“Perhaps we are here only to say: House, Bridge, Fountain, Gate,” says the poet Rainer Maria Rilke. He continues: “But to say them…oh, to say them more intensely than the Things themselves ever dreamed of being.”
Articles with Poetry
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Detail from "Young Hare" by Albrecht Dürer (1502)
The melancholy of the questing mind
In “Letters to a Young Poet,” the poet Rainer Maria Rilke writes: “We should try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue.”
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Drawing heat from this contagious sun
Regular visitors here will know that the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins frequently intrudes into my thoughts.
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Like shining from shook foil
During his lifetime, the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins was known to only a few close friends. The first collection of his poems did not appear until 29 years after his death. Today he is one of the best loved poets in the English language.
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On death and beauty
Few poems of the previous century have attracted more discussion than Wallace Stevens’ “Sunday Morning.”
Photo by Cross Duck (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
A poet’s kiss touches science
“The way bees on a drowsy day suck honey from fuchsia.” At least once each year I fly back and forth to Ireland on Aer Lingus, the Irish national airline. These words are woven into the fabric that covers the airplane seats, with other brief excerpts from Irish writers.
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Science fits nicely between art, reality
“There’s nothing creative about science,” someone recently said to me. “The world’s out there and science tries to know it. Scientists create nothing; they merely describe.”
Poet Laureate Ted Hughes • Roy.akarshak (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Science and metaphor
Reaching for a book on a high shelf. Down falls “Season Songs” by poet Ted Hughes, attracting attention to itself by delivering a lump on the head. I sit on the floor and read again these nature poems written 20 years ago by Britain’s poet-laureate.
Primula vulgaris, or common primrose • Photo by Henry Perks on Unsplash
A primrose is a primrose — well, not always
Come with me for a Valentine’s walk down the primrose path. It is a walk of spring, of young love, and of dalliance. Just now, in the midst of winter, we can use a taste of spring.