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Tag Archives: Free Verse
Night [Free Verse]
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Relentless [Free Verse]
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Paradox? [Free Verse]
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Shadow Songs
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BOOKS: “The Weary Blues” by Langston Hughes
The Weary Blues by Langston HughesMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Available online — Lehigh University
Langston Hughes was one of the greats of 20th century American poetry, and The Weary Blues was his first collection (1926,) containing some of his most beloved (and anthologized) pieces, including: “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” and “I, too, sing America” [a.k.a. Epilogue; which plays off Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing.”] I’ve always loved how Hughes used the rhythm of repetition and the technique of standing in for the everyman (as he famously did in “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” but in other of his poems as well.) He also had a gift for concision.
These sixty-nine poems deal in a wide range of themes including race, travel, love, etc. Music, be it Jazz or Blues, is an ever-present force in Hughes work. In addition to the aforementioned classics, among my favorite pieces from the collection are: “Winter Moon,” “March Moon,” “‘The Night is Beautiful'” [a.k.a. Poem,] “When Sue Wears Red,” “Water Front Streets,” “Long Trip,” “Seascape,” “Suicide’s Note,” “Songs to the Dark,” and “Lament for Dark Peoples.”
I’d highly recommend this collection for poetry readers.
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Winter Poem
Frame of Reference [Free Verse]
a butterfly hangs
upside down,
but it seems upside down
is as meaningless an
an abstraction for it
as the two million km/h
that a human sweeps,
spins, expands, etc.
through space
is for the person who
feels only the couch
against his backside.
what must it be to not know
upside down -- to feel free
to fall, knowing the air
will catch one?
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The Fig Treatment [Free Verse]
On a scale from
"this is cozy"
to
"my skull is cracking,"
I wonder how the fig tree
at Wat Mahathat treats
the Buddha's head?
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Tainted (Free Verse)
A gorgeous day:
the sky is blue;
the air is crisp,
and a bird swoops in low
over the field to land
in search of insects.
The sign is kind of a bummer:
It tells me that 13,000
people died here --
most by shitting themselves
into unconsciousness.
(it doesn't use those exact words.)
This is Andersonville --
site of a Civil War prison camp.
Here, I believe in ghosts.
I don't believe in ghosts
when drinking my morning coffee
at my dining room table.
I don't believe in them when I
turn off my bedside lamp.
I don't believe in them anywhere --
anywhere else -- really.
But here they vibrate up
through my boot heals,
and I fear I may
shit myself.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 