Baron Wormser: What Nurtures Us, What Diminishes Us
Poetry is the remembrance and avowal of loss and is accordingly pushed aside.
Baron Wormser: The Harrowing of Hart Crane (Among Others)
The fate of eloquence in modern times is played out in Crane’s poetry, not in some ultimate fashion but, rather, as a perpetual vision-quest one man puts himself through, a quest in which poetry is, at once, the means and the end.
Baron Wormser: After Poetry Month
The poet tries to be canny while practicing an uncanny art.
Video: Walt Whitman — “Song of Myself”
Produced by Harvard University, this series of animations looks to poetry to explain what science renders dry and academic.
Michael Simms: Rhythm Benders | The Musicality of American Poetry
A poem is rooted in the rhythms of pulse, breath and movement.
Michael Simms: Tootling Along
I hope you don’t mind my sharing links to my own recent publications.
Emily Dickinson: My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun (764)
My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun –
In Corners – till a Day
The Owner passed – identified –
And carried Me away –
Emily Dickinson: Presentiment – is that long Shadow
Presentiment – is that long Shadow – on the Lawn –
Richard Michelson: Angels with Guns Guarding the Gates of Heaven
My grandmother didn’t
live to see her youngest son, my father, murdered in a Brooklyn
gutter by a fifth generation, drug-addicted, unemployed house-
painter whose ancestors were dragged here like devils in chains.
Emily Dickinson: The Color of the Grave is Green
The Color of the Grave is Green
The Outer Grave—I mean—
You would not know it from the Field—
Except it own a Stone—
Emily Dickinson: I am afraid to own a Body
Double Estate—entailed at pleasure
Upon an unsuspecting Heir—
Video: The Opposites Game
An English teacher asks his class: ‘What’s the opposite of a gun?’
Video: “Hope” by Emily Dickinson | A Film by Robert Isenberg
“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –
Emily Dickinson: A Bird, came down the Walk
A Bird, came down the Walk –
He did not know I saw –
He bit an Angle Worm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw
