Sally Thomas

2 months ago | poemsancientandmodern.substack.com | Sara Teasdale |Sally Thomas

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedCrisply the bright snow whispered, Crunching beneath our feet; Behind us as we walked along the parkway, Our shadows danced, Fantastic shapes in vivid blue. Across the lake the skaters Flew to and fro, With sharp turns weaving A frail invisible net. In ecstasy the earth Drank the silver sunlight; In ecstasy the skaters Drank the wine of speed; In ecstasy we laughed Drinking the wine of love.

Jan 6, 2025 | poemsancientandmodern.substack.com | Sally Thomas |Joseph Bottum

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedAlready a spider’s run a shining skeinBetween one standing magus and one who kneels,Offering myrrh. Outside, a too-warm rainPounds the early spears of daffodilsWho’ve rushed their cue and think it’s Holy Week. Inside, the manger occupies all mantels. The child is everywhere, and wise men seekHim still, throughout the house. In knots of threeThey travel, bearing fragile gifts that breakFrom their re-glued-on fingers.

May 9, 2024 | poemsancientandmodern.substack.com | Sally Thomas |Joseph Bottum

If hendecasyllabics are hard to write in English verse, it’s not because the meter itself is difficult. All poets need to do is to get an eleven-syllable meter bouncing along — often in a pattern like this: \u\uu\u\u\u, or BAM ba, BAM ba ba, BAM ba, BAM ba, BAM ba. It’s not the most intuitive of meters in English, but once it’s up and running in a poet’s head, the lines pour out like the billy-o.

Feb 27, 2024 | poemsancientandmodern.substack.com | Henry Wadsworth Longfellow |Sally Thomas

Today is the birthday of the nineteenth-century American Fireside Poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) — so famous in his lifetime that schoolchildren all over the expanding country celebrated this day as a kind of civic feast. It’s hard for us, maybe, to imagine the extent to which a single literary figure could command the imagination of an entire culture. But Longfellow’s reach was enormous. People recited his verse in their parlors of an evening, or at town socials.

Feb 7, 2024 | poemsancientandmodern.substack.com | Edward Lear |Sally Thomas

Edward Lear (1812–1888) was one of those polymathic oddities whose tribe flourished in the Victorian era. He was an ornithological illustrator, a landscape painter, a travel writer, a musician and composer. The youngest survivor of a family of twenty-one children, he was doted on as the household baby by a much-older sister until her death, when Lear was nearly fifty. He was an epileptic, a depressive, and a lonely man, whose chief companion toward the end of his life was his cat, Foss.