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eaglesweb.com Poetry
for the ear in the tradition of blind Homer.
ARCHIVE
OF POETRY NOTES
by Walter Rufus Eagles
Archive initiated May 2, 2003 & updated
as needed.
Click HERE
for our editorial policy or to record your comments. Click
on the red logo to return to home page.
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Inclusion
Criteria for Poets and Poems:
1.
Weekly
Poems are chosen to comprise a short program that is both
entertaining and historically important,
2. Please
visit also Morning
Poems, a byproduct of the weekly page. Featured
daily are a principal poem and an alternate.
3. The third major page of this website, Index of Poets,
is an anthology of audio poetry in Modern English (1460 to 1973) with
alphabetical listing of all of the poet pages represented on eaglesweb.com
(in use now by teachers and students alike as a resource), and is
updated each morning by 0600 GMT. Most poets represented on this
website are deceased, and their collection amounts to a much-needed
audio poetry history, which is being accessed daily in 77 countries worldwide. As
for living poets, your editor refers you to a fine and representative
audio anthology,
Laurable.com
featuring living poets reading their own
works as well as poets who have died since 1973.
4. The fourth major page of this website,
British War Poets and
Beyond, is an ongoing tribute to the poets (including their poems),
principally British, who lost their lives in World War I, leaving war
poems that are astonishing both in enduring literary merit and in sheer
volume, and which seldom wax political. Please visit Morning
Poem in Time of War, a byproduct of that page. The Morning
Poem in Time of War page is also updated each morning by 0600
GMT.
Finally, the purpose of this multi-year project is
to present, not an academic anthology claiming to be a 'balanced
presentation' - rather, to make available a total of 2,002 lyrical audio
poems in Modern English (from the period 1460-1973): twice as many as
the Arabian Nights stories, and also a signal of the year in which the
project began, for the enjoyment and perhaps the edification of the
people of the planet Earth linked by the World Wide Web. The project
will encompass about 30 eighty-minute CDs, available to libraries, by
its completion on May 1, 2006 or earlier, if God grant your editor and
reader that time. [MISC NOTE: Recording
& Post-Edit Procedures.]
-
Walter Rufus Eagles [updated March 20, 2009] |
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Richard
P. ("R. P.") Blackburn
[1904-1965] is more remembered these
days, at the outset of the 21st century, as a literary critic, although
"He preferred to think of himself as a poet." [-Denis Donoghue]
Be that as it may, his poetic works (he wrote three books and a
collection) are out of print as of the date of this writing. It is still
possible, on the other hand, to find three of his in-print titles of
literary criticism at Amazon Books. We at Eaglesweb have set out to
redress a wrong: the current neglect (in print) and omission (from the Web
- text and audio) of a major American poet and critic. His admiration of,
and homage to, the Elizabethan sonnet form in his own work assures his
place as a practitioner of discipline and vitality, who had an ear for
history and a voice for the future of his craft. My own favorite poem
by Blackmur is Mirage, a
miniature work with astonishing imagery. |
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Walt
Whitman [1819-1892] wrote O
Captain! My Captain! after the 1865 assassination of President Abraham
Lincoln, in one of his very few efforts in traditional (i.e., rhyming) poetic form. |
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John
Clare [1793-1864] suffered from bipolar syndrome (once called
'manic-depressive' disorder) and spent his last 14 years in asylum. However, he wrote his
best poetry during this period. Yours truly, a member of National Alliance
for the Mentally Ill (NAMI), proudly recorded this poem in memory of John
Clare and in commemoration of Mental Health Month 2003 [May]. |
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British
War Poets -- A growing archive of poems: some with, and
some without, war themes; but most were written by poets who lived through
and (with a few exceptions) died in war, who lost their lives in a
conflict that would have to be repeated a generation later, as President
Woodrow Wilson predicted, partly because of the failure of the United
States to support the League of Nations, the forerunner of the United
Nations.
Questions: Where have the all flowers
gone? Why did these poets and their comrades die? What have we
learned? I have no answers -- only questions, particularly now that,
tonight, the battle is joined, and my old outfit in Korea, the First Marine
Division, have again entered harm's way, along with many other American
and United Kingdom service men and women, because their Commander in Chief
and Prime Minister have respectively so ordered it.
