A journal seeking light and beauty in people, places, arts, and culture
Fenton Johnson was an African American poet who wrote before and during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and early 1930s. He self-published several collections of poetry, including A Little Dreaming (1913), Visions of the Dusk (1915), and Songs of the Soil (1916). His poetry is often anthologized and exhibits a range of style from… Continue reading Two Poems by Fenton Johnson
On a midnight in midwinter when all but the winds were dead . . . (Poetry by Alfred Tennyson)
My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree / Toward heaven still (A poem by Robert Frost)
It gets dark so early these days. / And we needed to get home, / after the creek / and the climbing the hill / and . . . (Poetry by Katie Murchison Ross)
The first thing you should know: / The tree has leaves. / Leaves whose lives depart, by definition. / Evergreens have needles; palms, fronds. / But leaves fulfill their nomenclatural destiny: / Fade, wither, fall. . . . (Poetry by Jeannie Rose Barksdale)
Oh, Great Spirit, / Whose voice I hear in the winds . . . (Lakota Prayer translated by Chief Yellow Lark)
Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away; / Lengthen night and shorten day . . . (A poem by Emily Brontë)
A touch of cold in the Autumn night-- / I walked abroad, / And saw the ruddy moon lean over a hedge . . . (A poem by T.E. Hulme)
As Encomia embarks, a small vessel on the vast seas of published literature, it seems only natural to call to mind the popular odes of Pablo Neruda, particularly his “Ode to the Dictionary”. It’s a beautiful, wild, celebratory ode. Like many of Neruda’s odes, it’s generous in gratitude, appreciating even ordinary, everyday things. But it’s… Continue reading from Ode to the Dictionary, Pablo Neruda
