poetry

poetry

Poems about Anarchists

December 18, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] The poems (and songs) listed here all take inspiration from anarchists, nihilists or members of related movements. I have assembled a lot of related material, but it will probably be a relatively slow project bringing it all together, completing citations, etc. [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] “Time-Magazine,” New Harmony Gazette 3 no. 12 (December 26, 1827): 94. “Josiah Warren” (poem) (1874) Joseph Verey, “Vera Sassulitch” (1880) Joaquin Miller, “Sophia Perovskaya” (1881) George Barlow, “Sophia Perovskaia” (1895) J. William Lloyd, “Stephen Pearl Andrews,” Fair Play 1 no. 30 (January 5, 1889): 1. J. William Lloyd, “Moses […]
poetry

Eugène Bizeau, “Anarchist Individualist Initiation” (1924)

August 17, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur
My dear Armand, your book is a book of ideas, which is why those who wish to reign by the sword or by the power of their fists do not value it. I, preserving the ideal of my younger years, I like its dawn-air, which breaks as if to illuminate the helpless vessels that the surf carries off … And, fleeing the ebb of human stupidity, endlessly multiplied, how many sailors lost on the granite rocks, how many tormented minds and hearts full of sorrow, will one day to “put in at the port,” if by you aid their “compass” once again finds the north!

[…]

poetry

Poems of J. William Lloyd

July 4, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_half padding=”0 25px 0 0px”] “Stephen Pearl Andrews,” Fair Play 1 no. 30 (January 5, 1889): 1. “Moses Harman,” Liberty 7 no. 2 (April 24, 1890): 1. “Third Avatar of Woman,” Our New Humanity 1 no. 1 (September 1895): 64. “A Grandeur and a Dreaming,” The Whim 2 no. 2 (September 1901): 110. “Written at Walt Whitman’s Grave” The Conservator 13 no. 11 (January, 1903): 165. “An Ocean Prayer,” Free Society 10 no. 23 (June 7, 1903): 1. “Storm-Glass,” The New Review 1 (February 8, 1913): 188. “The Keen of the Cold,” The New Review 1 (March 15, 1913): 350. […]
poetry

P. E. Tanner, “The Rules” (1914)

March 14, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur
[ezcol_2third] THE RULES (With apologies to Edgar Allan Poe) I. Life is now beset with rules— Irksome rules That are framed by different bureaucratic legislative schools. How they mind us and they bind us In this regulative age, How they irritate and grind us Till it’s possible to find us In an unrestricted rage; And we curse, curse, curse, As our wrath grows worse and worse, At the fiendish machinations of the regulative fools, With their rules, rules, rules, rules, Rules, rules, rules— With their overtaxing, unrelaxing rules!   II. Then those “god old-fashioned rules,” Golden rules! How successfully they’ve […]
poetry

Charles Keller, “Their Poor Reasons”

December 25, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_half padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] LEURS PAUVRES RAISONS A Madame André Léo. Ce n’est pas sans bonnes raisons Qu’ils trottinent tous vers l’église, Chaque dimanche, comme oisons Que le Bon Pasteur mobilise! * * * Leurs raisons? — Interrogez-les. Ils n’en ont point, ou n’en ont guère : — Leurs ancêtres y sont allés; C’est la coutume séculaire. — Il faut de la religion, Disent les bonnes paysannes; La messe et la communion Ne sont pas faites pour les ânes. — Et pourquoi, grondent les anciens, Les gens qui travaillent la terre Vivraient-ils comme des païens ? Ils ont déjà tant de […]
poetry

Dyer D. Lum, “Four Epochs” (1889)

December 3, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 10px”] THE POETRY OF DYER D. LUM [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 10px 0 10px”] FOUR EPOCHS. I.—THEOCRATIC. The reign of terror is the reign of gods,             When fear sits regnant upon conscience’s throne,             When trembling manhood kneels as mute as stone, When warrior chieftains cringe ‘neath priestly rods, When valor earns rewards in churchyard sods,             When but one law to statecraft’s art is known             (To gods are given full action o’er their own), And life grows dark when’er the pontiff nods. For god hath spoken! who will dare gainsay                        The awful words that […]
Anarchist Beginnings

P. R. Bennett, “The Anarchist” (1912)

November 7, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
[From P. R. Bennett, Ducdame; a book of verses. 1912.] The Anarchist [A critic in the New Age suggests that modern thought can submit no longer to the tyranny of rhyme and metre.] Ravachol Needham was a man of letters, Who refused to submit to the wretched fetters That sought by rules of rhyme and scansion To prevent his soaring soul’s expansion. He had languished long on a dismal sonnet And wasted his eagle spirit on it, Till the poor old bird had been imprisoned So long that it grew depressed and wizened, Drooped its feathers and nearly moulted, Could […]
poetry

V. de C., “A Poetic Swing Around the Circle” (1888)

August 6, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
A Poetic Swing Around the Circle Now, all he truth seekers, attend my tale. I am not writing “no such word as dale” (Which, Truth Seeker observes, is common sense Beyond the average poem’s just pretense), But scribbling out a simple little story. For any fibs you’ll please giv God glory, For any merit please giv me the credit, And render all due thanks when you hav read it. There is a place that’s called the Smoky City; It has that reputation, more’s the pity That nicknames cling when we hav long outgrown them; In cases like thi people shouldn’t […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Francis W. L. Adams, “Anarchism” (1894)

July 20, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
“Anarchism.” ‘Tis not when I am here, In these homeless homes, Where sin and shame and disease And foul death comes; ‘Tis not when heart and brain Would be still and forget Men and women and children Dragged down to the pit. But when I hear them declaiming Of “liberty,” “order” and “law,” The husk-hearted gentleman And the mud-hearted bourgeois, That a sombre, hateful desire Burns up slow in my breast, To wreck the great, guilty temple. And give us rest! — Francis W. L. Adams. Francis William Lauderdale Adams, “Anarchism,” Songs of the Army of the Night (London: William […]