These ones now risk all, and will endure perhaps 'more
than all' (ask a veteran what that phrase means, or use your imagination)
before the guns are finally silent. If you can, pray for these ones
and their loved ones, and also for the Iraqi men, women and children as
well: Each one of us is a child of God, and the loss of a
single human being at the hand of another is cause enough for
keening, and for a wake in the house of our God of many names but of one
heart.
-- Walter Rufus Eagles,
March 20, 2003 0400 GMT
Post note:
With the fall of Baghdad at 1350 GMT on April 9, 2002 (i.e., the toppling
of Saddam Hussein's statue in the central city square), this page enters
archival status, and will no longer be a daily concern. The page
will remain on this web site, and reference will be made from time to time
to its primary purpose, to keep alive the war poetry of the
English-speaking world, so that the sacrifices made by these poets will
continue to educate young people growing up in what will possibly forever
be an unstable world. Now, God willing that the worst of the
battles is over, let us all work towards international peace.
-- Walter Rufus Eagles, April 9, 2003 1636 GMT
Post post note:
MORNING WAR POEM OF THE
DAY REDUX
It appears that I was in error thinking
through and writing the above post note. More men and women have been killed
since April 9th than during the "battle" itself, and it is
undeniable that we are now involved in a guerilla war. Only when the
latter war is over (and not merely declared so) will this daily feature
again "enter archival status."
-- Walter Rufus Eagles, November 4, 2003
2027 GMT |
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Edna
St. Vincent Millay [1882-1950] RECOMMENDATIONS:
Recuerdo and Euclid
Alone Has Looked on Beauty Bare. Millay was a Vassar student of
literature well known for her independence. Upon graduation, she
moved to Greenwich Village and lived a bohemian life. She had
several intense relationships with both men and women at Vassar and
afterwards in the Village, but married a man who became her manager, the
feminist Eugen Boissevain, with whom she lived in an open marriage until
his death in 1949. Her own death followed the next year. In
1934 she became involved in the infamous case of Sacco
& Vanzetti, upon the occasion of the execution of whom she wrote a
pair
of sonnets in their memory and in condemnation of the
"system" she believed had perpetrated a miscarriage of
justice. |
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Prior
to his discovery by President Theodore Roosevelt, Edwin
Arlington Robinson [1869-1935] was a New York subway inspector.
Previous to this job experience, the poet had attended classes at Harvard
and was published in the Harvard Advocate. His subsequent attempt at
self-publication failed to support him, whereupon he took the job with the
subway. Teddy Roosevelt had read his poetry and liked it, and
appointed him to a government job with the U.S. Customs Service for a five
year sinecure, after the end of which Robinson dedicated his next volume
of verse to the President. The poet was a friend and confidante of the
American poet Amy
Lowell [1874-1925], also heard on this website. |
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Conrad
Aiken [1889-1973] had surely as horrific an introduction to
pre-adolescence as any poet presented on this website. His physician
father killed the boy's mother and then took his own life, leaving Conrad
to discover the bodies of his dead parents and thus leaving the boy doubly
orphaned. The child, who was eleven years old at the time, was subsequently
raised by his great-aunt. Psychiatry was in its infancy during his
years of need, and its availability to, and use by, the poet are probably
responsible for the flowering of his mind and heart into the frequently
life-affirming body of work that he has left us in spite of the problems
of his youth. Sigmund Freud
thought highly of him, and praised Aiken's poetry for its analytical
introspection. The poet was a classmate of T.S.
Eliot [1888-1965] and co-editor with him of the Harvard
Advocate. He lived many years abroad, but returned to America in his
later years. |
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John
Henry, Cardinal Newman [1801-1890], a poet himself, encouraged
literati of his day (the Victorian era), especially Gerard
Manley Hopkins [1844-1889].
One of the Cardinal's most famous books, Apologia pro Vita Sua, was
a public retort to an attack on Catholic clergy of his time by Charles
Kingsley [1819-1875] an Anglican minister and poet also represented on
this website. |
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Gerard
Manley Hopkins [1844-1889] was not publicly recognized as a
poet until years after his death at age 44, when some friends compiled and
published his poems. A member of the Jesuit Order, he was physically
unable because of poor health to live the ascetic life to the full. He suffered from depression, signs of which one can hear
in his poetry. He influenced many poets after him, including W. H. Auden,
Dylan Thomas and yours truly,
and he has left a legacy for poetics that has yet to be mined fully.
