New York School poet Kenneth Koch (1925-2002) was called “the funniest serious poet we have”. His engaged poetry is often funny, but Koch is serious about his craft. He also wrote short satirical plays and worked very successfully with children. I read a love poem, “To You”. To You I love you as a sheriff searches for …
Robert Bly (b. 1926) was the child of Norwegian immigrants to the US. He is considered a nonacademic and very American poet (the plains of Minnesota…) He is also an important translator of Norwegian and Spanish poetry. One of his projects was writing a poem every morning and these Morning poems are considered to be among the best …
Galway Kinnell (1927-2004) was an engaged, versitale and prolific American poet who won many awards (Pulitzer, National Book Award. I read a classing sounding poem, called the Feast: The Feast Juniper and cedar in the sand. The lake beyond, here deer-meat smoking On a driftwood fire. And we two Reaching each other by the wash …
James Wright (1927-1980) won a Pulitzer Prize for his collected poetry in 1972 (fun fact: his son Franz Wright also won a Pulitzer Prize for poetry, which makes them unique). He was considered a technical innovator, well known for his depictions of the post-industrial American mid-West. The following poem is frequently anthologized: A Blessing Just …
Today I read a playful and fruity poem by American poet Peter Davison (1928-2004), who I understood was a quiet but powerful figure in American poetry who deeply believed in his craft. Here is “peaches”: Peaches A mouthful of language to swallow: stretches of beach, sweet clinches, breaches in walls, bleached branches; britches hauled over haunches; …
Beat poet Gregory Corso 1930-2001) was a young member of the Beat generation, ‘urchin shelley’ who always believed in the power of poetry to bring about change. Here is a funny verse about generational conflict between poets: I am 25 With a love a madness for Shelley Chatterton Rimbaud and the needy-yap of my youth …
Thom Gunn (1929-2004), another much-honored poet, who started out using iambic pentameter, borne out of an ambition to be the John Donne of the twentieth century, writing about topics such as LSD, Hell’s angels or queer culture. Later, he wrote no less heart-felt poetry in freer forms. For him, “Writing poetry has in fact become …
The American poet John Hollander (1929-2013) was known for his language virtuosity. His most famous book for a wider audience was his 1981 introduction to form and prosody Rhyme’s Reason, a witty tour through the intricacies of poetry that you can borrow online. Some say that his poems lack personal engagement, that the emotion is …
John Montague (1929-2016), a friend of Samuel Beckett, connected the English and Irish tradition like no other. This is captured in the short poem with the resounding title ‘Murphy in Manchester’: Murphy in Manchester He wakes to a confused dream of boats, gulls, And all his new present floats Suddenly up to him on rocking …
A very popular public poet, Arienne Rich (1929-2012) was also a leading feminist activist. Her poetry career stretches many decades and she was awarded many prizes. Her book ‘Diving into the Wreck’ is probably her most well-known publication. She is a kindred soul, who told us that “perhaps just such a passionate skepticism, neither cynical …
The Indian poet A. K. Ramanujan (1929-1993) wrote in English and Kannada, a rich language of South India. He considered himself to be the hyphen in “Indo-American” and was a respected teacher and a wonderful poet. As you can see here, in my imagination this poem has a specific Indian ring to it: Breaded Fish …
Donald Hall (b. 1928) is another celebrated American poet. Hall “has lived deeply within the New England ethos of plain living and high thinking, and he has done so with a sense of humor and eros.” He had lost his wife, Jane Kenyon to leukemia in 1994, with whom he lived a happy and harmonious poet’s …
Nigerian Yorùbá playwright, novelist and poet Wole Soyinka (b. 1934) received the Nobel Prize in 1986 as the first representative of a ‘new English literature’ emerged in the former colonies. He is also a political activist who spent 22 months in prison basically for trying to avert the Nigerian civil war, in the sixties. I …
Today I honor another master of words, Daryl Hine (1936-2012). We was a remarkably gifted poet whose language has been praised as exceptional. He studies the classics and philosophy, and that clearly influenced his poetic eye. Ormbsby says it better: Hines is “a poet in whom an almost irresistible exuberance of language brims to the …
The great American poet C.K. Williams (1947-2015) writes in characteristically very long lines. He was a very engaged poet, for example with the nuclear disaster at Three Miles Island in Tar. He earned many awards and honors (National Book Award, Pulitzer Prize). I read a seemingly simple poem called Zebra: Zebra Kids once carried tin …
Eleanor Wilner (b. 1937) has a clear poetic vision that she has expressed in many publications. She once said that “our culture has made us shallow and dreamless by inculcating the myth that the individual is defined and set apart by his or her own personal experience.” She is happy that poetry eludes attempts at …
Margaret Atwood (b. 1939) is an acclaimed Canadian novelist who also writes poetry, that I find quite accessible. I plucked ‘February’ from the interwebs: February Winter. Time to eat fat and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat, a black fur sausage with yellow Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and tries to …
Today I read Scottish poet Douglas Dunn (b. 1942) avoided draft in Vietnam by returning to Britain, where he worked in a library with Philip Larkin. He is said to be a reflective rather than a reactive poet. I read a compact and intriguing poem about a lark (laverock in Scottish): Larksong A laverock in …
We travel to Northern Ireland. Derek Mahan (b. 1941)’s poetry has been compared to Louis MacNeice and W.D. Auden. Some critics have called it ‘too controlled’. I found this poem worth reading, with an attribution to yet another famous Irish poet: Lives (for Seamus Heaney) First time out I was a torc of gold And …
