Tag: Poetry
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Excited to Read Dante Again
I saw a sun above a thousand lamps; it kindled all of them as does our sun kindle the sights above us here on earth; and through its living light the glowing Substance appeared to me with such intensity- my vision lacked the power to sustain it. O Beatrice, sweet guide and dear! She said…
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Hesiod, Works and Days
For acquisition means life to miserable mortals; but it is an awful thing to die among the waves (685)
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Loneliness on the Edge of the World
A passage in J.A. Baker’s obsessive, wonderful little book, The Peregrine, brought together a number of threads which have been tossing around my head lately. He writes, describing his home in the south of England “out there at the edges of things,” Farms are well ordered, prosperous, but a fragrance of neglect still lingers, like a ghost…
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The Poem of the Cid
Ultimately, I found The Poem of the Cid rather disappointing. The straightforward style lacked both the grandeur of other classic medieval epics–The Song of Roland, The Alexandreis–and the sparse, haunting beauty of the Anglo-Saxon poetry that I enjoy so much. The first part of the poem, perhaps 50 lines, has apparently been lost, and this…
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Poems I like
Recently I promised myself that I would post at least once a week. Unfortunately, I’ve been extremely busy lately, and haven’t had much time to compile even the bare amount of material I’ve been posting recently. Nevertheless, to satisfy the obligation, here are some poems I discovered recently and enjoy. From The Essential Haiku,by Basho Even…
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The Alexandreis, Book X
At the close of Book IX, Alexander has conquered the world, and sets his sites on more distant pastures: The boundary of the world lies near at hand. Not to provoke the ill will of the gods, the world’s too narrow, and the breadth of the earth is insufficient for its only lord. Bu when…
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The Alexandreis, Walter of Châtillon
Lately, I feel like I’ve lost some of my connection to the Medieval world. I’m rooted in Honorius, but not in the Middle Ages more broadly. In an attempt to rectify this, and to get through some books that I’ve long had on my to read/to reread list, I’m going to try to read a…
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Thoughts (Borrowed) While Looking at the Sky in Maine
By such signs, and on foot of such examples, some say that bees have supped a draught that is divine, that, as a matter of true fact, a god pervades the whole wide world, sea’s expanse and heaven’s height, whence flocks and herds and men, and all species of savage beast, derive that fine line…
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I found myself within a shadowed forest, for I had lost the path that does not stray.
Last quarter I was lucky enough to work as a writing intern for a course which read Dante’s Inferno. I love Dante, despite (more likely because of) feeling that I’ll never do more than scratch the surface of the Commedia. Mostly, I just hang back and wonder at it. A few images in particular that…
Dan Yingst 