His most famous poems (and also his most accessible ones) are Felix
Randal and Spring
and Fall (To a Young Child). The more complex poems (i.e., That
Nature is a Heraclitean Fire, and of the Comfort of the Resurrection, The
Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo and The Windhover
deserve hearing multiple times, with lapses between hearings. Very
soon, eaglesweb.com will publish the ambitious long poem, The
Wreck of the Deutschland, which is currently in the recording and
post-edit phases. |
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Alfred,
Lord Tennyson's [1809-1883] poem, 'St. Agnes' Eve', is not to
be confused with John
Keats' [1795-1821] much longer poem 'The Eve of St. Agnes' soon to be
heard on this website. The mythology and history of the name is of
interest -- select the title and do a web search.
My own favorite poem is Ulysses.
Concerning his poem, Tithonus, Tennyson
borrowed from the Greek myth of Eos, Goddess of the Dawn, and Tithonus, a
mortal. The goddess stole him away and "asked [Jupiter] for Tithonus to
be immortal, but forgot to ask for eternal youth. Tithonus indeed lived
forever but grew more and more ancient, eventually turning into a
cricket." [source: the free Internet encyclopedia, Wikipedia.] |
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Dante
Gabriel Rossetti [1828-1882] (not forgetting his sister Christina
Rossetti, arguably il miglior fabbro) represents the
Pre-Raphaelite school of art and poetry on Eaglesweb.com. While they lived
and flourished during the Victorian era, the Rossettis had their own
aesthetics, which were broader than the "Rossetti Woman" image
commonly associated with the paintings. Thus Dante Gabriel's poems usually
have mysticism and not 'carnal' or particularized beauty as their aim. On
the other hand, Christina's poetry has the power and emotional force of
the "Rossetti Woman" as a particularized, though internal
reality. |
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T.
S. Eliot [1888-1965] (born in America, he became an English
citizen) was the single most important Modern English poet of the 20th
Century. Eliot's poetry set the bar nearly impossibly high, just as Wm.
Faulkner's prose did in America. He was strongly influenced by the school
of Metaphysical Poets
of the 17th century in England. Listen to The
Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock with the term metaphysical in mind. My own favorite short poem
by Eliot is Journey of
the Magi. His friend Ezra
Pound gave him the nickname Old Possum, which Eliot then used
as a nom de plume in the publication of his lighter verse, The
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, which became the text for the
musical Cats. My own favorites in that book are The
Naming of Cats and Old
Deuteronomy. |
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William
Drummond of Hawthornden [1585-1649] was born and died at the estate of
Hawthornden in Scotland, of which he was Laird. He first gave the
new term "metaphysical"
to certain contemporary poets whom he knew and had read. He was not,
however, entirely subsumed within that school, being a classicist and a thoroughgoing
Renaissance man of letters. |
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Edward,
Lord Herbert of Cherbury [1583-1648], a Welshman, served as Ambassador
to France (Paris), was the elder brother to the poet George
Herbert. Both were of the metaphysical
school of poetry. |
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Wm.
Butler Yeats [1865-1939] received the Nobel Prize for
Literature for 1923, and is Ireland's greatest playwright and poet.
His poetry influenced the next generation of British poets: Listen to the
memorial poem by W. H.
Auden, In Memory
of W. B. Yeats. "Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry."
and ". . . for poetry makes nothing happen . . ."
Three of my own personal favorites are The
Swans at Coole, The
Lake Isle of Innesfree and Sailing
to Byzantium |
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Andrew
Marvell [1621-1678] is one of the many English metaphysical
poets of the 17th Century currently to be heard on Eaglesweb.com.
Marvell's poetry influenced the work of T.S. Eliot [1888-1965] three
centuries later. . . Listen especially to Marvell's 'On a Drop of Dew'
keeping the term 'metaphysical' in mind. His most famous poem is To
His Coy Mistress. |
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William
Shakespeare [1564-1616] was the greatest playwright the world has ever
known. His plays were largely written in unrhymed but metrical
(iambic pentameter) verse. His sonnets, in rhymed iambic pentameter,
were private in nature, as is nearly all lyrical poetry, and although he
drew from the past (Sir Thomas Wyatt,
Sir Philip Sidney,
Michael
Drayton, Henry Constable,
Samuel Daniel and
Fulke
Greville, Lord Brooke were among his progenitors and contemporaries in
the practice [sometimes public, more often private] of the sonnet form
following Petrarch), he set a standard for English-speaking sonneteers to
follow, including Edward,
Lord Herbert of Cherbury, John
Donne, John Milton,
William
Wordsworth, Christina
& Dante
Gabriel Rossetti, Matthew Arnold,
John Keats, Gerard
Manley Hopkins and many others including the twentieth century poets Rupert
Brooke, Wilfred Owen,
R.
