A poem imbued with a sense of healing and strength cultivated over many seasons, enabling the capacity for wide-open looking and listening.
Tag: American Poetry
Caroline Goodwin – Not, I’ll Not
'Not, I'll Not' takes its title from Gerard Manley Hopkins' sonnet about meeting suffering, 'Carrion Comfort' and explores some of the ideas in the psychedelic rock group Heron Oblivion's song, 'Beneath Fields'.
A.R. Ammons – Still
A call to commune with what is most basic and elemental, to ground oneself and to identify with the lowly rather than the grandiose.
One Art – Elizabeth Bishop’s Poem About Learning to Lose
'So many things seem filled with the intent to be lost,' writes Elizabeth Bishop in the first stanza of one of her most well-known poems. Having lost her father before she even knew him, her mother to mental illness at a very young age, and years later her partner to suicide, Bishop was close to… Continue reading One Art – Elizabeth Bishop’s Poem About Learning to Lose
Jane Hirshfield’s Ode to Optimism and Resilience
"Poetry itself is an instrument of resilience," Jane Hirshfield wrote more than a decade ago when referring to her poem 'Optimism' for the Washington Post. Poetry, she continues, reflects "life's continuing embrace of its own implausible, risky existence." A residential Zen student of many years, Jane Hirshfield's work embodies a continuing sense of wonder and… Continue reading Jane Hirshfield’s Ode to Optimism and Resilience
A Blessing by James Wright
Loneliness and separation are two enduring themes of poet James Wright's work, which is one of the reasons why this poem, A Blessing, is so uplifting. In the late 1950s, Wright had all but given up on his writing when he met fellow poet Robert Bly, and the two men formed a friendship and a… Continue reading A Blessing by James Wright
Why I Write – Danielle Pieratti
Can writing with your wrong hand beat writer's block? Are maternity leave and creativity at all compatible? Danielle Pieratti, The Dewdrop's featured poet this week, knows. The author of 'Fugitives', a collection that won the 2016 Idaho Prize and the 2017 Connecticut Book Award for Poetry, she has also published two chapbooks: 'By the Dog… Continue reading Why I Write – Danielle Pieratti
Triptych by Danielle Pieratti
'Triptych' by Danielle Pieratti is a dream-like scene that at once expounds a loaded world contained in a moment, a sail 'unhooked' and unfurling through a countryside picture. The poem holds an entire scale of refracted imagery, from the everyday image of two people, one observing the other while knee-high in mud, to the wider… Continue reading Triptych by Danielle Pieratti
Something There is That Doesn’t Love a Wall
Robert Frost's 'Mending Wall' is at once a humorous take on rural living as well as a more pointed meditation on isolation and the barriers we choose to build, or are obliged to put up. The walls, he seems to say, have a tendency to come down by themselves, but we will come and repair… Continue reading Something There is That Doesn’t Love a Wall
There’s No Salvation in Elsewhere
'If nothing's here, nothing's there', writes poet Stephen Dunn about the instinct to believe that happiness is a place other than where we are, over the horizon, up in the sky, on the streets of a foreign city. If you are expecting to find salvation there, he says, all you'll find are reflections of the… Continue reading There’s No Salvation in Elsewhere