In this installment, Terry Ehret reads “Kubla Khan” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Ehret has published three collections of poetry, including the collaborative volume Suspensions (White Mountain Press, 1990), Lost Body (Copper Canyon Press, 1993), and most recently Translations from the Human Language (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2001).  Literary awards include the National Poetry Series, California Book Award, and Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize.  She is the co-founder of Sixteen Rivers Press, a shared-work poetry publishing collective, run by and for San Francisco Bay Area poets.  She is currently poet laureate of Sonoma County, where she teaches writing and lives with her husband and daughters.

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Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Kubla Khan”

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced;
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:
And ‘mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And ‘mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves:
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ‘t would win me
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

admin Uncategorized kubla khan, samuel taylor coleridge, terry ehret

In this installment, Laure-Anne Bosselaar reads “Mock on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau” by William Blake. Bosselaar is the author of The Hour Between Dog and Wolf and of Small Gods of Grief, winner of the Isabella Gardner Prize for Poetry for 2001.  She is the editor of Outsiders: Poems about Rebels, Exiles and Renegades and Urban Nature: Poems about Wildlife in the City. Her next anthology, Never Before: Poems about First Experiences will come out from Four Way Books in the fall of 2005.  She and her husband, poet Kurt Brown, have completed a book of translations from Flemish poet, Herman de Coninck: The Plural of Happiness, which the Field Translations Series will publish in 2006.  She teaches a graduate poetry workshop at Sarah Lawrence College.

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William Blake, “Mock on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau”

Mock on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau:
Mock on, mock on: ’tis all in vain!
You throw the sand against the wind,
And the wind blows it back again.

And every sand becomes a Gem,
Reflected in the beams divine;
Blown back they blind the mocking Eye,
But still in Israel’s paths they shine.

The Atoms of Democritus
And the Newton’s Particles of Light
Are sands upon the Red Sea shore,
Where Israel’s tents do shine so bright.

admin Uncategorized laure-anne bosselaar, mock on mock on voltaire rousseau, william blake

In this installment, Laure-Anne Bosselaar reads “The Garden of Love” by William Blake. Bosselaar is the author of The Hour Between Dog and Wolf and of Small Gods of Grief, winner of the Isabella Gardner Prize for Poetry for 2001.  She is the editor of Outsiders: Poems about Rebels, Exiles and Renegades and Urban Nature: Poems about Wildlife in the City. Her next anthology, Never Before: Poems about First Experiences will come out from Four Way Books in the fall of 2005.  She and her husband, poet Kurt Brown, have completed a book of translations from Flemish poet, Herman de Coninck: The Plural of Happiness, which the Field Translations Series will publish in 2006.  She teaches a graduate poetry workshop at Sarah Lawrence College.

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William Blake, “The Garden of Love”

I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen:
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
And “Thou shalt not” writ over the door;
So I turned to the Garden of Love,
That so many sweet flowers bore;

And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tombstones where flowers should be;
And Priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars my joys and desires.

admin Uncategorized laure-anne bosselaar, the garden of love, william blake

In this installment, Cleopatra Mathis reads “A Poison Tree” by William Blake. Mathis‘s sixth book of poems, White Sea, will be published in 2005 by Sarabande Books. She is the recipient of many grants and awards, including two National Endowment for the Arts grants, a fellowship from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, The Robert Frost Award, and The Peter Lavin Award for Younger Poets from the Academy of American Poets. She has taught English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College since 1982.

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William Blake, “A Poison Tree”

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe;
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I water’d it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright;
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole
When the night had veil’d the pole:
In the morning glad I see
My foe out stretch’d beneath the tree.

admin Uncategorized cleopatra mathis, the poison tree, william blake

In this installment, Cleopatra Mathis reads “The Tyger” by William Blake. Mathis‘s sixth book of poems, White Sea, will be published in 2005 by Sarabande Books. She is the recipient of many grants and awards, including two National Endowment for the Arts grants, a fellowship from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, The Robert Frost Award, and The Peter Lavin Award for Younger Poets from the Academy of American Poets. She has taught English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College since 1982.

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William Blake, “The Tyger”

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night.
What Immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, and what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? and what dread feet?

What the hammer? What the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And water’d heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,
In the forests of the night.
What Immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

admin Uncategorized cleopatra mathis, the tyger, william blake