P. Blackmur and Edna
St. Vincent Millay. |
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Isaac
Rosenberg [1890-1918] was killed at the front on April 3, 1918. He was
the son of a working-class Russian-Jewish family who had emigrated to
London. Rosenberg was trained at the Art School of Birbeck College, London
University, and hoped to earn his living as a portrait artist. Both T.S.
Eliot and Ezra Pound knew Rosenberg's poetry and admired it. Some critics
suggest that, had he survived the war, he might have been an outstanding poet,
equaling Pound and Eliot in reputation.
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Mortally wounded in action at Belloy-en-Santerre,
France on the morning of July 4, 1916 whilst serving in the French Foreign
Legion (a necessity if he was to serve at all, since America had not yet entered
the war), Alan Seeger was reluctantly abandoned in the heat of battle by his own men
(he waved away the assistance they offered him, encouraging them instead to
continue fighting) until the following morning, when he was removed from the
battlefield, having bled to death during the night. He was
28 years old.
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John
Keats was in historical error in this poem: ". . . Cortez"
should have been ". . . Balboa" |
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Antigone.
In Greek mythology, the daughter of Oedipus and Jocasta.
In the Sophocles tragedy, she performed the forbidden funeral rites of
pouring soil over
her brother's body in defiance of her uncle Creon. Hear also my
own sonnet, Antigone. |
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For
my
secretary Jan (in the early Eighties) who, upon reading the draft of Poem for Marilu,
coyly complained, "Nobody ever wrote a poem for me." |
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Nobuyuki
Shirota, not Japan's recent winner of the national sushi-eating
contest (85 plates!)
but my roommate in the Honolulu Young Men's Buddhist Association Center in
1960. As for the sushi eater, "Gluttony is considered
one of the seven deadly sins, punishable by being force-fed rats, toads
and snakes in hell. But in Japan, gluttony has made stars out of
salesmen, altered programming for TV's prime slots and changed the
nation's dining scene. The surge in overeating has also led to
another deadly sin: envy." -- CHIE
MATSUMOTO, Asahi Shimbun News Service
I do not believe my roommate was ever
guilty of either of these sins, or any of the five others, for that
matter. On the contrary, he was
particularly concerned, on a day, that the pigeon outside our window had to walk
around in the hot Honolulu summer sun with its bare feet on the blistering asphalt: a poet; indeed a haiku poet, at heart, and a good roommate who
once, after lights out, whilst we were talking in the dark as we often
did from our respective bunks, spoke to me in familiar Japanese.
We were both touched by this linguistic incident/accident. |
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Thomas
Nashe [1567-1601] was a
brilliant, if erratic and substance-abusive English poet of the time of
the Plague in London. He died in his early thirties leaving a small
body of original poems. He was jailed at least once, as can be seen
on his page from the note on the engraving: "Nashe in
leg-irons." The setting I have chosen for his "final"
and most famous poem, Adieu,
Farewell Earth's Bliss, is liturgical in nature because he chose to
close each stanza with the English translation of the Kyrie eleison from
the Mass. I do not claim historical accuracy for my setting, anymore
than Carl Orff did for his "neo-Medieval" opera, Carmina
Burana, or his "neo-Classical" opera, Antigonae. But my setting seems appropriate to me and, hopefully,
carries some of the gravitas of the poem. |
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Adelaide
Crapsey died from complications of tuberculosis at age thirty seven. Carl
Sandburg's poem, Adelaide
Crapsey [0:55], published in 1918, coming as it did from a great and influential fellow
poet, helped rescue Crapsey's small "output" of miniatures from
oblivion.
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A reflection on a scene
from the movie, The
Horse's Mouth, adapted from the novel by Joyce Cary,
movie directed by Alec Guiness and starring himself. Sir Alec also
wrote the screenplay adaptation. Hear also a falsetto reading by
"The Duchess of
Blackpool" -- a character created in the movie by Guiness, a
sort-of outtake that never was: a recitation, by the Duchess, of Edmund Waller's
Go,
Lovely Rose [by your reader, Walter Rufus Eagles.]
