How to Read a Poem: Beginner’s Manual First, forget everything you have learned, that poetry is difficult, that it cannot be appreciated by the likes of you, with your high school equivalency diploma and steel-tipped boots, or your white collar misunderstandings. Do not assume meanings hidden from you: the best poems mean what they say … Read more
There’s a story behind every poem. There’s always a story. And the story behind this one is that the poet – Frank O’Hara – was on his way to Staten Island where he was to give a reading with Robert Lowell at Wagner College. It was February 1962 and the weather was nasty. O’Hara picked up … Read more
Before reading the poem – take a look at this painting. Take a good look. What’s there? Be literal. What is in this picture? What do you see? So you climbed the staircase with the one-legged man with the help of a crutch while the world about you lay in ruins. In spite of all, … Read more
The End and the Beginning After every war someone has to clean up. Things won’t straighten themselves up, after all. Someone has to push the rubble to the side of the road, so the corpse-filled wagons can pass. Someone has to get mired in scum and ashes, sofa springs, splintered glass, and bloody … Read more
A bike ride in the country. A conversation interrupted by a near accident and the shock of a racist chance encounter. The ride resumes only to be interrupted again by a moment of menace. And then something quite unexpected happens.. I love the way the poet just drops us into the middle of what seems like … Read more
Blackbirds are notorious for being able to mimic the sounds they hear as they hop about the celestial chimney pots of suburbia. Ice cream van jingles, phone ring tones, car alarms and ambulance sirens – they can do the lot. John Drinkwater – born in Leytonstone, London – writes about the song of the blackbird … Read more
Two Lorries It’s raining on black coal and warm wet ashes. There are tyre-marks in the yard, Agnew’s old lorry Has all its cribs down and Agnew the coalman With his Belfast accent’s sweet-talking my mother. Would she ever go to a film in Magherafelt? But it’s raining and he still has half the load … Read more
Sleeping is one of the things cats do best. Which is lucky because it limits the number of minutes and hours in the day that the cat plugs into the socket and goes on a wired rampage of electric energy. Sleeping one of their better qualities and most advanced skills. Cats, it seems, do not suffer … Read more
Moonlight What time the meanest brick and stone Take on a beauty not their own, And past the flaw of builded wood Shines the intention whole and good, And all the little homes of man Rise to a dimmer, nobler span; When colour’s absence gives escape To the deeper spirit of the shape,– Then earth’s … Read more
Abandoned Farmhouse He was a big man, says the size of his shoes on a pile of broken dishes by the house; a tall man too, says the length of the bed in an upstairs room; and a good, God-fearing man, says the Bible with a broken back on the floor below the window, dusty … Read more
Britain declared war on Germany just after U.A. Fanthorpe’s birthday in 1939. She was ten. Living in Kent she was familiar with the signs and sounds, fears and deprivations of wartime England. She knows the enemy – whom she calls by the popular put-down, the Hun – by “the nightly whines, searchlights, thuds, bomb-sites”. Her French … Read more
In light of decision-making by executive order and the White House signing ceremonies that seem to exude smug gloating – a poem and pictures. Decisions, signings, authorizations, treaties, orders have consequences. The hand that signed the paper The hand that signed the paper felled a city; Five sovereign fingers taxed the breath, Doubled the globe … Read more
Tides O patient shore, that canst not go to meet Thy love, the restless sea, how comfortest Thou all thy loneliness? Art thou at rest, When, loosing his strong arms from round thy feet, He turns away? Know’st thou, however sweet That other shore may be, that to thy breast He must return? And when … Read more
On the Fifth Day the scientists who studied the rivers were forbidden to speak or to study the rivers. The scientists who studied the air were told not to speak of the air, and the ones who worked for the farmers were silenced, and the ones who worked for the bees. Someone, from deep in … Read more
