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
Nate Marshall today i offer my selfall the small kindnesses. i’m out herewith breath in my bodythough it may be stank& body in my controlthough it may be too muchor not enough. today i offer the whole criba jam we ain’t heard in a minute& permission to turn the news down& move a hip like …
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Adam Zagajewski (June 21, 1945 – March 21, 2021) To go to Lvov. Which stationfor Lvov, if not in a dream, at dawn, when dew gleams on a suitcase, when expresstrains and bullet trains are being born. To leave in haste for Lvov, night or day, in September or in March. But only if Lvov exists,if it is …
John Keats ( October 31, 1795 – February 23, 1821) Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;Conspiring with him how to load and blessWith fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;To swell the gourd, and plump …
Ada Limón On the black wet branches of the linden,still clinging to umber leaves of late fall,two crows land. They say, “Stop,” and still I wantto make them into something they are not.Odin’s ravens, the bruja’s eyes. What newsare they bringing of our world to the worldof the gods? It can’t be good. More sufferingall …
Robert von Ranke Graves (July 24, 1895 – December 07, 1985) Every choice is always the wrong choice,Every vote cast is always cast away—How can truth hover between alternatives?Then love me more than dearly, love me wholly,Love me with no weighing of circumstance,As I am pledged in honour to love you:With no weakness, with no …
Franz Xaver Kappus (May 17, 1883 – October 09, 1966) Through my life there trembles, without complaintor sighs, a deep, dark pain.My dreams of pure snowblossomsconsecrate the stillest day.But oft my path encountersthe great question. I become smalland cold, like a lakewhose waters I dare not measure.Then a sorrow overcomes me, a sorrowlike the dullest …
Dawn Lundy Martin They will tell you that I was sick, that I was a drug addict. They will tell you I died a natural death. Sometimes young people just die, they will say, we don’t know why. They will say I was lazy, that I could not work because of disease and just general …
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William Blake (November 28, 1757 – August 12, 1827) You don't believe — I won't attempt to make ye.You are asleep — I won't attempt to wake ye.Sleep on, sleep on, while in your pleasant dreamsOf reason you may drink of life's clear streamsReason and Newton, they are quite two things,For so the swallow and …
Ha Jin (February 21, 1956 -) I sing of an old landwhere the gods have taken shelter underground,where the human idols eat human sacrifice,where hatred runs the business of philanthropy,where blazing dragons eclipse the wronged ghosts,where silence and smiles are the trace of wisdom,where words imitate spears and swords,where truth is always a bloody legend. I …
Michael Waters (November 23, 1949 -) Seth wrestled the Camaro with one fist & poppedHandfuls of pills while the pistol rode my thigh.I shouted Is it loaded? over Grandmaster Flash.Amateur thug, he slipped the piece into his boot& swaggered like a bouncer into the funeral home. Sunglass’d still & jittery, he scanned the room,Swept past uncles …
Kim Addonizio (July 31, 1954 -) One day everything that’s over or deadwill come back, oil painting & God,chivalry & the kings (even the madold rotters, why not, while the headsof the plotters are removedfrom their iron spikes & carefully gluedon again)— why not believe in the miracle— plaidhas already come back so why not …
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Naomi Shihab Nye (March 12, 1952 -) Before you know what kindness really isyou must lose things,feel the future dissolve in a momentlike salt in a weakened broth.What you held in your hand,what you counted and carefully saved,all this must go so you knowhow desolate the landscape can bebetween the regions of kindness.How you ride …
Joan Kwon Glass If rust can grow on the moon’s surface,240,000 miles away from oxygen,if solar wind can traverse that vacuum,confounding scientists, turning red the crustof such a scarred and lonesome celestial body,maybe I am capable of more than I think.Maybe everything I need for alchemyis already here, in my core and cells,in this room …
Aria Aber Last night it startled me again—I dreamedof the corn maze through which we walked,almost a decade ago, in the presenceof our other lovers. It was all burned down.Purple corn glowed in the fields envelopingthe ruined maze, the woodlands washedby October sun. Instead of you, I found in the salt-white musicof that familiar landscape …
David Romtvedt My Uncle Will wanted to be on Broadway.After family dinners, when everyone sat arounddrinking coffee, he’d do a little tap dance or shuffle.Of course it was embarrassing to have a grown manwho worked at the lumberyard dancing after dinner. On my ninth birthday, I became his reluctant partner.We wore white shirts, red jackets, …
