Poetry and About Poetry

Poetry Quarterly has accepted my poem “In a New Land” for publication later this year

Poetry Quarterly has accepted my poem "In a New Land" for publication later this year

Dove Descending: A Journey Into T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets by Thomas Howard My rating: 5 of 5 stars Thomas Howard apologizes regularly for the prosaism and reductiveness of his line-by-line reading of T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. And he is correct that the poetry is much better and much more than his analysis. Yet great poets need great readers, as Whitman maintained. And it is wonderful as one reader to be in the room listening to another, deeply appreciate and erudite reader as he lives with one of the great poems of the last 100 years. Howard clearly is of a mind with Eliot in terms of the religious assumptions and faith consistent with Anglo-Catholicism. That does not mean a reader of another faith, or no faith, cannot find power, meaning, and even solace in the poem or in Howard’s exegesis of it. I recommend Dove Descending, not as any sort of substitute for reading and rereading the Quartets themselves, but as a great resource in helping inform and reveal the po...

Dove Descending: A Journey Into T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets by Thomas Howard My rating: 5 of 5 stars Thomas Howard apologizes regularly for the prosaism and reductiveness of his line-by-line reading of T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets. And he is correct that the poetry is much better and much more than his analysis. Yet great poets need great readers, as Whitman maintained. And it is wonderful as one reader to be in the room listening to another, deeply appreciate and erudite reader as he lives with one of the great poems of the last 100 years. Howard clearly is of a mind with Eliot in terms of the religious assumptions and faith consistent with Anglo-Catholicism. That does not mean a reader of another faith, or no faith, cannot find power, meaning, and even solace in the poem or in Howard's exegesis of it. I recommend Dove Descending, not as any sort of substitute for reading and rereading the Quartets themselves, but as a great resource in helping inform and reveal the ...

Three of my poems are now spotlighted online at the Mystic Blue Review: “Morlocks” “A Murder” after Rimbaud’s “Les corbeaux“ “Wind Becomes Eland” They are also included in Issue #5 available HERE . Note: The stanza breaks are not showing correctly in these poems. “Morlocks” and “A Murder” have 6 line stanzas, while Eland” has 5 line ones. Thank you Editor, Alexa Findlay, for spotlighting these poems.

Three of my poems are now spotlighted online at the Mystic Blue Review: "Morlocks" "A Murder" after Rimbaud's "Les corbeaux“ "Wind Becomes Eland" They are also included in Issue #5 available HERE . Note: The stanza breaks are not showing correctly in these poems. "Morlocks" and "A Murder" have 6 line stanzas, while Eland" has 5 line ones. Thank you Editor, Alexa Findlay, for spotlighting these poems.

  Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot My rating: 5 of 5 stars I have read and reread Eliot’s Four Quartets during 6 of my nearly 7 decades thus far, and still find them the best poetry he wrote and among the best of the 20th Century. It does not matter that I am not an Anglo-Catholic or even a Christian. I still find a solace here. His overt faith in Redemption doesn’t preclude him from facing the dark living to die we all face. He is merciless in his mercy. The words are dense and beautiful. The imagery powerful. There is a Buddhist quality to his Christianity, though for him the End is Eternal Life. I will reread again as I near the end of all my beginnings. View all my reviews