Poem of the Week

(1:11)
read by Paul Muldoon. audio from paulmuldoon.net

My eldest sister arrived home that morning
In her white muslin evening dress.
‘Who the hell do you think you are
Running out to dances in next to nothing?
As though we hadn’t enough bother
With the world at war, if not at an end.’
My father was pounding the breakfast-table.

(more…)

(1:01)
read by Bill Berkson. audio from Poets on Poets

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that ’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow’d to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair’d the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o’er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

Various poets and poems were all over the news thanks to the Inauguration on the 20th and Edgar Allan Poe’s birthday on the 19th. So here are a smattering of links about the two:

• MSNBC’s video of the reading by Elizabeth Alexander. I would be interested in hearing thoughts on it (I’ll post the transcript in the comments).
• Time has an interview with Elizabeth Alexander about her process and thoughts on inaugural poems.
• And on to Poe. NPR has had a few pieces on him. The first is a remembrance with “Gomez” from The Addams Family (I like that the slug on the website doesn’t even refer to the actor by his real name). The second story I’m linking to covers the efforts of yet another city (Boston) to lay some claim to Poe. (He was born there in 1809 and was taken away shortly thereafter upon being orphaned. Apparently he later claimed he was ashamed to be born in Boston.)

(4:05)
read by Basil Rathbone. audio from The Edgar Allan Poe Audio Collection

I

Hear the sledges with the bells –
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells –
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

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(1:24)
read by Amiri Baraka. audio from PennSound. From a Reading at San Francisco State, University, 4 March 1965.

My intentions are colors, I’m filled with
color, every tint you think of lends to mine
my mind is full of color, hard muscle streaks,
or soft glow round exactness registration. All earth
heaven things, hell things, in colors circulate
a wild blood train, turns litmus like a bible coat,
describes music falling flying, my criminal darkness,
static fingers, call it art, high above the streetwalkers
(more…)

• “In a Haystack” by Andrea Cohen, published in the current Atlantic Monthly
• This is an older link, but one well worth sharing. Here is Joel Priddy’s cartoon story, “Mr. Blake’s Company”. For more information on Blake, his Wikipedia page is a good primer.
• This is not about poetry or about reading poetry, but about writing in the Internet age. Some good advice by Cory Doctorow.
• An interview on NPR from a month ago about Elizabeth Alexander who was chosen to write the Inaugural poem for Barack Obama
• Finally, thinking about inaugural poems (I’m sure I would not enjoy the task of praising someone in verse in such a formal setting) led me to stumble across this story about the inaugural poem Robert Frost wrote for JFK. The Library of Congress has original scans of the text Frost was attempting to read from.

(2:30)
read by E.E. Cummings. audio from Poetry Speaks: Expanded.

as freedom is a breakfastfood
or truth can live with right and wrong
or molehills are from mountains made
–long enough and just so long
will being pay the rent of seem
and genius please the talentgang
and water most encourage flame

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“Wulf and Eadwacer” by Unknown
trans. from the Old English by Richard Hamer

It is as though my people had been given
A present. They will wish to capture him
If he comes with a troop. We are apart.
Wulf is on one isle, I am on another.
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(2:00)
read by Ted Kooser. audio from Blue Flower Arts.

We were ten or eleven, my friend and I,
when we found them up under a bridge,
on top of a beam where pigeons were resting.
Someone had carefully hidden them there.
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