Category: language

  • Luisetta Mudie’s Climate Change and the Poetic Imagination

    _____   Editor’s note: As we are challenged in the world by the scientific and technological changes we produce, a line of thinking has been emerging that the English language is not up to the task of allowing us to communicate well enough to address important issues as they arise. And because of the nature…

  • Posing Aemilia Lanyer (as Shakespeare; as his Dark Lady; and as she posed)

    ______     ______   Aemilia Lanyer (1569-1645), was born in London to Baptista Bassano and his possibly common-law wife Margaret Johnson. At age 23, the then Aemilia Bassano married her cousin Alphonso Lanyer, supposedly after becoming pregnant by Henry Carey, Lord Hudson. She had two children, a son Henry and a daughter Odillya, who…

  • Alley War Poetry

        _____     Marvelous Marvin Hagler vs. Thomas “The Hit Man” Hearns Caesars Palace, Las Vegas, April 15, 1985 Announcers: Al Bernstein and Al Michaels     Alley War Poetry     The pugilists are in the desert, somewhere far from most of humanity and society. They are at a resort, however, a…

  • The Official Top 20 Countdown of the All Time Greatest Love Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar

    _____         Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906) with a friend I have been reading all the poems I can find by Paul Laurence Dunbar, in order to create another top 30 countdown. Yesterday, when I got down from the hundreds to 55 poems in order, I knew I did not want to lose…

  • The Lyric Minutiae (or the ee(cummings) in (katharine mcph)ee)

    In a recent forum thread, the scanning of poems was touched on. It was asserted that one responsibility of the poet is to captivate the reader; such that if readers are losing track of theme and meaning, if we are not drawn in, the poet did not write the poem well; thus a significant difference…

  • Li Bai drinking alone (with the moon, his shadow, & 43 translators)

    The Tang poet Li Bai–a.k.a. Li Po, Li Bo and the Poet Immortal–left us over 1,000 poems. Besides these, he is also known by the way it is said he died. He supposedly drowned drunk, trying to embrace the moon’s reflection in the Yangtze River. Below are 41 English translations (from 43 translators (and counting))…

  • Sonny’s Lettah by Linton Kwesi Johnson (LKJ)

        Duration 3:02     _____     by Linton Kwesi Johnson (LKJ)     Sonny’s Lettah (Anti-sus poem)     Brixton Prison Jeb Avenue London, South West 2 Inglan Dear Ma Maa, Good Day I hope that when these few lines reach you they may find you in the best of health Ma…