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Rest. Despite the unrest that fills the atmosphere, this is where I landed Wednesday night. After toiling for an hour or so with two different ideas, the stillness of an early-June twilight on my good friend’s porch demanded my attention and found its way onto the page. A…
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This final installment of last year’s The Guardian photograph of the day poems leaves me with a hopeful note. Poetry is essential because it reminds us that we are all human and what we’ve struggled with or felt for generations still rings true today. It’s why we still…
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Coming down to the final two weeks of last year’s The Guardian photograph of the day poems, I’m finding it harder to limit my offering to three poems. Two poems from this collection will draw upon that infamous weed that terrorizes the perfect lawns of the gated communities:…
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From the wonders of a steam engine crossing a trestled bridge to the twenty-nine cellphones that showcase mankind’s insatiable desire for distractions, and ultimately to the serene beauty and innocence of a young girl among a garden full of allium flowers, these poems capture the sometimes awe-inspiring wonder…
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Rather than rush out my three photo inspired poems tonight, I felt we required a journey to the deepening ground of Denise Levertov. I fell in love with this poem when I first read it in the AP English Literature textbook I use by Edgar Roberts. In a…
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The deepening wells of literature are abundant for those who still care to read, and though I have a long list of works I intend to share here, from T. S. Eliot to Herman Melville, I return to one of my favorites: Wendell Berry. If you’ve been to…
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Years ago I came upon W. H. Auden’s poem “The Unknown Citizen” in preparation for my AP English Literature course. I had been an Auden fan ever since I read “Musee des Beaux Arts” (another worthy read). Ironically, though I teach “Musee” nearly every year in at least…
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Relationships. So much of poetry, whether directly or not, deals with relationships. As I scrolled through my poems from last year’s collection inspired by The Guardian Photograph of the Day offerings, I repeatedly encountered the theme of relationships. Since I’ve intentionally limited myself on this site to three…
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This time last year, I was enjoying after-school baseball games at Forese Field in Grove City and winding down the school year in room 209, daily gazing at The Guardian‘s “Best Photographs of the Day” page as a source of poetic inspiration. Few of my poetry students took…
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Disturb us, Lord, when we are too well pleased with ourselves, when our dreams have come true because we have dreamed too little, when we arrived safely because we sailed too close to the shore. From Sir Francis Drake’s Prayer, 1577. Safety is overrated. I understand the need…
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the deepening ground 