When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses… We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth. — John F. Kennedy
Kathleen A Dale i. Nine thousand years seems long but for the imagination: see a Siberian girl smile as she reaches out to touch the saggital crest (shaped like an arrow, indicating strong jaw muscles) on the head of a Husky, once-removed from wolf, panting by the fire after pulling home a sled of reindeer meat. Now, see them …
Tao Writer (April 17, 1948 -) For most of my adult life I have been a holder. I draw away the pain as best I can.I am the one who holds. Arms are good for that. They were made to wrap around and embrace. Arms cannot run like legs or see like eyes, but they …
Eleanor Rand Wilner For years he had been hidden, quiet,huge head on his paws,almost a sphinx in his composure,a figure waitingfor a breeze to move the densegreen canopy of leaves overhead,enough to bring a hair-thin laser lineof light downinto the endless twilightbelow;he had been patient, waitingfor the underbrush to open, for a lowwind to enter, …
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Phillip Lopate It's good we only see each other once a week.A young man about to move in with his fiancéedied of a sudden heart attack at twenty-six.One hears these stories all the time.The heart is trained to handle deprivation,not unforeseen happiness. Just as when youthrow your arms around me I start to overflow,but then …
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JR Solonche Go out and listen to the frogs, he said.They speak for you. So I went out to listen to the frogsas he said, for he was a poet and spoke with passion and audacious authority.And in the moonlight at the pond, I listened to the frogs speaking to one another,and after a while …
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Lisel Mueller (February 8, 1924 – February 21, 2020) We bring our hands togetherin applause, that absurd noise,when we want to be silent. We might as wellbe banging pots and pans,it is that jarring, a violationof the music we've listened towithout moving, almost holding our breath.The pianist in his blindinglywhite summer jacket bowsand disappears and …
Adam Zagajewski (June 21, 1945 – March 21, 2021) To go to Lvov. Which stationfor Lvov, if not in a dream, at dawn, when dew gleams on a suitcase, when expresstrains and bullet trains are being born. To leave in haste for Lvov, night or day, in September or in March. But only if Lvov exists,if it is …
John Keats ( October 31, 1795 – February 23, 1821) Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;Conspiring with him how to load and blessWith fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;To swell the gourd, and plump …
Diane di Prima (August 6, 1934 – October 25, 2020) For Jackson Allen My friend wears my scarf at his waistI give him moonstonesHe gives me shell & seaweedsHe comes from a distant city & I meet himWe will plant eggplants & celery togetherHe weaves me cloth …
Deborah Landau So whatever’s the opposite of a Buddhist that’s what I am.Kindhearted, yes, but knee deep in existential gloom,except when the fog smokes the bridges like this—like, instead of being afraid we might juice ourselves up,eh, like, might get kissed again? Dwelling in bones I go straightthrough life, a sublime abundance—cherries, dog’s breath, the …
Alejandra Pizarnik (April 29, 1936 – September 25, 1972) Once again, someone falls in their first falling–fall of two bodies, of two eyes, of four green eyes or eight green eyes if we count those born in the mirror (at midnight, in the purest fear, in the loss), you haven’t been able to recognize the …
Dorianne Laux (January 10, 1952 -) On the street outside the windowsomeone is talking to someone else,a baffling song, no words, only the musicof voices—low contralto of questions,laughter’s plucked strings—voices in darknessbelow stars where someone straddles a bikeup on the balls of his feet, and someone elsestands firm on a curb, her arms crossed, twodogs …
Ada Limón On the black wet branches of the linden,still clinging to umber leaves of late fall,two crows land. They say, “Stop,” and still I wantto make them into something they are not.Odin’s ravens, the bruja’s eyes. What newsare they bringing of our world to the worldof the gods? It can’t be good. More sufferingall …
Margaret Hasse After being a student, then an hourly worker,I became a career girl and earned real money.I left behind a provisional furnished apartmentwith its stained curtains, butt-burned tableand Goodwill mattress I was never sure about. Alone I bought a house with an attic,a basement and a skirt of flowers.Freely I spent on white paint, …
Mary Jane Olive (September 10, 1935 – January 17, 2019) Who made the world?Who made the swan, and the black bear?Who made the grasshopper?This grasshopper, I mean—the one who has flung herself out of the grass,the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up …
Franz Xaver Kappus (May 17, 1883 – October 09, 1966) Through my life there trembles, without complaintor sighs, a deep, dark pain.My dreams of pure snowblossomsconsecrate the stillest day.But oft my path encountersthe great question. I become smalland cold, like a lakewhose waters I dare not measure.Then a sorrow overcomes me, a sorrowlike the dullest …
David Wolf Budbill (June 13, 1940 – September 25, 2016) Winter is the best timeto find out who you are.Quiet, contemplation time,away from the rushing world,cold time, dark time, holed-uppulled-in time and spaceto see that inner landscape,that place hidden and within.
