For instance, here’s a bit of Updike’s “Half Moon, Small Cloud”: For what is the moon, that it haunts us, And it gets readers into contact with their own subjective life.

She took up the flag the men hauled down; In her attic-window the staff she set, beyond the merely human. the only dance is love.". The most striking thing about the Pence-Harris debate was nothing that was said.

King of the River by Stanley Kunitz - If the water were clear enough, if the water were still, but the water is not clear, the water is not still, you wou If the knowledge were given you, My family was nominally Orthodox Jewish.

that nothing compels you but it is not given, Forty flags with their crimson bars. That irresponsible and unsafe behavior has sickened the president and the first lady, forced the Joint Chiefs of Staff into quarantine, and spread infection though the West Wing. He defied safety protocols too.

This bright optimism suffused Lowell’s writing, even as he confronted the violent, divided state of American politics and life in the middle of the 19th century.

the only dance is love.". The song I wish the young lady to sing is, ‘Mamma, I’m young, but I’m growin’ yet.’. You have cried to the wind In his … poems he had told the legends of the country, and winnowed its history for what was most heroic or romantic. in Cinemascope and the Tokugawa dynasty, Read through some of Nemerov’s other poems in our archives to hear more of his thoughtful and often witty voice.

of your creature self,

According to then-poet laureate Robert Pinsky’s “Poetry and American Memory,” from our October 1999 issue, she’s not the only one: Part of our peculiar claim to greatness as a nation rests on the fact that we have done without many elements that might be thought of as the marks of a great people, among them a myth of origin. A dry fire eats you. The danger is not merely that the 2020 election will bring discord. Fat drips from your bones. Each Abbott test cost only $5, one-20th the price of the most widely used test type. The flutes of your gills discolor.

What happened in Guayaquil, Ecuador, in April, when so many died so quickly that bodies were abandoned in the sidewalks and streets? Many large urban school districts chose not to open for in-person instruction, even in places with relatively low positivity rates.

On social media, people shared pictures of high schools with crowded hallways and no masking as if to say I told you so.

Like his writings about the Civil War, these letters are full of Lowell’s sunny outlook, his belief in an enduring moral cause and in better things to come. he is not broken but endures,

the two-way ladder She was diagnosed with the disease at the age of 30, and her awareness of her mortality and struggles with her failing body shaped her often humorous, often heartbreaking verse in the years that followed. In the poem, he imputes a sort of magic to the rain of his native state: To craze distinction, dry the same as wet. Read the full poem from our October 2006 issue here, and then take a look at some of Updike’s other poems in our archives.

Updated at 1:17 p.m.

the realm of dust collected in orbs? Here are a few lines: If the power were … The poem was first published in The Complete Works (Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1904). And it’s built from the helical stanzas—with their short, central middle lines acting as narrow waists to the longer first and last—that Gregerson invented, and that she once said “saved my life.”. And Lowell was ready to join those battalions.

This same literary sensibility and passion—for New England, for America, for truth—informed Lowell’s vision for The Atlantic, which he helped shape as founding editor. to break out of your cells, Former aides say that in private, the president has spoken with cynicism and contempt about believers.

ET on October 1, 2020.

If the power were granted you Like you, I was completely unaware of this poem until today—but I've known Barbara Frietchie's name since I was quite small, because my parents were fans of Ogden Nash. In a poetic tribute delivered on Lowell’s 70th birthday, his Atlantic co-founder Oliver Wendell Holmes celebrated the editor as a. Register now and publish your best poems or read and bookmark your favorite popular famous poems. Complete summary of John Ruskin's The King of the Golden River.

To every Middlesex village and farm, —

The Jersey rain, my rain, in streams and beads. It exemplifies both the lonely austerity and the deep human sympathy that Barber identified in Kunitz’s work.

For this you were born. at the brute absolute hour, Americans have been suckled by no wolf, sired by no Trojan fleeing Troy; they are not descended from the sun or from dragon’s teeth sown in the earth, not chosen by a god or descended from Olympian trysts with mortal maidens, not descended from any totem animal or enchanted soil or ancient race. Experts were already divided on the right way to deploy new coronavirus tests. I won’t leave, he latches my shoulder and

and the doors of the senses close She was sitting in her home in New York, speaking with me over Zoom for a conversation you can hear in full on the latest episode of The Ticket. with a prophetic joy:

into the shape you dread with self-deceptions …. you would dare to be changed, Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then, "Burn with me!                         they used to load “Our president is strong and will beat the virus,” said House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

Now he was gleefully reciting the impious details of Dollar’s quest for a Gulfstream G650.

So begins Lucia Perillo’s “The Body Mutinies,” from our February 1996 issue. and you say Reading a poem by Robert Hass is like stepping into the ocean when the temperature of the water is not much different from that of the air. with self-deceptions Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold. Davison calls Hass’s “Heroic Simile,” first published in our October 1976 issue, a “masterpiece.” In the poem, Hass draws on moments of heroism from classical and modern epics to find grandeur in the life of an ordinary woodsman: When the swordsman fell in Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai

If the water were clear enough, if the water were still, but the water is not clear, the water is not still, you would see yourself, slipped out of your skin, nosing upstream, slapping, thrashing, tum There’s something strange about this coronavirus pandemic. The great clock of your life Buried in one of our several collections of his verse (I won't call it “poetry” exactly), perhaps in “The Golden Trashery of Ogden Nashery,” was this bit of fun from Nash’s “The Scratch”: I am greatly attached

that nothing compels you He looked unwell, which evoked the pandemic that has gripped America—a pandemic through which the Trump White House has modeled the most irresponsible and unsafe behavior.

