Paul Hoover / House of Cedar, Rafters of Fir
Hoover is not a poet I’m familiar with but another that I discovered on the excellent Poetry Foundation app. He is riffing on the imagery...
BLOG
Search
-
- Aug 15
- 2 min
From "Out on the lawn, I lie in bed" / WH Auden
A very Audenesque Auden poem from 1933 that undercuts the dreamy, chummy pastoral of the first few stanzas with an unsettling meditation...
155 views2 comments
-
- Aug 2
- 1 min
From “Tintern Abbey” / William Wordsworth
I loved Wordsworth when I studied him as a Romantic teenager at school. And then was rather abashed in the very postmodern University...
182 views3 comments
-
- Jul 19
- 1 min
The Cold Heaven / WB Yeats
On a very hot week in the UK, here is a deliciously cold poem. One of my favourites from Yeats, it is filled with dazzling phrases -...
249 views8 comments
-
- Jul 12
- 2 min
The Island Revisited
After a three-year gap, we made it back to Holy Island! Kirsty, Dameon and I travelled up to Arran a day early but there were high winds...
682 views4 comments
-
- Jul 12
- 1 min
Adlestrop / Edward Thomas
Kirsty and I were travelling back from Holy Isle, crossing Scotland from Glasgow to Edinburgh on the train. We were talking poems. And we...
185 views2 comments
-
- Jul 4
- 1 min
Prayer / Carol Ann Duffy
This is a beautiful sonnet from the erstwhile UK Poet Laureate. In a 'faithless' world prayers come in all sorts of forms. I particularly...
218 views4 comments
-
- Jun 27
- 1 min
Biology / Stephen O'Connor
I came across this short poem on the excellent Poetry Foundation app which randomly selects a poem for your pleasure. Stephen O'Connor is...
197 views1 comment
-
- Jun 20
- 2 min
The Swan / Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver is the best-selling poet in America by a long shot. And her life, mostly in Provincetown, Massachusetts but in her last years...
237 views4 comments
-
- Jun 13
- 1 min
Thunder / Elizabeth Bishop
I love Elizabeth Bishop's poetry. The Moose and The Sandpiper are both masterpieces. But I came across this uncollected sonnet of hers...
181 views8 comments
-
- Jun 6
- 1 min
Weeds / Maureen N. McLane
I came across this poem in the London Review of Books (which is the source of much of my knowledge about the world, but not often poetic...
133 views0 comments
-
- Jun 3
- 6 min
Let the stillness soak through you
I have to come clean. Sometimes I find it almost impossible to still my mind. I’m a meditation teacher, a therapist and a practitioner of...
433 views3 comments
-
- Jun 2
- 8 min
Two reasons why “This Is Us” might be the greatest piece of art of the 21st Century
Daniel and I sit down, rather solemnly. Me with a bowl of ice cream. He with a nice glass of wine. We want this to be a good and...
420 views23 comments
-
- May 30
- 1 min
Lana Turner Has Collapsed / Frank O'Hara
I love Frank O'Hara's poetry and I wrote an IG post on his birthday a few months ago. "One of the most delicious and intoxicating poets I...
110 views1 comment
-
- May 26
- 1 min
We're building the ship as we sail it / Kay Ryan
Kay Ryan is an erstwhile America Poet Laureate and a Pulitzer Prize winner. But what is so delicious about her poem are the mordent...
172 views5 comments
-
- May 23
- 2 min
Sunday Morning / Wallace Stevens
This long poem by the American modernist poet Wallace Stevens is one of my favourites. He was an interesting fellow. High-ranking...
225 views12 comments
-
- May 22
- 2 min
The two big questions for meditation beginners.
One of the MIndsprings members asked a very pertinent question today about starting out on her meditation journey: Where am I going to do...
279 views2 comments
-
- May 8
- 3 min