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
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 …
Raymond Clevie Carver Jr. (May 25, 1938 – August 2, 1988) Now that you’ve gone away for five days,I’ll smoke all the cigarettes I want,where I want. Make biscuits and eat themwith jam and fat bacon. Loaf. Indulgemyself. Walk on the beach if I feellike it. And I feel like it, alone andthinking about when …
Continue reading "Raymond Carver – Still Looking Out for Number One"
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 …
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 …
Kim Addonizio (July 31, 1954 -) So your device has a low battery & seems to drain faster each day.Maybe you should double your medication.You might feel queasy, but also as if the spatula flattening you to the fry panhas lifted a little.So your breath comes out scorched, so what.Inside, trust me on this,there’s a …
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.
Jane Hirshfield (February 24, 1953 -) I stop the car along the pasture edge,gather up bags of corncobs from the back,and get out.Two whistles, one for each,and familiar sounds draw close in darkness—cadence of hoof on hardened bottomland,twinned blowing of air through nostrils curious, flared.They come deepened and muscular movementsconjured out of sleep: each small …
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, …
Continue reading "Walt Whitman – On The Beach Alone At Night"
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 …
Continue reading "Tracy K. Smith – We Feel Now A Largeness Coming On"
Kim Addonizio (July 31, 1954 -) I want a red dress.I want it flimsy and cheap,I want it too tight, I want to wear ituntil someone tears it off me.I want it sleeveless and backless,this dress, so no one has to guesswhat's underneath. I want to walk downthe street past Thrifty's and the hardware storewith …
Edward Hirsch (January 20, 1950 -) I miss your apartment on West Eleventh Streetwhere I slept off the front hall in a bedroomthat would have been a closet in another city. The plants breathed easily in their heavy pots,but the radiators knocked all night, like ghoststrying to reach us from the other side. The traffic …
Maxine Kumin (June 6, 1925 – February 6, 2014) Every spring when the ice goes outblack commas come scribbling across the shallows.Soon they sprout forelegs.Slowly they absorb their tailsand by mid-June, full-voiced, announce themselves.Enter our spotted dog.Every summer, tense with the scent of them,tail arced like a pointer's but waggingin anticipation, he stalks his frogstwo …
Sharon Olds (November 19, 1942 -) As soon as my sister and I got out of ourmother’s house, all we wanted todo was fuck, obliterateher tiny sparrow body and narrowgrasshopper legs. The men’s bodieswere like our father’s body! The massivehocks, flanks, thighs, elegantknees, …
Continue reading "Sharon Olds – The Sisters of Sexual Treasure"
Michael Harty For Leonard Cohen, 1934–2016 A crack in everything, he told us—that’show light gets in. And yes, he always knewthat this included him. The sharps and flatsof life—he savored them and suffered throughthem, shaped them to an art that calls the nameof every listener. The light that foundhis inner world was like a healing …
Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1340s – October 25, 1400) When April with his showers sweet with fruitThe drought of March has pierced unto the rootAnd bathed each vein with liquor that has powerTo generate therein and sire the flower;When Zephyr also has, with his sweet breath,Quickened again, in every holt and heath,The tender shoots and buds, …
Continue reading "Geoffrey Chaucer – The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales"
Toi Derricotte (April 12, 1941 -) In the movie, flamingos migrate over Rome and restovernight on the terrace of Jep Gambardella, so that,in the rose light of dawn, he walks out to find his saintlyold guest, Sister Maria, meditating among a flamboyance—a hundred stand on pink stilt-like legs with roseate plumesand beaks sturdy as lobster …
Sarah Browning For Ben’s project he must research five factsabout his African-American hero and write themon poster board. He chooses Harriet Tubman,whose five facts are: Her father’s name was Ben.Her mother’s name was Old Rit. She was bornin 1820 and died in 1913. She was born in Marylandand died in New York.Ben asks for adviceabout …
Jane Hirshfield (February 24, 1953 -) More and more I have come to admire resilience.Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foamreturns over and over to the same shape, but the sinuoustenacity of a tree: finding the light newly blocked on one side,it turns in another. A blind intelligence, true.But out of such persistence …
Amanda Gorman Today we honor our three captainsFor their actions and impact inA time of uncertainty and need.They’ve taken the lead,Exceeding all expectations and limitationsUplifting their communities and neighborsAs leaders, healers, and educators.James has felt the wounds of warfare,But this warrior still sharesHis home with at-risk kids.During Covid, he’s event lent a hand,Live-streaming football for …
