March 2011
30 posts
2 tags
The Wild Iris
by Louise Glück
At the end of my suffering there was a door.
Hear me out: that which you call death I remember.
Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting. Then nothing. The weak sun flickered over the dry surface.
It is terrible to survive as consciousness buried in the dark earth.
Then it was over: that which you fear, being a soul and unable to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth...
2 tags
Afternoon
by Dorothy Parker
When I am old, and comforted, And done with this desire, With Memory to share my bed And Peace to share my fire,
I’ll comb my hair in scalloped bands Beneath my laundered cap, And watch my cool and fragile hands Lie light upon my lap.
And I will have a sprigged gown With lace to kiss my throat; I’ll draw my curtain to the town, And hum a purring note.
And...
2 tags
from Astrophel and Stella
by Sir Philip Sidney
Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show, That she, dear she, might take some pleasure of my pain, Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know, Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain, I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe: Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain, Oft turning others’ leaves, to see if thence would...
2 tags
At Melville's Tomb
by Hart Crane
Often beneath the wave, wide from this ledge The dice of drowned men’s bones he saw bequeath An embassy. Their numbers as he watched, Beat on the dusty shore and were obscured.
And wrecks passed without sound of bells, The calyx of death’s bounty giving back A scattered chapter, livid hieroglyph, The portent wound in corridors of shells.
Then in the circuit calm of...
2 tags
The Good Morrow
by John Donne
I wonder by my troth, what thou and I Did, till we loved? Were we not wean’d till then? But suck’d on country pleasures, childishly? Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den? ‘Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be; If ever any beauty I did see, Which I desired, and got, ‘twas but a dream of thee. And now good-morrow to our waking souls, ...
2 tags
Ex-Boyfriends
by Kim Addonizio
They hang around, hitting on your friends or else you never hear from them again. They call when they’re drunk, or finally get sober, they’re passing through town and want dinner, they take your hand across the table, kiss you when you come back from the bathroom. They were your loves, your victims, your good dogs or bad boys, and they’re over you now. ...
2 tags
Momma Welfare Roll
by Maya Angelou
Her arms semaphore fat triangles, Pudgy hands bunched on layered hips Where bones idle under years of fatback And lima beans. Her jowls shiver in accusation Of crimes clichéd by Repetition. Her children, strangers To childhood’s toys, play Best the games of darkened doorways, Rooftop tag, and know the slick feel of Other people’s property. Too fat to whore, ...
2 tags
Fast Rode the Knight
by Stephen Crane
Fast rode the knight With spurs, hot and reeking, Ever waving an eager sword, “To save my lady!” Fast rode the knight, And leaped from saddle to war. Men of steel flickered and gleamed Like riot of silver lights, And the gold of the knight’s good banner Still waved on a castle wall.
A horse, Blowing, staggering, bloody thing, Forgotten at foot of castle wall. A...
2 tags
A Love Song from the North
by Sarojini Naidu
Tell me no more of thy love, papeeha, Wouldst thou recall to my heart, papeeha, Dreams of delight that are gone, When swift to my side came the feet of my lover With stars of the dusk and the dawn? I see the soft wings of the clouds on the river, And jewelled with raindrops the mango-leaves quiver, And tender boughs flower on the plain….. But what is their beauty to me,...
2 tags
A Drink with Something in It
by Ogden Nash
There is something about a martini, A tingle remarkably pleasant; A yellow, a mellow martini; I wish I had one at present. There is something about a martini, Ere the dining and dancing begin, And to tell you the truth, It is not the vermouth— I think that perhaps it’s the gin.
2 tags
Across Kansas
by William Stafford
My family slept those level miles, but like a bell rung deep till dawn I drove down an aisle of sound, nothing real but in the bell, past the town where I was born. Once you cross a land like that you own your face more: what the light struck told a self; every rock denied all the rest of the world. We stopped at Sharon Springs and ate— My state still dark, my dream too...
2 tags
Morning Song
by Sylvia Plath
Love set you going like a fat gold watch. The midwife slapped your footsoles, and you bald cry Took its place among the elements.
Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue. In a drafty museum, your nakedness Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.
I’m no more your mother Than a cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow Effacement at the...
2 tags
Lines for Winter
by Mark Strand
Tell yourself as it gets cold and gray falls from the air that you will go on walking, hearing the same tune no matter where you find yourself — inside the dome of dark or under the cracking white of the moon’s gaze in a valley of snow. Tonight as it gets cold tell yourself what you know which is nothing but the tune your bones play as you keep going. And you will be...
2 tags
Ireland
by Sidney Lanier
Heartsome Ireland, winsome Ireland, Charmer of the sun and sea, Bright beguiler of old anguish, How could Famine frown on thee? As our Gulf-Stream, drawn to thee-ward, Turns him from his northward flow, And our wintry western headlands Send thee summer from their snow, Thus the main and cordial current Of our love sets over sea, — Tender, comely, valiant Ireland, Songful,...
2 tags
History
by Robert Lowell
History has to live with what was here, clutching and close to fumbling all we had— it is so dull and gruesome how we die, unlike writing, life never finishes. Abel was finished; death is not remote, a flash-in-the-pan electrifies the skeptic, his cows crowding like skulls against high-voltage wire, his baby crying all night like a new machine. As in our Bibles,...
