Elizabeth Barrett Browning's 'Mother and Poet' is a lamentation of a mother's grief over losing her only two sons in battle.
Tag: Poetry
Sleep Faster, We Need the Pillows: Suzanne Buffam’s ‘A Pillow Book’
It's hard to define a writer like Suzanne Buffam who so easily jumps between different poetic forms, from lists to snippets and musings in prose.
Han Shan – A Bug Crawling in a Bowl
Han Shan's poems are rooted in the quiet nature of the Cold Mountain and the poet's effusive humor that reminds us of the worthlessness of worldly pursuits.
Peter Spaulding – Déjà Vu, According to The Matrix
Peter Spaulding's Déjà Vu, According to the Matrix starts with the Smiths and a scene from The Matrix, and builds up in layers of playful, random meaning and free-associative lines that run through the poem.
Janette Schafer – Passagio
Janette Schafer describes her short poem, Passagio, as 'a haiku of hope.'
Matthew Kohut – I Me Mine
The germ of the poem I Me Mine came to Matthew Kohut when he startled awake on a train that was passing through the area where he grew up.
Smelling the Flowers in Dogen’s Gardens – Marcia Lieberman’s ‘Clean Slate’
Photographer Marcia Lieberman's new book, Clean Slate, is a meditation on nature and temple gardens made in the footsteps of 13th century Japanese Zen master Dogen.
Li Bai – Zazen on Ching-t’ing Mountain
In this short poem, Li Bai writes about the experience of zazen (meditation) using some of the simplest and most common imagery of the time - birds and clouds for the passing phenomena of the mind, and the mountain for the stability of awareness, which eventually is the only thing that remains.
Susan Barba – How Should We Live Our Lives?
"Only the seaIs free of such calculations." Susan Barba Declared 'a poem worth framing' by one reviewer, Susan Barba's How Should We Live Our Lives? dips into a stream of questions and musings reminiscent in style of Mary Oliver's simple and probing verse. She starts with love and trepidation and ends with an… Continue reading Susan Barba – How Should We Live Our Lives?
Chiyono’s Enlightenment Poem
Adachi Chiyono (also known as Mugai Nyodai) was the daughter of a samurai warrior in the 13th century who became the first woman - and mother - to found and head a Zen monastery in Japan.