Poets and Poems: Peter Murphy and “You, Too, Were Once on Fire”

About the time my mother turned 75, she said something to me that she’d been apparently been saving up. “You know,” she said, “I’ve reached an age when I can say what I think, and I don’t have to worry about what happens because of it.” This was something she learned from her own mother, who’d made some kind of similar announcement at about the same age. Except my grandmother had been doing exactly that long before she announced it. So had my mother. 

I remembered those statements as I read deeper into You, Too, Were Once on Fire: Poems by Peter Murphy. Ad those thoughts hit me as I read “Stairs to All Levels,” a poem about Frank O’Hara and New York City and the Twin Towers and 9?11, and you don’t even realize it until the end of the poem hits you upside the head with a smack. It was that poem, followed immediately by “Miss Besieged Sarajevo,” about a beauty contestant during the Bosnian War in 1993, that made me realize I needed to make sure my seat belt was buckled and tray tables were locked securely for takeoff.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

A Giant on the Shoulder of Giants – J.C. Scharl at Public Discourse.

 

Hands of Christ – poem by Andrew Roycroft at New Grub Street.

 

Your Poems: The Beachy Poem Challenge – Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (excerpt), poem by Samuel Talyor Coleridge – Every Day Poems.

 

“Jabberwocky,” poem by Lewis Carroll – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

Poets and Poems: Peter Murphy and "You Too Were Once on Fire"

You Too Were Once on Fire: Poems, the new collection by Peter Murphy, begins almost biblically with the introductory poem “The Diaspora of Light.” It echoes the “Let there be light” from the book of Genesis, although the poem begins by citing Plato. It then moves to the stars, followed a leap to “The God Nobody Wanted,” with the convicting line of “What will it say on your tombstone / other than consumer?”. 

These first few poems of the collection show how important the introductory poems are. You read and digest them, and you come to expect (or read into) questions of faith and contemporary society no matter what the poem’s subject is.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

The Wildflower – poem by David Whyte.

 

Facing Backward – Padraig O Tuama at Poetry Unbound on “Bill’s Story” by Mark Doty.

 

Attack the day – poem by Franco Amati at Garbage Notes.

 

Westward – poem by Sandra Marchetti at Every Day Poems.

 

“An Essay on Criticism,” poem by Alexander Pope – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Thetis & Achilles – poem by Julia McMullen at Rabbit Room Poetry.