First Known When Lost

As one ages, commonplaces become eternal verities.  Truisms are recognized as being true. For instance:  the longer one lives, the more on...

From Oklahoma to Woolwich, the World has gone about its usual business the past week.  It has ever been thus.  But the genius of our age is ...

I knew nothing of Chinese poetry until I encountered the following poem by Li Po (701-762) in the mid-1970s, when I was in college.  I thoug...

There was a time (during my college years and immediately thereafter) when I was in love with the poetry of Yeats.  I'm sure that many o...

In " The Trees ," Philip Larkin writes:  "The trees are coming into leaf/Like something almost being said."  The lines b...

In my previous post, I stated that Philip Larkin's " The Trees " is my "May poem."  However, I remembered today that...

As some long-time readers may recall, I make it a habit to visit two particular poems in May and November of each year.  My November poem is...

If I take my daily walk in the late afternoon or early evening, I can watch the swallows take their dinner above the open fields that I pass...

In a recent post , I suggested that Elizabethan poets were preoccupied with the transience of our lives.  But transience is the implicit sub...

Perhaps I am easy to please, but I never cease to be amazed at the way these things work.  Now -- just as the last of the cherry, apple, and...