Wise Poets, Personal Writings, Clouds And Wisdom
Sarah Holland-Batt (December 22, 1982 -) In the garden, my father sits in his wheelchairgarlanded by summer hibiscuslike a saint in a seventeenth-century cartouche.A flowering wreath buzzes around his head—passionate red. He holds the gift of deathin his lap: small, oblong, wrapped in black.He has been waiting seventeen years to open itand is impatient. When …
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Gregory Fraser I heard you were going to Italy, he said. You heard correct, she said.You finally did it, he said, I’m happy for you. I’m happy for myself, she said.One of Scarlatti’s sonatas poured through the wide French doorsand a toast went up to the hosts, who announced they had beensummoned by the spirits …
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Marilyn Nelson (April 26, 1946 -) A new grad student far away from home,I took every step on trembling ground.I knew no one. Who were my friends?The other black student in the programducked and rushed away when our eyes met.Seminar rooms were full of hungry dogssnapping up scraps of nodding approval.At the end of a …
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Beck Anson / By now I know the drill—stuff clothes into a bag, pullthe strings out of my sweatpants,slip on my black slip-on Vans,clip my fingernails into the trash canbecause who knows when I’ll be able to next.I can’t bring my deodorant becauseit has alcohol in the top three ingredients, and yes,patients actually try to …
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George Bilgere When the doctor called at 3amto tell me that only a ventilatorcould keep my aunt alive at that point,I stood shivering in the dark kitchen,thinking about that word, ventilator. I envisioned a dark shaft of some sortin an old office building from the fifties,when my aunt was a young woman.Then I imagined being …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – George Bilgere – Living Will"
Jacinta V White Gumbo soil is great for growing cotton& blueberries & heirloom rosesbut is better for burying the dead& stories & roots & family ties& nonsense & quarrels & letters & coins & cigarette butts& moonshine & past lives & past wives with boyfriends& all things unspeakable & guilt & sin & worn shoes& …
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Donald Andrew Hall (September 20, 1928 – June 23, 2018) When I was twelve I sat by myself in the steamlinerwith a shoebox of sandwiches and deviled eggsmy mother made, and ate everything right awayas the train headed north by the Sound where trestlesof derelict trolley lines roosted nations of seagulls.From South Station I took …
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Pattiann Rogers Straight up away from this road,Away from the fitted particles of frostCoating the hull of each chick pea,And the stiff archer bug making its wayIn the morning dark, toe hair by toe hair,Up the stem of the trillium,Straight up through the sky above this road right now,The galaxies of the Cygnus A clusterAre …
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Sandra Cisneros (December 20, 1954 -) A Song For Guitar I liked being youngwith you once.A moment or two,here and therewith you once.When youwere a poet,and I was a poet.Wordsmiths afraidof the wordsshimmeringright before us.I remember censoringmyself when I was sober.Spontaneous combustionwhen I wasn’t.We did a lot of thingsback thenunder the courageof alcohol.We were a …
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Zang Di At the IKEA checkout, a tiny curiositynearly stirred your pocket money.Each time I brought you along,the wait in line made human creativityseem as funny as showing off.It was already hard to keep youfrom seeing through a father’s teachings. I tried all the tricks,but mostly I steeled myselfand showed that hidden behind the father’s …
Kristal Leebrick I remember our breathin the icy airand how the northern lights gatheredin a haze at the horizon,spread up past the water towerthen vanished into the dark.I remember that January night in North Dakota:We left the dance,the hoods of our dads’ air force parkas zipped tight,our bare hands pulled into the coat sleeves.We raninto …
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Joyce Sutphen (August 10, 1949 -) It was hard work, dying, harderthan anything he'd ever done. Whatever brutal, bruising, back-Breaking chore he'd forced himself to endure—it was nothingcompared to this. And it took so long. When would the jobbe over? Who would call him home for supper? And it washard for us (his children)— all …
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Señor Tao (April 17, 1948 -) MomentsEach one is important.Remember what you can remember.Record what you wish to remember and not forget… because you will.But what are these moments?How do I know what moments arememorable moments I will want to remember?The ones I promised someone, somewhere,I would never forget and already have?I wish to share …
Guy Fawkes (April 13, 1570 – January 31, 1606) Remember, remember!The fifth of November,The Gunpowder treason and plot;I know of no reasonWhy the Gunpowder treasonShould ever be forgot! English Folk Verse (c.1870) From The Archives Originally Published November 05, 2019 But what of the man? I know his name was Guy Fawkes and I know …
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Jim Peterson For Harriet You have done everythingThere is nothing left to do Your wrongs are now rightYour rights are still rightYou can let go now Let go of your eyesthat have seen too muchand too little,your hands that have playedthe strings, the keys,the skins of animalsstretched tight over the drums Let go of the …
Wendell Berry (August 05, 1934 -) The need comes on me nowto speak across the yearsto those who finally will live hereafter the present ruin, in the absenceof most of my kind who by noware dead, or have given their mindsto machines and become strange,"over-qualified" for the hardhandwork that must be doneto remake, so far …
Stephen Dunn (June 24, 1939 – June 24, 2021) And so you call your best friendwho’s away, just to hear his voice,but forget his recording concludeswith “Have a nice day.” “Thank you, but I have other plans,”you’re always tempted to respond,as an old lady once did, the clerkin the liquor store unable to laugh. Always …
Mary Angelino Struck with purpose, my father and grandfather worked silently together, in a languageof pointing and nods. My brother and I knewnot to ask questions when we brought them lunch on plastic trays: tuna salad sandwichesswaddled in napkins, the pitcher of lemonade that left vanishing halos on top of the brick wall. They’d work until the sky forgot …
Adrienne Rich (May 16, 1929 – March 27, 2012) I wake up in your bed. I know I have been dreaming.Much earlier, the alarm broke us from each other,you’ve been at your desk for hours. I know what I dreamed:our friend the poet comes into my roomwhere I’ve been writing for days,drafts, carbons, poems are …
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Danusha Laméris Ever since I found out that earth worms have taste budsall over the delicate pink strings of their bodies,I pause dropping apple peels into the compost bin, imaginethe dark, writhing ecstasy, the sweetness of applespermeating their pores. I offer beets and parsley,avocado, and melon, the feathery tops of carrots.I’d always thought theirs a …
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Walt Whitman (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) Of the terrible doubt of appearances,Of the uncertainty after all, that we may be deluded,That may-be reliance and hope are but speculations after all,That may-be identity beyond the grave is a beautiful fable only,May-be the things I perceive, the animals, plants, men, hills, shining and flowing …
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Rachel Betesh coarse skin, like a laborer;shoulders up, like horses;made for cold, like fire is,a radish holds its heat.in winter, we keepthe leastbecoming, what’s not bright,what burns your throat,these old,strong roots.black radishes:my back ached, i suppose,from taking them—the way you feel sorewhen you’ve lovedwith effort. when you’vestilled your thoughtswith work.bitter flesh, like wanting;smoky gray, like …
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Jeffrey Morgan They know by now about the bananas—yellow stippled with brown spotslike cheetahs—and our subsequent conversations about who should step up and bake a pie.They know by now our music, and can therefore construct an intimacy both sacred and mythological. They know what we say in our sleep better than we do ourselves,even as rain whispers promises to the darkness, even as …
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Joanna Fuhrman "Being in a funk" is what the cool people call it. It's the purple that surrounds the scene at the lake.Not sad enough to actually drown. You say, "I'm in a funk," and I think you thinkyou're too pretty, too well groomed,too stylishly disheveled, to actually sulk. Have you ever tried drinking a …
