Poetry: January 29, 2020 Issue [#9994] |
This week: Mark van Doren Edited by: Stormy Lady More Newsletters By This Editor
1. About this Newsletter 2. A Word from our Sponsor 3. Letter from the Editor 4. Editor's Picks 5. A Word from Writing.Com 6. Ask & Answer 7. Removal instructions
This is poetry from the minds and the hearts of poets on Writing.Com. The poems I am going to be exposing throughout this newsletter are ones that I have found to be, very visual, mood setting and uniquely done. Stormy Lady |
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Spring Thunder
by Mark van Doren
Listen, The wind is still,
And far away in the night --
See! The uplands fill
With a running light.
Open the doors. It is warm;
And where the sky was clear--
Look! The head of a storm
That marches here!
Come under the trembling hedge--
Fast, although you fumble...
There! Did you hear the edge
of winter crumble.
On June 13, 1894, in Hope Illinois Dr. Charles Lucius Van Doren and his wife Eudora Ann Butz welcomed their son Mark Van Doren into the family. Mark was the fourth son out of five boys. They lived on a farm during his early childhood. Then Dr Van Doren moved his family closer to Urabna for the boys to attend better schools. After attending the local elementary and high school Van Doren went on to study at the University of Illinois. He earned his Bachelor's of the Arts, in 1914. He then went on to Columbia University to earn his PhD graduating in 1920. He began working at the college that same year.
In 1922 he married Dorothy Graffe a novelist and writer. They had two sons Charles and John. Van Doren published his first poetry Spring Thunder in 1924. Then his second publication came in 1928, An Anthology of World Poetry. With the success of his second book the couple bought a house on Bleecker Street in New York City. While teaching at Columbia Van Doren joined his former Columbia alumni Mortimer Adler to establish the great books program at St. John's College in Annapolis. He would also be a guest lecturer at the college.
Van Doren published a volume of Collected Poems 1922-1939 which won the Pulitzer in 1939. He also wrote the influential Liberal Education in 1943. He published a collection of his lectures on poetry The Noble Voice in 1946. Followed by Morning Worship and Other Poems, published in 1959. He published an autobiography in 1958. In 1959 Van Doren retired from full time teaching and moved to Connecticut to focus on his writing. His other writings include novels and a play. The Last Days of Lincoln was published in 1959. He wrote two more volumes of Collected Poems published in 1963 and 1969.
Mark Van Doren was admitted to Charlotte Hungerford Hospital on December 8, 1972. He had surgery for circulatory problems, he died two days later on December 10 1972. He was 78 years old. Mark Van Doren was laid to rest at Cornwall Hollow Cemetery in Connecticut.
After Long Drought
by Mark van Doren
After long drought, commotion in the sky;
After dead silence, thunder. Then it comes,
The rain. It slashes leaves, and doubly drums
On tin and shingle; beats and bends awry
The flower heads; puddles dust, and with a sigh
Like love sinks into grasses, where it hums
As bees did once, among chrysanthemums
And asters when the summer thought to die.
The whole world dreamed of this, and has it now.
Nor was the waking easy. The dull root
Is jealous of its death; the sleepy brow
Smiles in its slumber; and a heart can fear
The very flood it longed for, roaring near.
The spirit best remembers being mute.
Thank you all!
Stormy Lady
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The winner of "Stormy's poetry newsletter & contest" [ASR] is:
"Homeless..."
Homeless...
Her innocence was gone.
Her world had turned upside down.
She was living on the street in a cardboard box.
She might collide with a passerby
But she would be quickly forgotten.
Her old life but a flicker in the corners of her mind.
Honorable mention:
" Forgotten One"
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