"Poem For Speculative Hipsters," by Amiri Baraka

"Penumbra," by Dante Gabriel Rosetti

"Theatre of the Absurd," by Hans Ostrom

Short Love Poem

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Short Love Poem

What's there to say about
a love poem that insists
on being short, except
"Thank you"? Dearest, I
love you for what you
know, do, feel, and remember.
True, your body's not incidental
to you or to me. It is your
body. Still, love's metaphysical--
no, really; or it's not love.
You know how much praise I can
raise, but here the poem ends.


Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom

"Sunday," by Nikki Giovanni

"September 1, 1939," by W.H. Auden

On the precipice of another September 1, I thought of W.H. Auden's famous poem--one he later disavowed, in a way, by choosing not to include it in collections over which he had editorial control. His argument was that the line "we must love each other or die" was illogical insofar as we will die whether we love each other or not, but of course, few if any readers read the line that literally, and I doubt if Auden meant it that way. He was also a notorious reviser of poems after they had been published (as was Wordsworth): the sort of thing that causes arguments amongst scholars and critics.

One of the best recorded readings of the poem is by "Tom O'Bedlam" on Youtube. It really is terrific:

September 1, 1939

"Neutral Tones," by Thomas Hardy

"o, sweet spontaneous earth," by e.e. cummings

"Felix Randal," by Gerard Manley Hopkins

"The Waterwheel," by Rumi

"Worry About Money," by Kathleen Raine

"I Thought It Was Tangiers I Wanted," by Langston Hughes

"The Rose That Grew From Concrete," by Tupac Shakur