Poetry

It has been quite some time since I wrote a post about a poem. I’m well aware of one reason for this, which is my continued studies of Japanese kanji. That is such a thoroughly poetic activity, opening up all…
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This poem by Robinson Jeffers has showed up on my doorstep as I scratch my head trying to start articulating all I have seen and experienced on my trip to Japan. So today, as the poem says, I am loving…
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I did not expect to be taking on Robert Browning when I initiated my “Poetry and the Spirit of Shamanism” project. As Wikipedia says, “His work has…had many detractors, and most of his voluminous output is not widely read.” Ouch….
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I have a weakness for big, complicated, fully embodied – some might say overblown – works of art. Wagner’s Ring cycle. Joyce’s Ulysses. The Odyssey itself, Dante’s Divine Comedy, and OK, the Bible. Lately I find myself being tugged into…
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Over stone lip      the creek leaps out as one     divides in spray and streamers,      lets it all          go. This poem, “Falls”, from Gary Snyder’s epic Mountains and Rivers Without End, is a hymn to motion. “Falls” follows the…
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At one of those little free libraries in our neighborhood my wife (as usual feeding my creativity) picked up a little volume called Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry by Jane Hirshfield. This book is dense and wise; I…
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As I poke around here and there in the poetic corpus for resonances of the shamanic spirit, some finds are easier than others. An easy one was the recent discovery I made at Seattle’s Globe Bookstore, Crazy Horse in Stillness…
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I went down to the hazel wood Because a fire was in my head. I cut and peeled a hazel wand And hooked a berry to a thread. And when white moths were on the wing And mothlike stars were…
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