Tag: powerlessness

poetry appreciation

coming to America, going not so well…

Dec 9, 2021 #circumlocution, #circumlocution office, #compassion, #emptahy, #envy, #evasiveness, #fear, #form, #grace, #hatred, #immigration, #injustice, #loathing, #paranoia, #passive, #poet laureate, #power, #powerlessness, #racism, #smith, #tone, #Tracy k Smith, #USA by Lucy Crispin

And now, as the Pythons used to say, for something completely different. Yes, it’s another another arrival in America, courtesy of Tracy K Smith, a former Poet Laureate; but it’s very different from last week’s. Read ‘The United States Welcomes you‘ and shiver.

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poetry appreciation

the wheel of fortune

Feb 18, 2021 #acceptance, #agency, #ambition, #calm, #chance, #change, #comfort, #connection, #constant, #destiny, #fate, #Fortune, #meaning, #modest, #modesty, #passivity, #peace, #philosophical, #powerlessness, #reflection, #Robert Southall, #soothing, #Southall, #times go by turnes, #wheel of fortune by Lucy Crispin

I just love it when a poem from another time or place “reaches” me: suddenly I’m in relationship with someone from another age or culture, often someone whose bones are long since turned to dust. Ain’t that something? Last week a poetry magazine I read had Robert Southall’s* ‘Times go by Turns‘ printed under the Editorial, and I had just that experience of remote connection: I felt less alone—comforted by being accompanied, by seeing what is common and constant in human experience. See if the poem does it for you, too.

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poetry appreciation

difficult thoughts

Nov 19, 2020 #disenfranchised, #dread, #dream, #dreaming, #fear, #gloom, #hope, #hopelessness, #hopes, #Lindsay, #Louis MacNeice, #Macneice, #passion, #possibility, #powerless, #powerlessness, #protest, #unrespresented, #Vachel Lindsay by Lucy Crispin

When times are hard, is it helpful or appalling to read something and realise that times have been hard in the same way before (and therefore probably will be again)? Mostly, as you’ll know by now, I tend to think it’s helpful to read and know you are not alone; but when today’s poem presented itself for duty in my head, seeming apt for the times, resonant and gloomy, I did initially feel a bit droopier than I already had been. So, see what you think: do you feel droopier when you read ‘The Leaden Eyed‘ by Vachel Lindsay? (Note: in versions I’ve seen in print there is a stanza break between lines 4 and 5, which doesn’t appear in this online version.)

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poetry appreciation

I do not approve

Jun 18, 2020 #anger, #bewilderment, #complaint, #denial, #Dirge WIthout Music, #Edna St VIncent Millay, #fury, #grief, #heartbreak, #loss, #powerlessness, #rage, #stages of grief by Lucy Crispin

Someone confided in me, earlier this week, their feelings in re: all the pain, confusion and madness in the world at the moment: “I don’t like it”. It was offered as if I was being let into an important secret, and there was something very disarming about it—so honest and un-clever and childlike. Not to mention unarguable. It put me in mind of the wonderful ‘Dirge Without Music‘ by Edna St Vincent Millay. There’s what I think is a very good reading of it there at the Poetry Website (click the red arrow by the title), and a different one here; or you could enjoy this fragment which, I think, catches the same mood as the PF reading. Have a listen. See what you think.

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