Tag Archives: poetry

Judith Kazantzis

Posted on November 8, 2018 by JMN

Ms. Kazantzis wrote in free verse, her language intelligent but not didactic, powerful but not polemic. It could be witty, with traces of sarcasm. She portrayed women as complex, to correct literature’s pigeonholing them in one-dimensional characterizations as goddess or … Continue reading →

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Ottoline Morrell on T.S. Eliot, 1916

Posted on November 3, 2018 by JMN

“He is obviously very ignorant of England and imagines that it is essential to be highly polite and conventional and decorous and meticulous.” (Quoted by Louis Menand, “Practical Cat, How T.S. Eliot became T.S. Eliot,” (The New Yorker, September 19, … Continue reading →

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Alex Katz at 91

Posted on November 1, 2018 by JMN

“I was in the abstract art world, socially – they all thought I was really stupid. The poets all liked my work – I had some of the smartest people on the planet buying my work. I knew I was … Continue reading →

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More Liberties Taken

Posted on September 29, 2018 by JMN

I puzzle over how the formal properties of verse help, or fail to help, verse. How do meter and rhyme support imagery and diction if they do, and why not if they don’t? I think rhythm and rhyme originally were … Continue reading →

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Liberties Taken

Posted on September 22, 2018 by JMN

I want to think out loud about how poetry works, but without being too scrupulous about terminology. It just slows me down to try to re-research what the proper name for everything is. For a specimen I want to take … Continue reading →

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Feelings and Imagination

Posted on September 19, 2018 by JMN

I once authored a proto-blog in the BI (Before Internet) epoch, an ante-deluvian moment on the cyber-scale of time. I was based in a rambling bayou city situated in a large, hidebound, arrière-garde, rump-facing state of the sector of the … Continue reading →

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“Soria” Wrecked: Meter and Rhyme

Posted on September 13, 2018 by JMN

“Soria” by Antonio Machado, Spanish Poet, 1875-1939 From “Campos de Castilla,” Antonio Machado, Biblioteca Anaya, 1964. (English translations by James Mansfield Nichols) Translating into meter is a lost cause, but adding a rhyme scheme escalates it to a punishing lost cause. You’re … Continue reading →

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“Soria”

Posted on September 10, 2018 by JMN

“Soria” by Antonio Machado, Spanish poet, 1875-1939 From “Campos de Castilla,” Antonio Machado, Biblioteca Anaya, Edición de José Luis Cano, 1964. (English translation by James Mansfield Nichols) The shield of Soria has the following heraldic description: [3] In a field … Continue reading →

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“A Prayer for My Daughter” (10 — final stanza)

Posted on September 7, 2018 by JMN

A Prayer for My Daughter by W.B. Yeats (Spanish translation by James Mansfield Nichols) https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/14635/a-prayer-for-my-daughter A Prayer for My Daughter (10 — final stanza) And may her bridegroom bring her to a house Where all’s accustomed, ceremonious; For arrogance and … Continue reading →

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“A Prayer for My Daughter” (9)

Posted on September 5, 2018 by JMN

A Prayer for My Daughter by W. B. Yeats (Spanish translation by James Mansfield Nichols) https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/14635/a-prayer-for-my-daughter A Prayer for My Daughter (9) Considering that, all hatred driven hence, The soul recovers radical innocence And learns at last that it is … Continue reading →

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