the thirsty paddocks, Watch, after many days, The filmy veil of greenness That thickens as we gaze. An opal-hearted country, A wilful, lavish land - All you who have not loved her, You will not understand - Though earth holds many splendours, Wherever I may die, I know to what brown country My homing thoughts will fly. |
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Nabin Kumar Chhetri
Nabin Kumar Chhetri reads for M.St in creative writing at the University of Oxford. He is a member of Scottish PEN. He graduated with a degree of M.Litt in Novel from the University of Aberdeen. His poems have been published in Gutter( Scotland), Irish Literary Review(Ireland), The Lamp(Canada), Fade Annual anthology (UK), Canon’s Mouth Poetry Journal (UK), Poetry Scotland ( UK), S.N Review (US), Apple Valley Review(Canada), The London Grip(UK), Forge Journal (UK), Wayfarers(UK), Ricepaper Magazine(Canada), Penny Dreadful(USA), The Sun(India), Nosside Poetry Anthology 2010(Italy), Quest(India), Spinny Babbler(Nepal), Mawaheb(Canada), Poetry Quarterly(China), Fade Poetry Journal(UK), Cynic magazine(US), Tower Journal(US), Poetic Justice - Amnesty International Anthology (Scotland), Featured Poet of the week in Poetry Super Highway(US), Taj Mahal Review (India), Revival(Ireland), Reverie Poetry Journal(US), Sixers Review(US), The Essence(UK), The Kathmandu Post(Nepal), Red Ochre Lit Journal (US), Nosside Poetry Anthology 2011(Italy), Birds Eye Review(US), The Dupage Valley Review, Benedictine University’s Press (US) and Verse Wisconsin (US). Apart from the publications, The Nosside Poetry Award (Italy) which falls under the UNESCO heritage award conferred a special mention for my poem ‘Memory’ in November 2011. RECEIVING THE NOSSIDE POETRY AWARD(ITALY) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLrm_NICsp8 |
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James G. Piatt
Two of Dr. Piatt's relatives, John James Piatt and Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt, were prolific poets who wrote their poetry in the mid and late 1800s. Their poetry has inspired much of his style of poetry, as well as his chosen themes. He is the author of two poetry books by Broken Publications, "The Silent Pond," and "Ancient Rhythms." A third book is scheduled for release in late 2014. He is also the author of over 535 poems, 2 novels, "The Ideal Society" and "The Monk," 33 short stories, and 7 essays. His poem The Night Frog was nominated for best of web, 2013. His books are available on Amazon, and Barnes and Noble. Recent Publication: Dr. Piatt's latest book of poetry, Light, was published in 2016. |
A favorite Public Domain poem of James G. Piatt:
My Shadow's Stature (Written in the 1800's) By John James Piatt WHENE'RE, in morning airs, I walk abroad, Breasting upon the hills the buoyant wind, Up from the vale my shadow climbs behind, An earth-born giant climbing toward his god; Against the sun, on heights before untrod, I stand: faint glorified, but undefined, Far down the slope in misty meadows blind, I see my ghostly follower slowly plod. 'O stature of my shade,' I muse and sigh, 'How great art thou, how small am I the while!' Then the vague giant blandly answers, 'True, But though thou art small thy head is in the sky, Crown'd with the sun and all the Heaven's smile-- My head is in the shade and valley too.' |
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Ray DiZazzo
Ray DiZazzo is an author, producer, teacher and speaker. He has spent the past 35 years writing, producing and directing media programs for large and small businesses, writing poetry, fiction and screenplays and teaching filmmaking and creative writing. He has written four books on corporate media production, which are used in colleges and universities internationally. His two early books of poetry include, Clovin’s Head, 1976, from Red Hill Press, and Songs for a Summer Fly, 1978 from Kenmore Press. The Water Bulls, his recent book of poetry, and art is a collection of early (mid-70s) and current work. In the introduction he makes the case that imagery, something he has strived to master over the years, is the essence of what he considers “the best of poetry”, just as imagery is the essence of fine art work. DiZazzo’s early major influences include Robert Peters and James Dickey. Of Peters he says, “In the early 1970s, I walked into a bookstore on Catalina Island and stumbled onto a copy of Songs for a Son -- an account of Peter’s son’s death, virtually overnight, from meningitis. I was stunned by the sharp, visceral imagery of his writing, and knew at once this was a direction I wanted to pursue. I wrote to Peters, we met, became teacher/mentor and eventually, very good friends.” His favorite James Dickey collection is Poems 1957-1967. “Again,” he says, “I was amazed by the amazing imagery Dickey managed to achieve. I consider him one of the few true masters of poetic imagery, and he was without a doubt the most influential poet in my life during those early years. Poems like “The Summons”, “Kudzu”, “The Fiend”, “The Firebombing” and so many others in that collection are incredible examples of some of the purest and most focused writing I’ve ever read.” Of his own writing, he says, “I’ve just always been a word person. I’m constantly amazed by the power of words, both spoken and written, and that’s kept me constantly trying to polish and purify my own work. Very frankly, I’m not sure how my work should be defined, other than as my own attempt to create stunning images with words.” DiZazzo has published two novels. He calls The Simian Bridge, “a spiritual, supernatural journey to achieve higher meaning,” and of Moonmare, his recently released science fiction novel, he says, “It is an exploration of the terrible possibilities of genetic manipulation, the instability of irrational need and child and animal abuse.” His business parable, The Clarity Factor, written in the style of The One Minute Manager, explores the rules of personal communication. It has been translated into six languages. (Ray DiZazzo's essay on poetry development appears in the "Essays by Featured Poets" section.) |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Ray DiZazzo:
