"Unfolded Out of the Folds" by Walt Whitman

"A man is a great thing upon the earth, and through eternity -- but every jot of the greatness of man is unfolded out of woman." So reads a line in the poem "Unfolded Out of the Folds" by Walt Whitman, who was born on this day in 1819 in West Hills, Long Island, New York. To read that poem in its entirety, click here.

Walt Whitman, 1819-1892

Two Poems for Memorial Day (Part 2)

(Yesterday's poem: "Memorial Day" by Joyce Kilmer)

According to Roman poet and satirist Horace (65-8 B.C.), "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori (It is sweet and seemly to die for one's country)." Is it? Today read the poem "Dulce et Decorum est" by British poet Wilfred Owen.

Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)

Two Poems for Memorial Day (Part 1)

According to Roman poet and satirist Horace (65-8 B.C.), "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori (It is sweet and seemly to die for one's country)." Is it? Today read the poem "Memorial Day" by American poet Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918).

(Tomorrow: a poem by Wilfred Owen)

Sgt. Joyce Kilmer, as a member

of the Fighting 69th Infantry Regiment,

United States Army, c. 1918

"The Camel's Back" (Chapter V of V) by F. Scott Fitzgerald

(Yesterday: Chapter IV of "The Camel's Back")

"The scene that followed will go down forever in the annals of the Tallyho Club." So begins Chapter V, the conclusion, of F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story "The Camel's Back" (1920). To continue reading that early short story of his and to continue reading Chapter V, the conclusion, of that story, click here.

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)

American writer

"The Camel's Back" (Chapter IV of V) by F. Scott Fitzgerald

(Yesterday: Chapter III of "The Camel's Back")

"This paradise of frail foundation was broken into by the sounds of a general ingress to the ballroom; the cotillion was beginning." So begins Chapter IV of F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story "The Camel's Back" (1920). To continue reading that early short story of his and to continue reading Chapter IV of that story, click here.

(Tomorrow: Chapter V of "The Camel's Back")

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)

American writer

"The Camel's Back" (Chapter III of V) by F. Scott Fitzgerald

(Yesterday: Chapter II of "The Camel's Back")

"The Howard Tates are, as every one who lives in Toledo knows, the most formidable people in town." So begins Chapter III of F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story "The Camel's Back" (1920). To continue reading that early short story of his and to continue reading Chapter III of that story, click here.

(Tomorrow: Chapter IV of "The Camel's Back")

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)

American writer

"The Camel's Back" (Chapter II of V) by F. Scott Fitzgerald

(Yesterday: Chapter I of "The Camel's Back")

"Mrs. Nolak was short and ineffectual looking, and on the cessation of the world war had belonged for a while to one of the new nationalities." So begins Chapter II of F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story "The Camel's Back" (1920). To continue reading that early short story of his and to continue reading Chapter II of that story, click here.

(Tomorrow: Chapter III of "The Camel's Back")

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)

American writer

"The Camel's Back" (Chapter I of V) by F. Scott Fitzgerald

"The glazed eye of the tired reader resting for a second on the above title will presume it to be merely metaphorical. Stories about the cup and the lip and the bad penny and the new broom rarely have anything to do with cups or lips or pennies or brooms. This story is the exception. It has to do with a material, visible and large-as-life camel's back." So begins F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story "The Camel's Back" (1920). To continue reading Chapter I of that story, click here.

(Tomorrow: Chapter II of "The Camel's Back")

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)

American writer

"The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham" by H. G. Wells

"I set this story down, not expecting it will be believed, but, if possible, to prepare a way of escape for the next victim." So begins H. G. Wells's classic short story "The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham." To read that short story in its entirety, click here.

H. G. Wells (1866-1946)

English writer

"Of Modern Books" by Carolyn Wells

A pantoum is a Malay verse form consisting of an indefinite number of quatrains with the second and fourth lines of each quatrain repeated as the first and third lines of the following one. "Of making many books there is no end" (Ecclesiastes 12:12, King James Version). So reads the first line of the poem "Of Modern Books" by Carolyn Wells. That poem is a humorous pantoum about reading and books. To read that poem, that pantoum, click here.

Carolyn Wells (1862-1942)

American writer

Poem: a tanka by Saigyo Hoshi

Here is an untitled poem, a tanka, by Japanese poet Saigyo Hoshi (1118-1190).

Now indeed I know
that when we said "remember,"
and we swore it so,
it was in "we will forget"
that our thoughts most truly met.

(The original source of this poem and the original source of its anonymous translation into English are both unknown. The poem above was quoted in Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia.)

Saigyo Hoshi

in the Hyakunin Isshu

"September 1, 1939" by W. H. Auden

"We must love one another or die," wrote W. H. Auden (1907-1973) in his long poem "September 1, 1939." To read that poem in its entirety, click here.

Article: "Notes from Auden Land" by Austin Allen

Read this essay on why W. H. Auden is as essential to our times as George Orwell: Notes from Auden Land by Austin Allen

"Out of May's Shows Selected" by Walt Whitman

Here is a short poem by Walt Whitman for spring, the season of renewal.


OUT OF MAY'S SHOWS SELECTED

Apple orchards, the trees all cover'd with blossoms;
Wheat fields carpeted far and near in vital emerald green;
The eternal, exhaustless freshness of each early morning;
The yellow, golden, transparent haze of the warm afternoon sun;
The aspiring lilac bushes with profuse purple or white flowers.


Source: The Language of Spring: Poems for the Season of Renewal (2003), Selected by Robert Atwan, with an Introduction by Maxine Kumin

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)