Tom Hennen Toads are smarter than frogs. Like all of us who are not good-looking they have to rely on their wits. A woman around thebeginning of the last century who was in love with frogs wrotea wonderful book on frogs and toads. In it she says if you placea frog and a toad on …
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Gabrielle Calvocoressi What you thought was the sound of the deer drinkingat the base of the ravine was not their soft tonguesentering the water but my Love tying my bow tie.We were in our little house just up from the ravine.Forgive yourself. It’s easy to mistake her wristsfor the necks of deer. Her fingers move …
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Jamey Hecht After Lattimore’s Homer We live on the flat surface of the world, and compared with a god,We can do nothing. If the god or the god’s divine messengerWere to come to Manhattan and approach this parkbench and sit beside me—And there is plenty of space for him or her and there is no …
Kate Barnes At eighteen, in Paris,I just woke up out of a dreamjust before dawn, and stepped through the long windowfrom my cold room with its red silk walls.Shivering a little in my dressing gown,I leaned on the balustradeand, look, overnight a light snow had fallen;no car had driven over it yet, it lay in …
José Antonio Rodríguez Don’t misunderstand me, I love a good poemLike half my Facebook friends, one that transports youTo a corner of the soul you didn’t know was thereBecause you couldn’t find the precise metaphor,Even if you felt it, like that time my parents sawA local news story of an older woman asking for helpWith …
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Marianne Moore (November 15, 1887 – February 5, 1972) What is our innocence,what is our guilt? All arenaked, none is safe. And whenceis courage: the unanswered question,the resolute doubt, —dumbly calling, deafly listening—thatin misfortune, even death,encourage othersand in its defeat, stirsthe soul to be strong? Hesees deep and is glad, whoaccedes to mortalityand in his …
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Jack Ridl (April 10, 1944 -) My grandfather grew up holding rags,pounding his fist into the pocketof a ball glove, gripping a plumb linefor his father who built what anyoneneeded. At sixteen, wanting to work onhis own, he lied about his ageand for forty-nine years carried his lunchto the assembly line where he stoodtightening bolts …
In war one nation may win, another nation may lose but the innocent victims who wish only to live, to survive, always lose. I cry each time I read this poem but I still read it’s story. The poet has a responsibility to truth whether it is found in the beauty of a sunset, the …
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Faith Shearin They go to the dark, unloved places: into buildingswhere no one lives, where windows have brokenand walls have fallen and all the furnitureis full of birds. Secrets are at the bottomof each tea cup, at the bottom of the oceanwhere fish swim through their ruined remains.Secrets are in hospitals where doctorshide them in …
Adam Zagajewski (June 21, 1945 – March 21, 2021) You shout from the other roomYou ask me how to spell boogie-woogieAnd instantly I think what luckno war has been declaredno fire has consumedour city’s monumentsour bodies our dwellingsThe river didn’t floodno friendshave been arrestedIt’s only boogie-woogieI sigh relievedand say it’s spelled just like it soundsboogie-woogie …
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Maja Lukic I was as blank today as you canimagine, lost the way to circle backto the beginning or even last summer.I remember those days we wore matchinglemon flower dresses. I remember themorbid anatomy of lemons and suburbanfront yards. We posed for photographsin our lemon dresses. We were little girlson film, locked in a disposable …
I have the most intense erotic dreams now. I have a sense of taste in my dreams, I have soundtracks, I have original works of art. It’s like the movies but better, ’cause I’m in it. My best dream was that I put a credit card down on a reception desk in a fancy hotel …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Sandra Cisneros – Making Love After Celibacy"
Lucille Clifton (June 27, 1936 – February 13, 2010) people who are going to bein a few yearsbottoms of treesbear a responsibility to somethingbesides people if it was onlyyou and mesharing the consequencesit would be differentit wouId be justgenerations of men …
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Bob Hicok In deciding what I am, I’ve ruled out cat, vulture, shoe,a sadist who tortures people to death in a Syrian hospital,a president who separates families at the border,a handful of purple irises at the beginning of the pathto heaven. Is there memory in the shade of a treeof a lynching fifty years ago, …
Alison Townsend At sunset the russet oak turns into a lamp.Each polished leaf glows amber, lit by sun.As a child, I raked leaves with my mother each fall.We burned small pyres, their flames the color of loss. Each polished leaf glows amber, lit by sun.I could not know my mother would die young.We burned small …
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Maria Mazziotti Gillan At eleven, my granddaughter looks like my daughterdid, that slender body, that thin face, the gracewith which she moves. When she visits, she sitswith my daughter; they have hot chocolate togetherand talk. The way my granddaughter moves her hands,the concentration with which she does everything,knocks me back to the time when I …
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Jacinta V White women in white dresses surroundme after service like absent motherslonging for baby's return to their breasts rejoicing—prayers for a daughter's return are answered while they wait in line to tell me they knew my folks, and how …
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Scott Owens Pulling the house down piece by piece,we see each other at our worstbefore we've even had our first date,my face itching with black insulation,yours covered with white dust of sheetrock.We scrape off paint and paper, buff outspots, old glue, unexplainedstains, remove tacky panelingrevealing forgotten charm, originalbeadboard, hard woods, solid ceilings.We're woefully unprepared, untrained,undertooled, …
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Edna St Vincent Millay (February 22, 1892 – October 19, 1950) 🌹In memory of those whose lives ended on September 11, 2001 I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:Into the darkness …
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Elizabeth Train-Brown I feel unraveledI feel like scriptureI feel like the words of prophetstorn aparttranslatedretranslatedrewrittenspread to countries that don’t carewhat I have to say. I feel like taking out the middle mantaking out the writerthe penthe pageburrowing my face through the undergrowthslithering through the cracksof a confession boothand whispering my sinsthrough a mouthful of leaves. …
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Rita Dove (August 28, 1952 -) Imagine you wake upwith a second chance: The blue jayhawks his pretty waresand the oak still stands, spreadingglorious shade. If you don’t look back,the future never happens.How good to rise in sunlight,in the prodigal smell of biscuits –eggs and sausage on the grill.The whole sky is yoursto write on, …
Toi Derricotte (April 12, 1941 -) How I thrived from the triflesin my aunt Lenora’s handbag—Tums,pencils, Lifesavers, fancycolored cards—how, in the early morningbefore dawn, beforemy parents rose, her welcoming sheetshid me from the house’sstorms. She’d listen tomy far-fetched taleswhile I (standing on a stool) “helped”her dry dishes; or, after, when we’dwalk through the neighborhood’sdeep night, …
William Blake (November 28, 1757 – August 12, 1827) To see a World in a Grain of SandAnd a Heaven in a Wild FlowerHold Infinity in the palm of your handAnd Eternity in an hourA Robin Red breast in a CagePuts all Heaven in a RageA Dove house filld with Doves & PigeonsShudders Hell thr' …
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Jo McDougall From a wood beyond the fields,something dark has not yet advancedtoward the yellow lightof the kitchen.A woman puts away the dishes.A man goes through the mail.A child leans over the table,saying her homework. The dog looks up once and growlsas if not meaning to, a soundalmost inaudible.He clicks across the floor, nosing for …
Perie Longo For my husband Everything I see or hear is about him.This morning, the Dalai Lamasays there is so much sufferingin the world he can’t do much. With his monks he sifts colored sandinto an intricate design for peace,then sweeps it away. They collectthe remains in a small jar, sprinkle a littleon top of …
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There is something in the pang of change — More than the heart can bear — Unhappiness remembering happiness. Euripides From The Archives - Originally Published June 29, 2018Tao Writer (April 17, 1948 -) 🌹For Kathleen Sherrill - Happy Birthday Remember To Remember When all that remains of me are my cremated ashesdon’t store them …
