Your weekly slice of Poetry

Welcome back to another edition of Poetry Pie! I apologize for missing the last edition; I was on vacation that week in the Adirondacks, enjoying both nature and plenty of poetry. My selections today are comprised of poems that I found during this designated relaxing time. Summer is such a bizarre mix of being both peaceful and busy. 🙏 Praying for more of those quiet afternoons when the kids are napping, the sun is shining, and my needy phone is safely away in another room.

The Diagnosis

J. Tullius

"The Diagnosis" has been one of the most enjoyable poems that I've read recently. This poem is a recent publication by one of the Substackers that I've found and enjoyed: J. Tullius. It is sweetly simple in design (a flow of iambic tetrameter couplets) and extraordinarily interesting in the flow of thought. On the first read, the poem brought me along a path to an end that I couldn't predict. The ending is beautiful, made so by the subtle work that the rest of the poem established along the way. This is a great example of a poem "cashing in" on the very last line.

To Daffodils
To Blossoms

Robert Herrick (1591-1674)

As I've been reading through my Oxford Book of English Verse, I've come across various authors that I've heard about, but never spent the time to read (there are so many.) And so, I've recently come to Robert Herrick and greatly enjoyed his poetry. I've included two of his poems (I couldn't choose) for today's selection.

He has many poems on flowers (most of them titled "To —"), and I've been delighted in my enjoyment of his use of form. Quite a few of his poems contain lines of different length, modulating between tetrameter (4 feet), trimeter (3), and even dimeter (2). This isn't done randomly (as may be done in Free Verse), but in a structured way. This type of writing causes you to read at the pace he designed, to pause at specific words and to resume on others. I've been quite impressed with this style of writing and I would love to practice it myself in the near future.

Sacred Heart 2025

Kate Bluett

Another Substack find and another one by Kate, this poem also impressed on me the power of changing line lengths. Each stanza is eight lines and the first four lines read in the Ballad stanza style (4-3-4-3). However, in the second half of the stanza, it slightly breaks this form and sticks with tetrameter until the last line (4-4-4-3). What this does is create a beautiful rhythm between the tetrameter lines and the trimeter refrains ("have mercy, Lamb of God," etc.).

What came to my mind while reading this was Psalm 107, in which the portraits of four types of people are given, each of which are in distress, cry out to God, and are delivered.

Terra Technica

Abram Newcomer

The last in today's selection is one of the fruits of my vacation, a small poem on the structure of nature. It was on our family's "beach day," right on the edge of the ever-inspiring woods, that I thought of the first line: The earth is God's technology. Our lives are so surrounded by "tech": new things to buy, to upgrade, to make our lives "better." One of our modern prides is amount of control we have over nature. The earth is primitive and our phones are superior. But take a moment to sit outside, to think through a list of the designs found in nature – which will far outlast our greatest creations – and it is clear which is superior.

I hope you enjoyed this edition and are able to find those quiet moments this summer. Until next time.