Skip to main content

American poetry

Song of Sanity

Walt Whitman was a poet of hope and encouragement, but his greatest poem is bleak at heart, ripped bloody, and shredded with despair. He was our verbal cheerleader, our avid egoist as well as our most enthusiastic inclusionist.

Hillside Trees

BLACK trees against a marble hill Of January snow declare New England to whoever will Behold them darkly standing there. Unveiled of leaves, bereft of sun Save now and then a grudging dole, They stand like berserks every one, Denied the berserks' was [...]

Garland for You

Don’t bother a bit, you are only a dream you are having,
And if when you wake your symptoms are not relieved,
That is only because you harbor a morbid craving
For belief in the old delusion in which you have always believed.

Directive

Back out of all this now too much for us,
Back in a time made simple by the loss
Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off

Pages