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Steven Espada Dawson That summer we’d hop fencesand call them gates. You’d shark pool, then we’d hunt deerwith all the quarters you tricked. You smiled when they leaptout of view. Passed me that orange rifle, told me to aimthen close my eyes for ten years. My antlered brother, momwon’t sell the house so you can …
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Anthony Hoagland (November 19, 1953 – October 23, 2018) Once, in the cool blue middle of a lake,up to my neck in that most precious element of all, I found a pale-gray, curled-upwards pigeon featherfloating on the tension of the water at the very instant when a dragonfly,like a blue-green iridescent bobby pin, hovered over …
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May Swenson (May 28, 1913 – December 4, 1989) Poetry is based in a craving to get through the curtains of things as they appear, to things as they are, and then into the larger, wilder space of things as they are becoming. This ambition involves a paradox: an instinctive belief in the senses as …
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Heather Allen Gradually along the rangeAll things exchange their lightFor darkness. Single oaksOn hills that burned with goldMerge now in shadow, And hawks sail outOver the valley,Its air like a mirror Filling with night,That takes our imagesAnd does not return them, Just as the pinesBlot out our voices,And even the stones at our feet Fade …
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June Adrienne Su The lazy Susan, in antiquity, would have been a fire.Drinking all night, the parents never get drunk.This is an ancient brew, with nuts, seeds, fruitto fuel the hours, to light a center.The tea dispenser’s orange light reminds us:they’re in the dining room, laughing in Chinesewhile we play Scrabble or Monopoly out here.They’re …
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From The Archives - Originally Published February 22, 2018 Tao Writer (April 17, 1948 -) My Father’s Son I became my father’s sonnot borne of his angerbut of my mother’s grace.My older brother was his favorite,from the same mold they were made.He was distant from meand absent from us all.I hid from him in solitude,my mother …
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Alicia Elsbeth Stallings (July 2, 1968 -) Dear A., Even before the virus, theseWere nearly empty galleries,But now we have these cluttered shelvesAnd halls of statues to ourselves.Stickers on the floor, in Greek,Tell us “Watch your apostasies”: “Mind your distance,” so to speak.But since the guards outnumber usThere is no nearness we need fear,No tourists …
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Ron Padgett (June 17, 1942 -) The best thing I didfor my motherwas to outlive her for which I deserveno credit though it makes me gladthat she didn't haveto see me die Like most people(I suppose)I feel I shouldhave done morefor her Like what?I wasn't such a bad son I would have wantedto have loved …
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Philip Levine (January 10, 1928 – February 14, 2015) We don't see the ocean, not ever, but in July and Augustwhen the worst heat seems to rise from the hard clayof this valley, you could be walking through a fig orchardwhen suddenly the wind cools and for a momentyou get a whiff of salt, and …
Gabrielle Calvocoressi The days I don’t want to kill myselfare extraordinary. Deep bass. All the peoplein the streets waiting for their high fivesand leaping, I mean leaping,when they see me. I am the sun-filledgod of love. Or at least an optimisticunder-secretary. There should be a word for it.The days you wake up and do not wantto …
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Barbara Quick That hair’s breadth of a moment,knowing that the body has lurched outsidethe mind’s controland is falling. The head-first journey of nine feetpowered by a thirty-pound backpack–seeing not lights, but the hubrisof that one false, resentful stepupwards onto the fallen tree-trunkblocking the trail–that one unpracticed vaultup to a place where balance–my balance–is suddenly gone. …
Señor Tao (April 17, 1948 -) Drawn To You I am drawnto youBy what forceI do not knowBirds to airFish to waterBody to bodySoul to soulThe natural thingsOver which weHave no controlIt is like thatWith love
William Blake (November 28, 1757 – August 12, 1827) There is a smile of love,And there is a smile of deceit;And there is a smile of smiles,In which these two smiles meet. (And there is a frown of hate,And there is a frown of disdain;And there is a frown of frownsWhich you strive to forget …
RA Villanueva Yanked free at the gills from cartilage and spine,these fish heads my mother cleans, whose bodies she scales, throwsall into salt water and crushed tamarind. At dinner she alonewill spoon out their eyes with her fingers, suck down each pair as we watch. See, this is why the three of youcould never hide …
Louise Elisabeth Glück (April 22, 1943 -) Today I went to the doctor—the doctor said I was dying,not in those words, but when I said itshe didn't deny it— What have you done to your body, her silence says.We gave it to you and look what you did to it,how you abused it.I’m not talking …
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Kristene Kaye Brown Let the world come hungry at me.Let the hours learn the tender curve of this neck. For so long I've wanted to believe that I'm made of star stuff, a glittering spigot funneled from the blue spiraling armsof our milky way. I hearthe clap of hands inside my chest.I swallow. The body …
Lisel Mueller (February 8, 1924 – February 21, 2020) For Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms The modern biographers worry“how far it went,” their tender friendship.They wonder just what it meanswhen he writes he thinks of her constantly,his guardian angel, beloved friend.The modern biographers askthe rude, irrelevant questionof our age, as if the eventof two bodies …
Elinor Morton Wylie (September 7, 1885 – December 16, 1928) My bands of silk and miniverMomently grew heavier;The black gauze was beggarly thin;The ermine muffled mouth and chin;I could not suck the moonlight in. Harlequin in lozengesOf love and hate, I walked in theseStriped and ragged rigmaroles;Along the pavement my footsolesTrod warily on living coals. …
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Kim Robert Stafford (October 15, 1949 -) Things pretty much worked out for you—you have what you need, and if you need more,you have people ready and able to provide. Sure, someday your luck will run out,you’ll be helpless, then gone, and your peoplewill gather in your honor. There will be music, and tears. People …
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Linda Pastan (May 27, 1932 -) In the ordinary weather of summerwith storms rumbling from west to eastlike so many freight trains haulingtheir cargo of heat and rain,the dogs sprawl on the back steps, panting,insects assemble at every window,and we quarrel again, bombardingeach other with small grievances,our tempers flashing on and offin bursts of heat …
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John Keats (October 31, 1795 – February 23, 1821) Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness!Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,Sylvan historian, who canst thus expressA flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shapeOf deities or mortals, or of both,In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?What men or gods are …
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Roxane Beth Johnson I am trying to remember the lyrics of old songsI’ve forgotten, mostlyI am trying to remember one-hit wonders, hymns,and musicals like West Side Story.Singing over and over what I can recall, I hum remnants onbuses and in the car. I am so often alone these days with echoes of these old songsand …
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Dana Gioia (December 24, 1950 -) She wasn't lookingwhen they took this picture:sitting on the grassin her bare feetwearing a cotton dress,she stares off to the sidewatching something on the lawnthe camera didn't catch.What was it?A ladybug? A flower?Judging from her expression,possibly nothing at all,or elsethe lawn was like a mirror,and she sat watching herself,wondering …
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David Whyte (November 02, 1955 -) There is a faith in loving fiercelythe one who is rightfully yours,especially if you havewaited years and especiallyif part of you never believedyou could deserve thisloved and beckoning handheld out to you this way.I am thinking of faith nowand the testaments of lonelinessand what we feel we areworthy of …
William Shakespeare (April 26, 1564 – April 23, 1616) Our revels now are ended. These our actors,As I foretold you, were all spirits andAre melted into air, into thin air:And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,The solemn temples, the great globe itself,Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolveAnd, like …
