Famed and beloved beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s quotable book Poetry as Insurgent Art is part desiderata, part manifesto on the importance of poetry.
In four prose poems and a brief essay, its quips vary from rebellious (“Strive to change the world in such a way that there’s no further need to be a dissident”) to koan-like statements to [...]
Posts Tagged as ‘Poetry’
October 28, 2009
Poetry as Insurgent Art
October 12, 2009
We Are Family
In Pittsburgh, we are truly family. When members of a family lose one of their own, they grieve. When they lose several, they hurt, more deeply than can be imagined.
For the moment, let’s put aside money and politics and contention and think about loss and what it means in our lives. Let us feel loss. [...]
September 22, 2009
Nick Cave: Poet, Novelist, Musician, Birthday Boy
Today is the birthday of one of Australia’s premier exports, Nick Cave. Cave has made his mark in many arenas: music, novels, poetry, and film, and probably a few more. His work with his band, The Bad Seeds, changed the landscape of literate rock. Their appearance in one of my favorite films of all times, [...]
September 3, 2009
Among the Jumbled Heap of Murky Buildings
In a previous post, I talked about how the clanging, banging music of Einstürzende Neubauten was the perfect soundtrack to urban living. Well, since John Keats published his sonnet “To one who has long been in city pent” in 1817, it is certainly not a new sentiment to want instead to escape the urban environment [...]
September 1, 2009
Wendell Berry: The Peace of Wild Things
When I think of Wendell Berry, I think of the Dalai Lama, Henry David Thoreau, and Gary Snyder, all extraordinary human beings whose lives I admire and ideas I cherish, particularly when it comes to our collective place in the larger ecosytem that is our world. “Hero” seems too ordinary a word, “saint,” perhaps too [...]
August 12, 2009
Why Anne Sexton Matters
So far, this year has been “The Year Without Fiction” for me, or nearly so. Since I usually read a couple of novels a month, to have read less than a handful by this time of year is pretty much unprecedented. There are a variety of reasons for this, some work-related, some otherwise, so I’ve [...]
July 24, 2009
A Summer’s Day …
2009 has been designated the 400th anniversary of the publication of perhaps the most famous poetry collection of all time, the Sonnets of William Shakespeare. Frequently, when you mention Shakespeare, folks start looking around for the exits, a feeling you might be having some kinship with at this very moment, but hang in, because there is [...]
June 17, 2009
“Sister Outsider:” Audre Lorde
Nearly every article on poet and activist Audre Lorde makes use of her self-description: “I am a Black, lesbian, feminist, warrior, poet, mother doing my work.” Lorde valued identity as a source of her work, and said, “My poetry comes from the intersection of me and my worlds.” Regarding identity, Lorde considered herself a “continuum of [...]
May 15, 2009
Three Poets, One Moon, and the Ancient Rites of Spring
In a recent post about Mary Oliver’s new book, Evidence, I quoted her poem, “Li Po and the Moon.” In one way, it was an unusual subject for her; in another, it was just a different approach to one of her dominant themes, nature.
So, imagine my surprise when I picked up the much anticipated (at [...]
April 30, 2009
Mary Oliver: Evidence
Once again, Mary Oliver fans may take heart: a new volume of her poetry, Evidence, has just been published and it is, as always, quite good.
Though not to everyone’s taste, Oliver has however managed to become one of the two most popular American poets of the last 20 years, among both the generally non-poetry reading [...]
