poetry

300d

Anactoria is a woman mentioned in the work of the ancient Greek poet Sappho, who wrote in the late 7th and early 6th centuries BCE. Sappho names Anactoria as the object of her desire in a poem numbered as fragment 16. Another of her poems, fragment 31, is traditionally called the "Ode to Anactoria", although no name appears in it.

Algernon Charles Swinburne wrote a long poem, "Anactoria", published in his 1866 collection Poems and Ballads.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anactoria

#books #literature #poetry

Sappho and Alcaeus (1881), painted by Lawrence Alma-Tadema. Anactoria's name is visible near the middle of the painting.

The scene is set in a marble amphitheater overlooking the sea, with lush pine trees framing the background.

Alcaeus, seated to the right, is playing a kithara (a type of lyre) and singing, clad in a pinkish tunic with golden sandals. He appears engaged in performance, his fingers on the strings, as he sings to an enraptured audience.

Sappho, seated on a stone bench to the left, leans forward with her chin resting on her hand, listening intently. She wears a flowing pale green gown and a dark headband. A small altar-like table in front of her holds a laurel wreath, possibly a prize for poetic excellence.

Behind Sappho, a group of women, possibly her companions or disciples, are dressed in elegant, classical garments and adorned with floral crowns.

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296d

#OTD in 1914 (dated February).

Publication of the first issue of New Numbers, a quarterly collection of work by the Dymock poets in England edited by Lascelles Abercrombie with Wilfrid Gibson. It containing poems such as Brooke's "The Soldier", published in 1915.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymock_poets

The Soldier at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/48306/pg48306-images.html#v-the-soldier

#books #literature #poetry

Image of Rupert Brooke (frontispiece) from For remembrance: soldier poets who have fallen in the war

Arthur St. John Adcock - https://archive.org/details/forremembranceso00adco

Brooke is depicted as a young man with wavy hair, gazing into the distance with a contemplative and idealistic expression.

The lighting emphasizes the classical features of his face, often described as handsome and romantic.

The portrait conveys a sense of youth, intellect, and melancholy, fitting for a poet who became a symbol of lost potential during World War I.

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296d

#dailyhandwriting 4 How do you feel about spring?

Petrichor's call

Cycle turns with vernal flux,
in zephyr's tune, the sparrows tryst,
Beneath the sky of equinox,
life's woken kiss, in dewy mist.

Petrichor's call, soft and fragrant,
from dormant clay to verdant gest,
from solstice cold, stark and vacant,
to Ostara's warmth on Gaia's breast.

Perennial dance in vibrant glee,
the reaffirm of life's decree,
Nature's lesson, simply free,
to seize and savour existence, be.

#poetry #handwriting

Notebook with lined paper and purple ink. Text the same as the post. The writing is cursive.

Edited 296d ago

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288d

Join me Tuesday AKA TODAY @ 6pm EST/5pm CST when #LaEsoterica explores experimental #poetry. Playlist available here (https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2Zslnc5XTfunQiYsTqu9xUW0-KB6uybR&si=BZyXaEau7433HjSt)
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315d

"Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard.
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word.
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!"

#OTD in 1898.

The Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde was published by Leonard Smithers, under the name "C.3.3.", which stood for cell block C, landing 3, cell 3.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ballad_of_Reading_Gaol

Ballad of Reading Gaol at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/301

#books #literature #poetry

Cover of The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1904).

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274d

"They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars—on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places."

'Desert Places'

~Robert Frost (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963)

Robert Frost at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/1091

#books #literature #poetry

"Robert Frost, head-and-shoulders portrait, facing front", c. 1910.

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311d

Lost and Found: A Newly Discovered Poem by Robert Frost

Nothing New,” which the American poet wrote in 1918, is published for the first time in The New Yorker’s Anniversary Issue.

By Jay Parini

https://www.newyorker.com/books/double-take/lost-and-found-a-newly-discovered-poem-by-robert-frost

#books #literature #poetry

Frost in 1949

Walter Albertin, World Telegram staff photographer - Library of Congress. New York World-Telegram & Sun Collection.

http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3c20741

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Robert_Frost_NYWTS_4.jpg

Frost appears as an elderly man with white, slightly disheveled hair, deep-set eyes, and a contemplative expression.