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Grace Paley (December 11, 1922 – August 22, 2007) I was going to write a poemI made a pie instead it tookabout the same amount of timeof course the pie was a finaldraft a poem would have had somedistance to go days and weeks andmuch crumpled paperthe pie already had a talkingtumbling audience among smalltrucks and a fire …
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Langston Hughes (February 1, 1901 – May 22, 1967) Let America be America again.Let it be the dream it used to be.Let it be the pioneer on the plainSeeking a home where he himself is free.(America never was America to me.)Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—Let it be that great strong land of …
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Hazem Fahmy Hours before the TV, my mouthagape, repeating after every American cartoonendlessly. Call it a meditation; was I not emptying my mindof language? Mouthing every syllable,like prayer–God, make me a true American,i.e. invisible, yetever-present. What a rush it wasto speak empireat such a young age. Later, I am asked: how did you getthis accent? …
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Kim Addonizio (July 31, 1954 -) I love you but I'm married.I love you but I wish you had more hair.I love you more.I love you more like a friend.I love your friends more than you.I love how when we go into a mall and classical muzak is playing,you can always name the composer.I love …
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Albert Garcia Here, take this palmful of raspberriesas my gift. It isn’t muchbut we’ve often said our needsare simple, some quiet timealone on the patioin the cool morning, coffee,a few words over the newspaper.I’ve rinsed these berriesso you can tumble themright into your cereal, one minuteon the vine, the next in your bowl,my hand to …
Edna St. Vincent Millay (February 22, 1892 – October 19, 1950) The railroad track is miles away,And the day is loud with voices speaking,Yet there isn't a train goes by all dayBut I hear its whistle shrieking. All night there isn't a train goes by,Though the night is still for sleep and dreaming,But I see …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Edna St. Vincent Millay – Travel"
Galway Mills Kinnell (February 1, 1927 – October 28, 2014) Wait, for now.Distrust everything if you have to.But trust the hours. Haven’t theycarried you everywhere, up to now?Personal events will become interesting again.Hair will become interesting.Pain will become interesting.Buds that open out of season will become interesting.Second-hand gloves will become lovely again;their memories are what …
Francesca Bell In the audiologist’s booth I clutch the device with the buttonI’m to press if I hear a tone, hand clammy, the waya child holds the finger of an adult she thinks can save her. Behind the one-way glass, my ears are cupped in the pinching headset, cilia becalmed, the quiet so thick I cannot …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Francesca Bell – What Small Sound"
Jane Hirshfield (February 24, 1953 -) Today, when I could do nothing,I saved an ant. It must have come in with the morning paper,still being deliveredto those who shelter in place. A morning paper is still an essential service. I am not an essential service. I have coffee and books,time,a garden,silence enough to fill cisterns. …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Jane Hirshfield – Today, When I Could Do Nothing"
Maxine Kumin (June 6, 1925 – February 6, 2014) You have forty-nine days betweendeath and rebirth if you're a Buddhist.Even the smallest soul could swimthe English Channel in that timeor climb, like a ten-month-old child,every step of the Washington Monumentto travel across, up, down, over or through—you won't know till you get there which to …
Constantine Peter Cavafy (April 17, 1863 – April 29, 1933) Like a good tailor who fashions a suit for one man (or even two) resplendently; and an over coat that might suit two or three — thus for me might my poems be made “to fit,” in one case (or perhaps in two or three). …
Continue reading "For The Love Of Wisdom – Constantine Peter Cavafy – Poetry"
Robert Herrick (August 24, 1591 – October 15, 1674) Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,Old Time is still a-flying;And this same flower that smiles todayTomorrow will be dying. The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,The higher he’s a-getting,The sooner will his race be run,And nearer he’s to setting. That age is best which is the …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Robert Herrick – To The Virgins, to Make Much of Time"
Matthew Olzmann So here’s what I’ve got, the reasons why our marriagemight work: Because you wear pink but write poemsabout bullets and gravestones. Because you yellat your keys when you lose them, and laugh,loudly, at your own jokes. Because you can hold a pistol,gut a pig. Because you memorize songs, even commercialsfrom thirty years back …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Matthew Olzmann – Mountain Dew Commercial Disguised as a Love Poem"
Tiana Clark Everything wanted to be touched:My bottom lip, the freshly bustedcherry blossoms, creamy drippingslike soft fluttering pearls that edgedthe lack (I meant to write lakebut kept the mistake) as I rimmedthe risky desires. And you, youwere all new, suffused with muskand sadness, height and a milk-chocolate sweater that curledat the collar rim, filling outyour …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Tiana Clark – First Date During Social Distance"
Raymond Carver Jr (May 25, 1938 – August 2, 1988) From The Archives Originally Published August 06, 2019 The Hotel Del Mayo The girl in the lobby reading a leather-bound book.The man in the lobby using a broom.The boy in the lobby watering plants.The desk clerk looking at his nails.The woman in the lobby writing …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Raymond Carver Jr – The Hotel Del Mayo"
Sara Teasdale (August 8, 1884 – January 29, 1933) (War Time)There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;And frogs in the pools singing at night,And wild plum trees in tremulous white,Robins will wear their feathery fireWhistling their whims on a low fence-wire;And not one will know …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Sara Teasdale – There Will Come Soft Rains"
Stephen Elliot Dunn (June 24, 1939 – June 24, 2021) As a child, some of his prayers were answeredbecause he prayed out loud for a kite or bike,which his mother would overhear, and pass onto her husband, his father, the Lord. Later, he understood that when he prayedhe was mostly talking to himself—albeit a better,more …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Stephen Elliot Dunn – An Evolution Of Prayer"
William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) When I was youngerit was plain to meI must make something of myself.Older nowI walk back streetsadmiring the housesof the very poor:roof out of line with sidesthe yards clutteredwith old chicken wire, ashes,furniture gone wrong;the fences and outhousesbuilt of barrel stavesand parts of boxes, all,if …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – William Carlos Williams – Pastoral"
Naomi Long Madgett (July 5, 1923 – November 4, 2020) If I were blind and could not watch the late sunmelting into a simmering seaor wish on the first starlight-starbright hope of evening,it would not be the lost sunsetthat would deprive mebut the oak-gold contour of your smile.And your hand never rising in a benediction …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Naomi Long Madgett – Without"
Jennifer Chang A type of hickory, it grows by water.So are we fools to drive to the riverthe day after our most savage stormshave finally stopped to seea tree we’ve never seen before?To hike in cold mud through a leafless forest,to behold clearings now clutteredby whatever fell last night—mostly oaks,no hickory—to attend the mad performanceof …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Jennifer Chang – The Lonely Humans"
Jane Kenyon (May 23, 1947 – April 22, 1995) A second crop of hay lies cutand turned. Five gleaming crowssearch and peck between the rows.They make a low, companionable squawk,and like midwives and undertakerspossess a weird authority. Crickets leap from the stubble,parting before me like the Red Sea.The garden sprawls and spoils. Across the lake …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Jane Kenyon – Three Songs at the End of Summer"
Paul Laurence Dunbar (June 27, 1872 – February 9, 1906) When summer time has come, and allThe world is in the magic thrallOf perfumed airs that lull each senseTo fits of drowsy indolence;When skies are deepest blue above,And flow'rs aflush,—then most I loveTo start, while early dews are damp,And wend my way in woodland trampWhere …
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Being solitary is being alone well: being alone luxuriously immersed in doings of your own choice, aware of the fullness of your won presence rather than of the absence of others. Because solitude is an achievement. Alice Koller (September 13, 1925 – July 21, 2020) From The Archives - The Poetry Of Tao Writer (TPOTW) …
