For this poem, I’m sending us back to youtube for a musical version. Many people say that Tolkien was not a good poet. They love what he did for the fantasy novel genre, but he should have just realized he wasn’t a poet. People say the same thing about C. S. Lewis, interestingly enough. Both Lewis and Tolkien, however, were consciously pursuing the same aesthetic aims in their novels and in their poetry (something like a continuation, a new flowering, even a maturation, of the Romantic movement in literature.) Those… Read more Poetry Survey Series Post Nine: The Lay of Beren and Luthien by J. R. R. Tolkien →
So now we have come again to the day of our bi-weekly poetry challenge. The task this time around was to write a poem beginning with Edgar Allan Poe’s line “It was many and many a year ago.” Post away! Many and many a year ago a hungry man went creeping and found through grief the brilliant orchards of the lands of the rains. Always and ever the sowers sow who reaps is always reaping and the crystalline and sparkling juice their hands daily stains. Give me, saith the man.… Read more Poetry Challenge 2: Many and Many A Year Ago →
HUNGRY, sputtering over the tree tops, Not landing yet, for there might be food Over the next rise. There: a rabbit Wondering at your shadow, so smoky and vast. Grab it: just a slightly larger than usual reach Of your massive haunch. The rabbit is only a tidbit In your cavernous mouth. A single seed Would feel the same to a man. Man. What a monstrous little verminous creature. Him and his spears; him and his maidens. Man, who would not share his babies with the hungry lords of the… Read more The Unlucky Dragon →
Dear Mr. Paolini, it was so good to see you last night. I do mean ‘see’ and little more, because I stood by the corner of a bookshelf and gazed at you for about a minute and then left. However, since you are the best-known person I’ve ever been within yards of, I felt it was an unevent singular enough to merit this letter. Indulge in no regret at this near miss. Our not having met, ever, saves you the necessity to make perfunctory apologies about not remembering me. The story is this: after hearing you on the radio… Read more Dear Mr. Christopher Paolini – About Last Night →
Slow Literature 