Szárnyú:

An Online Poetry Journal

Szárnyú is the Hungarian word for "winged." It is pronounced "SARN-yoo," with the "SARN" rhyming with the English "barn."  There is something akin to flying in poetry. A poem transports us to another place, another reality, another perspective, another feeling. And it is often as illusive as a bird in flight.

Click here to go directly to the poetry table of contents:  poems. Or click on the poet you would like to read: Miles Flansburg, Richard Higgs, Maggie Kelley, Michael Newman, Bronston Swindle, Kristal Tomshany, Bill Turley, Ann Zoller.

The High Calling of Poetry

A few words about poetry: The poet Jane Hirshfield says this: "Poetry's work is the clarification and magnification of being. Each time we enter its word-woven and musical invocation, we give ourselves over to a different mode of knowing: to poetry's knowing, and to the increase of existence it brings, unlike any other."*

If this seems lofty, and perhaps unattainable, consider what Socrates said, four hundred years before Jesus walked the  dusty roads of  Jerusalem: "Poets are light and winged and holy things, and there is no invention in them until they have been inspired and are out of their senses, and their minds are no longer in them."**

And then Socrates says it directly: "God takes away the minds of poets . . . God is the speaker, and through them converses with us."** Now that's a heavenly calling!


*Jane Hirshfield, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry (HarperCollins, 1997), p. vii.
**The Dialogues of Plato, volume I (trans. Benjamin Jowett (Random House, 1937), p. 289. (I modified these statements to make them inclusive---the spirit of Jowett perforce must accept them, and I'm sure the spirits of Plato and Socrates would be delighted! If it seems I use "spirit" in a fast and loose way, you can simply consider "spirit" to mean their existence in us!)


Poetry Table of Contents

Simply click on the poet's name to see all of the poet's work included here, or click on the  title of a poem to read it specifically.
Miles Flansburg
Metastable
Reveal
The Silver Calling
The Ring of Trees
Richard Higgs
One Warm And Sunny Afternoon
Listen
Fear of Darkness
Maggie Kelley
The Fingers of my Eyes
First Spring Cool
Michael Newman
I Awoke
Bronston Swindle
[I Demand the World to Return to My Mouth]

Kristal Tomshany
Winter Buffalo Grass
Adolescence
Reunion
Bill Turley
Letter to the Muse
They say . . .
Ann Zoller
So Simple
What Speaks
The Vision of Rain
Returning to the Sea




Return to unnamed paths home page