His face shows signs of age, with visible wrinkles that add to his distinguished and wise appearance.

He is dressed in a suit and tie, reflecting his formal yet approachable persona.

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198d

"Give me a little less
with every dawn."

Marjorie Lotfi performs John Burnside's "Prayer" in a film directed by Savannah Acquah, from a new series from the ‪Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation & the Writers’ Mosaic

https://www.brinkerhoffpoetry.org/poems/prayer

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #JohnBurnside

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195d

James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879) was born #OTD, 13 June. As a physicist, he ranks alongside Newton & Einstein (“He achieved greatness unequalled”—Max Planck; “I stand on the shoulders of Maxwell”—Albert Einstein).

Maxwell also wrote poetry: “Rigid Body Sings” is based on “Comin’ Through the Rye” by Robert Burns

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45774/in-memory-of-edward-wilson-who-repented-of-what-was-in-his-mind-to-write-after-section

#Scottish #literature #poetry #19thcentury #Victorian #Scots #Scotslanguage #Physics #science #physicist

In Memory of Edward Wilson, Who Repented of what was in his Mind to Write after Section
BY JAMES CLERK MAXWELL

Rigid Body (sings).

Gin a body meet a body
Flyin’ through the air,
Gin a body hit a body,
Will it fly? and where?
Ilka impact has its measure,
Ne’er a ane hae I,
Yet a’ the lads they measure me,
Or, at least, they try.

Gin a body meet a body
Altogether free,
How they travel afterwards
We do not always see.
Ilka problem has its method
By analytics high;
For me, I ken na ane o’ them,
But what the waur am I?

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244d

Thank you to an art lover from the Netherlands for purchasing four throw pillows from the haikuart collection of @MarjoleinRotsteeg (haiku) and me (art).

Find the complete haikuart collection here:
https://www.redbubble.com/de/people/karenkaspar/shop?artistUserName=KarenKaspar&collections=4136038&iaCode=all-departments&sortOrder=top%20selling

#sale #haikuart #haiku #art #cats #CatsOfMastodon #birds #giftideas #painting #poetry #watercolor #MastoArt #BuyIntoArt

Throw pillow featuring the haiku
big aspirations
the tabby kitten
has tiger dreams

combined with the 'Cute little cat' pastel painting in landscape format painted by the artist Karen Kaspar. The picture shows the head and upper body of a cute little grey tabby cat on a grey-blue background. The kitten looks curiously towards the viewer with its blue eyes.

Throw pillow featuring the haiku
mouse escaped
the tomcat tries hard
to not lose his cool

Combined with the 'Black cat in green grass' acrylic painting in portrait format, painted by the artist Karen Kaspar. A black cat is running in the green grass. You see it from behind. It turns its head towards the viewer and looks at you with green eyes.

Throw pillow featuring the haiku
reading
the tomcat’s body language
‘do not disturb’

Combined with 'The portrait of a sitting cat' hand-painted pastel painting by the artist Karen Kaspar. A brown and red tabby cat sits in the green grass with its back to the viewer and its head turned backwards. It is looking directly at the viewer.

Throw pillow featuring the haiku
by the roadside
swallows on the power lines
nearly Beethoven

Combined with the 'Gathering of Swallows' hand painted watercolour painting in landscape format by the artist Karen Kaspar. Swallows have gathered on three power lines in front of a blue sky with white clouds. The silhouettes of the birds in dark indigo blue stand out clearly against the sky. Some of the swallows are sitting on the wires and appear to be having a chat. Others are flying in to attend the meeting. Others are already taking off.

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262d

Poem of the week: A Sonnet to the Noble Lady, the Lady Mary Wroth by Ben Jonson

"A strategically flattering tribute to a pioneering female writer is lifted by authentic warmth and admiration"

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/apr/07/poem-of-the-week-a-sonnet-to-the-noble-lady-the-lady-mary-wroth-by-ben-jonson

Ben Jonson at PG

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/1269

#poetry #authors #books #literature

Erato, Muse of Lyrical Poetry by Charles Meynier (French, 1768–1832). "Erato is the muse of lyric poetry in Greek mythology. She is often depicted holding a small kithara or lyre, a stringed musical instrument, here seen resting against a tree in the lower left. She is writing with an arrow given to her by a winged Eros or Cupid, the god of love. This painting belongs to a cycle of five works commissioned by businessman François Boyer-Fonfréde for his home in Toulouse."