The Waste Land By T.S. Elliot I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, feeding A little life with dried tubers. Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade, And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten, And drank coffee, and talked for an hour. Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch. And when we were children, staying at the archduke’s, My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled, And I was frightened. He said, Marie, Marie, hold on tight. And down we went. In the mountains, there you feel free. I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter. What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, You cannot say, or guess, for you know only A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, And the dry stone no sound of water. Only There is shadow under this red rock, (Come in under the shadow of this red rock), And I will show you something different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust. Frisch weht der Wind Der Heimat zu, Mein Irisch Kind, Wo weilest du? “You gave me hyacinths first a year ago; They called me the hyacinth girl.” —Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden, Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, Looking into the heart of light, the silence. Öd’ und leer das Meer. ( Excerpt. Complete poem: http://www.bartleby.com/201/1.html ) |
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Roy Blokker
I was born in Holland in 1950. My family immigrated when I was two. I have ties to both the Old World and the New. I graduated from the University of California at Santa Cruz as a member of its first full-on four year class. I am author of The Music of Dmitri Shostakovich: The Symphonies (with Robert Dearling) and the novel Amber Waves as well as five volumes of poetry, the latest being a tribute to the soldier poets of World War One, Charles Sorley's Ghost. My work has appeared in publications ranging from Highlights for Children to Clever. Always passionate about writing, and especially poetry, since my retirement from the U. S. Postal Service I am devoting my full time to bettering my craft. I live in Glacier country in Montana, with my bride of forty years, Diane. |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Roy Blokker:
Autumn By Siegfried Sassoon October's bellowing anger breaks and cleaves The bronzed battalions of the stricken wood In whose lament I hear a voice that grieves For battle's fruitless harvest, and the feud Of outraged men. Their lives are like the leaves Scattered in flocks of ruin, tossed and blown Among the westering furnace flaring red. O martyred youth and manhood overthrown, The burden of your wrongs is on my head. |
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Tulip Chowdhury
A novelist and poet, Tulip Chowdhury is a seeker of truth and beauty in life. A Bangladeshi immigrant to the USA, she is a former English Language instructor. A novelist, poet and columnist, Tulip seeks to know life through people from different walks of life and loves the nature. Her first novel, Visible, Invisible and Beyond, published with Create Space is a fiction where she has her imagination play in the world of the humans and the souls. She lives in Massachusetts. |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Tulip Chowdhury:
Out of the Rolling Ocean the Crowd By Walt Whitman Out of the rolling ocean, the crowd, came a drop gently to me, Whispering, I love you, before long I die, I have travel'd a long way, merely to look on you, to touch you, For I could not die till I once look'd on you, For I fear'd I might afterward lose you. Now we have met, we have look'd, we are safe, Return in peace to the ocean, my love, I too am part of that ocean, my love,-we are not so much separated, Behold the great rondure--the cohesion of all, how perfect! But as for me, for you, the irresistible sea is to separate us, As for an hour carrying us diverse-yet cannot carry us diverse forever; Be not impatient--a little space--know you I salute the air, the ocean and the land, Every day at sundown for your dear sake my love. |
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Brice Wade Luse
Brice Wade Luse is an American poet, whose influences include, among others, Hart Crane, Wallace Stevens, William Stafford, and Robert Lowell. |
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Allison Grayhurst
