Connecticut Local Politics

Today I’m posting one of my favorite poems. I’ve always been drawn it’s fundamental sadness and the seed of faith in love’s hope contained within the poem. This will be the last poem I post on this site, as readers seem to prefer limericks as opposed to the poems. Happy Sunday.
Dover Beach
Matthew [...]

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Today’s poem from James Wright seems appropriate for this weekend as our weather flirts with the idea of Spring.
A Blessing
James Wright
Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step [...]

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A lovely poem from Richard Wilbur
For C.
BY RICHARD WILBUR
After the clash of elevator gates
And the long sinking, she emerges where,
A slight thing in the morning�s crosstown glare,
She looks up toward the window where he waits,
Then in a fleeting taxi joins the rest
Of the huge traffic bound forever west.
On such grand scale do lovers say good-bye�
Even [...]

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Growing up in New England, one can’t help but become comfortably acquainted with the poetry of Robert Frost - as crisp and clean as an October apple. Below is one of my favorites, especially as it isn’t seen nearly as often as “Mending Wall,” “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” and “The Road [...]

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Those Winter Sundays
Robert Hayden
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and [...]

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Tuesday is Lincoln’s Birthday. I know that the day is not recognized as it used to be, but for those of us who grew up when both Lincoln’s and Washington’s birthdays were individual holidays, I thought that this week’s poem should pay homage to President Lincoln. So below is our greatest poet writing [...]

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Wild Geese
Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the [...]

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Sunday morning seems as good a time as any to step back from the flurry and tumult of politics and sit down with some poetry. To reflect on beauty, to set our sights on that which is both deeper and distant, to remember that which is intangible but nonetheless gives meaning to our lives. [...]

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I had forgotten. I suppose part of me have given up. In our age of cynical sound bites and the stumbling incoherence of our Commander in Chief, I guess I no longer thought that it was part of our national vocabulary. I’m talking about eloquence, the poetry of politics. This morning, [...]

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This is one of my favorite poems. I thought I’d post it, since today is the first day it really feels like fall around here
Spring and Fall [To a Young Child]
by Gerard Manley Hopkins
M�rgar�t, �re you gr�eving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Le�ves, l�ke the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! �s the heart [...]

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Click To Play

Video by Spazeboy.

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Today’s poem is actually a folk song from England. I was reminded of it when I heard that Stop & Shop has already begun advertising for replacement workers, should the union there go on strike later on this week. Here’s the song, which came to me through the outstanding band Steeleye Span. A blackleg, by [...]

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Afraid
Langston Hughes
We cry among the skyscrapers
As our ancestors
Cried among the palms in Africa
Because we are alone,
It is night,
And we’re afraid.

Here’s a lesser-known Langston Hughes poem. Its simplicity is deceptive.
Hughes, like many artists, writers and musicians of the Harlem Renaissance, often reached back to try and touch a forgotten past, and to connect his own [...]

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I Saw a Man Pursuing the Horizon
Stephen Crane
I saw a man pursuing the horizon;
Round and round they sped.
I was disturbed at this;
I accosted the man.
“It is futile,” I said,
“You can never �”
“You lie,” he cried,
And ran on.

Do we scorn the man for chasing something that can never be attained? Or do we honor him instead, [...]

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The Past is such a curious Creature
To look her in the Face
A Transport may receipt us
Or a Disgrace �
Unarmed if any meet her
I charge him fly
Her faded Ammunition
Might yet reply.
–Emily Dickinson

There is danger lurking in the past. Too often, we look into it “unarmed,” or without knowledge or perspective, and it wounds us. Is Dickinson [...]

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