Having a look at Frank O'Hara's poem Lana Turner Has Collapsed.Lana Turner has collapsed!I was trotting along and suddenlyit started raining and snowingand you said it was hailingbut hailing hits you on the headhard s...

Taking a look at Robert Frost's Old Man's Winter Night.All out of doors looked darkly in at himThrough the thin frost, almost in separate stars,That gathers on the pane in empty rooms.What kept his eyes from giving back the ...

In March 1969, Doors singer Jim Morrison was charged with obscenity and indecent exposure stemming from an incident at a concert in Miami, FL. Prior to sentencing, the court asked his father for a letter describing Jim's character and situation...

Reading Clare Harner's Immortality, a beautiful poem for a eulogy. Other authors have tried to pass it off as their own, so I talk about that, too.Do not stand          By my grave, and weep.   ...

Saturday Morning Words and Coffee. Taking a look at Robert Frost's The Master Speed.No speed of wind or water rushing byBut you have speed far greater. You can climbBack up a stream of radiance to the sky,And back through hi...

Reading Ozymandias. What does it teach us about Kings of Kings and hubris? That the sand reclaims everything eventually.I met a traveller from an antique land,Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stoneStand in the dese...

Reading chapter 22 from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and talking about the dangers of the mob mentality.

Saturday morning words and coffee. Reading Yeats' "A Coat" and talking abut reappraising our own work as we go through life. Is it time to "strip down" and simplify? Yeats might tell you, "Yes."

Robert Frost is a great poet and, in a roundabout way, helped me to take a better road by dropping English lit. Have a decision to make on which path to take? I talk about that here.

Saturday morning words and coffee. Reading Thomas Hardy's poem from a New Year's Day many years ago.I leant upon a coppice gate      When Frost was spectre-grey,And Winter's dregs made desolate  ...

Jabberwocky is a poem from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass. It's called a "nonsense poem" because it uses made up words that you can't find in the dictionary. In this podcast episode, I read the poem and talk about what it might mean....

Reading Chapter 69 - The Funeral from Moby Dick. Do you believe in ghosts, my friend?

Reading a selection from The Odyssey. A 3,000-year-old tale of a dog's loyalty. 'This dog,' answered Eumaeus, 'belonged to him who has died in a far country. If he were what he was when Odysseus left for Troy, he would soon show yo...

Time for some Christopher Marlowe.Come live with me and be my love,And we will all the pleasures prove,That Valleys, groves, hills, and fields,Woods, or steepy mountain yields.And we will sit upon ...

Reading and talking about Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost.Nature’s first green is gold,Her hardest hue to hold.Her early leaf’s a flower;But only so an hour.Then leaf subsides to leaf.So Eden sank to grief,...

Looking at Robert Browning's The Patriot. Beware fleeting glory. Artwork: Washington Crossing The Delaware by Emanuel Leutze.IIt was roses, roses, all the way,With myrtle mixed in my path like mad:The house-roofs seemed t...

My neighbour's dumb dog makes me seek advice on patience from Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Saturday morning words and coffee. Taking a look at William Shakespeare's Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer's Day?Artwork: Summer is icumen in, 1902, Herbert Arnould OlivierShall I compare thee to a summer’s day?Thou art more lov...

Turning to Victorian poetry for Victoria Day weekend in Canada. Looking at Tennyson's elegy to a lost friend: Break, Break, Break.Artwork: The Wave by Pierre-Auguste Renoir.Break, break, break,On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!...

Reading The Tyger and talking about the wild things.

Reading and talking about Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnet 43.How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.I love thee to the depth and breadth and heightMy soul can reach, when feeling out of sightFor the ends of Being and ...

Reading a selection from the Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde. Remember the prisoners.

Reading and talking about To Celia (aka: Drink to me only with thine eyes) by Ben Jonson. A love poem that has been put to music countless times down through the centuries.

Reading Henley's Invictus and talking about being the masters of our fates in the face of adversity.

Reading and discussing A Crazed Girl from William Butler Yeats.