By Adam SediaMay 11 minCrocusesYou meekly poke your purple heads Through stubborn clumps of snow That yet persist in fallow beds Though balmy breezes blow; First to...
By Adam SediaMar 1511 minThe Parable of the Red SkyAfter crossing the Great Mountains, I saw before me, to the west, a vast and sprawling plain. Many great rivers crossed its fertile...
By Adam SediaFeb 221 minWindmills (Benton County, Indiana)The thunder departs. Its withdrawing boom Calls to a beam of angling light That strikes the titan towers through the gloom And sets them...
By Adam SediaDec 31, 20211 minThe New YearThe fields stretch out, bare, icy: __Wide, blank, yet-unetched slates, Tabulae rasae, waiting __The chisel of the Fates, But deep beneath...
By Adam SediaDec 12, 20211 minIncenseA hundred tongues of smoke— Translucent wisps, lithe specters— Rise, snaking languidly, Curling, grasping like tendrils At the light they...
By Adam SediaDec 1, 20219 minWhy Amanda Gorman Is Not a PoetAmanda Gorman became something of a phenomenon, fêted as a celebrity from the moment she read her poem, “The Hill We Climb,” amid the...
By Adam SediaOct 29, 202123 minWhitman’s Curse: Contemporary Poetry as SolipsismContemporary poetry is plagued by several characteristic vices: obscurity, banality, nihilism—each a topic for examination in its own...
By Adam SediaOct 1, 20211 minAutumn LeavesFlecks of yellow gold in bright cascades, Less like the hurried rain than lazy snow, Twirl downward, throwing out their warming glow As...
By Adam SediaSep 17, 20214 minBeyond the Lines: Robert Frost's "Acquainted with the Night"Robert Frost’s talent radiates best from his shorter poems. His poetic voice, naturally laconic, finds its most expressive mode in his...
By Adam SediaAug 8, 20214 minBeyond the Lines: Shelley's "Ozymandias"Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias” is one of his shortest works, but also one of his best known, anthologized to the point of ubiquity....
By Adam SediaJun 8, 20211 minTwo RainsThe Two Rains On Yorkshire’s moors, on Wiltshire’s plain, On Cornwall’s sea-sprayed craggy cliffs, the rain Hangs limp, immobile, from...
By Adam SediaMar 22, 20211 minThe Gift of LiliesIf angels plucked up blossoms In endless, light-drowned skies, With curved sextuple petals Glowing radiant white, Pearlescent in noon’s...
By Adam SediaJan 27, 20216 minBeyond the Lines: Ode on MelancholyAn ode on melancholy might conjure the worst stereotypes of poetry: restless youth agonizing over imagined existential crises – a...
By Adam SediaJan 1, 20211 minThe New YearThe fields stretch out, bare, icy: __Wide, blank, yet-unetched slates, Tabulae rasae, waiting __The chisel of the Fates, But deep beneath...
By Adam SediaNov 16, 20201 minNebulaWhen my time has come And helium Weighs down on my exhausted core, Spent from shedding light Through the endless night Until the fuel...
By Adam SediaSep 15, 202041 minClarity and Obscurity: Eliot's MasksT.S. Eliot means many things to many different people. Like Yeats he won the Nobel Prize in Literature. In the academy he numbers among...
By Adam SediaMay 25, 20202 minOde to SpringO life-affirming season, mild and fair Yet bursting with life, rousing long-dulled sense, Whose spark of youth electrifies the air Heavy...
By Adam SediaMar 30, 20201 minDawn HeraldNight broods heavy, dark, and still – Its darkest, stillest hour, When the damp, dead airs chill And the starlight glows dour. I roam the...
By Adam SediaMar 16, 20204 minBeyond the Lines: Frost's "Fire and Ice"Anyone who has ever attended a commencement ceremony in the United States has certainly heard Frost’s “The Road Not Taken,” often recited...
By Adam SediaOct 30, 201928 minClarity and Obscurity IV: Yeats and the OccultModernism produces obscure poetry because it denies the existence of absolute truth. Without a fundamental truth to reveal, poetry is...