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258d

I couldn’t touch a stop and turn a screw,
And set the blooming world a-work for me,
Like such as cut their teeth—I hope, like you—
On the handle of a skeleton gold key…

—“Thirty Bob a Week”, by the 19th-century poet, playwright & novelist John Davidson (1857–1909) – born #OTD, 11 April. A 🎂 🧵

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Page images from THE YELLOW BOOK vol. 2, 1894 – available on @gutenberg_org

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/41876/41876-h/41876-h.htm#Page_99

#Scottish #literature #poetry #19thCentury #Victorian #Modernist #Modernism #workingclass

John Davidson
Thirty Bob a Week

I couldn’t touch a stop and turn a screw,
And set the blooming world a-work for me,
Like such as cut their teeth—I hope, like you—
On the handle of a skeleton gold key.
I cut mine on a leek, which I eat it every week:
I’m a clerk at thirty bob as you can see.

But I don’t allow it’s luck and all a toss;
There’s no such thing as being starred and crossed;
It’s just the power of some to be a boss,
And the bally power of others to be bossed:
I face the music, sir; you bet I ain’t a cur!
Strike me lucky if I don’t believe I’m lost!

For like a mole I journey in the dark,
A-travelling along the underground
From my Pillar’d Halls and broad suburban Park
To come the daily dull official round;
And home again at night with my pipe all alight
A-scheming how to count ten bob a pound.

And it’s often very cold and very wet;
And my missis stitches towels for a hunks;
And the Pillar’d Halls is half of it to let—
Three rooms about the size of travelling trunks.
And we cough, my wife and I, to dislocate a sigh,
When the noisy little kids are in their bunks.

But you never hear her do a growl or whine,
For she’s made of flint and roses, very odd;
And I’ve got to cut my meaning rather fine
Or I’d blubber, for I’m made of greens and sod:
So p’rhaps we are in hell for all that I can tell,
And lost and damn’d and served up hot to God.

I ain’t blaspheming, Mr. Silvertongue;
I’m saying things a bit beyond your art:
Of all the rummy starts you ever sprung
Thirty bob a week’s the rummiest start!
With your science and your books and your the’ries about spooks,
Did you ever hear of looking in your heart?

I didn’t mean your pocket, Mr., no!
I mean that having children and a wife,
With thirty bob on which to come and go,
Isn’t dancing to the tabor and the fife;
When it doesn’t make you drink, by Heaven! it makes you think,
And notice curious items about life.

I step into my heart and there I meet
A god-almighty devil singing small,

Who would like to shout and whistle in the street,
And squelch the passers flat against the wall;
If the whole world was a cake he had the power to take,
He would take it, ask for more, and eat them all.

And I meet a sort of simpleton beside—
The kind that life is always giving beans;
With thirty bob a week to keep a bride
He fell in love and married in his teens;
At thirty bob he stuck, but he knows it isn’t luck;
He knows the seas are deeper than tureens.

And the god-almighty devil and the fool
That meet me in the High Street on the strike,
When I walk about my heart a-gathering wool,
Are my good and evil angels if you like;
And both of them together in every kind of weather
Ride me like a double-seated “bike”.

That’s rough a bit and needs its meaning curled;
But I have a high old hot un in my mind,
A most engrugious notion of the world
That leaves your lightning ’rithmetic behind:
I give it at a glance when I say “There ain’t no chance,
Nor nothing of the lucky-lottery kind.”

And it’s this way that I make it out to be:
No fathers, mothers, countries, climates—none!—
Not Adam was responsible for me;
Nor society, nor systems, nary one!
A little sleeping seed, I woke—I did, indeed—
A million years before the blooming sun.

I woke because I thought the time had come;
Beyond my will there was no other cause:
And everywhere I found myself at home
Because I chose to be the thing I was;
And in whatever shape, of mollusc, or of ape,
I always went according to the laws.

I was the love that chose my mother out;
I joined two lives and from the union burst;
My weakness and my strength without a doubt
Are mine alone for ever from the first.
It’s just the very same with a difference in the name
As “Thy will be done.” You say it if you durst!

