Part of the difficulty in considering song lyrics as poetry is the crucial omission of the role the music plays. Poetry is meant to contain its own music; even the most imagistic, syntactically concentrated and ideationally evocative song lyrics find their true measure in the music of the song, which offers connectors the lyrics will […]
Eating Poetry (XXVI) – “A Contribution to Statistics”
A Contribution to Statistics Out of a hundred people those who always know better -fifty-two doubting every step -nearly all the rest, glad to lend a hand if it doesn’t take too long -as high as forty-nine, always good because they can’t be otherwise -four, well maybe five, able to admire without envy -eighteen, suffering […]
How We Lived on It (28) – “Time Was More Important Than Money”
“I still love the idea that poetry comes out of a lived life.” Linda Gregg, was the winner of the 2009 Jackson Poetry Prize. Sponsored by Poets & Writers, Inc., the fifty-thousand dollar prize is intended to honor an American poet of exceptional talent who deserves greater recognition. Poets and Writers asked Gregg to offer […]
Eating Poetry (XXV) – We Say God and the Imagination Are One
Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour Wallace Stevens Light the first light of evening, as in a room In which we rest and, for small reason, think The world imagined is the ultimate good. This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous. It is in that thought that we collect ourselves, Out of all the indifferences, into […]
Eating Poetry (XXIV) – Giacomo Leopardi
The New Yorker, September 13, 2010