Tagged: poetry

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All Paid Subscribers / Feature / Fleming

18 Apr, 2024

The Government We Deserve, Part II (of 4)

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In the off chance that this screed might be read by people who do not already know the score, I ask such imaginary readers  to imagine a visit from Jefferson or Twain or Mencken or even some reasonable politician like Robert Taft or Sam Ervin, who asks us to take him on a guided tour of these United States.  We might begin their tour by taking them to see New York or San Francisco or Chicago or Portland, in fact to  any major city in to witness the complete breakdown of law and order, sanitation, and public decency.   

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Access / Free Content / Olson

9 Nov, 2022

From Golding’s Ovid

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I’ve just finished reading what is sometimes called Shakespeare’s Ovid because the playwright borrowed from it extensively. The passage below comes in the twelfth of the poem’s fifteen books.

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4 Nov, 2022

Poem by a Reactionary Bohemian

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This poem by Alec Wilder was read at the composer’s funeral.  Wilder is best known for several popular songs, especially “I’ll Be Around” (recorded by his friend Frank Sinatra) and “While We are Young,” but he also wrote chamber music pieces generally condemned as “unoriginal.”

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Access / All Paid Subscribers / Fleming

16 Sep, 2022

Poem by Thomas Chatterton

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Chatterton, a late 18th century poet, is more famous as a legend–the teenage poet who died at 17–than as a writer.  The Romantics, French as well as English, lionized him.  His best known poems are the medievalizing  verses he attributed to a 15th century poet, but his talent for painting satiric portraits is evident in “Apostate Will”–a fine sketch of the clergy on the make,