Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto (July 12, 1904 – September 23 1973), better known by his pen name and, later, legal name Pablo Neruda And it was at that age . . . poetry arrived in search of me. I don’t know, I don’t know where it came from, from winter or a river. I don’t …
Anne Sexton – Welcome Morning
Anne Sexton (November 9, 1928 – October 4, 1974) There is joy in all: in the hair I brush each morning, in the Cannon towel, newly washed, that I rub my body with each morning, in the chapel of eggs I cook each morning, in the outcry from the kettle that heats my coffee each …
Richard Blanco – My Father In English
Richard Blanco (February 15, 1968 -) First half of his life lived in Spanish: the long syntax of *las montañas* that lined his village, the rhyme of *sol* with his soul—a Cuban *alma*—that swayed with *las palmas*, the sharp rhythm of his *machete* cutting through *caña*, the syllables of his *canarios* that sung into *la …
Barbara Crooker – Poem With An Embedded Line By Susan Cohen
Barbara Crooker When the evening newscast leads to despair, when my Facebook feed raises my blood pressure, when I can't listen to NPR anymore, I turn to the sky, blooming like chicory, its dearth of clouds, its vast blue endlessness. The trees are turning copper, gold, bronze, fired by the October sun, and the bees …
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Naomi Shihab Nye – So Much Happiness
Naomi Shihab Nye (March 12, 1952 -) It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness. With sadness there is something to rub against, a wound to tend with lotion and cloth. When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up, something to hold in your hands, like …
Danusha Laméris – Small Kindnesses
Danusha Laméris I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you” when someone sneezes, a leftover from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying. And sometimes, when you spill lemons from your grocery bag, …
Gabrielle Calvocoressi – Jubilee
Gabrielle Calvocoressi Come down to the water. Bring your snare drum, your hubcaps, the trash can lid. Bring every joyful noise you’ve held at bay so long. The fish have risen to the surface this early morning: flounder, shrimp, and every blue crab this side of Mobile. Bottom feeders? Please. They shine like your Grandpa …