Allison Grayhurst has is a full member of the League of Canadian Poets. She has had over 280 poems published in more than 165 international journals, magazines, and anthologies. Her book Somewhere Falling was published by Beach Holme Publishers, a Porcepic Book, in Vancouver in 1995. Since then she has published ten other books of poetry and four collections with Edge Unlimited Publishing. Prior to the publication of Somewhere Falling she had a poetry book published, Common Dream, and four chapbooks published by The Plowman. Her poetry chapbook The River is Blind was recently published by Ottawa publisher above/ground press December 2012. She lives in Toronto with family. She also sculpts, working with clay. Some of places my work has appeared in include Parabola (summer 2012); Blue Fifth Review; South Florida Arts Journal; Gris-Gris; New Binary Press Anthology; The Brooklyn Voice; Straylight Literary Magazine; The Milo Review; The Foliate Oak Literary Magazine; The Antigonish Review; Dalhousie Review; The New Quarterly; Wascana Review; Poetry Nottingham International; The Cape Rock; Journal of Contemporary Anglo-Scandinavian Poetry; The Toronto Quarterly; Fogged Clarity, Boston Poetry Magazine; Decanto; White Wall Review. |
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Julie Finch
Julie Finch is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin where she majored in communications, minored in English. She worked for many years as an advertising copywriter. Today she works within Houston's staffing industry, and writes every chance she gets. |
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Dr. Ernest Williamson III
Dr. Ernest Williamson III has published poetry and visual art in over 400 national and international online and print journals. Some of Dr. Williamson’s visual art and/or poetry has been published in journals representing 50 colleges and universities around the world. Dr. Williamson is an Assistant Professor of English at Allen University,self-taught pianist, poet, singer,composer, social scientist, private tutor, and a self-taught painter. His poetry has been nominated three times for the Best of the Net Anthology. The poems which were nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology were as follows: “The Jazz of Old Wine”, “The Symbol of Abiotic Needs”, & “The Misfortune of Shallow Sight”. He holds the B.A. and the M.A. in English/Creative Writing/Literature from the University of Memphis and the PhD in Higher Education Leadership from Seton Hall University. |
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Charles Farrell Thielman
Raised in Charleston, S.C., and Chicago, educated at red-bricked universities and on city streets, Charles has enjoyed working as a social worker, truck driver, city bus driver and enthused bookstore clerk. Married on a Kauai beach in 2011, a loving Grandfather for 6! free spirits, his work as Poet and shareholder in an independent Bookstore’s collective continues! Mr. Thielman's chapbook, Into the Owl-Dreamed Night (Uttered Chaos Press), is available via [email protected] . A video of him reading at Tsunami Books, Eugene, Oregon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-5-G_jaoJY |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Charles Farrell Thielman:
Piute Creek by Gary Snyder One granite ridge A tree, would be enough Or even a rock, a small creek, A bark shred in a pool. Hill beyond hill, folded and twisted Tough trees crammed In thin stone fractures A huge moon on it all, is too much. The mind wanders. A million Summers, night air still and the rocks Warm. Sky over endless mountains. All the junk that goes with being human Drops away, hard rock wavers Even the heavy present seems to fail This bubble of a heart. Words and books Like a small creek off a high ledge Gone in the dry air. A clear, attentive mind Has no meaning but that Which sees is truly seen. No one loves rock, yet we are here. Night chills. A flick In the moonlight Slips into Juniper shadow: Back there unseen Cold proud eyes Of Cougar or Coyote Watch me rise and go. |
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Avgi Meleti
Avgi Meleti is Greek and she lives in Worcester, Massachusetts. Her novel Lydius was published by LegumeMan Books publications, Melbourne, Australia. Her short story Autumnale Aequinoctium was part of the Fugue collection of English short stories, published by TheSiren press, in London, UK. Some of her poems and short stories have been published in The Apogee Journal, The Coup d'Etat, The American Aesthetic Journal, The Stone Path Review and in Greek and Finnish Journals as well. She studied English Literature and she holds an MA in Education and Civilization. |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Avgi Meleti:
THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK by: T.S. Eliot Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question ... Oh, do not ask, “What is it?” Let us go and make our visit. In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo. The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes, Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening, Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, And seeing that it was a soft October night, Curled once about the house, and fell asleep. And indeed there will be time For the yellow smoke that slides along the street, Rubbing its back upon the window-panes; There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; There will be time to murder and create, And time for all the works and days of hands That lift and drop a question on your plate; Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea. In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo. And indeed there will