Ron (Ronald) Koertge

Highlights of Poetry. Index of poetry. How to Write Poetry. New Books read.

How to write specific forms:
Haibun. Haiku. Hay(na)ku. Rengay. Tanka.
Concrete. Ghazal. Lai. Pantoum. Prose poem. Rondeau. Rubáiyát.
Sestina. Skaldic verse. Sonnet. Terza rima. Triolet. Tritina. Villanelle.

Poets: Adam Zagajewski. Billy Collins. Billy Collins exercise.
Snorri's Edda. Carl Dennis. Corey Marks. Franz Wright. Gary Young. The Gawain Poet.
Jack Gilbert. Jane Hirshfield. Jorie Graham. Karen Braucher. Kay Ryan.
Laureate Poets: Britain; USA.
Len Anderson. Li-Young Lee. Linda Pastan. Nordic Skalds. Pulitzer Poetry Prize (U.S.A).
Rainer Maria Rilke Richard Hugo. Robert Bly. Ronald Koertge.
Sara Teasdale. Snorri's Edda. Stephen Dunn. Ted Kooser. W.S. Merwin.

On Ronald Koertge
by J. Zimmerman

The Ogre's Wife.
Links. Books.
Ronald Koertge featured in The Best American Poetry: 2006, Editor Billy Collins.

The Ogre's Wife

The Ogre's Wife was published in 2013.

The Ogre's Wife (2013)

55 poems (14 previously published); 69 pages; 1.3 pp/ poem
Includes some poems in form including sestina, sonnet, and villanelle. He also has three haibun (pp. 54-56), each closed with a haiku-like poem (in that the poems have three lines with the 5-7-5 pattern) but the content lacks season words and other aspect of the traditional haiku (as opposed to the senryu).

Published in three section. Favorite poems include:

"Trivial" (p.17)

The word comes from tri + via: three
roads. And it came to mean things of no
importance because that's where women
would stop and talk.

A man made that up, don't you think? He'd
be riding a fine horse, his head full of important
thoughts about his life, his sons, his money.

There would be these women standing where
three roads met filling the air with weather
and babies and recipes.

He would look them up and down, and lick his
fat lips as they whispered to each other how easy
it would be to make it look like somebody else
killed him, some man driven by the things men
talk about — envy, rage, revenge.

"Occasional Poems" (p.20)
"Poetry Begins in Delight" (p.37)
"Alone" (p.41)

"Icarus" (p. 49)

Forget the version with the wax wings. Forget the painting
by Bruegel and the poem by Auden.

Icarus and his father escape from Crete by boat. Daedelus
invents sails to outrun King Minos' galleys.

Icarus prances around the stern giving Cretans the finger
and at some point falls overboard.

He's not missed immediately and when he is it's too late.
Daedelus grieves. The others lie

on the deck eating the biscuits and honey Icarus had
in his ruscksack. Drinking his water.

How amazing to go so fast without rowing!

"A Page from the Apocrypha" (p. 53)