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Unread 10-22-2015, 07:59 PM
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Michael F Michael F is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: a foothill of the Catskills
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If I were asked to name the most philosophically interesting contemporary poets I have read, Wislawa Szymborska and Mary Oliver would probably be the first two names I'd think to mention. Most of their work is free verse, so far as I know.

One of my favorite philosophical poems by a committed formalist is the following. It’s so simple, and yet …


Neither Out Far Nor In Deep

The people along the sand
All turn and look one way.
They turn their back on the land.
They look at the sea all day.

As long as it takes to pass
A ship keeps raising its hull;
The wetter ground like glass
Reflects a standing gull.

The land may vary more;
But wherever the truth may be—
The water comes ashore,
And the people look at the sea.

They cannot look out far.
They cannot look in deep.
But when was that ever a bar
To any watch they keep?

-- Robert Frost
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