Wayne Miller When the dog finally died, dad dug a hole beside the fence and buried her in a boot box. She's gone, but she had a good life,mom said. It's OK to be sad. Next day, the boy came into the kitchen holding the box in front of him. She's not gone. She's still in there, he said. Look.Mom …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Wayne Miller – Parable of Childhood"
Eleanor Lerman It is a mild day in the suburbsWindy, a little gray. If there issunlight, it enters through thekitchen window and spreadsitself, thin as a napkin, besidethe coffee cup, pie on a plateWhat am I describing?I am describing a dreamin which nobody has diedThese are our mothers:your mother and mineIt is an empty day; …
Busisiwe Mahlangu the old chair is pushed against the door/ the windows are closed/the gate is locked/ the fence has barbed wire to hook the flesh/a good night’s sleep is bought with “caution”:/ pull all the keysout of the doors/do not switch off the lights/ turn over the welcome mats/ tell thedog to start barking …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Busisiwe Mahlangu – Safe House"
Emma Hine My mother calls to tell me a story.She and my father were drivingon a mountain road, and all around,the aspen trees were dying—each one on the mountainside leafless,clutching a sticky gold web in its brancheslike it had caught a rotten cloud.Where the road turned along a cliffthe guardrail was missing.Far below, a red …
Muriel Rukeyser (December 15, 1913 – February 12, 1980) I lived in the first century of world wars.Most mornings I would be more or less insane,The newspapers would arrive with their careless stories,The news would pour out of various devicesInterrupted by attempts to sell products to the unseen.I would call my friends on other devices;They …
James Harrison (December 11, 1937 – March 26, 2016) Coming out of anesthesia I believedI had awakened in the wrong body,and when I returned to my snazzy hotel roomand looked at Architectural DigestI no longer recognized large parts of the world.There was a cabin for salefor seven million dollars, while mine had costonly forty grand …
From The Archives - The Poetry Of Tao Writer (TPOTW) Tao Writer (April 17, 1948 -) This Hollow Emptiness In My Soul At a time like this I want to writeabout the joy of your life and not my pain.I want everyone to share your wisdom,hear your laughter, know your devotion to Jehovah,but all I …
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Diane Seuss I could do it. I could walk into the sea.I have a rental car. It’s blue and low on fuel.I have feet, two, and proximity. I could do it.Others have before me. Jeff Buckley (1997) hewas only 30. Carol Wayne (1985) the Matinee Ladyand a photo spread in Playboy. Dennis Wilson (1983)after diving …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Diane Seuss – From Frank Sonnets"
Maya Pindyck Today I am my sister’s sister,my father’s brow,my mother’s squirm,urging my spirit to light. I touch my abdomen,each daughters’ doorwayopened for a few fluorescent minutesthen sewn shutfor good, if not for now. I remain here,even when my form bruises, blooms,or falls away, by way of what it doesor does not say. Instead of …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Maya Pindyck – Present Tense"
Ada Limón I want to focus on how useful poetry can be in our daily lives. Poetry is one of the few art forms that has breath built right into it. It literally wants us to breathe, to pause for a moment and pay attention to what matters. Whether it’s a tree that we are …
Continue reading "For The Love Of Wisdom – Ada Limón – Poetry"
Kwame Opoku-Duku Blessed be the bitternessat your core, that quiet lightgrowing quieter still,like the dull moan that escapesyour lips while you dream.They’ll ask you, child,what you know of suffering.They’ll ask you where it hurtsthe most, when the pain changeslike wavelengths of lightin the evening sky, when the criesof the ancestors ring out to youfrom the …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Kwame Opoku-Duku – They’ll Ask You Where it Hurts the Most"
Jane Shore Jay and Linda moved to Plateau Roadand brought with them a pair of horses:old Kahlua and his longtime mare.When her heart failed suddenly, Kahlua—a paint the color of the Mexican liqueurand swaybacked like a hammock—went on a hunger strike. Fearingthat he might die from loneliness,Jay and Linda heard about a donkeyhoused unhappily an …
Matthew Arnold (December 24, 1822 – April 15, 1888) The sea is calm tonight.The tide is full, the moon lies fairUpon the straits; on the French coast the lightGleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!Only, from the long line …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Matthew Arnold – Dover Beach"
Robert Pinsky (October 20, 1940 -) Walking among the graves for exerciseWhere do you get your ideas how do I stop themLooking for Mike Mazur’s marker I lookedDown at the grass and saw Stanislaw BaranczakOur Solidarity poetry reading in PoznanYears later in Newton now he said I’m a U.S.Liberal with a car like everybody elseWhen …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Robert Pinsky – At Mt. Auburn Cemetery"
Heather McHugh (August 20, 1948 -) I. Daily, the kindergartenerspassed my porch. I lovedtheir likeness and variety,their selves in line like littlemonosyllables, but huggable—I wasn't meant to grab them, ever,up into actual besmooches or downinto grubbiest tumbles, my lot was notto have them, in the flesh.Was it better or worse to lettheir lovability go by …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Heather McHugh – Better Or Worse"
Tadeusz Dąbrowski Paulina, the gardener’s daughter, caresabout flowers doomed to die.If I bring her a bouquet, she frees itfrom the ribbons and gently places it in the hospiceof a vase. When the flowers weaken, she trims their stemsand plucks off their wilting leaves. She takesthe dead ones to the compost, from the restshe forms a …
Mark Bibbins In case what Yoko Ono said is true that to name one’s enemy is one’s art injures the art more than the enemyI won’t tell you whois president now I forget the name of the womanwho gave you acupuncture but notof …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Mark Bibbins – Excerpt From 13th Balloon"
Matthew Dickman I haven’t done drugs for threedays so I name each one aftermy sister and mother and brotherand take them out with meon a walk, each one taking turnsleading, each one the leaderof a pack that was bred in the mid-seventies, each leash the colorof glass and the density of a star,I hold each …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Matthew Dickman – Walking The Dogs"
Clint Margrave In memory of Gerald Locklin Nobody is more surprised than he is.First of all, Toad doesn’t believe in heaven,and secondly, even if he did,he never expected to visit. In fact, he’s minorly disappointed.Has he failed to achieve the properlydebauched life he so often courted? But the food tastes good.And you can drink all …
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Dilruba Ahmedq To test your pulse as you sleep.Bring the healer the howler the listening ear— Bring an apothecary to mix the tincture—We need the salvethe tablet the capsuleof the hour— Bring sword-eatersand those who will swallow fire—Fetch the guardian to flatten the wheelchair,to hoist it toward heaven:the public shuttle awaitsthe ceaseless trips to the …
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Rudyard Kipling (December 30, 1865 – January 18, 1936) If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied …
Yesenia Montilla i have diver’s lungs from holding mybreath for so long. i promise youi am not trying to break a recordsometimes i just forget toexhale. my shoulders held tightlynear my neck, i am a ball of tenseliving, a tumbleweed with steel-toedboots. i can’t remember the last timei felt light as dandelion. i can’t rememberthe …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Yesenia Montilla – A Brief Meditation On Breath"
Adrienne Rich (May 16, 1929 – March 27, 2012) Living in the earth-deposits of our historyToday a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earthone bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-oldcure for fever or melancholy a tonicfor living on this earth in the winters of this climateToday I was reading about Marie Curie:she must have known she suffered from radiation sicknessher body bombarded for years by …
Now out of this vast silencethe cherry trees scraping their gnarled limbson the sky, and the wind hurls downa flurry of petals, a snowstorm really,a thousand prints on the wet pavement,each one a pair of white shutters, opening.Numinous, the souls of the dead, and now you,. . . among them—an intake of breath.How little it …
Meghan Dunn I too am sick of the body.I too am sick of being a body,am sick of being sick about my body,have made myself sick over how to care forand clothe it, how to make it behave,make it need less. Walking in the street,I have wished it might dissolveso that I might more clearly …
Rainer Maria Rilke (December 04, 1875 – December 29, 1926) Before us great Death standsOur fate held close within his quiet hands.When with proud joy we lift Life's red wineTo drink deep of the mystic shining cupAnd ecstasy through all our being leaps—Death bows his head and weeps.
