by Tom C. Hunley
from Five Points, Volume 14, Number 2
Archive for the ‘Suggested Reading’ Category
An Interview with David Kirby
Monday, February 27th, 2012Poetry 180
Saturday, February 4th, 2012As former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins states on this site, “Poetry can and should be an important part of our daily lives.” To that end, Collins created Poetry 180 to provide high schools with one poem a day for 180 days. http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/
Colm Tóibín, Winner of the Irish Pen Award
Friday, February 18th, 2011“It’s good to read Tóibín’s novels,” writes the Los Angeles Times, “in which human beings fail to forgive, fail to understand. We spend to much of our lives in the dark, shouldn’t literature face this as squarely as we must?”
Read Colm
Cowboy Poetry
Wednesday, January 26th, 2011Slim has it covered: http://www.
Mary Oliver and the Nature-esque
Tuesday, January 25th, 2011“Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”
- from Wild Geese, a poem by Mary Oliver
Read Mary Oliver and the Nature-esque, Rambles with America’s most popular poet.
Kay Ryan
Sunday, January 16th, 2011I am enjoying “The Best of It,” an anthology of Kay Ryan’s work.
“Ryan has said that her poems do not start with imagery or sound, but rather develop “the way an oyster does, with an aggravation.” Read more about her wonderful creativity: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/kay-ryan
Jennie Clare Adams
Sunday, January 2nd, 2011Jennie Clare Adams was a missionary during World War II on Panay Island in the Philippines. Chased by the Japanese, she and other missionaries hid in the jungle for over a year where she composed poetry as a fugitive. After her martyrdom there, her poetry was snuck away from her captors by being sewn into a pillowcase. Her poetry book is “The Hills Did Not Imprison Her.”
Today
Yesterday is a memory,
Of joys and hopes and work begun,
The visions and the dreams of youth,
The glories of the rising sun.
Today is a reality,
The noontime summit of the way,
A task demanding strength to bear,
The burden and the heat of day.
Tomorrow is a distant scene,
The view each mile more lovely grows,
Until at golden evening time,
The sunset all in splendor glows.
So may your gold and silver days,
And all the years between,
Increase in health and wealth and bliss,
Surpassing every former scene.
- Jennie Clare Adams
Ode Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood
Tuesday, December 28th, 2010Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give,
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
Alice Taylor
Saturday, December 4th, 2010Irish author Alice Taylor is simultaneously timeless and a perfect embodiment of a long-forgotten time, when life was gentler, kinder, but perhaps not easier. Everyday living was hard, but the rewards were many. Read her many Christmas stories, and enjoy the labor and the love:
http://www.corkindependent.com/profiles/profiles/alice-taylor-/
Charles Baudelaire’s Fleurs du Mal
Saturday, November 13th, 2010Charles Baudelaire was an acclaimed poet and translator, and during his life he produced works that explored the urban condition, psychological turmoil, and despondency. He took meticulous care when crafting his poems, and his first work, Les Fleurs Du Mal (The Flowers of Evil) was published in 1857 when he was 36.