They say it daily up and down the land
As easy as you take a drink, it’s true;
But the difficultest go to understand,
And the difficultest job a man can do,
Is to come it brave and meek with thirty bob a week,
And feel that that’s the proper thing for you.

It’s a naked child against a hungry wolf;
It’s playing bowls upon a splitting wreck;
It’s walking on a string across a gulf
With millstones fore-and-aft about your neck:
But the thing is daily done by many and many a one . . .
And we fall, face forward, fighting, on the deck.

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195d

I’d look
I’d answer
when other voices
did the same

But it’s so damn sweet
and it flows like honey
when he says my name

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259d

Rare, oh it's so rare
To meet somebody
Able to understand you
So deeply that
You never feel alone.

-Debora Radice

❤️

@poetry

#readersdon #writersdon #bookstodon #poetry #poem #poesia #poems #poesie #thoughts #pensieri #thought #pensiero #poemoftheday #thoughtoftheday #poesiadelgiorno #pensierodelgiorno

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145d

Beyond ruined houses and a past
eroded by salt and marram grass
stretch miles of sand dunes
where as kids we hurled ourselves
into space …

—Eleanor Livingstone, “Breathless”
from In the Event of Fire: New Writing Scotland 27 (ASLS, 2009)

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry

Eleanor Livingstone
BREATHLESS

Beyond ruined houses and a past
eroded by salt and marram grass
stretch miles of sand dunes
where as kids we hurled ourselves
into space, legs and rebel cries
suspended in the air, landing

spread-eagled in cotton shorts
and bare legs, winded but alive.

On August evenings years later
under cover of dark we returned
stumbling in and out of rabbit holes
to find the sand sun-warmed, soft
and far enough removed for us
to lie as still and silent as the sea

but for fingers finding buttons
and the racket of our hearts.

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223d

“Multitudes” is a #haiku from Library on Fire, my 3rd volume of #poetry available at https://www.nihtgengapress.com/product/library-on-fire

#books #indie #poem

Multitudes
I must remember
Within my darkness resides
Multitudes of stars

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208d

Thae laddies in the Celtic shirts,
a baker’s dozen
lumbering all the way to the summit cairn
the hot last Saturday of May
as larks trilled
and the loch-side braes released their midgies…

—Kathleen Jamie, “Ben Lomond”
published in THE BONNIEST COMPANIE (Picador, 2015)

https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/kathleen-jamie/the-bonniest-companie/9781509801718

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry

Ben Lomond
Kathleen Jamie

Thae laddies in the Celtic shirts,
a baker’s dozen
lumbering all the way to the summit cairn
the hot last Saturday of May
as larks trilled
and the loch-side braes released their midgies …

Well, up at the raven-haunted trig-point
(as the sun shone bright o’er the whole lower Clyde)
they unfurled a banner,
and triumphant-sombre, ranked themselves behind it
for the photies,
‘R.I.P.’ it read, then the name of a wee boy

they’ll never meet again. Ach,
would the wean were playing fit-ba
on some bonny banks somewhere …

There’s no accounting for it, is there?
I mean the low road, and the high.

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223d

There are
Ancient
Constellations
In your veins.
All wild things
Know the language
Of burning.

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228d

New 3”x 3” stickers available in the shop!The poem is “Become”, one of my favorites from Library on Fire. https://www.nihtgengapress.com/product/become-sticker. Free shipping in the US!

#poetry #books #sticker

WHAT
CHOICE DO I
HAVE IN THE
DEEPEST DARK,
BUT TO BECOME
THE STARS?

