Category Archives: Poetry

Sonnet 98 by William Shakespeare

… It’s April. Everything is young and beautiful. But you’re not here. It might as well be winter. You’ve cast your shadow over everything. … From you have I been absent in the spring, When proud-pied April, dress’d in all … Continue reading →

Sonnet 60 by William Shakespeare

16 Apr ’17

… Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore, So do our minutes hasten to their end; Each changing place with that which goes before, In sequent toil all forwards do contend. Nativity, once in the main of light, … Continue reading →

Dame Edith Sitwell reads Still Falls the Rain

14 Apr ’17

… During the London Blitz in 1940, Edith Sitwell wrote Still Falls the Rain, perhaps her most famous poem, a Good Friday poem that ponders human suffering and the salvation of the soul, a harbinger of Dame Edith’s conversion to … Continue reading →

Synchronicity: Tom Savage and Me

5 Apr ’17

… I was planning and looking forward to hearing Anne Waldman and Vincent Katz read some poetry at 192 Books—it would have been fun. But I do not move as fast as I used to, or time is moving faster … Continue reading →

Jet Wimp reads The Drowning Place

16 Feb ’17

… During January I was taking care of my father who is 91 and ailing, and about mid-month I wanted a little change, got up before dawn and drove Dad’s car through the still dark countryside hardly anyone yet around … Continue reading →

John Godfrey at KGB 11/21/16

31 Jan ’17

… I no longer teach on Monday nights so I can get to the KGB poetry readings whenever I want, and I was especially looking forward to hearing John Godfrey read. When host, Ali Power, introduced John saying he was … Continue reading →

Poems by Gil Ott 1977 – 78

28 Dec ’16

… I knew Gil Ott when I lived in Philadelphia in the 1970s. He was hosting a poetry program on the radio at the University of Pennsylvania on Saturdays that featured both local and visiting poets. Philly had a vibrant … Continue reading →

Alfred Corn reads at Poets House

2 Nov ’16

… On October 8, 2016 in the late afternoon Alfred Corn read some poems at a celebration for his work at Poets House. The first poem Alfred reads here, The Bridge, Palm Sunday, 1973, I have added below. … … … Continue reading →

The Night Becomes Thick and Comfortable by Joel Colten and Randal Rupert: read by Peter Bushyeager

9 Oct ’16

… Joel Colten (1950 – 1980) was a poet and photographer who lived in Philadelphia and Manhattan. From 1976 to 1980, he was also coeditor of the literary magazine Hot Water Review. During his brief career, Colten’s poetry appeared widely … Continue reading →

Philip Good reads Coffee Poems

10 Sep ’16

… I was upstate over Labor Day visiting Philip Good and Bernadette Mayer at their beautiful home. It’s been freshly painted red and continues to await guests along a quiet meandering road on the edge of some woods, Bernadette’s Poetry … Continue reading →

After Apple Picking by Robert Frost

22 Aug ’16

… … My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree Toward heaven still, And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill Beside it, and there may be two or three Apples I didn’t pick upon some bough. But I am … Continue reading →

Ozymandias

19 Aug ’16

… I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown And wrinkled lip and sneer … Continue reading →