Saturday Morning Words + Coffee

Having a look at Frank O'Hara's poem Lana Turner Has Collapsed. Lana Turner has collapsed! I was trotting along and suddenly it started raining and snowing and you said it was hailing but hailing hits you on the head hard so it was really snowing and raining and I was in such a hurry to meet you but the traffic was acting exactly like the sky and suddenly I see a headline LANA TURNER HAS...

Taking a look at Robert Frost's Old Man's Winter Night. All out of doors looked darkly in at him Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars, That gathers on the pane in empty rooms. What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand. What kept him from remembering what it was That brought him to that creaking room was age. He stood with barrels r...

In March 1969, Doors singer Jim Morrison was charged with obscenity and indecent exposure stemming from an incident at a concert in Miami, FL. Prior to sentencing, the court asked his father for a letter describing Jim's character and situation. This was his response. Photo: Jim Morrison and his father aboard the  USS Bon Homme Richard prior to Jim's fame.

Reading Clare Harner's Immortality, a beautiful poem for a eulogy. Other authors have tried to pass it off as their own, so I talk about that, too. Do not stand           By my grave, and weep.      I am not there,           I do not sleep— I am the thousand winds that blow I am the diamond glints in snow I am the sunlight on ripened grain, I am the gentle, autumn rain. As you awake with morn...

Saturday Morning Words and Coffee. Taking a look at Robert Frost's The Master Speed. No speed of wind or water rushing by But you have speed far greater. You can climb Back up a stream of radiance to the sky, And back through history up the stream of time. And you were given this swiftness, not for haste Nor chiefly that you may go where you will, But in the rush of everything to waste, That...

Reading Ozymandias. What does it teach us about Kings of Kings and hubris? That the sand reclaims everything eventually. 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 of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read...

Reading chapter 22 from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and talking about the dangers of the mob mentality.

Saturday morning words and coffee. Reading Yeats' "A Coat" and talking abut reappraising our own work as we go through life. Is it time to "strip down" and simplify? Yeats might tell you, "Yes."

Robert Frost is a great poet and, in a roundabout way, helped me to take a better road by dropping English lit. Have a decision to make on which path to take? I talk about that here.

Saturday morning words and coffee. Reading Thomas Hardy's poem from a New Year's Day many years ago. I leant upon a coppice gate       When Frost was spectre-grey, And Winter's dregs made desolate       The weakening eye of day. The tangled bine-stems scored the sky       Like strings of broken lyres, And all mankind that haunted nigh       Had sought their household fires. The land...

Jabberwocky is a poem from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass. It's called a "nonsense poem" because it uses made up words that you can't find in the dictionary. In this podcast episode, I read the poem and talk about what it might mean. 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrab...

Reading Chapter 69 - The Funeral from Moby Dick. Do you believe in ghosts, my friend?

Reading a selection from The Odyssey. A 3,000-year-old tale of a dog's loyalty.  'This dog,' answered Eumaeus, 'belonged to him who has died in a far country. If he were what he was when Odysseus left for Troy, he would soon show you what he could do. There was not a wild beast in the forest that could get away from him when he was once on its tracks. But now he has fallen on e...

Time for some Christopher Marlowe. Come live with me and be my love, And we will all the pleasures prove, That Valleys, groves, hills, and fields, Woods, or steepy mountain yields. And we will sit upon the Rocks, Seeing the Shepherds feed their flocks, By shallow Rivers to whose falls Melodious birds sing Madrigals. And I will make thee beds of Roses And a thousand fragrant posies, A cap of flower...

Reading and talking about Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost. Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf’s a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.

Looking at Robert Browning's The Patriot. Beware fleeting glory. Artwork: Washington Crossing The Delaware by Emanuel Leutze. I It was roses, roses, all the way, With myrtle mixed in my path like mad: The house-roofs seemed to heave and sway, The church-spires flamed, such flags they had, A year ago on this very day. II The air broke into a mist with bells, The old walls rocked with the crowd...

My neighbour's dumb dog makes me seek advice on patience from Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Saturday morning words and coffee. Taking a look at William Shakespeare's Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer's Day? Artwork: Summer is icumen in, 1902, Herbert Arnould Olivier Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer’s lease hath all too short a date. Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,...

Turning to Victorian poetry for Victoria Day weekend in Canada. Looking at Tennyson's elegy to a lost friend: Break, Break, Break. Artwork: The Wave by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Break, break, break, On thy cold gray stones, O Sea! And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me. O, well for the fisherman's boy, That he shouts with his sister at play! O, well for the sai...

Reading The Tyger and talking about the wild things.

Reading and talking about Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnet 43. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of Being and Ideal Grace. I love thee to the level of everyday's Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight. I love thee freely, as men strive for Right; I love thee purely, as t...

Reading a selection from the Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde. Remember the prisoners.

Reading and talking about To Celia (aka: Drink to me only with thine eyes) by Ben Jonson. A love poem that has been put to music countless times down through the centuries.

Reading Henley's Invictus and talking about being the masters of our fates in the face of adversity.

Reading and discussing A Crazed Girl from William Butler Yeats.