Lyric Life

An exploration of Stevens' metaphysical poem about snow and winter--and the misery therein. Or perhaps not. Because you can see it without thinking it's miserable. But then you'll be left with the void.

Shakespeare's first sonnet in his sequence sets the tone for all that follows--and begins the exploration of unfulfilled love. Or perhaps unfulfilled aestheticism. Or simply repression. And the foibles of a May/December relationship. Get busy, young man. Get married. Bear a child. So we can have more of you in the world.

Kinnell's honest, quiet, private poem about sex--and its constant reminder in the physical world in the body of the child you create. A gorgeously realized meditation in the finest transcendental fashion from this burly New England poet.  

Olds' poetry can be rawly honest, brutally straightforward. But in this questioning poem, she comes at some age-old questions that lead out to surprising--and emotionally satisfying--answers. Can you make something out of nothing? Yes, you can make loneliness. And sex without love.

Ryan's small, carefully crafted poem explores how light gets inside an interior--and how it slowly softens into something that can turn a vase of flowers into, well, a metaphor. Into poetry.

Dickinson's small poem about distillation and perfume provides her with a springboard to explore the nature of her own craft. In a melancholy poem from the middle of the Civil War, she discovers what lasts--and the painful way that some things overcome even death.

A mechanical toy horse with a whirling dancer on his back canters across the floor. While she stays the same, he morphs into a mythic creature with stars for his eyes. And when he connects with the poet, they find they both have "formal, melancholy" souls.

How do we ever share lives? How can we ever find what we have in common? Apparently, we tick off the freeway exits we pass. And then we have to do a lot more.

Dickinson, bred among the mountains, sets sail into deep eternity. In this short poem, she moves out, moves beyond, and finds the very thing her Puritan forebears would have chalked up innocence, worldliness, or worse. Who wouldn't want to follow her?

Philip Larkin's short lyric poem, "Water," sets out to make up a religion entirely of imagery--and imagery of water, at that. In four stanzas, it shows a dramatic range of feelings and effects, finally ending at a quiet moment in which a glass of water is raised "in the east." This is lyric poetry at its purest, its finest.