A poem by Swedish Modernist poet Karin Boye (1900-1941), translated by David McDuff, who translated her Collected Poems from Bloodaxe Books. Reading/video:
Libraries seem more important than ever in these anti-intellectual, anti-science times. Here's a short tribute-poem to them by Philip Larkin--reading/video:
A short poem by Beat writer Lew Welch. Welch (1926-1971) was an important poet and teacher in the San Francisco Renaissance/Beat Movement. For a time, he functioned as the step-father of the lad who would adopt the performer's name, Huey Lewis. Welch is presumed to have committed suicide on May 26, 1971, in the Sierra Nevada. His body has never been found. City Lights Books published his Collected Poems (Ring of Bone) in 2012, with an afterword by Gary Snyder, who was Welch's roommate at Reed College. Reading/video:
A reading/video of a poem by Conrad Aiken, American poet who won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award:
Harlem Renaissance writer Gwendolyn Bennett wrote this poem about the great adventure-novelist Alexandre Dumas (The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, etc.), whose father was French and whose mother was African--and a former slave:
(in other words, it stinks)