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M
Information and acknowledgements concerning music heard on this
web site:
The music now playing is fully described in the following
note O.
Most keyboard Midi sequences heard on other
pages of this site are by permission John Sankey, at http://www.sankey.ws/harpsichord.html.
Other instrumental Midi sequences are by permission Curtis Clark
(Internet Renaissance Band) at CSU
Pomona. A small number of Midi sequences are heard
without attribution, but by file name alone. Special
thanks for Mr. Sankey and to Mr. Clark for helping our students
and lovers of poetry to place in cultural, especially musical,
context the audio poetry heard on this site.
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0 Thomas
Tallis [1505-1585]: Third Mode Melody (Phrygian Mode)
("Why fum'th in fight. . .") [0:53] from Archbishop
Parker's Psaltery of 1567. The melody was the basis for Ralph Vaughan
Williams' [1872-1958] orchestral work for string quartet, string
nonette and full string orchestra, Fantasia on a Theme by
Thomas Tallis, four centuries later (1910). Click
HERE to listen to the recorded performance by the Cambridge Singers, used for non-commercial purposes
without permission but with full attribution. Tallis was a
great organist, and the front page of this website features the organ
version. For more music by the
Cambridge Singers, go to www.amazon.com.
Here are the words:
"Why fum'th in fight the Gentiles
spite, in fury raging stout?
Why tak'th in hand the people fond, vain things to
bring about?
The Kings arise, the Lords devise, in counsels met
thereto,
against the Lord with false accord, against His
Christ they go." |
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FOOTNOTES
TO FRONT PAGE:
1
Teachers, please feel free to review the poetry on
this site for appropriateness to your student age group [the
range is K16, with Mother Goose Rhymes at K and most of
Hopkins' poetry at 13-16], then assign to your students any
recordings as corollary teaching material. Recent class
referrals have included (1) Rudyard Kipling's poem If
(215 hits in one day, 206 hits the next) and (2) the
tongue-twisting Mother Goose Rhyme,
Peter
Piper Picked a Peck of Pickled Peppers (1,220 hits per day
for two days). Others have been the Brownings - Robert
and Elizabeth
Barrett - and the British
War Poets.
2
Your suggestions for the
Featured Poet of the Week (starting Thursday of each week) are
welcome. Simply go to the Poet Index
and send me an email with your choice of poet's name to be
considered:
3
"Grant eternal rest to
them, Lord" from the Mass for the Dead (Missa pro
defunctis).
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M
Information and acknowledgements concerning music heard on this
web site: See following
note O.
Most keyboard Midi sequences heard on other
pages of this site are by permission John Sankey, at http://www.sankey.ws/harpsichord.html.
Other instrumental Midi sequences are by permission Curtis Clark
(Internet Renaissance Band) at UC
Pomona. A small number of Midi sequences are heard
without attribution, but by file name alone. Special
thanks for Mr. Sankey and to Mr. Clark for helping place the
beginnings of English and European culture of the late Mediaeval
and Renaissance periods in context. |
0 Thomas
Tallis [1505-1585]: Third Mode Melody (Phrygian Mode)
("Why fum'th in fight. . .") [0:53] from Archbishop
Parker's Psaltery of 1567. The melody was the basis for Ralph Vaughan
Williams' [1872-1958] orchestral work for string quartet, string
nonette and full string orchestra, Fantasia on a Theme by
Thomas Tallis, four centuries later (1910). Click
HERE to hear the recorded performance
by the Cambridge Singers, used for non-commercial purposes
without permission but with full attribution. For more music by the
Cambridge Singers, go to www.amazon.com.
Here are the words:
"Why fum'th in fight the Gentiles
spite, in fury raging stout?
Why tak'th in hand the people fond, vain things to
bring about?
The Kings arise, the Lords devise, in counsels met
thereto,
against the Lord with false accord, against His
Christ they go." |
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eaglesweb.com
is a world-wide (91 countries) non-commercial educational multimedia literature and arts website,
updated daily with newly-recorded poems throughout the school year.
All poems on the site are fully archived and accessible by use of
the Googletm
search engine on the front page, which is always handy from any other page
by clicking on the
eaglesweb.com
red logo. The quota of 2,002 poems (twice the number of the Arabian Nights
stories) is expected to be achieved by May 1, 2010, on the anniversary of the launching of the Eaglesweb poetry
project. NOTE: There is an annual two month summer vacation from Independence Day
(July 4th) through Labor Day (USA) (first Monday in September), after which
date the features MORNING
POEM and WEEKLY POEMS resume with
new recordings. All other updates and maintenance continue.
