Shelley’s Queen Mab

The manOf virtuous soul commands not nor obeys.Power like a desolating pestilencePollutes whate’er it touches; and obedience,Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,Makes slaves of men, and of the human frameA mechanized automaton.—Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab, Canto III (1813)

America lost one of its greatest cities: Detroit.

Robert Frost (1874-1963)

The Road Not Taken By Robert Frost Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth;         5 Then took the other, as just as fair, and having …

Yvor Winters–America’s Best Poetry Critic?

Is Yvor Winters the best American poetry critic?  I don’t know.  I do know that I liked his anti-Romanticism and his skewering of Frost’s “The Road Not Taken,” both of whom, of which, I like.

Poetry in the high school?

Poetry Unit for high school freshmen.  I’d open with poetic categories–lyrical, narrative, etc.  Once the students can identify the different forms and types of poetry, then they can understand their purpose.  For lyrical poems, I would offer the following poems by their respective artists.  Because I tend toward liberty-minded philosophies, I choose carefully the artists …