Good Morning!
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Welcome to The Coffee Shop, just for you early risers
on Monday mornings. This is an Open Thread forum,
so if you have an off-topic opinion burning a hole in
your brainpan, feel free to add a comment.
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In the depths of winter, I found there was
within me an invincible summer.
– Albert Camus
Continue readingTed Kooser (1939 – ) was born in Ames, Iowa. He was a two-term Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry chosen by the Librarian of Congress. He used his time as laureate to further the cause of poetry with American readers. Partnering with the Poetry Foundation, he began the “American Life in Poetry” program, which offers a free weekly poem to newspapers across the United States, aiming to raise the visibility of poetry. He’s won four Pushcart Prizes, the 2005 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, and a slew of other honors and awards.
To read Ted Kooser’s poem “In January” click:
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Elder Olson (1909-1992), American poet, teacher and literary critic. He was born in Chicago, Illinois. He became a founder and leading figure of the “Chicago school” of literary criticism. In 1942, he started teaching at the University of Chicago as an assistant professor in the Department of English. In 1955 he was presented with the Poetry Society of America Chap-book Award. He gained full professorship in 1955 and was named Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of English in 1973. His poetry collections include Thing of Sorrow, Collected Poems, and Last Poems.
To read Elder Olson’s poem, “Pavan for the New Year” click
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It is New Year’s Eve, so in order to assist those aviators and airport bums who enjoy entertaining at home, I present the secret recipe for the concoction known to Royal Canadian Air Force personnel as “Moose Milk”. Originally made with milk obtained from a lactating Alces alces, the practice was eventually curtailed.
There was one problem. The North American moose is the largest member of the deer family. A cow moose weighs as much as 880 pounds and stands almost seven feet tall. They tend toward an irritable disposition, especially when people start pulling on their lady moose parts.
Too many pilots and flight crew members began attending morning “sick parades” due to a variety of “non-combat related” injuries, leaving no one to “slip the surly bonds”.
The current RCAF Moose Milk recipe is made using milk from domesticated cows, available at your local grocer or supermarket.
Continue readingRichard Hoffman (1949 – ) is the author of the poetry collections Without Paradise: Poems, and Gold Star Road, which won the Sheila Motton Award from the New England Poetry Club. He is also the author of the memoir Half the House, and a collection of short fiction, Interference & Other Stories. A writer-in-residence at Emerson College in Boston, Hoffman also teaches for the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast low-residency MFA program.
To read Richard Hoffman’s poem “December 31st” click
Continue readingMaggie Smith (1977 – ), the one who is not a famous British actress, is an American poet, freelance writer, and editor, who lives with her husband and two children in Bexley, Ohio. Her poetry collections include Lamp of the Body; Good Bones; The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison, which won the 2012 Dorset Prize; and Disasterology.
To read Maggie Smith’s poem “How Dark the Beginning” click:
Continue readingMaggie Smith (1977 – ), the one who is not a famous British actress, is an American poet, freelance writer, and editor, who lives with her husband and two children in Bexley, Ohio. Her poetry collections include Lamp of the Body; Good Bones; The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison, which won the 2012 Dorset Prize; and Disasterology.
To read Maggie Smith’s poem “Rain, New Year’s Eve” click:
Continue readingWilliam Shakespeare (1564-1616) English playwright, poet, actor, and theatrical company partner; widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world’s greatest dramatist. He is often called England’s national poet and the “Bard of Avon.”
To read William Shakespeare’s Sonnet XCVII, click:
Continue readingW. S. Merwin (1927–2019) was an American poet who wrote more than fifty books of poetry and prose, and produced many translations. In the 1980s and 1990s, his writing influence derived from an interest in Buddhist philosophy and deep ecology. Residing in a rural part of Maui, Hawaii, he wrote prolifically and was dedicated to the restoration of the island’s rainforests. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry twice, in 1971 and 2009, National Book Award for Poetry in 2005. He was named as the U.S. Poet Laureate (2010-2011).
To read W.S. Merwin’s poem, To the New Year, click:
Continue readingHenry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), was the most popular American poet of his day, and one of the first American celebrities who was also known in Europe. Though he was a very private man, who suffered greatly from neuralgia (nerve pain), his public reputation was “as a sweet and beautiful soul,” as his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson called him at his funeral. His reputation declined quickly after his death, and he has long been overshadowed by the more modern American poets such as Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost and Carl Sandberg.
To read Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “Holidays” click
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