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'December 18th' / Anne Sexton
So here's a muscular, sexy poem from Anne Sexton for the beginning of Spring. It's the last poem in her 1969 sequence "Eighteen Days...

Alistair Appleton
Feb 8, 20232 min read
1,574 views
8 comments


Again in the Black Cloud / J.H. Prynne
I finally feel inspired to post a poem from one of my favourite poets of all time, Jeremy Prynne. I've written about my fascination with...

Alistair Appleton
Dec 15, 20222 min read
443 views
6 comments


Love / Czesław Miłosz
I've had Miłosz' Collected poems sitting on my shelf for decades and just fished that out this evening. He was writing this poem in the...

Alistair Appleton
Nov 27, 20221 min read
406 views
4 comments


A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford/ Derek Mahon
This poem by Mahon is a miracle. A shed in Ireland, abandoned during the Civil War in the 1920s, has been home for fifty years to a...

Alistair Appleton
Nov 2, 20221 min read
700 views
3 comments


A Bird In the House / Robin Blaser
This poem, by the modernist San Francisco poet, Robin Blaser is the source of the word "otherous" (in the very first line) which we...

Alistair Appleton
Oct 18, 20222 min read
313 views
2 comments


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...

Alistair Appleton
Sep 5, 20221 min read
198 views
4 comments


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...

Alistair Appleton
Aug 15, 20222 min read
1,664 views
2 comments


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...

Alistair Appleton
Aug 2, 20221 min read
222 views
3 comments


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 -...

Alistair Appleton
Jul 19, 20221 min read
303 views
8 comments


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...

Alistair Appleton
Jul 12, 20221 min read
202 views
2 comments


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...

Alistair Appleton
Jul 4, 20221 min read
471 views
4 comments


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...

Alistair Appleton
Jun 27, 20221 min read
216 views
1 comment


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...

Alistair Appleton
Jun 20, 20222 min read
682 views
4 comments


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...

Alistair Appleton
Jun 13, 20221 min read
489 views
8 comments


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...

Alistair Appleton
Jun 6, 20221 min read
150 views
0 comments


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...

Alistair Appleton
May 30, 20221 min read
211 views
1 comment


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...

Alistair Appleton
May 26, 20221 min read
489 views
5 comments


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...

Alistair Appleton
May 23, 20222 min read
307 views
12 comments


I am de-militarizing my mind
I am de-militarizing my mind, taking down the barbed-wire strand by strand. There is or was barely a surface unmined but gently I am...

Alistair Appleton
Sep 17, 20101 min read
2 views
0 comments


A Rumi quote
This Rumi quote seems to encapsulate how wonderful the mindfulness was on Holy Island last week. Out beyond ideas of wrong doing and...

Alistair Appleton
Aug 25, 20101 min read
7 views
0 comments
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