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Lars Gustafsson

When Lars Gustafsson received the Pilot Prize in Sweden, the jury described him as “poet philosopher, a dreamer, an encyclopedist, a stranger familiar with every latitude from the locks of Västmanland to the Texas

Elegy for a Dead Labrador

by Lars Gustafsson (1936–2016)

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2<author>
3  <person id="24489" sex="1" role="author">
4    <name>
5      <firstname>Lars</firstname>
6      <lastname>Gustafsson</lastname>
7    </name>
8    <life-events>
9      <date ty="birth" circa="false" suffix="ad">1936</date>
10      <text-value>(1936–2016)</text-value>
11    </life-events>
12    <biography>y</biography>
13  </person>
14</author>
15

Here there may be, in the midst of summer,
a few days when suddenly it’s fall.
Thrushes sing on a sharper note.
The rocks stand determined out in the water.
They know something. They’ve always known it.
We know it too, and we don’t like it.
On the way home, in the boat, on just such evenings
you would stand stock-still in the bow, collected,
scouting the scents coming across the water.

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Poets Book of Days

May 17

Robert Tannahill died, 1810

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Poetry Trivia

Question:

According to the twelfth century French poet Jean Brodel, what were the three subjects appropriate for epic poetry?

Answer

The Matter of Britain (Arthurian Legend, such as Gawain and the Green Knight , or "the Romance of the Rose "); the Matter of France (Carolingian 'history' such as the Song of Roland , Orlando Furioso and to a certain extent El Cid ); and the Matter of Rome (any stories from the classical period, such as John Lydgate's Troy Book ).

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