Jane Mead (August 13, 1958 – September 8, 2019) I wonder if I will miss the mossafter I fly off as much as I miss it nowjust thinking about leaving. There were stones of many colors.There were sticks holding bothlichen and moss.There were red gates with oldhand-forged hardware.There were fields of dry grasssmelling of first …
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Ursula K Le Guin (October 21, 1929 – January 22, 2018) Time says “Let there be”every moment and instantlythere is space and the radianceof each bright galaxy.And eyes beholding radiance.And the gnats’ flickering dance.And the seas’ expanse.And death, and chance.Time makes roomfor going and coming homeand in time’s wombbegins all ending.Time is being and beingtime, …
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Louis Burke Jenkins (October 28, 1942 – December 21, 2019) "It's no use," he says, "she's left me." This is afterseveral drinks. It's as if he had said, "Van Gogh ismy favorite painter." It's a cheap print he has addedto his collection. He's been waiting all evening toshow it to me. He doesn't see it. …
Patricia Fargnoli (November 16, 1937 – February 18, 2021) I wake up to a world that is invisible,no golden trees, no picnic spread on the lawn.The ladies in hats have finished their teaand moved on. None of the questions I spent life askinghave been answered.Transience, evanescence, the dispersal of dust.God knows where, and is no …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Patricia Fargnoli – After the Dream of My Death"
Nicholas Laird A human is not such a perfect machine.I didn’t design it for interaction particularlywith other machines—not closely—not non-stop.I made the campfire, for example, to be nature’stelevision but with a human being basicallyI was thinking of a tree, of what a tree needs.A root system, distance, light and air. Even livingyou are tearing through …
Theodore J. Kooser (April 25, 1939) In the musty light, in the thin brown airof damp carpet, doll heads and rust,beneath long rows of sharp footfallslike nails in a lid, an old man standstrying on glasses, lifting each pairfrom the box like a glittering fishand holding it up to the lightof a dirty bulb. Near …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Ted Kooser – In the Basement of the Goodwill Store"
Angelina Weld Grimké (February 27, 1880 – June 10, 1958) Little grey dreams,I sit at the ocean’s edge,At the grey ocean’s edge,With you in my lap. I launch you, one by one,And one by one,Little grey dreams,Under the grey, grey, clouds,Out on the grey, grey, sea,You go sailing away,From my empty lap,Little grey dreams. Sailing! …
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Afaa M. Weaver This wall is a great stairway, wallsare things that shoot up, keep out, linethe places where we mark the halls that carry our names. The bustsof this one and that one, this historyis in the hard labor of hearts, thrusts of piston and valve. I sit downat the first house, dizzy at …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Afaa M. Weaver – Climbing China’s Great Wall"
Florence Margaret Smith, better known as Stevie Smith (September 20, 1902 – March 07, 1971) Nobody heard him, the dead man,But still he lay moaning:I was much further out than you thoughtAnd not waving but drowning. Poor chap, he always loved larkingAnd now he’s deadIt must have been too cold for him his heart gave …
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Ellen Bass(June 16, 1947 -) Cook a large fish—choose one with many bones, a skeletonyou will need skill to expose, maybe the flyingsilver carp that’s invaded the Great Lakes, tumblingthe others into oblivion. If you don’t livenear a lake, you’ll have to travel.Walking is best and shows you mean it,but you could take a train …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Ellen Bass – How To Apologize"
Yalie Saweda Kamara While sipping coffee in my mother’s Toyota, we hear the birdcall of two teenage boysin the parking lot: Aiight, one says, Besaydoo, the other returns, as they reachfor each other. Their cupped handshake pops like the first, fat, firecrackers of summer, their fingers shimmy as if they’re solving a Rubik’s cube just …
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Sarah Freligh I’m driving home from school when the radio talkturns to E.B. White, his birthday, and I exitthe here and now of the freeway at rush hour, travel back into the past, where my mother is readingto my sister and me the part about Charlotte laying her eggsand dying, and though this is the …
John Paul Martinez For Lolo Ma says not to swat at the houseflychirring in our headspace for the past two hoursbecause it just might be you. Ma shows me the flimsy browned picturesof you & me in your workshop, a scored-leather tool belt strapped acrossyour chest like a bandolier. My whole body smaller stillthan a …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – John Paul Martinez – To Offer Sweet Fruit To The Ghost"
James Crews The night my mother turned back the clocksI thought that while we slept the hours stolenfrom everyone on earth would collect like coinsin a bank vault, so we’d wake up rich at last.Even as my mother explained that it meantonly extra dreams in winter, only late lightreturned to us with daffodils and rain …
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Mary Jane Oliver (September 10, 1935 – January 17, 2019) One thing I do know is that poetry, to be understood, must be clear. It mustn’t be fancy. I have the feeling that a lot of poets writing now […] sort of tap dance through it. I always feel that whatever isn’t necessary shouldn’t be …
Continue reading "For The Love Of Wisdom – Mary Oliver – Poems And Poetry"
Guillaume Apollinaire (August 26, 1880 – November 09,1918) I stand here in the sight of everyone a man full of senseKnowing life and knowing of death what a living man can knowHaving gone through the griefs and happinesses of loveHaving known sometimes how to impose his ideasKnowing several languagesHaving travelled more than a littleHaving seen …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Guillaume Apollinaire – The Pretty Redhead"
Rainer Maria Rilke (December 04, 1875 – December 29, 1926) His vision, from the constantly passing bars,has grown so weary that it cannot hold anything else.It seems to him there are a thousand bars;and behind the bars, no world. As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,the movement of his powerful soft stridesis like …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Rainer Maria Rilke – The Panther"
Charlotte Mary Mew (November 15, 1869 – March 24, 1928) I remember rooms that have had their partIn the steady slowing down of the heart.The room in Paris, the room at Geneva,The little damp room with the seaweed smell,And that ceaseless maddening sound of the tide—Rooms where for good or ill—things died.But there is the …
Elsa Gidlow (December 29, 1898 – 08, June 1986) I shall never have any fear of love,Not of its depth nor its uttermost height,Its exquisite pain and its terrible delight.I shall never have any fear of love. I shall never hesitate to go downInto the fastness of its abyssNor shrink from the cruelty of its …
Kim Dower Barbara, my childhood piano teacherplayed Chopin like he was whisperinginto her hands, all us kids from the buildinghad our Saturday morning lessons, apartment 6C,our giddy fingers trotting in the key of G,lifting high for Mozart, metronome tickingas her coffee brewed, her sandy-haired husbandat the wooden breakfast table, mug, cigarettetight in his hands, he …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Kim Dower – Visiting Eleanor"
Señor Tao (April 17, 1948 -) The Sound Of Silence It was almost silentexcept for the constant buzz of life between my earsThen the cooing of the mourning doves perchedon the terrace looking for leftover seeds attracted me.They take flight and I hear the beating of wings against invisible air.I see the plants moving with …
Continue reading "The Poetry Of Señor Tao – The Sound Of Silence"
Li-Young Lee (August 19, 1957 -) I loved you before I was born.It doesn’t make sense, I know. I saw your eyes before I had eyes to see.And I’ve lived longingfor your every look ever since.That longing entered time as this body.And the longing grew as this body waxed.And the longing grows as this body …
