Ellen Bass, "How To Apologize"
I found this poem while I was seeing my dad through his death. I thought of it a lot during those awful months. I thought about what I needed to apolo...
Lyric Life
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About
Join me, Mark Scarbrough, on this bookmarked journey through some of the best lyric poetry in the English language. I've got a passion for small, evocative poems. I'd like to share those poems with you--as well as a some thoughts about the best things we humans have invented: love, purpose, and identity.
Bernadette Mayer, "[Sonnet] You jerk you didn't call me up"
How can something published in 1968 be so 2021? It can because it's a lyric poem by Bernadette Mayer, a poet whose work may well define what I think i...
Emily Dickinson's Poem #1108 ("The Bustle in a House")
I'm back from a long hiatus. I didn't mean to go on one. My dad died. Or as I keep saying, he went over a cliff and took me with him. I wanted to reco...
Hayley Mitchell Haugen, "Would You Please Stop Whistling, Please?"
A warning, first off: this lyric poem has language, imagery, and incidents that are difficult to bear. If you have children with you, you'll want to s...
Caitlin Seida, "Hope Is Not A Bird, Emily, It's A Sewer Rat"
It takes a brave writer to lead the charge against Emily Dickinson. Especially in my books! You know how much I love Dickinson. But I may love Caitlin...
Donna Hilbert, "Rosemary"
Here's a poem that's deceptively small. It's actually a sonnet, broken into an octet and a sestet. And it does what sonnets do best: it turns the worl...
Ted Kooser, "The Old People"
Ted Kooser has been called part of the "Midwestern poetry revival" in the U.S., his poems plainsong truth-telling that somehow avoid the pitfalls (and...
Emily Dickinson, Poem #256 ("The Robin's my Criterion for Tune")
I've just come off teaching Emily Dickinson's poetry in two-hour seminar segments over eight weeks--and her art has done to me what it always does to ...
Tamara Madison, "What Now Is Like"
Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as I explore this poem from a working poet, Tamara Madison: "What Now Is Like." It's a gentle exploration of the experience ...
Camille T. Dungy, "Let Me"
Dungy's magnificent poem, "Let me," published just this month in The New Yorker (April, 2021) is a terrifying glimpse into the problem of living in th...