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, …
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"
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 …
Michael Mark After I write Temporary on each sticky noteand press them onto socks, silverware, bills,my hair, I put one on each maple tree in the yard,and notice I don’t think of them as eternalas much. All it takes is a single written wordon red, yellow, green tags to remind methe car isn’t mine. The …
Natasha Trethewey (April 26, 1966 -) We tell the story every year—how we peered from the windows, shades drawn—though nothing really happened,the charred grass now green again. We peered from the windows, shades drawn,at the cross trussed like a Christmas tree,the charred grass still green. Thenwe darkened our rooms, lit the hurricane lamps. At the …
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 …
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 …
Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; it takes its origins from emotion recollected in tranquility. The emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquility gradually disappears. William Wordsworth (April 07, 1770 - April 23, 1850) Surprised by joy—impatient as the WindI turned to share the transport—Oh! with whomBut Thee, long …
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 …
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 …
Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) Take this kiss upon the brow!And, in parting from you now,Thus much let me avow—You are not wrong, who deemThat my days have been a dream;Yet if hope has flown awayIn a night, or in a day,In a vision, or in none,Is it therefore the …
Gregory Loselle (1963 -) The box of papers on the closet floorcontains his discharge papers from the war,a couple letters, dog tags: amuletsagainst prospective dangers, even betson futures filed away, here; telegramsmy grandmother amended in shorthandnotes (“May God protect you,”) on their backs;her death certificate, its seal (not waxlike his diplomas also here with hers)stamped …
Continue reading "Gregory Loselle – The Whole Of Him Collected"
Tess Gallagher (July 21, 1943 -) We had our heads downbaiting hooks—three wild salmonalready turned back that morningfor the in-season hatchery silversnow out there somewherecounting their luck—whenunder our small boat the seagave a roll like a giant turning overin sleep, lifting us so high I thoughtan ocean liner or freighter hadslipped up on us, the …
Elizabeth Bishop (February 8, 1911 - October 6, 1979) Although it is a cold evening,down by one of the fishhousesan old man sits netting,his net, in the gloaming almost invisible,a dark purple-brown,and his shuttle worn and polished.The air smells so strong of codfishit makes one’s nose run and one’s eyes water.The five fishhouses have steeply …
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 …
Jimmy Pappas Not because she wanted him to let her go.She wanted to stay on her bed. Not because shewanted him to remove his arms from around her.She wanted them to remain. Not because shewanted him to go away. She wanted him to be there. But because she wanted him to let her go, just …
Sarah P. Strong At first we did not know what was happening.The tea on the porch table cooled several degreeswhile she stood up, clutchedthe scrollwork back of the chair. The lineson her face arranged themselves in a waywe’d never seen, her nostrils flaredand the bird in the tree behind her stoppedsinging. Someone, not me, tooka …
Continue reading "Sarah P. Strong – After 75 Years, She Finally Gets Angry"
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 …
Anthony Dey Hoagland (November 19, 1953 – October 23, 2018) Though I have no children, sometimes I tell strangers about my daughter;I tell them about her science project for school.I tell them how badly my nerves were wreckedfrom …
Philip Levine Out of burlap sacks, out of bearing butter,Out of black bean and wet slate bread,Out of the acids of rage, the candor of tar,Out of creosote, gasoline, drive shafts, wooden dollies,They Lion grow.Out of the gray hillsOf industrial barns, out of rain, out of bus ride,West Virginia to Kiss My Ass, out of …
Red Hawk When I was a boy, the Varsity Theaterwas a mile from our house. Saturdayswe were allowed to walk there, and for a dimewe got a cowboy double-feature and a long-running serial, which involvedan incredibly stupid, weak and helplessbut beautiful woman, upon whomunimaginable indignities and cruelties were enacted by darkly evil men with mustaches.Week …
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"
Wendell Berry (August 05, 1934 -) The summer ends, and it is timeTo face another way. Our themeReversed, we harvest the last rowTo store against the cold, undoThe garden that will be undone.We grieve under the weakened sunTo see all earth’s green fountains dried,And fallen all the works of light.You do not speak, and I …
Beverley Bie Brahic In his dishevelled garden my neighborHas fourteen varieties of apples,Fourteen trees his wife put in as seedlingsBecause, being sick, she wanted somethingDifferent to do (different from being sick).In winter she ordered catalogues, poredOver subtleties of mouthfeel and touch:Tart and sweet and crisp; waxy, smooth,And rough. Spring planted an orchard,Spring projected summersOf green …
Ann Tweedy When my son was born, his immense needand my ability to answer it were like the two hemispheresof the world. Sometimes I was afraid and bewilderedyet comforted in knowing what my purpose was.When he slept in my bed between bouts of nursing,I’d throw my arm lightly across his chestlike a cave-dwelling woman making …
Margaret Eleanor Atwood (November 18, 1939 -) All those times I was boredout of my mind. Holding the logwhile he sawed it. Holdingthe string while he measured, boards,distances between things, or poundedstakes into the ground for rows and rowsof lettuces and beets, which I then (bored)weeded. Or sat in the backof the car, or sat …
Stephen Dunn (June 24, 1939 -) Why you need to have oneis not much more mysterious thanwhy you don’t say what you thinkat the birth of an ugly baby.Or, you’ve just made loveand feel you’d rather have beenin a dark booth where your partnerwas nodding, whispering yes, yes,you’re brilliant. The secret lifebegins early, is kept …
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"
Márton Kálasz (August 09, 1934 -) I don’t see my mother dancing—in my thoughts she still trims vinessprayed blue with copper sulfatefor her two bags of wheat, eight bushels rye.I don’t know if her young facewas lovely, if the other tenantsadmired her dragonfly form,or if my blonde father tethered his horse onlyat our cabin on …
Regina Spektor (February 18, 1980 -) (When the lecturer’s shirt matches the painting on the wall)He stands there speaking without loveOf theories where, in the democracyOf this universe, or that,There could be legislatorsWho ordain trajectories for falling bodies,Where all things must be dreamed with indifference,And purpose is a momentary silhouetteBacklit by a blue anthropic flash,A …
Tracy K. Smith (April 16, 1972 -) Comes in from a downpourShaking water in every direction —A collaborative condition:Gathered, shed, spread, thenForgotten, reabsorbed. Like loveFrom a lifetime ago, and mudA dog has tracked across the floor.
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 …
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
