Poets on Poets Blog

Laure-Anne Bosselaar reads "Mock on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau" by William Blake

Submitted by rc-admin on

Printer-friendly versionSend by email

In this installment, Laure-Anne Bosselaar reads "Mock on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau" by William Blake. Bosselaar is the author of The Hour Between Dog and Wolf and of Small Gods of Grief, winner of the Isabella Gardner Prize for Poetry for 2001.  She is the editor of Outsiders: Poems about Rebels, Exiles and Renegades and Urban Nature: Poems about Wildlife in the City. Her next anthology, Never Before: Poems about First Experiences will come out from Four Way Books in the fall of 2005.  She and her husband, poet Kurt Brown, have completed a book of translations from Flemish poet, Herman de Coninck: The Plural of Happiness, which the Field Translations Series will publish in 2006.  She teaches a graduate poetry workshop at Sarah Lawrence College.

William Blake, "Mock on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau"

Mock on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau:
Mock on, mock on: 'tis all in vain!
You throw the sand against the wind,
And the wind blows it back again.

And every sand becomes a Gem,
Reflected in the beams divine;
Blown back they blind the mocking Eye,
But still in Israel’s paths they shine.

The Atoms of Democritus
And the Newton’s Particles of Light
Are sands upon the Red Sea shore,
Where Israel’s tents do shine so bright.

Authored by (Primary): 

Blake, William

Audio Author: 

Bosselaar, Laure-Anne

Audio Categories: 

Parent Resource: 

Poets on Poets

Laure-Anne Bosselaar reads "The Garden of Love" by William Blake

Submitted by rc-admin on

Printer-friendly versionSend by email

In this installment, Laure-Anne Bosselaar reads "The Garden of Love" by William Blake. Bosselaar is the author of The Hour Between Dog and Wolf and of Small Gods of Grief, winner of the Isabella Gardner Prize for Poetry for 2001.  She is the editor of Outsiders: Poems about Rebels, Exiles and Renegades and Urban Nature: Poems about Wildlife in the City. Her next anthology, Never Before: Poems about First Experiences will come out from Four Way Books in the fall of 2005.  She and her husband, poet Kurt Brown, have completed a book of translations from Flemish poet, Herman de Coninck: The Plural of Happiness, which the Field Translations Series will publish in 2006.  She teaches a graduate poetry workshop at Sarah Lawrence College.

William Blake, "The Garden of Love"

I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen:
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
And "Thou shalt not" writ over the door;
So I turned to the Garden of Love,
That so many sweet flowers bore;

And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tombstones where flowers should be;
And Priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars my joys and desires.

Authored by (Primary): 

Blake, William

Audio Author: 

Bosselaar, Laure-Anne

Audio Categories: 

Parent Resource: 

Poets on Poets

Cleopatra Mathis reads "A Poison Tree" by William Blake

Submitted by rc-admin on

Printer-friendly versionSend by email

In this installment, Cleopatra Mathis reads “A Poison Tree” by William Blake. Mathis's sixth book of poems, White Sea, will be published in 2005 by Sarabande Books. She is the recipient of many grants and awards, including two National Endowment for the Arts grants, a fellowship from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, The Robert Frost Award, and The Peter Lavin Award for Younger Poets from the Academy of American Poets. She has taught English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College since 1982.

William Blake, “A Poison Tree”

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe;
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I water'd it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright;
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole
When the night had veil'd the pole:
In the morning glad I see
My foe out stretch'd beneath the tree.

Authored by (Primary): 

Blake, William

Audio Author: 

Mathis, Cleopatra

Audio Categories: 

Parent Resource: 

Poets on Poets

Cleopatra Mathis reads "The Tyger" by William Blake

Submitted by rc-admin on

Printer-friendly versionSend by email

In this installment, Cleopatra Mathis reads “The Tyger” by William Blake. Mathis's sixth book of poems, White Sea, will be published in 2005 by Sarabande Books. She is the recipient of many grants and awards, including two National Endowment for the Arts grants, a fellowship from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, The Robert Frost Award, and The Peter Lavin Award for Younger Poets from the Academy of American Poets. She has taught English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College since 1982.

William Blake, "The Tyger"

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night.
What Immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, and what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? and what dread feet?

What the hammer? What the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And water'd heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,
In the forests of the night.
What Immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Authored by (Primary): 

Blake, William

Audio Author: 

Mathis, Cleopatra

Audio Categories: 

Parent Resource: 

Poets on Poets

Roger Fanning reads "Trespass" by John Clare

Submitted by rc-admin on

Printer-friendly versionSend by email

In this installment, Roger Fanning reads “Trespass” by John Clare. Fanning's first book of poems, The Island Itself, was a National Poetry Series selection.  His second book, Homesick, was published in 2002, and he is currently at work on a third collection, tentatively titled Buoyancy Disorders.

John Clare, "Trespass"

I dreaded walking where there was no path
And pressed with cautious tread the meadow swath
And always turned to look with wary eye
And always feared the owner coming by;
Yet everything about where I had gone
Appeared so beautiful I ventured on
And when I gained the road where all are free
I fancied every stranger frowned at me
And every kinder look appeared to say
"You've been on trespass in your walk today."
I've often thought, the day appeared so fine,
How beautiful if such a place were mine;
But, having naught, I never feel alone
And cannot use another's as my own.

Authored by (Primary): 

Clare, John

Audio Author: 

Fanning, Roger

Audio Categories: 

Parent Resource: 

Poets on Poets

Richard Fammerée reads "Ode on a Grecian Urn" by John Keats

Submitted by rc-admin on

Printer-friendly versionSend by email

In this installment, Richard Fammerée reads “Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats. Fammerée is a poet, composer, and performing artist; visit his website to learn more about his work.

