My name is Porto Gautuma and a few years ago, a friend of mine, Marie Howe, said to me,

nobody will read our poems after we die.

And I think people will read hers after she dies, I'm pretty sure they will.

But one of the things I thought was brilliant about what she said is we write as evidence

of being alive.

We write as a way of being alive to attune us to our lives, rather than some imagination

of eternal life through our writing.

But writing has a purpose of paying attention to the world, rather than thinking it has

survived my own life.

The Jew and the Bird by Alexander Posey.

There is more glory in a drop of Jew that shineeth only for an hour than there is in the

pomp of Earth's great kings within the noonday of their power.

There is more sweetness in a single strain that falls from a wild bird's throat at random

in the lonely forest's depths than there is in all the songs that Bards erode.

Yet men, for I remembering Caesar's name, forget the glory in the Jew, and praising

Homer's epic that the Lark song fall on heaters from the blue.

I don't always think you need to know a huge amount about the poet in order to build

on Stan the poem.

But in this case, with this poem by Alexander Posey, I think it's really rewarding to know

something about who the poet is, especially when you look at the elevated language of

the Jew and the bird, you know, lines like that shineeth only for an hour or falleth

from a wild bird's throat.

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