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 – In the Midst of Life
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 – The Pulse Of Morning
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 – Snow Fall
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 – The Duino Elegies X
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 – 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 for the …
Continue reading "Rainer Maria Rilke – The Duino Elegies IX"
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 VIII"
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 VII"
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 …
Continue reading "Rainer Maria Rilke – The Duino Elegies VI"
Rainer Maria Rilke – The Duino Elegies V
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 – 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 IV"
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 III"
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 …
Continue reading "Rainer Maria Rilke – The Duino Elegies II"
Rainer Maria Rilke – The Duino Elegies I
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 – Eagle Poem
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 – How to Survive This
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 – As If To Demonstrate An Eclipse
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 – Pseudacris Crucifer
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 – Stroke
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 – Imagination
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 – Today, Another Universe
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 …
Continue reading "Jane Hirshfield – Today, Another Universe"
Marissa Davis – Singularity
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 – Diaspora Writes To Her New Home
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
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 …
Rudyard Kipling – The Explorer
Rudyard Kipling (December 30, 1865 – January 18, 1936) "There's no sense in going further --it's the edge of cultivation,"So they said, and I believed it --broke my land and sowed my crop --Built my barns and strung my fencesin the little border stationTucked away below the foothillswhere the trails run out and stop. Till …
Natalie Diaz – Lake-Loop
Natalie Diaz (September 4, 1978 -) because there was yet no lake into many nights we made the lake a labor, and its necessary laboringsto find the basin not yet openedin my body, yet my body — any bodywet or water from the start, to fill a clay, start being what it ever means, a beginning …