John Keats, "Ode on a Grecian Urn"

1.

Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

2.

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

3.

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

4.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.

5.

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,"—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know

Authored by (Primary): 

Keats, John

Audio Author: 

Fammerée, Richard

Audio Categories: 

Parent Resource: 

Poets on Poets

Elise Paschen reads "To Autumn" by John Keats

Submitted by rc-admin on

Printer-friendly versionSend by email

In this installment, Elise Paschen reads “To Autumn” by John Keats. Paschen is the author of Infidelities, winner of the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize, and of Houses: Coasts.  Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, Ploughshares, and Shenandoah, among other magazines, and in numerous anthologies, including Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry; The POETRY Anthology, 1912-2002; Reinventing the Enemy's Language: Contemporary Native Women's Writings of North America; and A Formal Feeling Comes: Poems in Form by Contemporary Women.  Former Director of the Poetry Society of America, she is the co-founder of "Poetry in Motion," a nation-wide program which places poetry posters in subways and buses.  Co-editor of Poetry in Motion, Poetry in Motion from Coast to Coast, and Poetry Speaks, she teaches in the Writing Program at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  Learn more about Paschen's work here.

John Keats, "To Autumn"

1.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

2.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

3.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Authored by (Primary): 

Keats, John

Audio Author: 

Paschen, Elise

Audio Categories: 

Parent Resource: 

Poets on Poets

Michelle Boisseau reads "The world is too much with us" by William Wordsworth

Submitted by rc-admin on

Printer-friendly versionSend by email

In this installment, Michelle Boisseau reads “The world is too much with us” by William Wordsworth. Boisseau was educated at Ohio University (B.A., M.A.) and the University of Houston (Ph.D.). Her books of poetry include Trembling Air (University of Arkansas Press, 2003); Understory, winner of the Morse Prize (Northeastern University Press, 1996); and No Private Life (Vanderbilt, 1990). She is also author of the popular text Writing Poems (Longman), in its 6th edition.  Her poems have appeared in The Yale Review, Threepenny Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Southern Review, Shenandoah, Poetry, and Ploughshares. Her work has received a National Endowment for the Arts poetry fellowship and awards from the Poetry Society of America. She is a professor of English at the University of Missouri-Kansas City where she also is associate editor of BkMk Press and the coordinator of the Creative Writing program.

William Wordsworth, "The world is too much with us"

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.—Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

Authored by (Primary): 

Wordsworth, William

Audio Author: 

Boisseau, Michelle

Audio Categories: 

Parent Resource: 

Poets on Poets

Randall Couch reads "The Yellowhammer" by John Clare

Submitted by rc-admin on

Printer-friendly versionSend by email

In this installment, Randall Couch reads “The Yellowhammer” by John Clare. Couch received a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts fellowship in poetry in 2000 and an MFA from Warren Wilson College in 2003.  He teaches at Arcadia University and serves on the planning committee of Penn's Kelly Writers House. He is a contributor to the critical anthology Gabriela Mistral: The Audacious Traveler, edited by Marjorie Agosín (Ohio University Press, 2003).

John Clare, “The Yellowhammer”

When shall I see the white thorn leaves agen
And yellowhammers gath'ring the dry bents
By the dyke side on stilly moor or fen
Feathered wi love and natures good intents
Rude is the tent this Architect invents
Rural the place wi cart ruts by dyke side
Dead grass, horse hair and downy headed bents
Tied to dead thistles she doth well provide
Close to a hill o' ants where cowslips bloom
And shed o'er meadows far their sweet perfume
In early Spring when winds blow chilly cold
The yellowhammer trailing grass will come
To fix a place and choose an early home
With yellow breast and head of solid gold.

Authored by (Primary): 

Clare, John

Audio Author: 

Couch, Randall

Audio Categories: 

Parent Resource: 

Poets on Poets

Forrest Gander reads "Frost at Midnight" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Submitted by rc-admin on

Printer-friendly versionSend by email

In this installment, Forrest Gander reads "Frost at Midnight" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Gander's most recent books include Torn Awake (New Directions, 2001) and Faithful Existence: Essays (forthcoming from Shoemaker & Hoard).  Princeton University Press will bring out Gander’s translation, with Kent Johnson, of The Night by Jaime Saenz.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Frost at Midnight”

The Frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry
Came loud---and hark, again! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings: save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.
'Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,
This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,
With all the numberless goings-on of life,
Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame
Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;
Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,
Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.
Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature
Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,
Making it a companionable form,
Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit
By its own moods interprets, every where
Echo or mirror seeking of itself,
And makes a toy of Thought.

But O! how oft,
How oft, at school, with most believing mind,
Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,
To watch that fluttering stranger! and as oft
With unclosed lids, already had dreamt
Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower,
Whose bells, the poor man's only music, rang
From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,
So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me
With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear
Most like articulate sounds of things to come!
So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,
Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!
And so I brooded all the following morn,
Awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine eye
Fixed with a mock study on my swimming book:
Save if the door half opened, and I snatched
A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,
For still I hoped to see the stranger's face,
Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,
My play-mate when we both were clothed alike!

Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,
Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,
Fill up the interspersed vacancies
And momentary pauses of the thought!
My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart
With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,
And think that thou shall learn far other love,
And in far other scenes! For I was reared
In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.
But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language, which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself.
Great universal Teacher! he shall mould
Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.

Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.

Authored by (Primary): 

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

Audio Author: 

Gander, Forrest

Audio Categories: 

Parent Resource: 

Poets on Poets

Pages

Subscribe to Poets on Poets Blog