This is the second in our occasional series celebrating State Poets Laureate. It is adapted from a reading I gave at Bennington College in 2018 when the college was gifted the Stone House in which Robert Frost lived with his family and wrote from 1920-1940. It was here that he won the first of his […]
All rhyme is a regulation of sound. When rhyme is overused and mismatched to the meaning of the poem, it distracts from rather than reinforces the flow. Rhyme then becomes an independent activity; the effect is that of watching a child skip rope while trying to sing an unrelated song. If rhyme in a poem […]
Can you name your state’s poet laureate? If not, you have a lot of company. Although 45 of the 50 states have an official position of state poet laureate (per Library of Congress) the programs vary widely from state to state. Some of the appointments are local and, to steal a line from Ezra […]
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