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She wasn’t a good cat. Wouldn’t let us pick her upor cuddle on the bed. Sometimes she’d permit petting, but only if she was in the mood, and onher own terms. If she was perched on a chair, perhaps you might approach. But now, at fifteen, she’s stoppedeating and drinking, sleeps all day. Instead of …
Ursula K. Le Guin (October 21, 1929 – January 22, 2018) Very slowly burning, the big forest treestands in the slight hollow of the snowmelted around it by the mild, longheat of its being and its will to beroot, trunk, branch, leaf, and knowearth dark, sun light, wind touch, bird song.Rootless and restless and warmblooded, …
Dorianne Laux (January 10, 1962) In the room where we lie, lightstains the drawn shades yellow.We sweat and pull at each other, climbwith our fingers the slippery ladders of rib.Wherever our bodies touch, the fleshcomes alive. Head and need, like invisibleanimals, gnaw at my breasts, the softinsides of your thighs. What I wantI simply reach …
Stephen Elliot Dunn (June 24, 1939 – June 24, 2021) The room has no choice.Everything that’s spoken in itit absorbs. And it must put up with the bad flirt, the overly perfumed,the many murderers of mood—with whomever chooses to walk in. If there’s a crowd, one personis certain to be concealing a sadness,another will have …
William Wordsworth (April 07, 1770 – April 23, 1850) 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.
Emily Jane Brontë (July 30, 1818 – December 19, 1848) No coward soul is mineNo trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphereI see Heaven's glories shineAnd Faith shines equal arming me from Fear O God within my breastAlmighty ever-present DeityLife, that in me hast rest,As I Undying Life, have power in Thee Vain are the thousand …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Emily Bronte – No Coward Soul Is Mine"
Priscilla Denise Levertov (October 24, 1923 – December 20, 1997) When I opened the doorI found the vine leavesspeaking among themselves in abundantwhispers. My presence made themhush their green breath,embarrassed, the wayhumans stand up, buttoning their jackets,acting as if they were leaving anyway, as ifthe conversation had endedjust before you arrived. I likedthe glimpse I had, though,of …
Joseph Stroud Trying to tie my shoes, clumsy, not able to work outthe logic of it, fumbling, as my father stands there,his anger growing over a son who can’t even dothis simplest thing for the first time, can’t even managethe knot to keep his shoes on—You think someone’sgoing to tie your shoes for you the …
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 …
George Bilgere Jane, the old woman across the street,is lugging big black trash bags to the curb.It's snowing hard, and the bags are turning white,gradually disappearing in the storm. Jane is getting ready to put her house on the marketand move into a home of some sort. A facility.She's just too old to keep the …
Sophie Jewett (June 3, 1861 – October 11, 1909), aka Ellen Burroughs I have read somewhere that the birds of fairyland are white as snow. W B Yeats (June 13, 1865 – January 28, 1939) Where all the trees bear golden flowers,And all the birds are white;Where fairy folk in dancing hoursBurn stars for candlelight; Where …
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Alfonsina Storni (May 29, 1892 – October 25, 1938) Teeth of flowers, bonnet of dew,hands of grass, you, lovely nursemaid,turn down the earthen sheets for meand the quilt of weeded moss. I’m going to sleep, my nurse, tuck me in,put a lamp on my headboard;a constellation; whichever you like;both are fine; lower the light a little. Leave …
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Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) I have no Life but this —To lead it here —Nor any Death — but lestDispelled from there — Nor tie to Earths to come —Nor Action new —Except through this extent —The Realm of you —
Alex Dimitrov (November 30 1984 -) I was just beginningto wonder about my own lifeand now I have to return to itregardless of the weatheror how close I am to love.Doesn’t it bother you sometimeswhat living is, what the day has turned into?So many screens and meetingsand things to be late for.Everyone truly deservesa flute …
Muriel Rukeyser (December 15, 1913–February 12, 1980) Now, when it is hard to hold for a moment the giant clusters of event and meaning that every day appear, it is time to remember [poetry], which has forever been a way of reaching complexes of emotion and relationship, the attitude that is like the attitude of …
Continue reading "For The Love Of Wisdom – Muriel Rukeyser – Poetry"
Cathy Song (August 20, 1955 -) To prepare the body,aim for the translucent perfectionyou find in the sliced shavingsof a pickled turnip.In order for this to happen,you must avoid the sun,protect the faceunder a paper parasoluntil it is bruised whitelike the skin of lilies.Use white soapfrom a blue porcelaindish for this. Restrict yourself.Eat the whites …
David Watts He stands at the window baffledby pleasure and how brief it is.Pleasure followed by the memoryof pleasure. Lightthen dark with a splinterleft in. Something like that.The woman in the chair is reading,drinking tea in the ground glasshaze of evening.The sudden swell he feelswatching herilluminates the past she spentgetting to this place:a lover who …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – David Watts – Man at the Window"
Mi-Mi Monahan Her mother makes her dinner every night.We sit at the table and say grace with hands pressedlike clenched thighs and I pray they can’t tell my motherdoesn’t believe in god and doesn’t cook. So I eatall the peas off my plate while she complains over the two bites she’s forced to takefor a …
Deborah Landau So whatever’s the opposite of a Buddhist that’s what I am.Kindhearted, yes, but knee deep in existential gloom,except when the fog smokes the bridges like this—like, instead of being afraid we might juice ourselves up,eh, like, might get kissed again? Dwelling in bones I go straightthrough life, a sublime abundance—cherries, dog’s breath, the …
Thomas Hardy (June 02, 1840 – January 11, 1928) Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,Saying that now you are not as you wereWhen you had changed from the one who was all to me,But as at first, when our day was fair. Can it be you that I hear? Let …
Mary Jane Olive (September 10, 1935 – January 17, 2019) Who made the world?Who made the swan, and the black bear?Who made the grasshopper?This grasshopper, I mean—the one who has flung herself out of the grass,the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Mary Jane Oliver – The Summer Day"
David Whyte (November 02, 1955 -) The poet lives and writes at the frontier between deep internal experience and the revelations of the outer world. There is no going back for the poet once this frontier has been reached; a new territory is visible and what has been said cannot be unsaid. The discipline of …
Continue reading "For The Love Of Wisdom – David Whyte – Poets And Poetry"
Billy Collins (March 22, 1941 -) Yesterday, I lay awake in the palm of the night.A soft rain stole in, unhelped by any breeze,And when I saw the silver glaze on the windows,I started with A, with Ackerman, as it happened,Then Baxter and Calabro,Davis and Eberling, names falling into placeAs droplets fell through the dark.Names …
Anna Andreyevna Gorenko (June 11, 1889 – March 05, 1966) better known by the pen name Anna Akhmatova Not under foreign skiesNor under foreign wings protected -I shared all this with my own peopleThere, where misfortune had abandoned us.[1961] INSTEAD OF A PREFACE During the frightening years of the Yezhov terror, Ispent seventeen months waiting …
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 …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – William Blake – You Don’t Believe"
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 …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Kim Addonizio – Comfort Of The Resurrection"
Tao Writer (April 17, 1948 -) Want Ad Booksconversationbreakfast in beda rainy Sunday morningfollowing an enchantedSaturday night— Please reply.