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EDITORIAL
POLICY Your
comments will be considered in future site construction or content of this
literary resource website. All suggestions are welcome (see
below), and English
teachers especially are encouraged to let me know how they would like
see/hear the
form/content of eaglesweb.com
in the future. This free
personal, voluntary educational site exists for the general
public of course, but specifically for yourself and for your students --
and for students, teachers and poetry lovers worldwide.
COMMENTS or
SUGGESTIONS. Click HERE
to review past comments. Policy changes were necessary in order to
screen prank emails. Alternatively, QUERIES will be answered when you SEND
E-MAIL to me.
Please include the name of your school or library and your state (or
country if not USA).
I take great care in the selection, research, study, rehearsal,
recording and post-edit of the poems in this anthology, and your advice is
solicited if you believe, for instance, that I have misspelled or
mispronounced names or words generally. After I have decided to
include a particular poem, no censorship is performed by me as editor, and
no suggestions in that regard will be countenanced.
As for inclusion criteria, there is only one: The timeless literary worth
of the individual poem considered without regard to the varied, changing and
sometimes conflicted/conflicting cultures
in which we find ourselves at the beginning of this particular
century in our long journey home.At my back I always
hear
The Sheltons, Miltons and Shakespeares;
And my grave responsibility
Is to each of them and their compeers.
My working philosophy for the
present, at age 69, and for the future:
"I
am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades
Forever and forever when I move.
. . . my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die."
-- Alfred, Lord
Tennyson (1833) (From Ulysses) [hear]
"And after that, the dark":
[hear]
Fragment of My Own Epitaph:
"I needed more from myth than
wine:
I wanted stars to guide a wounded dragon home,
Several miles of space within my mind,
And skies as open as tomorrow."
-- Walter
Rufus Eagles (1968) (From My
Epitaph]
poet, reader, editor, webmaster and English teacher (the latter now more than
ever)
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Go to
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All audio recordings copyright ©
2001, 2002, 2003 Walter Rufus Eagles voice recording only. All audio
reproduction rights reserved.
Mahra
AUDIO
PUBLISHING DEADLINES, both daily and weekly, will be
no later than 0700 Mountain Daylight Time [USA], or 1400 Greenwich Meantime.
Eaglesweb.com has now arrived at its midway point in the four-year
project first enunciated on May 1, 2002. The resulting 1,001-poem anthology (starting
May 10, 2004) is to be called "A Thousand and One Mornings of Modern English Lyrical Audio Poetry" -- each poem to be heard once during the cycle that starts May 1, 2004 and ends two years and nine months from then, on February 28,
2007 with a total of 2,992 poems having been recorded by May 1, 2006. Repeating this long cycle will be a lifetime learning process if continued in the future. Each daily listener will have heard each poem on the site at least once during the two years and nine months of each cycle. Consequently he / she will have a unique foundation in Lyrical Audio Poetry in Modern English,
accomplished during a lapsed period less than the standard four years of college. Newly-recorded poems
(code blue) will appear, but they will accompany
the replayed poem (code red) in the total of 2,002
by the end of Part Two (Cycle 28). The "replaced" poem can thus still be heard secondarily with its replacement. All archives, especially the Anthology, will remain available, and will contain all of the poems ever recorded and published on this site. The Google Search specific to eaglesweb.com is another good aid in locating a specific poem or poet. Remember that this program involves a lifetime of learning: I am still learning (I am seventy years old this year) and I find excitement in poetry each day. So can you. The poet James Dickey, teaching at Cal State Northridge, asked his creative writing students to do one thing after the course was over: Read "The Bear" by
fellow Southerner William Faulkner once each year for the rest of their lives. So it should be in this case. Poets especially will find the resulting lifetime benefits in every way enriching beyond what he or she could have imagined at the outset. Stay with me, poets and other people of the planet: "The best is yet to be."
If I should live past the recording of the first 28 cycles, then the project
scope will be doubled: Cycles 29 through 56 would thus be complete by May 1,
2010, for a total of 4,004 lyrical audio poems in Modern English to be played
in the long cycle form thereafter, with no further additions to the anthology
planned.
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