I love this article! Great choices! I'd toss in William Trowbridge's "Kong Looks Back on His Tryout with the Bears". Such a bawdy, politically incorrect football poem with lines like "...And if it weren't for love, I'd drop/this shrieking little bimbo sixty stories/and let them take me back to the exhibit..." LOL. I love the fact you went heavy on the formal poets. James Dickey once told me a major fault of contemporary poetry is that no one can remember the lines! Great work!
Thank you so much for reading and sharing! I LOVE that Trowbridge poem and would have never known about it if it weren’t for you. Such a good poem! Dickey, what a poet. And so true. I might not be able to write formal poetry worth a damn but it’s mostly what I read 🤣
I love this! What a beautiful addition to the discussion. I love that last line, "But westward, look, the land is bright." What inspiring words! Thanks so much for reading and sharing this with us!
Good stuff. A poem a day keeps the blues away! I maintain a long list at https://monadnock.net/poems.html but keep finding more.
As to Beowulf (which I happened to read twice recently), I highly recommend sampling the translation by Michael Alexander, for reasons I briefly described here: https://philosopher.coach/2024/10/13/beowulf/
Thank you so much for sharing these links! I love your line, "A poem a day keeps the blues away." Brilliant! I will definitely check out the link regarding Beowulf as well- I'll never tire of reading different translations of that story :)
I love this article! Great choices! I'd toss in William Trowbridge's "Kong Looks Back on His Tryout with the Bears". Such a bawdy, politically incorrect football poem with lines like "...And if it weren't for love, I'd drop/this shrieking little bimbo sixty stories/and let them take me back to the exhibit..." LOL. I love the fact you went heavy on the formal poets. James Dickey once told me a major fault of contemporary poetry is that no one can remember the lines! Great work!
Thank you so much for reading and sharing! I LOVE that Trowbridge poem and would have never known about it if it weren’t for you. Such a good poem! Dickey, what a poet. And so true. I might not be able to write formal poetry worth a damn but it’s mostly what I read 🤣
You can write one helluva song, though. And that’s as close to formal poetry as you can get!
Well thank you!! 😊🙏😍
I like "Say not the struggle naught availeth". My favorite verse is:
"And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light,
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,
But westward, look, the land is bright"
I love this! What a beautiful addition to the discussion. I love that last line, "But westward, look, the land is bright." What inspiring words! Thanks so much for reading and sharing this with us!
Another fav that has and overlapping theme is: "We are the music makers".
It is inspiration for bards and philosophers wondering whether they will have impact.
Some of these are exactly what I needed. I think I'll be reciting Invictus to myself just about everyday now. Thankyou
Thank you so much for reading! Invictus is one of my go-to poems as well. So, so good :) Glad these poems spoke to you! 👏
Good stuff. A poem a day keeps the blues away! I maintain a long list at https://monadnock.net/poems.html but keep finding more.
As to Beowulf (which I happened to read twice recently), I highly recommend sampling the translation by Michael Alexander, for reasons I briefly described here: https://philosopher.coach/2024/10/13/beowulf/
Thank you so much for sharing these links! I love your line, "A poem a day keeps the blues away." Brilliant! I will definitely check out the link regarding Beowulf as well- I'll never tire of reading different translations of that story :)
On second thought, "a poem a day keeps the doldrums away" would better preserve the original rhythm. ;-)
Well now I don’t know which one to choose because I love them both. Though I like any saying that presents me with the opportunity to say “doldrums”😅