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
Francesca Nemko Who’d have thoughtThat reaching 84Would feel like adolescence?All pimples and unmanageable hairStammering over long wordsBeing totally irresponsibleAnd forgetting what timeI’m supposed to be home. I am NOT aging gracefully(even though I may appear to beon the outside)And, to be honest, I don’t reallyWant to grow up!I did that when I was 3040, 50, …
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 …
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"
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 …
Danusha Laméris Do they ever want to escape?Climb out of the white pagesand enter our world?Holden Caulfield slipping in the movie theaterto catch the two o'clockAnna Karenina sitting in a diner,reading the paper as the waitressserves up a cheeseburger.Even Hector, on break from the Iliad,takes a stroll through the park,admires the tulips.Maybe they grew tiredof …
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 …
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 …
Harryette Mullen (July 01, 1953 -) We are not responsible for your lost or stolen relatives.We cannot guarantee your safety if you disobey our instructions.We do not endorse the causes or claims of people begging for handouts.We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone. Your ticket does not guarantee that we will honor your …
Continue reading "Harryette Mullen – We Are Not Responsible"
Amanda Gorman (March 07, 1998 -) At the age of 5I saw how we always pick the flower swelling with the most color.The color distinguishes it from the rest, and tells us:This flower should not be left behind.But this does not happen in the case of colored girls.Our color makes hands pull back, and we, …
Continue reading "Amanda Gorman – At the Age of 18 – Ode to Girls of Color"
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"
Wystan Hugh Auden aka WH Auden (February 21, 1907 – September 29, 1973) If all a top physicist knowsAbout the Truth be true,Then, for all the so-and-so’s,Futility and grime,Our common world contains,We have a better timeThan the Greater Nebulae do,Or the atoms in our brains.Marriage is rarely blissBut, surely it would be worseAs particles to …
Continue reading "WH Auden – After Reading A Child’s Guide To Modern Physics"
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 …
T.S. Eliot (September 26, 1888–January 4, 1965) Time present and time pastAre both perhaps present in time futureAnd time future contained in time past.If all time is eternally presentAll time is unredeemable.What might have been is an abstractionRemaining a perpetual possibilityOnly in a world of speculation.What might have been and what has beenPoint to one …
William Ernest Henley (August 23, 1849 – July 11, 1903) Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole,I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud.Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed. Beyond this …
David Whyte (November 02, 1955 -) Sometimesif you move carefullythrough the forest,breathinglike the onesin the old stories,who could crossa shimmering bed of leaveswithout a sound,you come to a placewhose only taskis to trouble youwith tinybut frightening requests,conceived out of nowherebut in this placebeginning to lead everywhere.Requests to stop whatyou are doing right now,andto stop what …
Jasmin Roberts My grandmother will tell you thatshe does not like white people,does not look them in the eye. W.E.B. Du Bois coined the term double consciousness in 1903.It refers to the psychological experience of viewing oneselfthrough the lens of a racist white society. He meant that to grow up black in Americais to be …
Continue reading "Jasmin Roberts – Self-Selection For Preservation"
Erika L. Sánchez It was the way summer hunted me:a sequence of instructionsin the folds of a flower.How do I explain the hatred of the sun,the terrible wonder of being alive?Fuck the fucking birds. I lookedto the sky to join the storms. I couldn’thave imagined you, swift as the lightningI traced with my finger, a …
Continue reading "Erika L Sánchez – Instructions For Living"
Galway Mills Kinnell (February 1, 1927 – October 28, 2014) 1 When one has lived a long time alone,one refrains from swatting the flyand lets him go, and one hesitates to strikethe mosquito, though more than willing to slapthe flesh under her, and one lifts the toadfrom the pit too deep to hop out ofand …
Continue reading "Galway Kinnell – When One Has Lived a Long Time Alone"
Amanda Gorman When day comes we ask ourselves, where can we find light in this never-ending shade? The loss we carry, a sea we must wade. We’ve braved the belly of the beast. We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace. In the norms and notions of what just is isn’t always justice. And yet, the …
Carl Phillips (1959 -) Remind me to show you where the horses finally got freedfor good—not for the freedom of it, or anything likebeauty, though their running was for sure a loveliness, I’mthinking more how there’s a kind of violence to re-enteringunexpectedly a space we never meant to leave but gottorn away from so long …
Continue reading "Carl Phillips – Pale Colors in a Tall Field"
Laura Foley I didn't read the news.I raked a rainbowof pungent autumn leaves,played abroad with happy dogs,held my granddaughter in my arms,and sat beneath an amiable maple,attentive to current events.
Alejandro Escudé I wanted my soul out of the house, too.So, I took all my diaries—twenty or so,from the past twenty years. And I slipped theminto the recycling bin. I took all my photos,baby, childhood, adolescence, college years,and trashed those, too. I took my blood pressure reader,and I took the white carnival mask I bought …
Continue reading "Alejandro Escudé – Bed Sheets (Moving Out After Separation)"
Aimee Nezhukumatathil “After reading a letter from his mother, Harry T. Burn cast the deciding vote to ratify the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.” My parents are from countrieswhere mangoes grow wild and boldand eagles cry the sky in arcs and dips.America loved this bird too and made it clutch olives and arrows. Some …
Kahlil Gibran (January 6, 1883 – April 10, 1931) Defeat, my Defeat, my solitude and my aloofness;You are dearer to me than a thousand triumphs,And sweeter to my heart than all world-glory. Defeat, my Defeat, my self-knowledge and my defiance,Through you I know that I am yet young and swift of footAnd not to be …
James Ragan (1944 -) I don’t know how long I can play with a sloth,how long I can wait to time his glidealong a space no wider than his bulbous face,as if the air had softened long enough to sloweach arm’s motion to an easy slide,as if by committing each inch of legto a longer …
CL O’Dell I am ready for the nextthing: rows and rows of wingslifting off the earthand telling me to stay.The sky wriggles with lifeand still, the air is graylike any rockabove a grave.So let me have this nowbefore the blossomstake my absencefrom the yardand I am again only one-sided,a living thing responsibleto live, finding myself …
Jenny Joseph (May 07, 1932 -) When I am an old woman I shall wear purple With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me. And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter. I shall sit down on the pavement …
Langston Hughes (February 01, 1902 – May 22, 1967) Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,I heard a Negro play.Down on Lenox Avenue the other nightBy the pale dull pallor of an old gas lightHe did a lazy sway . . .He did a lazy sway . . .To the …
Ama Codjoe ⏤ After Pablo Neruda and Fannie Lou Hamer I’m tired of being a woman. I walk into grocery stores and laundromats wet with the cracked face of a maidenhead lurching across the Atlantic. I want to sleep like a seed in stony ground. I want the phone to stop biting my ear. I …
Maria Wisława Anna Szymborska (July 2, 1923–February 1, 2012) I prefer movies. I prefer cats. I prefer the oaks along the Warta. I prefer Dickens to Dostoyevsky. I prefer myself liking people to myself loving mankind. I prefer keeping a needle and thread on hand, just in case. I prefer the color green. I prefer …
Continue reading "Maria Wisława Anna Szymborska – Possibilities"
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
