Tagged: poem

When Humanities and Natural Sciences Meet

It can be strange to think sometimes of the humanities and sciences meeting. A poetic stanza has very little to do with a mathematical equation one would think; not Edna St. Vincent Millay. In this poem, “Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare”, the Father of Geometry can see what poets, those so attuned to […]

Progressing through Poetry

The late 19th and early 20th century gave birth to some of our world’s favorite poets and poetry, something that could be written off as simple proximity, but we at Core believe what makes these writers so important was not only the still resonating effects of political and societal changes they commented on but also […]

Odysseus to Telemachus

Welcome back after the break! In relation to CC101’s study of The Odyssey is a poem by celebrated Russian poet laureate Joseph Brodsky, titled Odysseus to Telemachus: My dear Telemachus, The Trojan War is over now; I don’t recall who won it. The Greeks, no doubt, for only they would leave so many dead so far […]

Annual Poetry Reading: Poetry’s Distant Voice

The Core presents a “set of two poems, which are the same poem” as phrased by Zachary Bos, one of the respected speakers at the Annual Poetry Reading this year on April 16th. The theme of the reading was “Poetry’s Distant Voice”, and here is Zachary Bos’ contribution: From The Book of Hours I, 36 MacDiarmid, […]

Boston: Forever Changed

Former US Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky, who teaches here at BU, shares his reaction to the Boston Marathon bombings: Out of town, watching the horror on a screen, in a familiar place on a familiar occasion, I thought first of my daughter, who works at Mass. General, and my daughter-in-law, who was in Copley Square […]

Winston Churchill- ‘Our Modern Watchwords’

Until recently, Winston Churchill was only known to have written one poem as a schoolboy. Now, a 10-verse poem he wrote while serving in the army has emerged, from 1898 when he was 24 years old. Two of the 10 stanza of the work, titled ‘Our Modern Watchwords’, read: The shadow falls along the shore The search […]

Twists on John Keats

The Core presents a poem by Dan Beachy-Quick titled The Cricket and The Grasshopper, named after the poem by Romantic poet John Keats, whose work is studied in the CC202 Core class. Here is the Dan B-Q poem: The senseless leaf   in the fevered hand Grows hot, near blood-heat, but never grows Green. Weeks ago the […]

Walt Whitman: Leaves of Grass

Relating to CC202’s study of Walt Whitman’s work, here is an extract of the article by Claire Kelley on the poet’s whereabouts while he was writing in 1855: “Whitman-iacs” like NYU Professor Karen Karbiener have paid their respects to the ghost of Walt Whitman by visiting the unassuming white house that stands one story taller than […]

John Keats: “This Living Hand”

Some spring semesters, CC202 studies the works of John Keats. Here is an interesting untitled fragment the Romantic poet scribbled in a margin: This living hand, now warm and capable Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold And in the icy silence of the tomb, So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights […]

Poem ‘Marginalia’ by Billy Collins

To celebrate the new page on the Core blog, Marginalia, we present a poem on the topic of the marginal note itself. The American poet illustrates its variation and beauty. This sample may be very relevant to Core students: Students are more modest needing to leave only their splayed footprints along the shore of the […]