On the Cards and Dice – Sir Walter Raleigh

read by Robert Pinsky audio from The Slate Poetry Podcast.

Before the sixth day of the next new year,
Strange wonders in this kingdom shall appear:
Four kings shall be assembled in this isle,
Where they shall keep great tumult for awhile.
Many men then shall have an end of crosses,
And many likewise shall sustain great losses;
Many that now full joyful are and glad,
Shall at that time be sorrowful and sad;
Full many a Christian’s heart shall quake for fear,
The dreadful sound of trump when he shall hear.
Dead bones shall then be tumbled up and down,
In every city and in every town.
By day or night this tumult shall not cease,
Until an herald shall proclaim a peace;
An herald strange, the like was never born,
Whose very beard is flesh and mouth is horn.

“as freedom is a breakfast food” and internet searches

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The tendency is for viewers of this site to read for a while and pass on quietly – so it is rare I receive comments or thoughts on the postings or poems. But in the spirit of counteracting this trend I pose a question to readers both regular and not. Over the past two months a fair amount of traffic has come to poem.oftheweek.org due to searches for E.E. Cummings’ “as freedom is a breakfast food”. A month ago there were 60 unique hits on that page – certainly an oddity for potw.org. Why is this? The poem does not seem to have cropped up in the zeitgeist recently in any significant way that I have noticed. My hope is that one of these searchers will pause on this post to answer, but all readers are welcome to hypothesize (my current theory is that questions on the American high school AP English test may have centered around this poem, though I have have no verification).

Link Friday – Recession? What Recession? Poets are already broke.

Link Tuesday – National Poetry Month, Poets play baseball and graduate Nixon

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The site has been quiet recently – lots going on. But we certainly couldn’t let National Poetry Month pass us by. Since April has been so named it gives news organizations license to run their “special interest” pieces. We certainly could never hope (nor wish) to link to all of them, but you will find a few. And if over the course of the month you come across particular sites or stories of interest, please share them. Now read on for assorted and sundry links!

Poem in Your Pocket Day. About what it sounds like. On April 30th various organizations encourage you to carry a poem in your pocket – share it with your friends. I think the most famous example of someone carrying a poem in his (or her) pocket was Percy Shelley – supposedly he had Keats’ poetry in his shirt pocket on the day Shelley drowned. So, there’s that (link courtesy of nataline).
So Thursday (4/23) is Shakespeare’s birthday. Cool. Apparently people are encouraging Talk Like Shakespeare Day to celebrate this. p.otw.org will not be participating.
NPR has been doing a number of poetry stories recently (no doubt tied to NaPoMo). Here’s one that discusses performing Wendell Berry’s work. Wish we could have seen the performance.
And unrelated to anything at all – faithful reader johnlos alerts us to the existence of the Whittier College Poets. As he notes in his email, “Whittier College is probably most famous for being where Richard Nixon went to undergrad. For some reason their athletics aren’t very well known…” Alas.

from Helen in Egypt – H.D.

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excerpt read by H.D. audio from Poetry Speaks: Expanded.

3
…
few were the words we said,
nor knew each other,
nor asked, are you Spirit?

are you sister? are you brother?
are you alive?
are you dead?

the harpers will sing forever
of how Achilles met Helen
among the shades,

but we were not, we are not shadows;
as we walk, heel and sole
leave our sandal-prints in the sand,

though the wounded heel treads lightly
and more lightly follow,
the purple sandals.
…

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