Audio Recording of Robert Frost’s “Christmas Trees” by Doug Storm. Christmas Trees Robert Frost (1920) (A Christmas Circular Letter) The city had withdrawn into itself And left at last the country to the country; When between whirls of snow not come to lie And whirls of foliage not yet laid, there drove A stranger to our yard, [...]
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The Conflict of Convictions
An audio recording of Herman Melville’s “The Conflict of Convictions.” Read by Doug Storm. The Conflict of Convictions (1860-1.) On starry heights A bugle wails the long recall; Derision stirs the deep abyss, Heaven’s ominous silence over all. Return, return, O eager Hope, And face man’s latter fall. Events, they make the dreamers quail; [...]
“Misgivings” by Herman Melville
An audio recording by Doug Storm. From Battle Pieces (1866) by Herman Melville. ”Misgivings” Misgivings. (1860.) When ocean-clouds over inland hills Sweep storming in late autumn brown, And horror the sodden valley fills, And the spire falls crashing in the town, I muse upon my country’s ills— The tempest bursting from the waste of Time [...]
“The Portent” by Herman Melville
An audio recording by Doug Storm of “The Portent” by Herman Melville from Battle Pieces (1866). The Portent. (1859.) Hanging from the beam, Slowly swaying (such the law), Gaunt the shadow on your green, Shenandoah! The cut is on the crown (Lo, John Brown), And the stabs shall heal no more. Hidden in the cap [...]
“Evelyn Hope” by Robert Browning
An audio recording by Doug Storm of “Evelyn Hope” by Robert Browning (1812–89) from his 1855 volume Men & Women. (audio file has a 10-second delay) Evelyn Hope BEAUTIFUL Evelyn Hope is dead! Sit and watch by her side an hour. That is her book-shelf, this her bed; She pluck’d that piece of geranium-flower, Beginning [...]
Anecdote of the Jar & Anecdote of Men by the Thousands
An audio recording by Doug Storm of “Anecdote of the Jar” and of “Anecdote of Men by the Thousands” by Wallace Stevens, both from his first book, Harmonium. Anecdote of the Jar (1919) I placed a jar in Tennessee, And round it was, upon a hill. It made the slovenly wilderness Surround that hill. The [...]
Ozymandias
An audio recording by Doug Storm of “Ozymandias“by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Ozymandias I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command Tell [...]
Free Writing in a 6th Grade Class
In class today, in a free-writing period I offered this to the gods: If my throat were a cave would my words hang like bats? If my eyes were eclipses would pinholes reveal me? If my teeth were tombstones would they order the dirt? My “working papers” (drafts) accompany the post. Recently, my good friend [...]
Absentee America
The Big House, you see, still stands, though now the tenants are the absentees. Paul Muldoon in Horse Latitudes photo credit: Old Ship Church by Kallicrates
But It Isn’t Freedom
Shine, Perishing Republic by Robinson Jeffers While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening to empire, And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, and the mass hardens, I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit, the fruit rots to make earth. [...]
