Tag Archives: poetry

N[avarre] Scott Momaday

Posted on November 14, 2025 | Leave a comment

“N[avarre] Scott Momaday: (1934-2024) Native American novelist, essayist, and poet, Momaday was born in Lawton, Oklahoma. He studied at the University of New Mexico and received his Ph.D. at Stanford in 1963. His first novel, House Made of Dawn (1969), received the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Momaday’s work blends myth and tribal history with family tales and personal recollection: his essay collection, The Way to Rainy Mountain (1969), examines his own cultural history through the native tradition of living in nature. He has also published The Gourd Dancer (1976), a collection of poems; The Names: A Memoir (1977), a family history and autobiography; The Ancient Child, (1989), a novel. A literature professor for many years, Momaday has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and an award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters.”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

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Cultural Literacy: Hiawatha

Posted on November 7, 2025 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Hiawatha. Most people, if they’re aware of Hiawatha at all, probably received that awareness by way of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem, “The Song of Hiawatha.” I vaguely recall reading “The Song of Hiawatha” in grade school, but Longfellow is more memorable to me as one of the suits in the old card game of “Authors.”

Incidentally, the Wikipedia page for “The Song of Hiawatha” suggests that Longfellow based some of the material in the poem on conversations with an Ojibwe man named George Copway, whose story interested me enough to mention him here.

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

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Cultural Literacy: Ships that Pass in the Night

Posted on October 31, 2025 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the idiom “ships that pass in the night.” This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of three sentences and three questions. A spare, but adequate, introduction to an idiom that may well be fading from public use.

Did you know this line comes from a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow? I didn’t until I prepared this document for publication here.

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

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Octavio Paz

Posted on October 10, 2025 | Leave a comment

“Octavio Paz: (1914-1998) Mexican poet, writer, and diplomat. Educated at the University of Mexico, Paz published his first book of poetry, Luna Silvestre (“Savage Moon”) in 1933. He later founded and edited several important literary reviews. Influenced in turn by Marxism, surrealism, existentialism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, his poetry uses rich imagery in dealing with metaphysical questions, and his most prominent theme is the human ability to overcome existential solitude through erotic love and artistic creativity. His prose works include The Labyrinth of Solitude (1950), an influential essay on Mexican history and culture. He was Mexico’s ambassador to India 1962-68. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1990.”

Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.

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Cesar Davila Andrade

Posted on October 3, 2025 | Leave a comment

“Cesar Davila Andrade: (1918-1967) Ecuadorian poet, short-story writer, and essayist. Davila Andrade published eight books of verse and two collections of short stories before committing suicide in a hotel in Caracas, Venezuela, a victim of prolonged depressions and alcoholism. While his work is known mainly in Ecuador and Venezuela, he was most often compared to Neruda and Vallejo. Of most influence as a poet, he carried certain key obsessions—evil in the form of sickness, passion, or death; sex as annihilation, and love as the absolute ideal—through several poetic incarnations. He began in the tradition of love poetry, as seen in Cancion a Teresita (1946). The second phase, which includes Arco de instantes (1959) and Boletin y elegia de las Mitas (1967), is dedicated to poetic experimentation and the geography and people of his American continent. The final period is complex, personal, and hermetic, best characterized by Conexiones de tierra (1964), which often voices his views of life, literature, and aesthetics. A lover of both the mystical and prosaic, he perhaps never managed a successful reconciliation of these twin currents in either his poetry or his life.”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

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The Weekly Text, 26 September 2025: A Lesson Plan on William Blake’s Poem “The Chimney Sweeper”

Posted on September 25, 2025 | Leave a comment

This week’s Text is a lesson plan on William Blake’s poem, from his book Songs of Innocence and Experience, “The Chimney Sweeper.” I started with Blake in high school, after learning of Allen Ginsberg’s (I was seriously into The Beats in those years) affinity for Blake and hearing The Fugs sing “How Sweet I Roam’d” and “Ah! Sunflower,” and have read him ever since.

Blake’s lyrics lend themselves to music, so Greg Brown’s record of Songs and Innocence and Experience came as little surprise to me when he released it in 1986. In researching this post, I was also not surprised to learn that Benjamin Britten composed a song cycle of Blake’s texts, Songs and Proverbs of William Blake.

