Easter, 1916 by William Butler Yeats

Easter, 1916
by William Butler Yeats

I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our wing�d horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road,
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse�
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.


For an interesting explication of this complicated Easter (as in "Easter Rebellion") poem, look at this article.

Two Poems by Wang Ping

from The River
in Our Blood

A Sonnet Crown



I



The geese are painting the sky with a V, my lord

The Mississippi laughs with its white teeth

How fast winter flees from the lowland, my lord

And how�s the highland where songs forever seethe?



At the confluence, I sing of the prairie, my lord

My joy and sorrow soar with rolling spring

Its thunder half bird, half mermaid, my lord

No

UniVerse, a United Nations of Poetry

UniVerse, A United Nations of Poetry is an anthology and public program to encourage universal dialogue, compassion and peace. It is an archive of visionary poets and �Teach This Poem,� a free, interactive teaching tool featuring questions and writing exercises.

It celebrates the belief that "Poets comprise an international community practicing sensitivity in desensitized times. By writing and reading poems, one participates in the faith that truth-telling will lead to healing and growth; that the practice of pure intention will create peace; and that there will be someone, somewhere, listening."

There is United States representation by poets like Yusef Komunyakaa,  Li-Young Lee, W.S. Merwin,  Adrienne Rich and| Meghan O'Rourke. But there are many other countries represented that are usually underrepresented and often unknown to American readers.

Do you know any poets or poems from Bulgaria, Iran, Nigeria, France or even any of the Native American nations, such as the Assiniboine-Sioux?

Dorianne Laux's Family Stories

I will be attending a workshop and reading on April 6, 2013 with Dorianne Laux at The Poetry Center in Paterson, NJ where she is receiving the 2012 Paterson Poetry Prize for her collection The Book of Men.

I first found her poetry after reading The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry which she co-authored with Kim Addonizio. That book with its brief essays on the elements of poetry and writing prompts and exercises was one of the things that encouraged me to start the Poets Online website and later this blog.

Recently, I saw this poem of hers on the American Life in Poetry site. I think it is a good example of her poetry which Publishers Weekly described as being in a "descriptive, storytelling vein: the at-hand, the matter-of-fact, the day-to-day are rendered in an earnest tone both sensuous and nostalgic"

Family Stories

I had a boyfriend who told me stories about his family,
how an argument once ended when his father
seized a lit birthday cake in both hands
and hurled it out a second-story window. That,
I thought, was what a normal family was like: anger
sent out across the sill, landing like a gift
to decorate the sidewalk below. In mine
it was fists and direct hits to the solar plexus,
and nobody ever forgave anyone. But I believed
the people in his stories really loved one another,
even when they yelled and shoved their feet
through cabinet doors, or held a chair like a bottle
of cheap champagne, christening the wall,
rungs exploding from their holes.
I said it sounded harmless, the pomp and fury
of the passionate. He said it was a curse
being born Italian and Catholic and when he
looked from that window what he saw was the moment
rudely crushed. But all I could see was a gorgeous
three-layer cake gliding like a battered ship
down the sidewalk, the smoking candles broken, sunk
deep in the icing, a few still burning.




Dorianne Laux's most recent book of poems is The Book of Men, (W.W. Norton & Co., 2011)  "Family Stories" appears in Smoke, (BOA Editions, Ltd.)

Anne Sexton on Film

The work of Anne Sexton reveals struggles with loneliness and depression, but she went before the camera to read her poems "Her Kind" and "Menstruation at Forty."

The second set of clips is from a 1966 visit to Sexton's home after the release of her Pulitzer Prize-winning collection Live or Die. She tells the camera crew her husband hates the way she reads poems, but I have to disagree with him. Perhaps the most charming part of the clip is when Sexton loses her composure and snaps at her dogs. "What'd you do, tape me screaming at the dog?" she grins.

A fourteen-minute video split into two parts - Sexton at home reading, talking about poetry and about her family. Most of the material is showed in public for the first time. Spanish subtitles.


Part 1




Part 2


From a page at The Atlantic collecting rare clips of authors including Orwell, Beckett, Pynchon, Fitzgerald and Anne Frank.

Someone forgot to tell the fish by Hal Judge

Someone forgot courtesy and politeness. Someone forgot to rinse off the weed killer. Someone forgot to turn off the billing software. Someone forgot to rent the crowd. Someone forgot to tell the owners of the 4 million cars sold in China. Someone forgot to bring the Zombie-Killing Manual. Someone forgot to tighten the sidestay shackle. Someone forgot to tell Rocky. Someone forgot to strap down

March by William Carlos Williams

March (Parts I and II)
by William Carlos Williams (from Sour Grapes, 1921)


I
Winter is long in this climate
and spring�a matter of a few days
only,�a flower or two picked
from mud or from among wet leaves
or at best against treacherous
bitterness of wind, and sky shining
teasingly, then closing in black
and sudden, with fierce jaws.

II
March,
you remind me of
the pyramids, our pyramids�
stript of the polished stone
that used to guard them!
March,
you are like Fra Angelico
at Fiesole, painting on plaster!

March,
you are like a band of
young poets that have not learned
the blessedness of warmth
(or have forgotten it).

At any rate�
I am moved to write poetry
for the warmth there is in it
and for the loneliness�
a poem that shall have you
in it March.


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