be time To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?” Time to turn back and descend the stair, With a bald spot in the middle of my hair -- (They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”) My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin, My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin -- (They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”) Do I dare Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. For I have known them all already, known them all: Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; I know the voices dying with a dying fall Beneath the music from a farther room. So how should I presume? And I have known the eyes already, known them all-- The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase, And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, Then how should I begin To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways? And how should I presume? And I have known the arms already, known them all-- Arms that are braceleted and white and bare (But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!) Is it perfume from a dress That makes me so digress? Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl. And should I then presume? And how should I begin? Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? ... I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! Smoothed by long fingers, Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers, Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me. Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter, I am no prophet — and here’s no great matter; I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, And in short, I was afraid. And would it have been worth it, after all, After the cups, the marmalade, the tea, Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me, Would it have been worth while, To have bitten off the matter with a smile, To have squeezed the universe into a ball To roll it towards some overwhelming question, To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead, Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”-- If one, settling a pillow by her head Should say: “That is not what I meant at all; That is not it, at all.” And would it have been worth it, after all, Would it have been worth while, After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets, After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor-- And this, and so much more?-- It is impossible to say just what I mean! But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen: Would it have been worth while If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl, And turning toward the window, should say: “That is not it at all, That is not what I meant, at all.” No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two, Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use, Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculous-- Almost, at times, the Fool. I grow old ... I grow old ... I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me. I have seen them riding seaward on the waves Combing the white hair of the waves blown back When the wind blows the water white and black. We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown Till human voices wake us, and we drown. |
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Tom Fielding
I am an inveterate/incorrigible singer and songwriter, as well as a professional decorative designer, photographer, published essayist, poet, and speculative fiction writer. A graduate of the University of California at Berkeley with a major in history, my articles have appeared (under an alternate name) in the San Francisco Examiner, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times, and The Activist (UK). Further, I have written (again under an alternate name) numerous short stories; one-act plays; two screenplays; and a full-length, four-act play titled "Rabbits". Two of my poems were featured in Tangent Literary Arts Magazine (Buffalo-Cheektowaga, NY). My long short story/novella, "The Carousel", has recently been serialized by Hypnos magazine (Radium Town, OK). My short story "The Spirit of India" will also appear in Hypnos this spring (2017). My favorite public domain poem ("Year Around") was written by my maternl grandmother, a well known California painter. |
A favorite Public Domain poem of Tom Fielding:
Year Around by Thelma Paddock Hope I loved a garden where the "pineys" bloomed At each spring's end Nodding round heads of white and red For Decoration Day. Where old lilac bushes scented spring's air Following the crocuses, by daffodils escorted. Where summer brought the "butter and eggs" And Queen Anne's lace to fringe the fence There the grace of an ancient pear tree's Bended arms, loaded with blossoms Where petals fell like snow Softly about its silver trunk Followed by the thud of ripening pears in summer. Guarded by black-green pines impervious To summer's heat and winter's snow That garden of my childhood, I loved it so. There are each loved flower bloomed again each spring There seasons passed, some dancing feet, some slow Some hastening almost fearful, Toward winter's snow. Golden pear leaves falling then Frost fern's magic on the window pane Soon the garden slept beneath the snow And then--again the spring. Under branches black against the sky White violets wrapped in green blankets Simulated snow. Garden of my childhood, Year around, I loved you so. |