In this suite of poems, to my mind, “The Chimney Sweeper” has always stood out. It still nearly brings me to tears every time I encounter it.

This Cultural Literacy worksheet on William Blake (half-page, four-sentence reading, three comprehension questions) opens this lesson. Of course you’ll need a copy the poem itself; and finally, here is the analysis and comprehension worksheet I prepared for the lesson.

If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

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Jalal ad-Din ar-Rumi or Mawlana

Posted on May 23, 2025 | Leave a comment

“Jalal ad-Din ar-Rumi or Mawlana: (1207?-1273) Anatolian-Persian mystic and poet. He was a theologian and teacher in Anatolia when he met Shams ad-Din, a holy man who revealed to him the mysteries of divine majesty and beauty; their intimate relationship scandalized Rumi’s followers, who had Shams murdered. The Collected Poetry of Shams contains Rumi’s verses on his love for Shams. His main work, the didactic epic Masnavi-ye Manavi (“Spiritual Couplets”), widely influenced Muslim mystical thought and literature. He is believed to have composed poetry while in a state of ecstasy and often accompanied his verses by a whirling dance. After his death, his disciples were organized as the Mawlawiyah order, called in the West the whirling dervishes. Rumi is regarded as the greatest Sufi mystic and poet in the Persian language. In English translation, his work has become widely popular in recent years.”

Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.

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Bhartrhari

Posted on May 16, 2025 | Leave a comment

“Bhartrhari: (570?-650) Indian Hindu philosopher, poet, and grammarian. He was of noble birth; according to legend, he made seven attempts to renounce the world for monastic life before eventually becoming a yogi and moving into a cave near Ujjain. His Vakyapadiya is his major work on the philosophy of language. Also ascribed to him are three collections of poetry, each containing 100 verses: Shrngara-shataka (on love), Niti-shataka (on ethics and polity), and Vairagya-shataka (on dispassion). His Bhatti kavya (‘Poem of Bhatti’) demonstrates the subtleties of Sanskrit.”

Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.

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Haiku

Posted on May 16, 2025 | Leave a comment

Haiku: A form of Japanese poetry, composed of seventeen syllables in a 5/7/5 pattern. The haiku evokes a complete impression or mood through the juxtaposition of a natural physical element such as a sound or sight, with a phrase to suggest a season or emotion. It developed from the nonstandard linked verse (haikai no renga) popular in the 16th and 17th centuries—the “opening verse” (hokku) of which eventually was treated as in independent form, known today as haiku. Its greatest practitioner was Matsuo Basho, followed by the painter Yosa Buson, Kobayashi Issa, and Masaoka Shiki. Haiku’s emphasis on the immediate and concrete influenced early 20th century Imagism in Europe and America, especially through the influence of Ezra Pound.

Two well-known examples by Basho are the ‘summer grasses’ verse composed on a visit to the site where Yoshitsune was vanquished, and the following:

Furuike ya                                           An ancient pond—

Kawazu tobikomu                           Then the sound of water

Mizu no oto                                        Where a frog plops in”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

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Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Posted on March 28, 2025 | 3 comments

“Elizabeth Barret Browning: (1806-1861) English poet. In childhood she suffered a spinal injury and, until her meeting with Robert Browning, seemed to be doomed to invalidism and seclusion from the world. Barrett and Browning’s courtship under the eyes of her jealous, tyrannical father, their elopement, and subsequent happy married life in Italy form one of the most celebrated of literary romances. Hawthorne describe Mrs. Browning as ‘a pale, small person scarcely embodied at all,’ and this ethereality of her physical appearance is reflected by the palpitating fervor and unworldly tenderness and purity of her work. Often, however, these qualities decline into stridency, diffuseness, and confusion. Her themes were dictated by her broad humanitarian interests; a deep if unorthodox religious feeling, her affection for her adopted country, Italy; and her love for Browning. Her greatest work, Sonnets from the Portuguese, a sequence of love sonnets addressed to her husband, remains an extraordinary and living achievement. Her other works include Essay on Mind, with Other Poems (1826), a translation of Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound (1833), The Seraphim and Other Poems (1838), Poems (1844), Casa Guidi Windows (1851), Aurora Leigh (1856), Poems before Congress (1860), and Last Poems (1862). See THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN, LADY GERALDINE’S COURTSHIP.”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

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