Category: Poetry
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Life Cycle of Common Man: Howard Nemerov
The American poet Howard Nemerov was born in New York on this day (February 29) in 1920. He died on July 5, 1991. This poem of his reminds me of Auden’s The Unknown Citizen. This is what the poet himself said about his poem: “Life Cycle of Common Man is…
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Auden: Poem on a painting
It was Auden’s birth anniversary yesterday. He was born in York on Feb 21, 1907, and he died in Vienna on Sept 29, 1973. I love many of his poems, and when I saw this picture of a painting which inspired one of his famous poems, I could not resist…
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Gong xi fa cai! And a poem on Singapore
Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in his Chinese New Year message says: Ultimately we all want to make Singapore the best home in the world for ourselves, our families and our children. We all want ours to remain an inclusive, meritocratic society where every child has the chance to…
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Wordsworth and Billy Collins
William Wordsworth was born on April 7, 1770, reminds The Writer’s Almanac. He died on April 23, 1850. William Shakespeare (1564-1616) also died on April 23 —and that’s also believed to be his birthday. The philosopher Bertrand Russell summed up Wordsworth’s career this way: In his youth, Wordsworth sympathized with…
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A Singlish poem
I just came across this Singlish poem in an article that appeared in Salon way back in 2007. Wah! I heard we all now got big big debate.They said future of proper English is at stake. All because stupid Singlish spoil the market,want to change now donno whether too late.…
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Poems Singapore
I saw this book and loved it at first sight. How could I not with its poems about Singapore? It is called Words: Poems Singapore and Beyond and edited by Edwin Thumboo. As luck would have it, the very first page I opened had a poem by him about the…
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World Cup poem by Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy
A new poem by the poet laureate in response to England’s dismal Fifa World Cup run. The Shirt by Carol Ann Duffy Afterwards, I found him alone at the bar and asked him what went wrong. It’s the shirt, he said. When I pull it on it hangs on my…
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On Julia’s Clothes and 99 other most popular poems
This must be one of the shortest, heavily anthologized poems in the English language. On Julia’s Clothes, by Robert Herrick, runs to only six lines. But, witty and playful, this 17th century poem is one of the 100 most anthologized poems in the English language, according to the Columbia Granger’s…
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Robert Pinsky: Samurai Song
I have been reading Essential Pleasures: A New Anthology of Poems to Read Aloud, edited by Robert Pinksy. Here is one of his own poems from the anthology: Samurai Song. I could not resist posting it here after seeing this video, where he recites the poem. Here’s the text. Samurai…
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Two poems about Singapore
One poem leads to another. Reading Reflecting on the Merlion: An Anthology of Poems edited by Edwin Thumboo and Yeow Kai Chai, and co-edited by Enoch Ng, Isa Kamari, and Seetha Lakshmi at the public library, I wanted to read more poems about Singapore. And, as luck would have it,…
Readiscovery 