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172d

SHIPS: Live Poetry & Music
10 July, An Tobar, Mull – tickets from £8

A live evening of poetry & music with five acclaimed poets: Sharon Black, Leonie Charlton, Julie Antill, Jon Miller, & Cait O’Neill McCullagh.

https://www.antobarandmulltheatre.co.uk/whats-on/ec276n5cy0uxkyu4xc55hrskyopw6r

#Scottish #literature #poetry #Highlands #HighlandsandIslands

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207d

We needed it—and he stood there,
feet on the dry porch, saying rain,
cloud and skyful, the sound of drumming…

—Niall Campbell, “The Rainmaker”
published in POETRY (July/August 2020)
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/153822/the-rainmaker

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #rain

The Rainmaker
by Niall Campbell

We needed it—and he stood there,
feet on the dry porch, saying rain,
cloud and skyful, the sound of drumming;

the bath trough in the garden listened,
white and bone dry, as he described
a bright wash across the dust fields,

the surest downpour, the flushed skin,
my soaked shirt, heavy as a bell.
Then off he went to the scorched fields,

humming, and weighing what we paid.
What did he say: prayer is moisture;
hope is a well—I didn’t care,

I wanted just the words from him—
what I couldn’t dare say—not there
beneath that sun, that blur of fire-sky.

My thoughts all thoughts of water, I
spun my head round—to hear the spill
of the word rain across the boards,

and nothing grew dark, nothing fell—
but something fell, and the ground took,
and something wild as garlic grew.

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207d

Love rules. Love laughs. Love marches. Love is the wolf that guards the gate.
Love is the food of music, art, poetry. It fills us and fuels us and fires us to create.
Love is terror. Love is sweat. Love is bashed pillow, crumpled sheet, unenviable fate…

—Edwin Morgan, “Love”
A poem for Pride Month 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️
published in A BOOK OF LIVES (Carcanet, 2011)

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781857549188/a-book-of-lives/

#Scottish #literature #EdwinMorgan #poem #poetry #love #lovepoem #loveislove #Pride #PrideMonth #PrideMonth2025

Love
by Edwin Morgan

Love rules. Love laughs. Love marches. Love is the wolf that guards the gate.
Love is the food of music, art, poetry. It fills us and fuels us and fires us to create.
Love is terror. Love is sweat. Love is bashed pillow, crumpled sheet, unenviable fate.
Love is the honour that kills and saves and nothing will ever let that high ambiguity abate.
Love is the crushed ice that tingles and shivers and clinks fidgin-fain for the sugar-drenched absinthe to fall on it and alter its state.
With love you send a probe
So far from the globe
No one can name the shoals the voids the belts the zones the drags the flares it signals all to leave all and to navigate.

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207d

Tenderness is mandatory.
Careless lurches may draw blood,
enthusiasms leave abrasions,
excessive ardour has been known
to snap off spinal plates…

—“The Mating of Dinosaurs”, by William Oliphant (1920–2004)
published in The Mating of Dinosaurs (Taranis Books, 1992)

Today, 1 June, is Dinosaur Day 🦖

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #dinosaurs #DinosaurDay

The Mating of Dinosaurs
William Oliphant

Tenderness is mandatory.
Careless lurches may draw blood,
enthusiasms leave abrasions,
excessive ardour has been known
to snap off spinal plates.

There is the constant burden of
the force of gravity that pulls
against the need for viable eggs.

The wear and tear on genitalia,
like spoil of grind of glacier, is
lost in some future fossil count.

The adaptationists suggest
that gentleness emerges here,
and some will come to call it love.

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172d

The poems of Arthur Conan Doyle
16 September, online – pay what you can

Although best known for his Sherlock Holmes stories, Arthur Conan Doyle also published several volumes of verse. While his poetry never achieved the same level of acclaim as his fiction, it remains an important part of his literary legacy, & The Live Canon ensemble will perform a selection of his poems

@litstudies

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-poems-of-arthur-conan-doyle-tickets-1284197211429

#Scottish #literature #poetry #19thCentury #ConanDoyle

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219d

How Losing a Poetry Competition Launched Edna St. Vincent Millay’s Career

By Nava Atlas

https://www.literaryladiesguide.com/classic-women-authors-poetry/losing-poetry-competition-millay/

Edna St. Vincent Millay at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/70

#books #literature #poetry

Edna St. Vincent Millay portrait (c. 1920)

In the photograph, Edna appears poised and introspective, exuding a quiet confidence. Her hair is cropped short in a stylish bob, reflecting the flapper fashion of the era and her alignment with the progressive spirit of the 1920s.

She wears simple, elegant attire—a dark blouse—with minimal adornment, allowing her expressive eyes and finely sculpted features to command attention.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edna_St._Vincent_Millay#/media/File:Edna_St._Vincent_Millay_Portrait_(c._1920).jpg

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