The lightnings trembled And in thy Silence was his Sentence, And in his Soul a vain repentance, And evil dread so ill dissembled, That in his hand the lightnings trembled. Lord Byron, Prometheus idefiancesilence
The way an oyster does A Fragment by Kay Ryan www.csmonitor.com Her poems, [Kay Ryan] says, don't begin with a simple image or sound, but instead start "the way an oyster does, with an aggravation." An old saw may nudge her repeatedly, such as "It's always darkest before the dawn" or "Why did the chicken cross the road?" "I think, 'What about those chickens?' " she says, "and I start an investigation of what that means. Poets rehabilitate clichés." poetrymeaningcliché