Category Archives: Poetry

Curated Content, Poetry

English is even trickier than it looks.

Link Leave a comment

the poke.co.uk invites you to test your skills with “English Pronunciation,” a poem that highlights the myriad nuances in spelling and pronunciation in the English language. See below for a sample:

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)

Continue reading English is even trickier than it looks. →

Poetry

“Woman, I Got the Blues”: Finding Morality in Modern Times

Leave a comment
The following is a close reading of a poem by Yusef Komunyakaa (one of my favorite poets) entitled, “Woman, I Got the Blues,” which you can read at http://nathanielturner.com/igotheblues.htm.

As adolescents enter adulthood, many of them start to question the truisms spoon-fed to them from their parents, teachers, ministers, and others in positions of power. Perhaps these inquiries arise following the initial breach of a social taboo, such as engaging in premarital relations with another person, trying drugs or alcohol for the first time, or breaking a minor law without censure. Continue reading “Woman, I Got the Blues”: Finding Morality in Modern Times →

Poetry

DIGGING INTO THE EARTH’S SURFACE: Pondering Geography III by Elizabeth Bishop

4 Comments

To describe the planet aptly is one thing, but to understand one’s place on the planet is another one altogether. The poems of Elizabeth’s Bishop’s Geography III go beyond mere description of the earth’s surface and delve into how geography defines not only where we are on the planet but also who we are. Continue reading DIGGING INTO THE EARTH’S SURFACE: Pondering Geography III by Elizabeth Bishop →

Poetry

Questions to Kal (revised draft)

Leave a comment
Remove the spectacles, scarlet letter,
and the mercurial mythologies.
Grant a mask-less moment so I may ask
the being we have named the Man of Steel:

Did it hurt when you heard that you were not
Jonathan’s and Martha’s little boy Clark,
not even a boy at all, but some thing?
Did you weep any of those salty drops
of lost trust that leak out the reddish eyes
of your youngest fans when they discover
that Santa’s really just Dad’s MasterCard?

Is that why you prefer a glasses-mask,
to hide your own tired, dried-out, cried-out eyes?
Or are tears products of man’s reaction
and lowly to higher life forms like you?