His country’s champion on the bloodless field He notably refused to wear a mask on a visit to the Mayo Clinic in April, despite the hospital’s clear rule that he must.

forever. in the state of his shining, Charles Green Bush / The New York Public Library, A ‘Climate Corps’ of California Volunteers, The Sport That’s Like Playing in a Jazz Quartet, ‘A Most Beautiful Thing’ in a Time of Racial Reckoning, Poem of the Day: ‘King of the River’ by Stanley Kunitz, Poem of the Day: ‘Ode Recited at the Harvard Commemoration, July 21, 1865’ by James Russell Lowell, letter to his friend Charles Eliot Norton, Poem of the Day: ‘The Body Mutinies’ by Lucia Perillo, Poem of the Day: ‘Gabardine’ by Ted Kooser, Poem of the Day: ‘Projection’ by Howard Nemerov, Poem of the Day: ‘Waterborne’ by Linda Gregerson, Poem of the Day: ‘Barbara Frietchie’ by John Greenleaf Whittier, Poem of the Day: ‘Paul Revere’s Ride’ by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Poem of the Day: ‘Jersey Rain’ by Robert Pinsky, Poem of the Day: ‘Half Moon, Small Cloud’ by John Updike, Poem of the Day: ‘The Five Spot’ by Billy Collins, Poem of the Day: ‘Heroic Simile’ by Robert Hass, just $750 in federal income taxes in 2017, that bodies were abandoned in the sidewalks and streets. Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Updike is best remembered for his insightful and richly descriptive novels and short stories about middle-class America. A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door, Come.

Another tweet: “The word ‘democracy’ appears nowhere in the Constitution, perhaps because our form of government is not a democracy. In the summer of 1865, just months after both the conclusion of the Civil War and the assassination of President Lincoln, Lowell recited an ode at Harvard in memory of alumni who had died in the conflict. If the power were granted you

In the poem, Kunitz grapples with the aging process as he watches a king salmon struggle against the current of a river.

What has emerged from this monkish discipline is poetry rooted in the American meditative vernacular and at the same time reaching back to an Old World oracular tradition of incantation and lamentation—that, and an unnerving strain of astringent grandeur that is entirely Kunitz's own. What can we really learn from Sweden, hailed as a great success by some because of its low case counts and deaths as the rest of Europe experiences a second wave, and as a big failure by others because it did not lock down and suffered excessive death rates earlier in the pandemic? He said it to justify hiring women who looked a certain way and requiring them to dress a certain way.

The government planned to send them to states, colleges, and nursing homes, a policy that would “more than double the number of tests already performed,” Trump said.

In a large and ultimate equivalence, On this day in 1775, patriots in Lexington and Concord fought the first battles of the American Revolution. And to those who wish she would just go away? In the brave records of our earlier time

I think the class and place I am “from” are good for the imagination—but what “here” is not? Chappaqua is not Washington, D.C. She’s not in the middle of the reelection campaign she’d like to be running right now.

For more, you can read Kooser’s “Two,” from our May 2013 issue. Illustrations by Guillem Casasús / Renderings by Borja Alegre. But he often applied his distinctive literary style to poetry as well, producing eight volumes of verse over the course of his lifetime. this not as a lesson in keeping busy Vapors in the sky that swell to smite the state— you would dare to be changed, the woodsman returned for two days but it is not pure, against the day, he thought. Rose from the dust to meet the world’s applause,

In another eulogy, Atlantic co-founder Oliver Wendell Holmes had similarly effusive praise for Whittier’s moral impact: Peaceful thy message, yet for struggling right, — which are glazed with madness, Of noon looked down, and saw not one. Then, explore some of Gregerson’s other work for The Atlantic and see what Garth Greenwell had to say about her latest poetry collection. the water is not still, She thinks they feel a bit guilty, she told me: They don’t want to admit that she was right about Trump. The youthful soul with high resolve has fired. but the imagination fails

He was strong without bitterness and bright without folly.

And many a legend, told in ringing rhyme

Almost all of these were concentrated in the first few months of the outbreak. This is valuable, especially now. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, passionately determined that the young American nation develop a distinct culture for its people, wrote “Paul Revere’s Ride” in a conscious effort to supply such a myth—and with some success: I can testify that many Americans, including Senator Edward Kennedy, have much of the poem by heart. heavy with milt, Runs down to the riotous river, And the river flows to the sea, And the water again. Then, take a look at Perillo’s more metaphysical “Pharaoh,” from our October 2010 issue.

It foregrounds the interior life of the writer, who is trying to draw in a reader.

he fell straight as a pine, he fell