v. anastasi
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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 my site before, you’ll know Berry is…
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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 one of my courses, I have rarely…
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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 poems a week from this collection, I…
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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 up the challenge to write a poem…
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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 for caution, but I don’t want perfect…
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Last year at this time, the profound horror, beauty, and absurdity of our world were on display in the photographs on The Guardian‘s “Best Photographs of the Day” page. This triptych of Photo Poems showcases the horror of a church bombing in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday, the beauty of fields of tulips in the…
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Here’s the studio album produced back in 2012 by the now defunct Tate Music Group. Members of Treebeard Brown appear on both “Ballad of the Ideal Citizen” and “Noiselessly,” two of my favorite tracks on the album. “Song of the Broken Man” appeared on the indie radio show Under the Radar with other great indie…
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During this time of online learning for my students, I came across this poem in the final unit for my AP English Literature & Composition course. The unit focuses on the use of figurative language: simile, metaphor, and personification. Little did the creators of the course know that this poem would be so timely! It’s…
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These three poems from my collection of last year’s The Guardian Photo Poems are some of my favorites. Though none of these poems really showcases a set form, structurally, they are two stanza poems that draw inspiration from a set of images that defy a set form in themselves, but provide stunning juxtapositions: surfers at…
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When I began researching to write “Leo,” the idea of hiding behind lies emerged primarily from the version that ties Leo to the lion Hercules had to kill as one of the Twelve Labors. Although the Pyramus and Thisbe story, the fertile ground for one Romeo and Juliet, had its merits, the idea of a…
the deepening ground 