Poetry blog

We keep you updated on the world of poetry with our news roundups.

Recent posts

Poems About Loss

 

Some of us aren"t very good about talking about loss. In many of our modern, sophisticated cultures, we"ve forgotten how to deal with loss -- grieving is a underdeveloped concept. We are actually too busy to grieve and deal with loss. Mostly when we talk about "loss" our thoughts go to the death of family members or friends or people we knew ...

Australian Poetry

 

Australia is one of those places on my "bucket list" of places to visit. I travel frequently to the Philippines, and the "land down under" is just a couple more hours away by air, but as of yet I haven"t managed a visit. My son, on the other hand, spent an entire month in Darwin along the northern coast. He had ...

Winter Poems

 

[caption id="attachment_3690" align="alignleft" width="300"] Bai Juyi - Chinese Poet[/caption] Each of the four seasons has found itself the topic of many essays, songs and poems. I remember as a young college student in the mid-1970s, hearing the lyrics of John Denver's Season Suite caused me to be more aware of the impact of each seasonal change. Being a biology major during ...

Clerihew Poems

 

For those who don't know what a clerihew is, let me define it this way: it is simply four lines of whimsical, biographical verse. Perhaps one of the most famous of these is as follows: Sir Christopher Wren Said, "I am going to dine with some men. If anyone calls Say I am designing St. Paul's." This untitled poem, as most clerihews are,  was penned by ...

David Whyte Poems

 

When I was a young man, I was greatly influenced by watching nature specials on television, and in particular, the adventures of Jacque Cousteau and his famous ship, Calypso. My dream was to join some research team and travel deep along the Amazon or find myself working at a research center on the Galapagos Islands. David Whyte has done all of ...

Roger McGough Poems

 

I first learned of Roger McGough when I was working on my teaching certification. One of my mentors told me about a rather frightening poem that McGough had composed regarding how frustrated teachers might sometimes be tempted to behave in the classroom. Of course, the poem was intended as a witty, albeit dark, satire, not as a recommended course of action for ...

Inspirational Poems

 

[caption id="attachment_3506" align="alignleft" width="224"] Charles Ghigna[/caption] People enjoy poetry for a multitude of reasons.  For some of us, poetry serves as a means of sharing emotions and experiences, while others enjoy it for admiring the craftiness of poets' and observing their ability to manipulate words and phrases.  Still others find poetry to be of significant source of inspiration in times of trial ...

Alexander Pope Poems

 

Alexander Pope's witty and pointed poetic satire brought him infamy during his lifetime. It has also made critical evaluation of Pope in the years since his death more prone to interpretation based on the critic's personal feelings about such satire than perhaps any other poet in history. Pope was born the only child of Alexander and Edith Pope in 1688. The ...

Thomas Moore Poems

 

Irish balladeer, singer, and poet Thomas Moore gained fame in the first half of the nineteenth century both as a poet and as a society figure whose scandalous behavior may have overshadowed his talents. Thomas Moore was born in 1779 in Dublin, Ireland, over his father"s grocery business. Moore was one of the first Catholic students allowed entry to Trinity College in ...

Robert Lowell Poems

 

Poet Robert Lowell"s turbulent journey in life is echoed in the more personal of his poetry. Robert Lowell was born in 1917, the son of the famous Lowells of Boston, a family that already boasted two poets, James Russell Lowell and Amy Lowell. He followed family tradition by enrolling at Harvard, but after two years - and upon the advice of his ...