Category Archives: Word Cloud

Word Cloud: EARTH

by NONA BLYTH CLOUD Religion and Science — two different approaches to the questions, How Does Stuff Work? and Why Do Things Happen? When you start with the same questions, you often uncover similar answers. The Elements, for example. The “basic four”— … Continue reading

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Word Cloud: SENSATION

by NONA BLYTH CLOUD “Overnight sensation” – the star who bursts on the scene, seemingly out of nowhere, so often is someone who has labored unappreciated at their craft for years. At the end of the 20th century, Australian poetry was … Continue reading

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Word Cloud: RESISTANCE

by NONA BLYTH CLOUD In 1895, Japan was at war with China for supremacy over Korea, which was China’s most important client state. Japan wanted access to Korea’s coal and iron, and to use it as a buffer zone to prevent Chinese or Russian … Continue reading

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Word Cloud: TRANSLATION

by NONA BLYTH CLOUD The Nobel award committee’s citation called her the “Mozart of poetry,” a woman who mixed the elegance of language with “the fury of Beethoven.” Wislawa Szymborska (1923-2012) was awarded the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature.  The Nobel … Continue reading

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Word Cloud: ALOUD

by NONA BLYTH CLOUD Dana Gioia, the subject of last week’s post, often writes about the change poetry is undergoing from small runs of books at boutique publishers for a sparse group of readers to a populist movement of rappers and poetry slammers speaking … Continue reading

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Word Cloud: GOLDEN

by NONA BLYTH CLOUD A poet with an MBA from the Stanford Business School who became a Vice President at General Foods and marketed Kool-Aid? Doesn’t sound very promising, does it? Even more damning, he’s written literary criticism, in books and … Continue reading

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Word Cloud: AFTERIMAGE

 NONA BLYTH CLOUD Writing poetry in reaction to headline news is risky business. Even some of the best poets have written work so momentary about a particular incident it’s glaringly out-of-place in their future collected works. But when a poet … Continue reading

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Word Cloud: RACE

by NONA BLYTH CLOUD Elizabeth Alexander. The name may sound familiar.  If I say “the inauguration of President Barak Obama,” a lightbulb might go off, because she was there, reading her poem for that momentous occasion, “Praise Song for the … Continue reading

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Word Cloud: REVISITING

by NONA BLYTH CLOUD On Friday, July 24, 2015, my very first “Word Cloud” appeared at Flowers for Socrates. There’s been another one every Friday since, so I’ve now posted 52 profiles at this site. The first poet I wrote about … Continue reading

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Word Cloud: INNER-BI ȾȻH

by NONA BLYTH CLOUD I normally try to abstain from vulgar language in my writing, but profiling Carolyn Kizer (1925-2014), it’s hard to avoid the word “Bitch” since that is the title of one of her most famous poems. “Women writers are … Continue reading

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