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
Sean Hill She, being the midwifeand your mother’slongtime friend, saidI see a heart; can yousee it?And on the greydisplay of the ultrasoundthere you were as you were,our nugget, in that momentbecoming a shrimpor a comma punctuatingthe whole of my life, separatingits parts—before and after—,a shrimp in the seaof your mother, and I couldn’thelp but see …
Jim Moore 1I’ve always wanted to write a poem that endsat the ocean. How the poem gets theredoesn’t much matter, just so at lastit arrives. The manatee will be therewe saw all those years ago,almost motionless under the waterlike a pendant swaying at an invisible throat,the one my mother used to wearon the most special …
Belén Atienza Give me back the hours you swore mine foreverand take away this grief hidden in my wardrobeand when you remember me, do not whisper my namenor think of me as yours, though yours you know I was. I shall be asleep and forget the scent of youI shall awaken alone, as then, before, …
Continue reading "Belén Atienza – Solitude Is a Life’s Work"
Elinor Morton Wylie (September 7, 1885 – December 16, 1928) 1 When the world turns completely upside downYou say we’ll emigrate to the Eastern ShoreAboard a river-boat from Baltimore;We’ll live among wild peach trees, miles from town,You’ll wear a coonskin cap, and I a gownHomespun, dyed butternut’s dark gold color.Lost, like your lotus-eating ancestor,We’ll swim …
Anna Andreyevna Gorenko (June 11, 1889 – March 05, 1966) better known by the pen name Anna Akhmatova We aged a hundred years and this descendedIn just one hour, as at a stroke.The summer had been brief and now was ended;The body of the ploughed plains lay in smoke. The hushed road burst in colors …
Continue reading "Anna Akhmatova – In Memoriam, July 19, 1914"
Alison Hazle No one calls me that anymore. But that long Y,it licks the space. I longfor that Y in my name. Am I still young? These other dykesare young, wetfrom their clamshellwombs. I am dry having smoked and smokedand not slept and been notwell for quite a while. But I am a dyke, I …
Edna St. Vincent Millay (February 22, 1892 – October 19, 1950) What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,I have forgotten, and what arms have lainUnder my head till morning; but the rainIs full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sighUpon the glass and listen for reply,And in my heart there stirs a …
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Diane di Prima (August 6, 1934 – October 25, 2020) Sweetheartwhen you break thruyou’ll finda poet herenot quite what one would choose. I won’t promiseyou’ll never go hungryor that you won’t be sadon this guttedbreakingglobe but I can show youbabyenough to loveto break your heartforever
Meena Alexander (February 17, 1951 – November 21, 2018) In a crumpled shirt (so casual for a god)Bow tucked loosely under an arm still jittery from battleHe balanced himself on a flat boat painted black.Each wave as I kneel closer a migrant flagA tongue with syllables no script can catch.The many births you have passed …
Michael Mark After I write Temporary on each sticky noteand press them onto socks, silverware, bills,my hair, I put one on each maple tree in the yard,and notice I don’t think of them as eternalas much. All it takes is a single written wordon red, yellow, green tags to remind methe car isn’t mine. The …
Kristene Kaye Brown I too have had my hands full of what keeps mecontained, a vastness softened by restraintand made more terriblebecause of it. I think it’s time we talkabout the safety of distance,how the tire tread of rush hour trafficsounds like something being patiently worn down,how the cars parked along the streetnever seem to …
Aracelis Girmay (December 10, 1977 -) You, selling roses out of a silver grocery cartYou, in the park, feeding the pigeonsYou cheering for the beesYou with cats in your voice in the morning, feeding catsYou protecting the river You are who I lovedelivering babies, nursing the sickYou with henna on your feet and a gold …
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) Grief is a Mouse —And chooses Wainscot in the BreastFor His Shy House —And baffles quest —Grief is a Thief — quick startled —Pricks His Ear — report to hearOf that Vast Dark —That swept His Being — back —Grief is a Juggler — boldest …
Linda France (May 21, 1958 -) 1 Because we love watching the flock’s precision glide upstroke for height, tilt of wing spun mid-flightjust for a moment we’re in the frenzied swirling rush home for the winged owls hoot their love through the dark chiffchaff creeps up stalks fennel and flowdipper and wagtail Arctic terns like dartsgeese honking each note weigheda duck sits on …
Derek Jarman (January 31, 1942–February 19, 1994) to whom it may concernin the dead stones of a planetno longer remembered as earthmay he decipher this opaque hieroglyphperform an archeology of soulon these precious fragmentsall that remains of our vanished dayshere — at the sea’s edgeI have planted a stony gardendragon tooth dolmen spring upto defend …
Wisława Szymborska (July 02, 1923 – February 01, 2012) As long as nothing can be known for sure,(no signals have been picked up yet),As long as earth is still unlikeThe nearer and more distant planets,As long as there’s neither hide nor hairOf other grasses graced by other windsOr other treetops bearing other crowns,Other animals as …
Richard Cecil Beyond the waves that lap the sandy beachesmy balcony looks down on, there must beno distant shoreline, only open seathat stretches toward the west until it reachesthe sky to make an infinite horizon,which the sun sinks into with a hissof surf as afternoon and evening kissgood night and sky turns on its constellations. …
Czesław Miłosz (June 30, 1911 – August 14, 2004) Of those at the table in the caféwhere on winter noons a garden of frost glittered on windowpanesI alone survived.I could go in there if I wanted toand drumming my fingers in a chilly voidconvoke shadows. With disbelief I touch the cold marble,with disbelief I touch …
Walter Everette Hawkins Ask me why I love you, dear,And I will ask the roseWhy it loves the dews of SpringAt the Winter’s close;Why the blossoms’ nectared sweetsLoved by questing bee,—I will gladly answer you,If they answer me. Ask me why I love you, dear,And I will ask the flowerWhy it loves the Summer sun,Or …
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Katherine Anne Porter (May 15, 1890 – September 18, 1980) I watched themAs they neared the lakeThey wheeledIn a wide arcWith beating wingsAnd thenThey put their wings to sleepAnd glided downward in a driftOf pure abandonmentUntil they touchedThe surface of the lakeComposed their wingsAnd settledOn the rippling waterAs though it were a nest.
