Relocating to SoundCloud

Hi.
You may have noticed a distinct lack of posts recently. This is mostly because I haven't been reading a lot of poetry for a while.
Due to the non-audible nature of blogging, I have decided to relocate my poems to SoundCloud. However, if you still like visiting this blog, here's a helpful embedded player.
More recordings to come.
And perhaps poem-of-the-month will replace poem-of-the-week at some stage soon. I think that's more manageable with my schedule!

  Poetry by johnnysharpe

Poem of the Week: Notice by Steve Kowit

Today's poem is a fun little one about mortality. Yeah, I know, not the most fun topic, yet Steve Kowit approaches it with his tongue in his cheek, catching us off guard with his black comedy and his flippant tone. Like all good poems, this one will make you think and make you feel.

Poem of the Week: Red Tailed Hawks by W. D. Ehrhart

Today's poem is a lovely one for the first week of school here in Sydney, Australia. I'd like to dedicate it to all my school-teacher friends out there!

W. D. Ehrhart is a high school teacher himself, and also a highly acclaimed poet (mostly known for his Vietnam War poems). This poem concerns the events of a school excursion to Mill Grove, Audubon, Pennsylvania. The kids are mucking up and have no appreciation of the wild beauty surrounding them, until one of them spots a red tailed hawk in the sky.

I see myself in the kids, going through life without realising the beauty that surrounds me, until all of a sudden someone says, '"There's a Hawk", and points', and the world grows silent and reverent for a moment as I take in the beauty that has always been there, just beyond my gaze.

Poem of the Week: Why I Am Not A Painter - Frank O'Hara

I love Frank O'Hara. I just love his New York style. Basically, he's like a New York comedian in the form of a poet - he's just makes observations of everyday life as he sees it, and rather than making jokes he makes poems. Actually, they've often got jokes in them too. You should read some of his stuff if you've got the time.

As it happens, he got a job one day at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (at the front desk) and from that point on he was totally into the art scene, but he was never an artist himself. He was a critic, reviewer and curator, but never an artist. This poem is about that (and about watching Abstract Impressionist Michael Goldberg paint). I can't paint either, and I love art. So this poem resonates with me. Hopefully you like it too.

Poem of the Week: Christmas Trees - Robert Frost

Seasons greetings to you all!

My parents send a circular letter around to all their friends at this time of year, to wish them all a Merry Christmas and to share the latest news from the past 12 months. Robert Frost, it seems, did the same. But he was a poet, so his circular letter is about just one thing - Christmas Trees - inasmuch as it's a poem, and therefore about many other things in between!

Robert Frost lived in New Hampshire, although he was born in San Fransisco. So he knew the city and the country equally well, and he became famous for his rural poetry set in the New England countryside. Christmas Trees is a great example of his style, yet as a letter to his friends it is unassuming and friendly where his other poems can be a bit more blunt and instense. 

Merry Christmas to you all!

Poem of the Week: The Oxen - Thomas Hardy

Hello again!

Another week has passed, and as we approach Christmas I've decided to blog a Christmas poem by the wonderful architect, novelist and poet Thomas Hardy. You know, the Tess of the D'Urbervilles guy.

Here is a glimpse of nostalgia at a faith Hardy once knew, growing up in the church before he gave his religion up. And the poem shows such a fondness, a yearning even, for his lost Christian faith.

This poem is about as lyrical as my tastes can usually handle, but there's something really lovely about the rhyme and meter at work here as memories of childhood Christmases are invoked by the form as well as the content of Hardy's poem.

Enjoy!

Poem of the Week: Road Trip - Kurt Brown

 Today's poem is a truly contemporary poem - published this year! This poem is about progress in America, and is an observation of the city life encroaching on the country life encroaching on the natural world. We see this here in Australia too, as we drive through the outback on sealed roads where there was once only dirt, past fences where there was once free open space. It's a wonderfully deep thought, expressed beautifully in poetry.

Poem of the Week: The Sea and the Man - Anna Swir

Today POTW takes us to Poland, to Anna Świrszczyńska, an amazing woman who lived through tough times (1909-1984). She was a member of the Polish Resistance in WWII and saw some pretty full-on stuff, and all that influences her poetry. Poets are philosophers more than any other type of artist, and Swir certainly reveals that in this short poem about the sea; also about the exciting brevity of life: a burst of laughter. There is joy to be found in our human ability to live simply in the now.