Poetry

Tracy Lee Karner

Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey: my love affair with poetry, part 3

Wordsworth was twenty-eight years old when he composed Lines in 1798. 190 years later, I was twenty-eight when I first read his poem, and immortality touched me. I had tried repeatedly to appreciate Wordsworth’s poems. I trudged through them only because they had been assigned and I was a dutiful student. But I found his poems difficult …

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Sleeping in the Forest: my love affair with poetry, part 2

One of the first contemporary poems I loved was Sleeping in the Forest, by Mary Oliver. To adequately love a poem, you must prepare its dwelling place; memorize it. Revisit it frequently. When I found the poem (late 1980’s): Reading that poem (which is under copyright and not legally available online) felt like meditation to me. It felt …

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Tracy Lee Karner

Easter Morning

I’ve been told that repeating the same ritual twice makes it a tradition. Today we visited Conimicut Point in Rhode Island, making it our new tradition to spend Easter listening to the crash of waves. Here’s the poem I wrote when we spent Easter morning in Rockport, Massachusetts. Toward Daylight We face the sun we cannot …

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