2 tags
And Ut Pictura Poesis Is Her Name
by John Ashbery
You can’t say it that way any more. Bothered about beauty you have to Come out into the open, into a clearing, And rest. Certainly whatever funny happens to you Is OK. To demand more than this would be strange Of you, you who have so many lovers, People who look up to you and are willing To do things for you, but you think It’s not right, that if they really knew...
3 tags
Near a Raven
a Pilish retelling of “The Raven” by Edgar Allen Poe
Midnights so dreary, tired and weary. Silently pondering volumes extolling all by-now obsolete lore. During my rather long nap - the weirdest tap! An ominous vibrating sound disturbing my chamber’s antedoor. “This”, I whispered quietly, “I ignore”.
Perfectly, the...
2 tags
On a March Day
by Sara Teasdale
Here in the teeth of this triumphant wind That shakes the naked shadows on the ground, Making a key-board of the earth to strike From clattering tree and hedge a separate sound, Bear witness for me that I loved my life, All things that hurt me and all things that healed, And that I swore it this day in March, Here at the edge of this new-broken field. You only knew me, tell...
2 tags
How It Happens
by W.S. Merwin
The sky said I am watching to see what you can make out of nothing I was looking up and I said I thought you were supposed to be doing that the sky said Many are clinging to that I am giving you a chance I was looking up and I said I am the only chance I have then the sky did not answer and here we are with our names for the days the vast days that do not listen to us
2 tags
Flood
by James Joyce
Goldbrown upon the sated flood The rockvine clusters lift and sway; Vast wings above the lambent waters brood Of sullen day. A waste of waters ruthlessly Sways and uplifts its weedy mane Where brooding day stares down upon the sea In dull disdain. Uplift and sway, O golden vine, Your clustered fruits to love’s full flood, Lambent and vast and ruthless as is thine Incertitude!
2 tags
Introduction to Poetry
by Billy Collins
I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out
or walk inside the poem’s room and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski across the surface of a poem, waving at the author’s name on the shore.
But all they want to do is...
2 tags
A Mountain Revelry
by Li Po
To wash and rinse our souls of their age-old sorrows, We drained a hundred jugs of wine. A splendid night it was… In the clear moonlight we were loath to go to bed, But at last drunkenness overtook us; And we laid ourselves down on the empty mountain, The earth for pillow, and the great heaven for coverlet.
2 tags
Woman King
by Samuel Beam
Blackbird claw, raven wing Under the red sunlight, Long clothesline, two shirtsleeves Waving as we go by. Hundred years, hundred more— Someday we may see A woman king, Wristwatch time Slowin’ as she goes to sleep. Black horsefly, lemonade Jar on the red anthill, Garden worm, cigarette Ash on the windowsill, Hundred years, hundred more— Someday we may...
2 tags
The Forsaken Merman
by Matthew Arnold
Come, dear children, let us away; Down and away below! Now my brothers call from the bay, Now the great winds shoreward blow, Now the salt tides seaward flow; Now the wild white horses play, Champ and chafe and toss in the spray. Children dear, let us away! This way, this way! Call her once before you go— Call once yet!...
2 tags
The Eel
by Harry Clifton
In the crowded yard, in the oily blue smoke Of an eel supper, the eel looks on.
He is home for the summer. She is home for the summer, Metamorphosing, the one in the other,
Androgynous, ambivalent, slipping in and out, Of the local, the universal,
Reading about itself, in the Book of the Eel, As a disappearing species,
Toying with its own myths, renewing its passports,...
2 tags
The Life You Could Be Living (If You Weren't...
by Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg
The life you could be living aches in its compression, tires of being a spark, an asteroid, a falling raindrop bouncing when it hits. It’s wound tight between muscle and sinew, lodged in the happy gaps of a synapse. It’s fluid like flowers. It sounds like geese out of sight. It’s marvelous as falling asleep when exhausted, and it foreshadows your dreams like a stray...
2 tags
My Life Has Been the Poem
by Henry David Thoreau
My life has been the poem I would have writ, But I could not both live and utter it.
2 tags
Remember Thee! Remember Thee!
by Lord Byron
Remember thee! Remember thee! Till Lethe quench life’s burning stream Remorse and shame shall cling to thee, And haunt thee like a feverish dream!
Remember thee! Aye, doubt it not. Thy husband too shall think of thee: By neither shalt thou be forgot, Thou false to him, thou fiend to me!
2 tags
Hades' Pitch
by Rita Dove
If I could just touch your ankle, he whispers, there on the inside, above the bone— leans closer, breath of lime and pepper— I know I could make love to you. She considers this, secretly thrilled, though she wasn’t quite sure what he meant. He was good with words, words that went straight to the liver. Was she falling for him out of sheer boredom— cooped up...
2 tags
A Process in the Weather of the Heart
by Dylan Thomas
A process in the weather of the heart Turns damp to dry; the golden shot Storms in the freezing tomb. A weather in the quarter of the veins Turns night to day; blood in their suns Lights up the living worm.
A process in the eye forwarns The bones of blindness; and the womb Drives in a death as life leaks out.
A darkness in the weather of the eye Is half its light; the fathomed...
