Category Archives: Poetry

14
Dec
2009

What is success?

4 comments
Posted in Motivation, Poetry
We all want to be “successful”. But what does “success” mean? Here’s what Ralph Waldo Emerson thinks about it: To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, To find [...]

Read more
03
Dec
2009

Feel the salt wind spitting in your face

0 comments
Posted in Poetry, Travel
Here’s an extract from Tony Hoagland’s poem Reading Moby-Dick at 30,000 Feet. I like it because it reminds me how vast our lifetime is, as opposed to the too-fleeting sands I normally see it as. And I’m always prone to enjoying verse that talks about “feel the salt wind spitting in your face”. Imagine being [...]

Read more
18
Nov
2009

Warning! When I am an old woman I shall wear purple

2 comments
Posted in Poetry
Don’t wait until you are old to live a little. When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple with a red hat that doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me. And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves and satin candles, and say we’ve no money for butter. I shall sit [...]

Read more
15
Oct
2009

Go as a pilgrim and seek out danger

3 comments
Posted in Best Bits, Motivation, Poetry, Writing
A fantastic excerpt from a James Elroy Flecker poem that I stumbled across here. Go as a pilgrim and seek out danger far from the comfort and the well lit avenues of life. Pit your every soul against the unknown and seek stimulation in the comfort of the brave. Experience cold, hunger, heat and thirst [...]

Read more
01
Oct
2009

Pass through Paradise in a Dream

1 comment
Posted in Poetry
“If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream, and have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his soul had really been there, and if he found that flower in his hand when he awoke – Aye, and what then?” S.T. Coleridge DON’T MISS A THING – FREE MONTHLY UPDATE BY [...]

Read more
19
Aug
2009

Hiking in British districts, I picnic in virgin firths

1 comment
Posted in Poetry, Writing
An extract from Eunoia, one of my favourite books this year, about the delights of being out in nature in the summer. Can you spot what is unusual about this passage? Hiking in British districts, I picnic in virgin firths, grinning in mirth with misfit whims, smiling if I find birch twigs, smirking if I [...]

Read more
14
Jul
2009

Hunger and Night and the Stars

0 comments
Posted in Our World, Poetry, Ramblings
“Were you ever out on the Great Alone, When the moon was awful clear, And the icy mountains hemmed you in With a silence you ‘most could hear With only the sound of a timber wolf And you camped there, in the cold, A half-dead thing in a stark, dead world, Clean mad for the [...]

Read more
05
Jul
2009

Never retreat to the ‘glorious past’

1 comment
Posted in Poetry
I wrote a while ago about living in the moment and not trying to over-prolong it. One of the post’s comments came from Mike Barnes. He said that the post reminded him of a poem. I did not know the poem, but I enjoyed it and decided to share it here. ‘Never go Back’ by [...]

Read more
18
Jun
2009

How much junk in my life do I really need?

0 comments
Posted in Poetry, Ramblings
Lyrics from Waterfall by James: Watching too much TV I’m an actor in a puppet show. There’s so much stuff in my life, no room for me to grow. One day I’m going to break from my life – due south down to Mexico, I’m going to burn down my house it’s the only way [...]

Read more
08
Jun
2009

Thalassa

1 comment
Posted in Poetry, Travel, Writing
Run out the boat, my broken comrades; Let the old seaweed crack, the surge Burgeon oblivious of the last Embarkation of feckless men, Let every adverse force converge- Here we must needs embark again. Run up the sail, my heartsick comrades; Let each horizon tilt and lurch- You know the worst: your wills are fickle, [...]

Read more