Ross Gay (August 01, 1974 -) Friends I am here to modestly reportseeing in an orchardin my towna goldfinch kissinga sunfloweragain and againdangling upside downby its tiny clawssteadying itself by snapping openlike an old-timey fanits wingsagain and again,until, swooning, it tumbled offand swooped back to the very same perch,where the sunflower curled its giantswirling of …
William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) so much dependsupona red wheelbarrowglazed with rainwaterbeside the whitechickens.
Galway Mills Kinnell (February 1, 1927 – October 28, 2014) I open my eyes to see how the nightis progressing. The clock glows green,the light of the last-quarter moonshines up off the snow into our bedroom.Her portion of our oceanic duvetlies completely flat. The wordsof the shepherd in Tristan, "Wasteand empty, the sea," come back …
Bartholomew Griffin Fair is my love that feeds among the lilies,The lilies growing in the pleasant garden,Where Cupid’s mount, that well-beloved hill is,And where that little god himself is warden.See where my love sits in the beds of spices,Beset all round with camphor, myrrh and roses,And interlac’d with curious devices,Which her from all the world …
Wendell Berry (August 05, 1934 -) From the porch at dusk I watcheda kingfisher wild in flighthe could only have made for joy.He came down the river, splashingagainst the water's dimming facelike a skipped rock, passingon down out of sight. And stillI could hear the splashesfarther and farther awayas it grew darker. He came backthe …
Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) Take this kiss upon the brow!And, in parting from you now,Thus much let me avow—You are not wrong, who deemThat my days have been a dream;Yet if hope has flown awayIn a night, or in a day,In a vision, or in none,Is it therefore the …
Elizabeth Bishop (February 8, 1911 - October 6, 1979) Although it is a cold evening,down by one of the fishhousesan old man sits netting,his net, in the gloaming almost invisible,a dark purple-brown,and his shuttle worn and polished.The air smells so strong of codfishit makes one’s nose run and one’s eyes water.The five fishhouses have steeply …
Karen Moulton Charlie Daniels is blaring from the jukeboxas she strolls into the bar, surveys tonight’sselection, then sidles up to the guy on the end.He admires her ass, curls his arm around her waist.“Hammer’s the name,” he says in a loud voice.She looks him over: alligator boots, green cords,plaid flannel shirt unbuttoned to show offhis …
Sarah P. Strong At first we did not know what was happening.The tea on the porch table cooled several degreeswhile she stood up, clutchedthe scrollwork back of the chair. The lineson her face arranged themselves in a waywe’d never seen, her nostrils flaredand the bird in the tree behind her stoppedsinging. Someone, not me, tooka …
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Walt Whitman (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) On the beach at night alone,As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song,As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought of the clef of the universes and of the future.A vast similitude interlocks all,All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, …
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Tracy K. Smith (April 16, 1972 -) Being called all manner of thingsfrom the Dictionary of Shame—not English, not words, not heard,but worn, borne, carried, never spent—we feel now a largeness coming on,something passing into us. We knownot in what source it was begun, butrapt, we watch it rise through our fallen,our slain, our millions …
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Joyce Carol Oates (June 16, 1938 -) in which the poet discoversdelicate white-parched bonesof a small creatureon a Great Lake shoreor the desiccated remainsof cruder roadkillbeside the rushing highway.Nor is it a poem in whicha cracked mirror yieldsa startled face,or sere grasses hiss-ing like consonantsin a foreign language.Family photo albumfilled with yearningstrangers long deceased,closet of …
Anthony Dey Hoagland (November 19, 1953 – October 23, 2018) Though I have no children, sometimes I tell strangers about my daughter;I tell them about her science project for school.I tell them how badly my nerves were wreckedfrom …
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