Joy Harjo (May 09, 1951 -) Praise the rain; the seagull diveThe curl of plant, the raven talk—Praise the hurt, the house slackThe stand of trees, the dignity—Praise the dark, the moon cradleThe sky fall, the bear sleep—Praise the mist, the warrior nameThe earth eclipse, the fired leap—Praise the backwards, upward skyThe baby cry, the …
Tadeusz Różewicz (October 09, 1921 – April 24, 2014) “In the Midst of LifeAfter the end of the worldafter deathI found myself in the midst of lifecreating myselfbuilding lifepeople animals landscapes this is a table I saidthis is a tableon the table is bread a knifea knife is to cut breadpeople live on bread man must be …
Maya Angelou (April 4, 1928 – May 28, 2014) A Rock, A River, A TreeHosts to species long since departed,Mark the mastodon.The dinosaur, who left dry tokensOf their sojourn hereOn our planet floor,Any broad alarm of their of their hastening doomIs lost in the gloom of dust and ages.But today, the Rock cries out to …
Joy Harjo (May 09, 1951 -) To pray you open your whole selfTo sky, to earth, to sun, to moonTo one whole voice that is you.And know there is moreThat you can't see, can't hearCan't know except in momentsSteadily growing, and in languagesThat aren't always sound but otherCircles of motion.Like eagle that Sunday morningOver Salt …
Jane Hirshfield (February 24, 1953 -) This first-light mountain, its east peak and west peak.Its first-light creeks:Lagunitas, Redwood, Fern. Their fishes and mosses.Its night and day hawk-life, slope-life, fogs, coyote, tan oaks,white-speckled amanita. Its spiderwebs’ sequins.To be personal is easy:Wake. Slip arms and legs from sleep into name, into story.I wanted to be mountainal, wateral, …
William Blake (November 28, 1757 – August 12, 1827) I love to rise in a summer morn,When the birds sing on every tree;The distant huntsman winds his horn,And the skylark sings with me:Oh, what sweet company! But to go to school in a summer morn, —O it drives all joy away;Under a cruel eye outworn,The …
David Baker (December 27, 1954 -) Even the night cooling down is slick with heat.Even the sheet we share like a humming skin.From three stories up the sounds of the street,drinkers at the curb, a wet hiss of dry tires,is a rhythm through our box fan, like panting.When we sleep it is piecemeal until morning. …
JR Solonche Nothing disturbs them,the clouds, stoics,philosophers, sages,graybeards of the sky.Not even this jet,that streaks throughthem, that shredsthe silence likea silver shark,disturbs their slow,slow, mindful walk on air.
Billy Collins (March 22, 1941 -) I pick an orange from a wicker basketand place it on the tableto represent the sun.Then down at the other enda blue and white marblebecomes the earthand nearby I lay the little moon of an aspirin.I get a glass from a cabinet,open a bottle of wine,then I sit in …
Continue reading "Billy Collins – As If To Demonstrate An Eclipse"
Yolande Cornelia Nikki Giovanni Jr (June 7, 1943) I love you because the Earth turns round the sun because the North wind blows north sometimes because the Pope is Catholic and most Rabbis Jewish because the winters flow into springs and the air clears after a storm because only my love for …
Gabrielle Otero Being a Latina from the Bronx means:I am everybody and nobody at the same time. I know the soundwaves of the train tracks better than my father’s voice.I look like I should speak Spanish but nobody ever taught me.I look like you should want to bend me over but you try not tothink …
Continue reading "Gabrielle Otero – Self-Portrait, Despite What They Say"
Phillis Wheatley Peters (c. 1753 – December 5, 1784) Thy various works, imperial queen, we see, How bright their forms! how deck'd with pomp by thee!Thy wond'rous acts in beauteous order stand,And all attest how potent is thine hand. From Helicon's refulgent heights attend,Ye sacred choir, and my attempts befriend:To tell her glories with …
Philip Bryant I remember my father's storiesabout him being cold, fitful,reproachful, surly, rude, cruel,unbearable, spiteful, arrogant, hateful.But then he'd playSome Day My Prince Will Comein a swirl of bright spring colorsthat come after a heavy rainmaking the world anew againand like the sometimes-tyrannical kingwho is truly repentant of his transgressionssteps out onto the balconyto greet …
Continue reading "Philip Bryant – Miles: Prince Of Darkness"
Elizabeth Alexander (May 30, 1962 -) My mother loves butter more than I do,more than anyone. She pulls chunks offthe stick and eats it plain, explainingcream spun around into butter! Growing upwe ate turkey cutlets sauteed in lemonand butter, butter and cheese on green noodles,butter melting in small pools in the heartsof Yorkshire puddings, butter …
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