Alexandra Umlas That night, the clouds roll in,as if on a whim, just at the momentyou decide to take the dog you rescuedoutside to pee—and you’ve discoveredhow the dog is scared of the rain,the wind shattering the stillnessof the trees, how the dog won’t move,not even an inch, but stands solidly,his four legs statued to …
Marie Howe The soul has a story that has a shape that almost no onesees. No, no one ever does. All those kisses, The bedroom chair that rocked with me in it, his bodyhis body and his and his and his. More, I said, moreand more and more. . . . What has it come to?Like …
Hayden Saunier A dog and I stare at each otherfrom our separate cars, waiting for our people to return.He’s a shepherd mix, big head, big ears,like me, he’s riding shotgun.Heat blares inside my car,exhaust plumes from the pickup truck he’s in,so I know he isn’t freezing but I don’t knowif he’s a he or a …
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William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) They call me and I go.It is a frozen roadpast midnight, a dustof snow caughtin the rigid wheeltracks.The door opens.I smile, enter andshake off the cold.Here is a great womanon her side in the bed.She is sick,perhaps vomiting,perhaps laboringto give birth toa tenth child. Joy! …
Maxine Kumin (June 6, 1925 – February 6, 2014) If I could only live at the pitchthat is near madness, Eberhart wrotebut there was his wife Betty hanging ontohis coattails for dear life to the end of her life.No one intervened when my mother’s brother’swife ran off with the new young rabbievery woman in the …
Paul Laurence Dunbar (June 27, 1872 – February 9, 1906) We wear the mask that grins and lies,It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—This debt we pay to human guile;With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,And mouth with myriad subtleties. Why should the world be over-wise,In counting all our tears and sighs?Nay, let them …
Jane Kenyon (May 23, 1947 – April 22, 1995) Let the light of late afternoonshine through chinks in the barn, moving up the bales as the sun moves down. Let the cricket take up chafing as a woman takes up her needles and her yarn. Let evening come. Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned in long grass. Let …
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, …
Jim Moore 1I’ve always wanted to write a poem that endsat the ocean. How the poem gets theredoesn’t much matter, just so at lastit arrives. The manatee will be therewe saw all those years ago,almost motionless under the waterlike a pendant swaying at an invisible throat,the one my mother used to wearon the most special …
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 …
Meena Alexander (February 17, 1951 – November 21, 2018) In a crumpled shirt (so casual for a god)Bow tucked loosely under an arm still jittery from battleHe balanced himself on a flat boat painted black.Each wave as I kneel closer a migrant flagA tongue with syllables no script can catch.The many births you have passed …
Ellen Bass (June 16, 1947 -) to love life, to love it evenwhen you have no stomach for itand everything you've held dearcrumbles like burnt paper in your hands,your throat filled with the silt of it.When grief sits with you, its tropical heatthickening the air, heavy as watermore fit for gills than lungs;when grief weights …
William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) so much dependsupona red wheelbarrowglazed with rainwaterbeside the whitechickens.
Lisel Mueller (February 8, 1924 – February 21, 2020) Let it come down: these thicknesses of airhave long enough walled love away from love;stillness has hardened until words despairof their high leaps and kisses shut themselvesback into wishing. Crippled lovers lieagainst a weather which holds out on them,waiting, awaiting some shrill sign, some cry,some screaming …
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, …
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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 …
Camille Rankine What have ITo say in my wrong tongueOf what is gone To know something isLost but what You have forgotten whatYou long forgot If I amWhat survives I am here but I am notMuch of anything at all To be what’s leftAnd all the rest scooped outAnd dropped into the sea My fleshForming …
David Biespiel At first they stand, orphaned, like a line of birds,First on one foot, then the other, in unison,Like any other unnamed someones, as if poisedFor a firing line, until someone thinks he knowsA train is coming in the sparrow-morning light,And someone else taps a pack of cigarettesAgainst his gloved hand, not exotic,But it’s …
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
