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
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
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 …
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 …
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"
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 …
Tao Writer (April 17, 1948 -) At my age, Death is always waiting just around the corner,standing in the half hidden doorways of my favorite hauntsin a mix of shadows and light, rolling my life or deathbetween his spiny fingers like a pair of dice.Sometimes He waits in plain daylight, on the street corner,in front …
Continue reading "Tao Writer – Memento Mori (Remember You Will Die)"
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"
WS Merwin (September 30, 1927–March 15, 2019) I will tell you what he told mein the years just after the waras we then calledthe second world wardon’t lose your arrogance yet he saidyou can do that when you’re olderlose it too soon and you maymerely replace it with vanityjust one time he suggestedchanging the usual …
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 …
Wendell Berry (August 05, 1934 -) At start of spring I open a trenchin the ground. I put into itthe winter's accumulation of paper,pages I do not want to readagain, useless words, fragments,errors. And I put into itthe contents of the outhouse:light of the sun, growth of the ground,finished with one of their journeys.To 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 …
May Sarton (May 3, 1912 – July 16, 1995) With no wind blowingIt sifts gently down,Enclosing my world inA cool white down,A tenderness of snowing. It falls and falls like sleepTill wakeful eyes can closeOn all the waste and lossAs peace comes in and flows,Snow-dreaming what I keep. Silence assumes the airAnd the five senses …
Rainer Maria Rilke (December 04, 1875 – December 29, 1926) The Duino Elegies are among my favorite mystical, existential love poems. I hold Rilke in the same ethereal realm as Rumi and Blake. To ease your enjoyment of Rilke’s creation written over a ten year period, I present them as individual verses, one each day …
Rainer Maria Rilke (December 04, 1875 – December 29, 1926) The Duino Elegies are among my favorite mystical, existential love poems. I hold Rilke in the same ethereal realm as Rumi and Blake. To ease your enjoyment of Rilke’s creation written over a ten year period, I present them as individual verses, one each day for the …
Continue reading "Rainer Maria Rilke – The Duino Elegies IX"
Rainer Maria Rilke (December 04, 1875 – December 29, 1926) The Duino Elegies are among my favorite mystical, existential love poems. I hold Rilke in the same ethereal realm as Rumi and Blake. To ease your enjoyment of Rilke’s creation written over a ten year period, I present them as individual verses, one each day …
Continue reading "Rainer Maria Rilke – The Duino Elegies VIII"
Rainer Maria Rilke (December 04, 1875 – December 29, 1926) The Duino Elegies are among my favorite mystical, existential love poems. I hold Rilke in the same ethereal realm as Rumi and Blake. To ease your enjoyment of Rilke’s creation written over a ten year period, I present them as individual verses, one each day …
Continue reading "Rainer Maria Rilke – The Duino Elegies VII"
Rainer Maria Rilke (December 04, 1875 – December 29, 1926) The Duino Elegies are among my favorite mystical, existential love poems. I hold Rilke in the same ethereal realm as Rumi and Blake. To ease your enjoyment of Rilke’s creation written over a ten year period, I present them as individual verses, one each day …
Continue reading "Rainer Maria Rilke – The Duino Elegies VI"
Rainer Maria Rilke (December 04, 1875 – December 29, 1926) The Duino Elegies are among my favorite mystical, existential love poems. I hold Rilke in the same ethereal realm as Rumi and Blake. To ease your enjoyment of Rilke’s creation written over a ten year period, I present them as individual verses, one each day …
Rainer Maria Rilke (December 04, 1875 – December 29, 1926) The Duino Elegies are among my favorite mystical, existential love poems. I hold Rilke in the same ethereal realm as Rumi and Blake. To ease your enjoyment of Rilke’s creation written over a ten year period, I present them as individual verses, one each day …
Continue reading "Rainer Maria Rilke – The Duino Elegies IV"
Rainer Maria Rilke (December 04, 1875 – December 29, 1926) The Duino Elegies are among my favorite mystical, existential love poems. I hold Rilke in the same ethereal realm as Rumi and Blake. To ease your enjoyment of Rilke’s creation written over a ten year period, I present them as individual verses, one each day …
Continue reading "Rainer Maria Rilke – The Duino Elegies III"
Rainer Maria Rilke (December 04, 1875 – December 29, 1926) The Duino Elegies are among my favorite mystical, existential love poems. I hold Rilke in the same ethereal realm as Rumi and Blake. To ease your enjoyment of Rilke’s creation written over a ten year period, I present them as individual verses, one each day …
Continue reading "Rainer Maria Rilke – The Duino Elegies II"
Rainer Maria Rilke (December 04, 1875 – December 29, 1926) The Duino Elegies are among my favorite mystical, existential love poems. I hold Rilke in the same ethereal realm as Rumi and Blake. To ease your enjoyment of Rilke’s creation written over a ten year period, I present them as individual verses, one each day …
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 …
Barbara Kingsolver (April 08, 1955 -) O misery. Imperfectuniverse of days stretched outahead, the string of pearlsand drops of venom on the web,losses of heart, of lifeand limb, news of the worst:Remind me againthe day will comewhen I look back amazedat the waste of sorry saltwhen I had no more than thisto cry about.Now I …
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"
Terrance Hayes (November 18, 1971 -) The father begins to make the sound a tree frog makesWhen he comes with his son & daughter to a pailOf tree frogs for sale in a Deep South flea marketJust before the last blood of dusk.A tree frog is called a tree frog because it chirpsLike a bird …
Matthew Dickman (August 20, 1975 -) The hotel sign blinkingin the brainof my bodystops blinking but notthe whole sign,you know, just a coupleof the letters,the H and T.Then the E and Lso all that is leftwhen the whole leftside of my bodycomes to an endis the O. I am sitting acrossfrom a beautifulwoman, drinking coffee,and …
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 …
Jane Hirshfield (February 24, 1953 -) The arborist has determined:senescence beetles cankerquickened by drought but in any casenot prunable not treatable not to be propped.And so.The branch from which the sharp-shinned hawks and their mate-cries.The trunk where the ant.The red squirrels’ eighty-foot playground.The bark cambium pine-sap cluster of needles.The Japanese patterns the ink-net.The dapple on certain fish.Today, for some, a universe will vanish.First noisily,then …
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Marissa Davis after Marie Howe in the wordless beginningiguana & myrrhmagma & reef ghost moth& the cordyceps tickling its nerves& cedar & archipelago & anemonedodo bird & cardinal waiting for its redocean salt & crude oil now blackmuck now most naïve fumbling planktonevery egg clutched in the copycat softof me unwomaned unracedunsexed as the ecstatic prokaryotethat would rage …
Yesika Salgado I am what comes after the civil warafter the dismembered corpsesthe burnt sugar cane fieldsthe mango tree strung with a single hanging bodythe man with his tongue in his pocketthe soldiers and the guerrillathe exodus of my grandmother’s children I arrived after the fleeing. after the bruise was named a desert.after the new …
Continue reading "Yesika Salgado – Diaspora Writes To Her New Home"
JR Solonche The lover of stone must be old,for there is no such thing as a young stone. The lover of stone must be strong,for he must be able to climb up the mountainand the summit of the mountainto find the beginning of stone. And he must be able to climb downthe mountain again to …
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
