poems for September 23

To Earthward -- Robert Frost
The Waking by Theodore Roethke
Old Men Pitching Horseshoes by X J Kennedy
The World Is in Pencil by Todd Boss
The Pattern by Robert Creeley
My Personal Tornado by Jeffrey Harrison

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/09/poetry-isnt-as-useless-as-a-lot-of-poets-say-it-is/279539/?utm_source=Poetry+Sept+18%2C+2013

I'm not sure the above article does justice to poetry in the closing line -- the question really is not what is the "use" of an individual poem, which borders on the aesthetics and emotional needs that direct our choices.

I will miss the discussion of poems for September 23.
The first one by Robert Frost, was a favorite of Seamus Heaney -- and I think one of mine, which got me thinking about other favorites like Roethke's villanelle. I needed a bit of humor for balance and stumbled on X.J. Kennedy in a book of "old men poems". A bit of linguistic wit, is always welcome in my book, hence, Todd Boss and Robert Creeley's poems -- and back to emotion -- what other's go through, felt with empathy, to reduce a sense that things out of control, tragedy, etc. Jeffrey Harrison reminds us, this is part of the human condition, and our own experience of it is merely a minor reflection.