The Chained Muse

The King of Thule by Johann Wolfgang Goethe

A king once lived in Thule, Faithful until the grave, To whom his dying mistress A golden goblet gave. Nothing was dearer to him— He...

Looking Down

Behold, she dangles, helpless in the sky, Affrighted by the curving earth below: It beckons so seductively, as though 'Twould be a...

Restoring Pontormo’s Veronica

I swear he breathed down my neck. I smelled his pungent manhood, grimy crusts on his pant thighs he was no faint knight— a madman in...

Sappho Fragments 2, 55, and 58

Sappho, fragment 2 (Lobel-Page 2 / Voigt 2 / Diehl 5, 6 / Bergk 4, 5) Come, Cypris, from Cretea to meet me at this holy temple where a...

A Riff on Abstraction

"Evil is the systematic substitution of the abstract for the concrete." —Sartre As in “concrete” as well as “abstract,” and though I...

Profiles in Poetry: Robert Frost

“A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.” —Robert Frost To many in America, Robert Frost is the grandfatherly originator of “The...

Natural Bridge Suite

I Steep path, up the limestone stair, sediment and sand hardened to bedrock, yet porous. Groundwater flowing through, that reinvents the...

Edgar Allan Poe’s Metaphysics: Rediscovering “Eureka”

"What I here propound is true: — therefore it cannot die: — or if by any means it be now trodden down so that it die, it will “rise again...

Angels & Other Poetry

Angels Perhaps it’s simply age that makes it hard To recognize the world as someplace where An inner spirit once itself declared, A...

Ebb Tide

Massive, gray, these leaden waves bear their unchanging burden— the sameness of each day to day while the wind seems to struggle to say...

Crocuses

You meekly poke your purple heads Through stubborn clumps of snow That yet persist in fallow beds Though balmy breezes blow; First to...

The Spanish Knight — A Historical Ballad

Wa le ghalib il Allah (God is the only victor) —Muhamed Ibn-l-Ahmar, founder of the Alhambra Palace He rode across the star-engulfed...