Here's an index of drafts of my poems I've posted on this weblog since its inception. Some of them are fairly good, some are manifestly bad; all are quite rough, and some are very rough. If I had to choose a favorite, I think it would be "The Flood, the Phoenix, and the Hind" or "A Graduate Student Thinks of Footnotes" or "God Has Blessed My Cup of Tea" or "Parmenides' Vision". Are there any that you especially like?
Age of Wonders
A Graduate Student Thinks of Footnotes
A Kryptonian Hymn
All-Father's Knowledge
All the Skeptics Do Not Know
Ashes and Clay
As Zeus upon Danae
A Texas Hymn
Augustine's Hymn
Before a Storm
Cartesian Meditations
Commonplace Things
Cosmogonies (selections)
Coursing Star
Creation
Gaps
God Has Blessed My Cup of Tea
Hope
In which she rebukes a rose, and in it those like it
Love's Madness
Mary's Magnificat
Naked
Night
Nursery Rhyme
On Being Stuck in an Airport
Parmenides' Vision
Pensive
Philosophy
Phoenix
Plan
Rhyme of St. Bernard
Roses
Sign of Fire
Skies
Stabat Mater Dolorosa
Stabat Mater Speciosa
The Battle
The City Builds Up Around Me
The Conversion of Ramon Lull
The Crucial
The Flood, the Phoenix, and the Hind
The Garden of the Great Khan
The Good of Sorrow
The Light Is a Tiger Pouncing
Thought
The Sorrow of the Shepherd Boy
The Striving
The Trees Are Not Awake
The Triumph of St. Catharine
The Word They Hear
Two Lovers
Vanitas
We All Have Voices
Winter Sunset
Alcestis Cycle (unfinished)
1. Lament of Alcestis
2. Elders of Pherae
3. Alcestis and Admetus
4. Lament of Admetus
I stopped with the "Lament of Admetus" because it seemed clear to me that I needed to practice writing narrative poetry, and just rethink the whole poetic approach. In part, for instance, the verse needs to flow more swiftly -- a common mistake, to which I succombed, is to write narrative verse in an ordinary way. Narrative verse, or dramatic verse conveying a narrative, needs to be tight and swift.
