Rest in Peace, Christopher Tolkien

Christopher John Reuel Tolkien died on 16 January 2020, at the age of 95, in Draguignan, Var, France.

Poesie: March Thoughts

Daffy-down-dilly is come up to town, / In her yellow petticoat and her green gown.

Poesie: Jeffers’ To an Old Square Piano

Tor is a term for a craggy outcrop or lookout.

Poesie: Frost’s Birches

One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

Poesie: Roethke’s In a Dark Time

Although thoroughly postmodern, the American poet Theodore Roethke would have been at home with almost any of the lyric poets of the 16th and 17th centuries.

Poesie: Burgess’ Purple Cow

Some poets live to regret having written wildly successful poems...

Our Own Dear John Ronald: The Power of Song

Have we forgotten, or do we just habitually underestimate the power of song?

Poesie: Tolkien’s Little Princess Mee

Little Princess Mee is a Hobbit poem that was among those written in the margins of the Red Book of Westmarch.

Poesie: Stevenson’s Requiem

Well known, for good reason. If you are mourning, it helps to think of things this way.

Poesie: Dickinson’s “There’s a certain Slant of light”

Neither dash nor dot means anything; it is the difference between that makes the Morse code possible.