Tagged: “collected poems”

Poem of the Week: “Seals at High Island” by Richard Murphy

The calamity of seals begins with jaws.
Born in caverns that reverberate
With endless malice of the sea’s tongue
Clacking on shingle, they learn to bark back
In fear and sadness and celebration.

Poem of the Week: “Autobiography” by Louis MacNeice

Samhain is upon us, so we’re celebrating by sharing poems with a sinister bent in honor of this Celtic predecessor of Halloween. In this week’s poem, Louis MacNeice explores the darker side of youthful memory. MacNeice reflects on the early loss of his mother, a loss which remains as a sort of specter for the child in the poem, one…

Poem of the Week: “Endymion” by Thomas Kinsella

As we get ready to celebrate Halloween, let’s take a moment to think about where the most frightful holiday of the year comes from—Samhain (pronounced SOW-in). Samhain is a traditional Celtic celebration to remind people that the year is about to get darker, and that harvest season is over: Winter is here! It’s also a…

Poem of the Week: “Circe” by Louis MacNeice

“… vitreamque Circen”

Something of glass about her, of dead water,
Chills and holds us,
Far more fatal than painted flesh or the lodestone of live hair

Poem of the Week: John Montague’s “At Last”

We are drawn to John Montague’s poem “At Last” for its tale of reunion and the sense of readjustment to what once was familiar, which the speaker suggests through the images of Ireland and the relationship between the father and son.

Poem of the Week: “High Island” by Richard Murphy

A shoulder of rock
Sticks high up out of the sea,
A fisherman’s mark
For lobster and blue-shark.

Poem of the Week: “Elegy for Minor Poets” by Louis MacNeice

“Who often found their way to pleasant meadows
Or maybe once to a peak, who saw the Promised Land,
Who took the correct three strides but tripped their hurdles,
Who had some prompter they barely could understand . . .”

Poem of the Week: “…even a still life is alive…”

“The Ray,” Jean-Baptiste-Simeone Chardin (1728) Nature Morte (Even so it is not so easy to be dead) As those who are not athletic at breakfast day by day Employ and enjoy the sinews of others vicariously, Shielded by the upheld journal from their dream-puncturing wives And finding in the printed word a multiplication of their…

MacNeice poem inspires Scottish song

Louis MacNeice is one of the inspirations for the Scottish group, Battlefield Band. MacNeice’s poem, “Bagpipe Music,” provides the lyrics for the song on the group’s newest album Room Enough for All, which has been nominated for an Independent Music Award in the category of “World Traditional Song.” You can read the poem just below, buy MacNeice’s Collected Poems here, and…

Poem of the Week: “To Posterity” by Louis MacNeice

To Posterity When books have all seized up like the books in graveyards And reading and even speaking have been replaced By other, less difficult, media, we wonder if you Will find in flowers and fruit the same colour and taste They held for us for whom they were framed in words, And will your…