Word: poems
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...life was about being overlooked. Harold, who died June 8 at 92, was a brilliant poet in an era in which you were supposed to veil your marital problems or homosexual angst in 10 layers of metaphor. But in poem after poem, Harold used his tremendous pain--he was an illegitimate child who stood 5 ft. 2 in. and was openly gay--and, in a language that was accessible to anybody in America, made you feel very powerful things...
...Harold's poems were chiseled. William Carlos Williams, who was pretty much a god of American poetry, called him the "best poet of [his] generation." In Harold's most famous poem, "I Am in the Hub of the Fiery Force," he flashes back and forth between three or four rhythms like a virtuoso. He was writing about the agonies of being a gay man and an outcast in the U.S. before Allen Ginsberg. The Beats looked up to him. It was a tragedy that Harold never got the recognition that he should have...
...weekend cacophony of messages and videos, one note lingers. A video posted the night before the crackdown is of a woman reading a poem about Iranians standing up to change their country, afraid but determined to move into the morning, even if it is to face forces that would destroy them. The voice is sad and at one point almost breaks into a sob, and in the backdrop of the Tehran night can be faintly heard protest chants: "Allahu-Akbar, Allahu-Akbar." God is Great, God is Great. A Palestinian friend of mine remarked that those words would once have...
...commonly assert that labor executed by the mind—reading, writing, analyzing, and criticizing—is fundamentally different from, and in some way superior to, labor executed by the hands. Why? A clever speech, a lively poem, and a novel scientific discovery all possess an inherent and self-secure beauty that demands no propping up through comparison. A well-built chair, a useful trinket, and a clean bathroom—these too are things of beauty and of humanity. Our own labors are not diminished by a broad extension of this franchise of value...
...long-cherished Memorial Day tradition of wearing red poppies got its start in 1915. While reading Ladies' Home Journal, an overseas war secretary named Moina Michael came across the famous World War I poem "In Flanders Fields" by John McCrae, which begins, "In Flanders fields the poppies blow/ Between the crosses, row on row." Moved, she vowed always to wear a silk poppy in honor of the American soldiers who gave up their lives for their country. She started selling them to friends and co-workers and campaigned for the red flowers to become an official memorial emblem. The American...