September 2009

  • How to Talk About Poetry

    By lisala on 9/18/09 12:31pm
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    Let's be honest. Reading poetry, in the greater scheme of things, is just this side of engaging in an obscenity. Poetry is meant to be spoken or sung or chanted; it's meant to be heard, not to be engaged in as a quiet, sullen and solitary vice. Poems live when they are shared; they are meant to be spoken and heard and passed on and celebrated.

    Anyone can read and enjoy and comment appreciatively and intelligently about poetry. You don't have to be some sort of creative writer, or a poet, or an artist, or sensitive, or anything much, beyond a thoughtful reader.

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  • Queen Elizabeth I Poems

    By lisala on 9/15/09 11:41am
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    Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603) is, perhaps, the most famous ruler England has ever known. But far fewer people realize that Elizabeth I was not only the patron of poets Elizabeth I 1555Elizabeth I 1555like Raleigh, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Sidney, she wrote poems herself. She also wrote brilliant speeches, thoughtful letters and astonishingly eloquent translations from Latin, French and Italian. Her best known poem is "On Monsieur's Departure"; it's generally agreed that it was likely about either the end of marriage negotiations between Elizabeth I and The Duke of Anjou in 1582, or, possibly, the Earl of Essex, once her favorite but who was executed for treason in 1601.

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  • They flee from me . . . Sir Thomas Wyatt

    By lisala on 9/14/09 10:19am
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    They flee from me that sometime did me seek
    With naked foot, stalking in my chamber.
    I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek,
    That now are wild and do not remember
    That sometime they put themself in danger
    To take bread at my hand; and now they range,
    Busily seeking with a continual change.

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