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Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem.-Edgar Allan Poe

Poetry is when emotion has found its thought and thought has found words--Robert Frost

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance--Carl Sandburg

I have nothing to say, I am saying it, and that is poetry--John Cage

You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some of it with you--Joseph Joubert

Poetry is what in a poem makes you laugh, cry, prickle, be silent, makes your toe nails twinkle, makes you want to do this or that or nothing, makes you know that you are alone in the unknown world, that your bliss and suffering is forever shared and forever all your own. ~Dylan Thomas

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A New Snapshot from an Old Poem: There Is No City


There Is No City

Four days and there is no city,

Only a dusty gravel road,

Sagging green bushes, wilting flowers,

And stifling sterile winds.

The sun shrinks from gay Victorian curtains,

Air conditioning, and buzzing fans.

This is too hot to be bothered,

Like old clichés and Venus de Milo.


For the first time in my memory, someone besides Kellie has suggested a particular section of an old poem that might be improved were it standing on its own. The old poem is Another Conversation found in my third published book of poetry The Joy of Shadows. My friend and fellow blogger Patrick Gillespie and I were discussing the criticism--actually, the lack of good criticism--of poetry in the late 20th and early 21st century. Somehow, the poet John Ashbery came up, and I mentioned to Patrick that I had written several critical conversations to Mr. Ashbery back when I used to care about writing out my thoughts about free verse, confessional poets and poetry. He read the poem (I am not sure how poetic it is.), and he selected this part as a portion of the poem that stood out to him. It fits well within the theme of nature poems that I am writing for my next book, and it is song-like even though it does not rhyme nor have regular meter. I suppose it will stand as one of my few contributions to the free verse phenomenon that has plagued poetic endeavors for the last hundred years or so. I did change one word in the poem because, in the original, it was repeated without good reason.


I do not have a picture that goes with the poem, so I decided that I have not displayed a picture of a purple coneflower (Echinacea) in a while. Aren't they beautiful?


My friend, Patrick Gillespie, is a much more accomplished blogger than I am. He has been at it since 2008, I believe. He is an accurate and thorough critic of literature whose research skills and knowledge are top notch. He is a very good poet who exhibits a craftsmanship that goes well beyond most of the tawdry poetic skills exhibited in contemporary poetic offerings, he is a clear and evocative writer of prose, and he covers a wide range of topics and subjects not always related to poetry. His blog can be found at https://poemshape.wordpress.com/. Please go check out his site and, in the comment box, mention that you heard about it from me.


Most of all, as always, I only ask that you ENJOY! my blog. If you just started reading my blog, by clicking on the topics "All Post," "Poetry and Thoughts on Poetry," "Dewey Lynne Stories," etc., you can read all of the posts as far back as you want. In less than a year, I have posted tons and tons of things to read, and, now, I will ask. What would you like to see put together in a book? Please let me know by typing your answers into the comment box at the bottom of the page on most devices.


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I find that I cannot exist without Poetry--without eternal poetry--half the day will not do--the whole of it--I began with a little, but habit has made me a Leviathan.-John Keats

We do not quite say that the new is more valuable because it fits in; but its fitting in is a test of its value.-T. S. Eliot

A man may praise and praise, but no one recollects but that which pleases.-George Gordon, Lord Byron

The great beauty of poetry is that it makes everything in every place interesting.-John Keats

Our faulty elder poets sacrificed the passion and passionate flow of poetry to the subtleties of intellect and to the stars of wit; the moderns to the glare and glitter of a perpetual, yet broken and heterogeneous imagery, or rather to an amphibious something, made up, half of image, and half of abstract meaning. The one sacrificed the heart to the head; the other both heart and head to point and drapery.-S. T. Coleridge

The purpose of rhythm, it has always seemed to me, is to prolong the moment of contemplation, the moment when we are both asleep and awake, which is the one moment of creation.-W. B. Yeats

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