Word: poem
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...addition to welcoming millions of immigrants arriving at neighboring Ellis Island (the "huddled masses yearning to breathe free," in the words of Emma Lazarus' poem, itself written as part of a Statue of Liberty fundraiser), the statue had a more immediately practical function: lighthouse. Considered a navigational aid to ships entering the harbor, the statue was first administered by the U.S Lighthouse Board before eventually falling under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service. A massive, two-year project restored and improved the statue in time for its 100th birthday in 1986, marked by a four-day extravaganza...
Carl Phillips ’81 dramatizes the weeping of Patroclus’ horses at their owner’s death in the poem “Happiness”; “Immortal, / and yet earthbound, hovering around their disbelief, / around their instinct not to believe…” they weep without understanding, until the anguish recedes and they are returned to indifference. It is the analysis of sorrowful themes such as this, tinged with optimism, that characterizes his latest collection “Speak Low.”In his 10th book, a collection...
...written in his senior year of high school, won the Phyllis Anderson Prize for Playwriting in 2006 and was produced in Berlin the next year. “The play is about a mother and daughter on their wedding day, but it soon turns into a metaphysical poem.” Growing up near Cambridge, Pecci often saw theater performances at the American Repertory Theatre. The ART, he says, was “one of the reasons—if not ‘the’ reason—that I came to Harvard.” But when...
Reading a poem by John Ashbery ’49 for the first time feels like walking into the room of a stranger. The space is mysterious; the language, unfamiliar. There is some sort of order, but it is known only to the owner. Slowly, though, orienting details emerge. Ashbery’s words take on a reassuring rhythm, thrumming steadily, visually, against the walls of the mind. Gradually one gets one’s bearings, locating oneself within the discursive beauty. “How does it feel to be outside and inside at the same time, / The delicious...
...title poem of “Self-Portrait,” Ashbery addresses 16th century painter Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola: “Whose curved hand controls, / Francesco, the turning seasons and the thoughts / That peel off and fly away at breathless speeds / Like the last stubborn leaves ripped / From wet branches?” The lines are typical Ashbery—both contemplative and frenzied, an ecstasy of stillness...