Happy Holidays! 2025!!!

 

Oh wow... I was just noticing that my most recent post appears to be a Seasons Greetings from last year. Well, it's not surprising. This ol' blog doesn't get much attention -- not from me or from readers. But it's still one of the places I like to keep track of stuff. 

I've been journaling since the 90s. I go through stretches where I'm very dedicated. And then I stumble through periods where the only thing I write in my journal is a list of stuff I need to do (which usually involves grading essays, teaching classes, and maybe some creative project). 

It was interesting to read the last post, because 2025 has felt like more of the same -- which is a good and comforting thing, for the most part... The kids live out of state, so we don't get to see them on a regular basis -- but we did make a concerted effort to visit them, and those adroable grandkids! 

Well, Cheri is calling... We're going to hang out and watch some Stephen Colbert while he's still on the air! 

Merry Christmas!!! 

Poets Across the Ages

 

• William Shakespeare (1564–1616) — passage of time, love, jealousy

• John Donne (1572–1631) — religion, love, faith

• William Blake (1757–1827) — vocation, religion

• William Wordsworth (1770–1850) — death, endurance, and grief

• Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) — theological, political, nature

• George Gordon (Lord Byron) (1788–1824) — nature, satirical, love, loss

• Percy Shelley (1792–1822) — love and sorrow, nature, politics

• John Keats (1795–1821) — friendship, human nature, life/death

• Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) — slavery, love, feminism, spirituality

• Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) — horror fiction, adventure, detective fiction

• Lord Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892) — mythology, loss and grief, nature

• Robert Browning (1812–1889) — love, dramatic, morality

• Walt Whitman (1819–1892) — loss and healing, democracy and equality

• Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) — loss, longing, faith, doubt

• Christina Rossetti (1830–1894) — unrequited love, sexuality, death, faith in God

• Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) — death, nature, love, spirituality

• Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) — war, love, loss, time

• A.E. Housman (1859–1936) — unrequited love, grief, fleeting youth

• Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) — spirituality, nature, and humanism

• William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) — love, longing and loss, Irish myths

• Robert Frost (1874–1963) — human vs nature, natural world

• Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) — imagination vs. reality

• Kahlil Gibran (1883–1931) — spirituality, love, loss, drinking

• T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) — time, death/rebirth, quest for meaning

• Wilfred Owen (1893–1918) — inhumanity of war and its impact

• E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) — love, nature, individualism

• Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) — love, self-discovery, poetry itself

• Langston Hughes (1901–1967) — struggles of everyday life, racial injustice

• Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) — longing, desire, loss, and search for identity

• W.H. Auden (1907–1973) — love, political/science themes, war

• Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) — life and death, individual growth, appreciation for nature

• Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979) — her sexuality, family relationships, loneliness

• Dylan Thomas (1914–1953) — life and death, love and loss, childhood nostalgia

• Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) — black pride, black identity/solidarity, love

• Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) — sexuality, political dissent, mental illness

• Maya Angelou (1928–2014) — strength of women, human spirit, black beauty

• Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) — death, patriarchy, motherhood

• Marge Piercy (1936 - present) — political activism, Jewish heritage

• Billy Collins (1941–present) — love, death, mortality

• Bob Dylan (1941–present) — social commentary, love

• Jimmy Santiago Baca (1952–present) — social justice, addiction, community

• Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) — racism, violence, and social injustice