Letter to the reader:
Hello! My name is Sam Burbank. I’m an English teacher in Portland, Oregon, and I love poetry. My hope is that you’ll find here a set of refreshingly positive readings of some new poems and some old. My goal isn’t to write criticism, just to admire, and say what I think makes these poems tick, and why I personally feel moved by them.
For the “Admired Poems”, I would highly encourage you to read each poem in full before reading my commentary, and then, if you’re not put off, once more afterwards. The “Book Reviews” won’t provide the poems in full. Happy reading!
Reel of latest posts:
The speaker appoints himself “census-taker to the waste”. That is, someone sent to count people where there are none. And yet, he’s prodigiously good at it. He finds “none not in hiding”. The double negative actually places people in the poem. By not finding them, he finds them hiding.
Human Chain is a book that talks about the difficulty of sustaining life and the loss of loved ones, using the language of physical labor – lifting, carrying, handing-off, and unburdening. At times, labor and physical sensations are made to feel infinitely deep for their resonances with the experience of life and death. Other times,…
Old Man Old Man, or Lad’s-love – in the name there’s nothing To one that knows not Lad’s-love, or Old Man, The hoar-green feathery herb, almost a tree, Growing with rosemary and lavender. Even to one that knows it well, the names Half decorate, half perplex, the thing it is: At least, what that is…
Days Each one is a gift, no doubt, mysteriously placed in your waking hand or set upon your forehead moments before you open your eyes. Today begins cold and bright, the ground heavy with snow and the thick masonry of ice, the sun glinting off the turrets of clouds. Through the calm eye of the…
An upper chamber in a darkened house, Where, ere his footsteps reached ripe manhood’s brink, Terror and anguish were his cup to drink; I cannot rid the thought, nor hold it close But dimly dream upon that man alone: Now though the autumn clouds most softly pass, The cricket chides beneath the doorstep stone, And…
Window End of season, end of play – no one left But a boy playing with the lonely sea On the rain-wet shore below that runs Helplessly on and on into advancing dusk. Pushed under the cliff, houses look to themselves, Look blindly away from the darkening game In which the boy runs purposefully Seawards…
Watering the Horse How strange to think of giving up all ambition! Suddenly I see with such clear eyes The white flake of snow That has just fallen on the horses mane! Robert Bly Why I like it: What can I say about this poem? It feels like rest. Such a simple poem, but with…
Sam Reads Poetry 