Billy Collins (March 22, 1941 -) Yesterday, I lay awake in the palm of the night.A soft rain stole in, unhelped by any breeze,And when I saw the silver glaze on the windows,I started with A, with Ackerman, as it happened,Then Baxter and Calabro,Davis and Eberling, names falling into placeAs droplets fell through the dark.Names …
Dawn Lundy Martin They will tell you that I was sick, that I was a drug addict. They will tell you I died a natural death. Sometimes young people just die, they will say, we don’t know why. They will say I was lazy, that I could not work because of disease and just general …
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Anna Andreyevna Gorenko (June 11, 1889 – 05, March 1966) better known by the pen name Anna Akhmatova Not under foreign skiesNor under foreign wings protected -I shared all this with my own peopleThere, where misfortune had abandoned us.[1961] INSTEAD OF A PREFACE During the frightening years of the Yezhov terror, Ispent seventeen months waiting …
Skye Jackson at the parades, everyone wants to touch my hair. on the corner of st charles and marengo, i am cold & smashed & puffy AF when two white women try to convince me that they love my hair no they really really do they say because it is soblack and thick and curly and soaking up all of thewater in …
Maria Mazziotti Gillan (March 12, 1940 -) A friend sends me a picture of herselffrom the 70s—bell bottoms, platform shoesa patterned button down shirt,hair puffed up from a perm. I can see the outline of the person she is nowand she reminds me of myself in the 70s—married for eight years to a manI knew …
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Gregory Djanikian There's something to be said for banality,the way it keeps everything on a level plane,one cliché blithely following anotherlike cows heading toward the pasture. How lovely sometimes not to thinkabout Russian Futurism, or the second lawof thermodynamics, or how thinking itselfrequires some thoughtfulness. I'd like to ask if Machiavelliever owned a dog named …
Naomi Shihab Nye (March 12, 1952 -) Before you know what kindness really isyou must lose things,feel the future dissolve in a momentlike salt in a weakened broth.What you held in your hand,what you counted and carefully saved,all this must go so you knowhow desolate the landscape can bebetween the regions of kindness.How you ride …
Diane Ackerman (October 07, 1948 -) Especially in early spring,when the sun offers a thin treacle of warmth,I love to sit outdoorsand eat sense-ravishing apricots.Born on sun-drenched trees in Morocco,the apricots have flown the Atlanticlike small comets, and I can tastebroiling North Africa in their flesh.Somewhere between a peach and a prayer,they taste of well …
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Joan Kwon Glass If rust can grow on the moon’s surface,240,000 miles away from oxygen,if solar wind can traverse that vacuum,confounding scientists, turning red the crustof such a scarred and lonesome celestial body,maybe I am capable of more than I think.Maybe everything I need for alchemyis already here, in my core and cells,in this room …
Kenneth Ronkowitz A star chart tells methat the star I am seeing tonightis 500 light years away.It may have died 499 years ago,and I am still seeing its last light.Stars are born, they live, and they die.What is the light that remains when we leave?If I die after writing this poem, is this my light,and …
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Aria Aber Last night it startled me again—I dreamedof the corn maze through which we walked,almost a decade ago, in the presenceof our other lovers. It was all burned down.Purple corn glowed in the fields envelopingthe ruined maze, the woodlands washedby October sun. Instead of you, I found in the salt-white musicof that familiar landscape …
How many of us were fingered?A soft thing with a hole in it,a thing that won’t tell, that can’t.I forget how many times I was broken, a soft thing with a hole in it.Some remember, grateful it wasn’t worse;I forget how many times I was broken.Someone faceless rolled on me like a horse. Some remember, …
Louis Jenkins (October 28, 1942 - December 21, 2019) I'm out of it these days. I guess I have less interest inkeeping up to date on what's happening. I don't knowthe names of most of the current movie stars and have notseen their movies. Same for the music scene. I have notread what everyone is …
Heidi Seaborn I fall in love todaywith the man fixing my water faucets,how he crouches in his boots, feelshis way deftly to salve the leak.I’m in love with dandelions & ugly bobs& even morning glory as I yanktheir roots free from this dark & luscious soil.O I love, love the rhododendronblushing newborn pink, lovethe neighbor’s …
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Arthur Sze(December 1, 1950 -) Leafing branches of a back-yard plum—branches of water on a dissolving ice sheet—chatter of magpies when you approach—lilacs lean over the road, weighted with purple blossoms—then the noon sun shimmers the grasses—you ride the surge into summer—smell of piñon crackling in the fireplace—blued notes of a saxophone in the air—not …
Ted Kooser (April 25, 1939 -) What once was meant to be a statement—a dripping dagger held in the fistof a shuddering heart—is now just a bruiseon a bony old shoulder, the spotwhere vanity once punched him hardand the ache lingered on. He looks likesomeone you had to reckon with,strong as a stallion, fast and …
If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation. —Jiddu Krishnamurti
The truest philosophy, is not to long for anything in particular, but to accept everything as it comes, and find out the reason of it coming. — Marie Corelli
...If one looks long enough at almost anything, looks with absolute attention at a flower, a stone, the bark of a tree, grass, snow, a cloud, something like revelation takes place. — May Sarton
The most we can do is to write — intelligently, creatively, evocatively — about what it is like living in the world at this time. — Oliver Sacks
When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses... We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth. — John F. Kennedy
