Horace Phelps Reads "Old Age"

Hear a recording from 1978 of Poet Horace Phelps reading his haunting haiku poem, "Old Age." Written in the autumn of '72 during what has become known as Phelps' "Montauk crisis" a time when the poet's battle with depression hit a crisis point with the poet's near suicide in the sleepy fishing village, Phelps turned his back on earlier successes for what he called, "a new road." "Old Age" is emblematic of Phelps' new, darker tone and compact style he employed after emerging from the depths of depression to produce his acclaimed collection of poems, Broken Branches.

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Tags:

• poetry
• haiku
• symbolism
• Baudelaire
• Horace Phelps
• Old age
• depression
• memory
• nature
• winter
• death
• literature
• poets
• life
• existentialism
• modernism
• post-modernism
• hell