Tag: Poetry
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ART: Uplands And Sky by Adrian Stokes
Rise, O my soul, with thy desires to heaven, And with divinest contemplation use Thy time where time’s eternity is given, And let vain thoughts no more thy thoughts abuse; But down in darkness let them lie: So live thy better, let thy worse thoughts die! –Sir Walter Raleigh.
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Poet, Novelist, Diplomat & Friend: Henry van Dyke
Once upon a time there lived on a Saratoga hillside surrounded by lakes a tragic little family of wealth and privilege. Spencer and Katrina Trask lost every child they ever produced, but gathered countless friends, many of whom were artists and poets drawn to the couple’s generosity and toughness in the face of Job-like losses, […]
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Poet: Paul Laurence Dunbar
He Had His Dream He had his dream, and all through life, Worked up to it through toil and strife. Afloat fore’er before his eyes, It colored for him all his skies: The storm-cloud dark Above his bark, The calm and listless vault of blue Took on its hopeful hue, It tinctured every passing beam […]
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Books I’ve Known And Loved
When Harriet Hanson Robinson explained to her busy (and presumably happy) single friend that she felt sorry for her because she wasn’t married and could not be a complete woman there was no hint of bitchiness. Harriet was a contented creature of her time. In my early feminist days I would have found this hard […]
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QUOTE: “Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.” Edgar Allan Poe
“She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that’s best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes…” George Gordon Byron
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Summer in the South by Paul Laurence Dunbar
SUMMER IN THE SOUTH The oriole sings in the greening grove As if he were half-way waiting, The rosebuds peep from their hoods of green, Timid, and hesitating. The rain comes down in a torrent sweep And the nights smell warm and pinety, The garden thrives, but the tender shoots Are yellow-green and tiny. Then […]
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Beautiful Librarian–Ina Coolbrith
What soulful eyes! What great hair! But now I’m being shallow. Ina was so much more than her looks. Her poetry career held much promise, but she put her family first when illness struck. Someone once said that their family lived off of Ina’s poetry to which she replied, “How nice. That’s more than I […]
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Famous for Riding a Horse Naked
Adah was a bright girl who told stories about herself. No one really knew where she’d come from in the late 1850’s but it didn’t matter. She’d arrived. She drank with Whitman, wrote semi-bad poetry and had a body . . . she had some body! Adah after leaving her husband (maybe her first) in […]
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Song of Myself
Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d the earth much? Have you practis’d so long to learn to read? Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems? Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems, You shall possess the […]