At the Mid Hour of Night (Thomas Moore, 1779–1852)

*

At the mid hour of night, when stars are weeping, I fly
To the lone vale we loved, when life shone warm in thine eye;
And I think oft, if spirits can steal from the regions of air
To revisit past scenes of delight, thou wilt come to me there,
And tell me our love is remember'd even in the sky.

Then I sing the wild song it once was rapture to hear,
When our voices commingling breathed like one on the ear;
And as Echo far off through the vale my sad orison rolls,
I think, O my love! 'tis thy voice from the Kingdom of Souls
Faintly answering still the notes that once were so dear.

Thomas Moore
________________________________________________________
*

ANNOUNCEMENT: Admin Currently On Sabbatical

*


As you may have noticed, I have not been posting much here lately.

Currently, I am on a sabbatical, serving as a Fulbright Scholar in Skopje, Macedonia, which does take significant time.

I haven't forgotten about Poets.net; in fact, I'm thinking about ways I can improve the site, although such improvements must wait until I return home in July 2010.

Meanwhile, I'm maintaining two blogs:

MacedonianJournal.com (my online journal)

and

MsSiegel.com (my academic site for my students)

In the near future, with my University of Skopje chairperson, I will be working on an online journal for Macedonian Literature in English translation.

I'm also writing a novel, tentatively titled Corpus Delicious, which I'm posting online as a first draft.

This is an exciting time for me--I'm having a great time in the Balkans--but it also means that some projects must be placed on the back burner for now, and Poets.net is one of them.

From time to time, I will post works here that catch my fancy, perhaps some stories by my Creative Writing students.

I have already read some pretty impressive work by them, even though English is their second language.

Until later!
*

On Seeing Rothko's No. 14, 1960 (Carolyn Foster Segal)

*

It's a Roman shade, the thick dull red

falling halfway, to blot out

the evening sky,

or a thick swath of happiness,

the kind that arrives from nowhere

and knocks you out,

or the last scene in a Bergman film--

the black line at the horizon,

that hilltop parade of

the dead--backlit and

somehow triumphant.

_______________________________________________

See Rothko's No. 14, 1960

Mark Rothko
No. 14, 1960, 1960
oil on canvas
114 1/2 in. x 105 5/8 in. (290.83 cm x 268.29 cm)
Collection SFMOMA, Helen Crocker Russell Fund purchase
© 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

_______________________________________________

Carolyn Foster Segal teaches creative writing, American literature, and film at Cedar Crest college, in Allentown, PA. She writes humorous essays for The Chronicle of Higher Ed, Inside Higher Ed, and The Irascible Professor; her other essays, stories, and poems have appeared in over fifty publications, including, most recently, 2RiverView and Long Island Quarterly.

This poem is copyright 2009 by Carolyn Foster Segal and is posted here with permission.
*

Rounds (Carolyn Foster Segal)

*

__________________________________________________________________

“Thank you for

coming,” my father says

at the beginning and

end of each visit, and “How’s

the family?” and “Do you know

if there’s a kind of flower called

rose?” When we go for a drive,

he calls out the name

of each street

as if it were

an exotic place he’s seeing

for the first time,

as indeed he is, each day blank

and shimmering

and open, like

the snow-covered lawn

that he’s studying now.

“That’s snow,” I tell him, and

he says, “Imagine that.”

__________________________________________________________________
Carolyn Foster Segal teaches creative writing, American literature, and film at Cedar Crest college, in Allentown, PA. She writes humorous essays for The Chronicle of Higher Ed, Inside Higher Ed, and The Irascible Professor; her other essays, stories, and poems have appeared in over fifty publications, including, most recently, 2RiverView and Long Island Quarterly.

This poem is copyright 2009 by Carolyn Foster Segal and is posted here with permission.
*

Resistance (John Lawson)

*

These fields and creeks, these woods and hills and hummocked spots,

Where rabbits crouch among the briars, none of these

Recognize their owners or the claims they stake.

They sleep, unmoving and unmoved, long winter through, and wake

To bear the tractor and the plow, the rake

In sullen silence, but connive to bring

Forth into the sun and feed

The hornet, thistle, and the rattlesnake.

Honeysuckle, yellow-green

And hostile, heaps the fences, breaks them.

___________________________________________________________

John Lawson teaches Rhetoric and Creative Writing at Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh. His book, Generations, was published by the St. Andrews College Press in 2007, and his poems have appeared in a variety of print and online venues. His first published play, "Playing Through," recently appeared in the online journal Public Republic.

*

A Huge Welcome to CEA and PCEA Members!

*

We hope you're enjoying the 2009 joint CEA-PCEA conference!

Please visit this site often and submit your poems, short stories, creative non-fiction, and drama.

See left side panel for more information.

Again, WELCOME!
*