The Vulgar Eclectic

Category: poetry

  • Carmina Achilochi: the Fragments Of Archilochos

    I read this collection of poems by the Greek lyric poet Archilochus back in January of 2021 and wrote a very brief reaction: I just finished reading Carmina Archilochi: the Fragments Of Archilochos, translated by Guy Davenport. Archilochos was a 7th Century Greek poet and soldier. This book was really fun to read and felt…

  • Snowy world

    In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,In the bleak midwinter, long ago. -Christina Rossetti; excerpt from In the Bleak Midwinter

  • Inevitable

    The shades drawn all dayErasing time, a circleThe elm seed in spring

  • London Calling

    I was feeling down earlier today, sad and a little alone maybe. I rode on the train to a physiotherapy appointment and everyone in the train car seemed downcast, isolated, and grim. It made me think of the poem London by William Blake: I wander thro’ each charter’d street,Near where the charter’d Thames does flow.And…

  • Evening haiku

    Midnight, standing stillMind is like a drop of inkRipples in water

  • Theodore the Poet

    As a boy, Theodore, you sat for long hoursOn the shore of the turbid SpoonWith deep-set eye staring at the door of the crawfish’s burrow,Waiting for him to appear, pushing ahead,First his waving antennae, like straws of hay,And soon his body, colored like soap-stone,Gemmed with eyes of jet.And you wondered in a trance of thoughtWhat…

  • Morning haiku

    Morning of new snowBranches draped in soft dreamingFrom this moment on

  • An old book jot…Sappho

    This is a reaction I typed up after reading a collection of the poetry of Sappho. I finished reading this back in May of 2021. I’m going back and adding these sorts of reactions to the “book jots” section of the website. I thought I’d throw it up as a post, too, even though it’s…

  • Cricket

    The silence withinThe noise of a normal dayListen, a cricket

  • Haiku

    Here is a haiku I wrote this morning upon looking out the window. The weather has changed; the cool and damp of late fall has settled in. Yellow smoke of pinesFiltering the morning lightRain will be heavy