In this very breath that we take now lies the secret that all great masters try to tell us. Peter Matthiessen Tao Writer (April 17, 1948 -) The Uninvited Guest There was no movementaway from the sorrowin any direction.It was an uninvited guesttaking refugein my home,lingering like a fat catsprawled outin the morning sun.What could …
Continue reading "The Poetry Of Tao Writer – The Uninvited Guest"
John Clare (July 13, 1793 – May 20, 1864) I am—yet what I am none cares or knows;My friends forsake me like a memory lost:I am the self-consumer of my woes—They rise and vanish in oblivion’s host,Like shadows in love-frenzied stifled throes—And yet I am and live—like vapours tossed Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,Into …
Carol Ann Duffy (December 23, 1955 -) Poetry matters to people in this country; poetry is a place we can go to for comfort, celebration, when we’re in love, when we’re bereaved, and sometimes for events that happen to us as a nation. Poetry comes from the imagination, from memories, from experience, from events both …
Continue reading "For The Love Of Wisdom – Carol Ann Duffy – Poetry"
J. D. “Sandy” McClatchy (August 12, 1945 – April 10, 2018) To hide something is to conceal it; to disguise something is to reveal it but only to those who know how and where to look. The very conventions of poetry were devised to encode experience, to make it less obvious and thereby more true. …
Continue reading "For The Love Of Wisdom – JD McClatchy – Poetry"
Belén Atienza Give me back the hours you swore mine foreverand take away this grief hidden in my wardrobeand when you remember me, do not whisper my namenor think of me as yours, though yours you know I was. I shall be asleep and forget the scent of youI shall awaken alone, as then, before, …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Belén Atienza – Solitude Is a Life’s Work"
WS Merwin (September 30, 1927 – March 15, 2019) When a poem is really finished, you can’t change anything. You can’t move words around. You can’t say, ‘In other words, you mean.’ No, that’s not it. There are no other words in which you mean it. This is it.
Jane Hirshfield (February 24, 1953 -) I don’t think poetry is based just on poetry; it is based on a thoroughly lived life. And so I couldn’t just decide I was going to write no matter what; I first had to find out what it means to live.
Langston Hughes (February 1, 1901[1] – May 22, 1967) Way Down South in Dixie(Break the heart of me)They hung my black young loverTo a cross roads tree. Way Down South in Dixie(Bruised body high in air)I asked the white Lord JesusWhat was the use of prayer. Way Down South in Dixie(Break the heart of me)Love …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Langston Hughes – Song For ADark Girl"
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 …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Michael Mark – A Daily Practice"
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 …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Aracelis Girmay – You Are Who I Love"
Howard Nemerov (February 29, 1920 – July 5, 1991) Poetry makes things happen, but rarely what the poet wants.
It’s all very strange. You can be walking along, not thinking of anything in particular. Suddenly you’re reminded of a lost love. Charlie Brown (Charles Shultz) Tao Writer (April 17, 1948 -) If You Had Not Died Today If you had not died when you did,so many things could have been shared.As it turns out I …
Continue reading "The Poetry Of Tao Writer – If You Had Not Died Today"
Galway Mills Kinnell (February 1, 1927 – October 28, 2014) I open my eyes to see how the nightis progressing. The clock glows green,the light of the last-quarter moonshines up off the snow into our bedroom.Her portion of our oceanic duvetlies completely flat. The wordsof the shepherd in Tristan, "Wasteand empty, the sea," come back …
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 …
Karen Benke Each day he left our shallow bed at sunrise.All that remained: the black snake lie.Yes, he remembered his watch, the cream for his coffee.He unloaded the dishwasher, carried the recycling to the curb.How can you say I’m not here for you?The house creaked quiet.The woman who was me curled under the stiff sheet …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Karen Benke – After The Affair"
Stéphane Mallarmé (March 18, 1942 - September 09, 1898) There is nothing but beauty — and beauty has only one perfect expression, Poetry. All the rest is a lie.
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 "Wise Poets – WH Auden – After Reading A Child’s Guide To Modern Physics"
WS Merwin (September 30, 1927 – March 15, 2019) I think a poem begins out of what you don’t know, and you begin not by having a good idea but by hearing something in the language.
May Sarton (May 3, 1912 – July 16, 1995) If I were in solitary confinement, I'd never write another novel, and probably not keep a journal, but I'd write poetry, because poems, you see, are between God and me.
Nikki Giovanni (June 07, 1943 -) Don't look nowI'm fading awayInto the gray of my morningsOr the blues of every night Is it that my nailskeep breakingOr maybe the cornon my second little piggyThings keep popping outon my face or of my lifeIt seems no matter howI try I become more difficultto holdI am not …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Nikki Giovanni – Cotton Candy On A Rainy Day"
Susan Browne I know him, that manwalking- toward me up the crowded streetof the city, I have lived with himseven years now, I know his fast stride,his windy wheatfield hair, his hands thrustdeep in his jacket pockets, handsthat have known my body, touchedits softest part, caused its quick shuddersand slow releasings, I have seen his …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Susan Browne – Chance Meeting"
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 …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Wendell Berry – A Purification"
James Augustine Joyce (February 02, 1882 – January 13, 1941) Opening Paragraph of Ulysses "O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the fig trees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rose gardens and …
Continue reading "For The Love Of Wisdom – James Joyce – Ulysses"
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 …
William Bolcom (May 26, 1938 -) I’ve been looking at these texts since I fell in love with them at 17. I thought that maybe they would make more sense sung than spoken. Singing spreads them out. When I read these poems aloud, they make a weird kind of sense. But people have gotten all …
Continue reading "For The Love Of Wisdom – William Bolcom – Songs Of Innocence"
Yolande Cornelia Nikki Giovanni Jr (June 7, 1943) I love you because the Earth turns round the sun because the North wind blows north sometimes because the Pope is Catholic and most Rabbis Jewish because the winters flow into springs and the air clears after a storm because only my love for …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Nikki Giovanni – Resignation"
Alison Luterman Some girls can’t help it; they are lit sparklers,hot-blooded, half naked in the depths of winter,tagging moving trains with the bright insignia of theirfury.I’ve seen their inked torsos: falcons, swans, meteorshowers.And shadowed their secret rendezvous,walking and flying all night over paths traced like veinsthrough the deep body of the forestwhere they are trying …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Alison Luterman – Some Girls"
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 "Wise Poets – Galway Kinnell – When One Has Lived a Long Time Alone"
Kay Ryan (September 21, 1945 -) Poems should leave you feeling freer and not more burdened. I like to think of all good poetry as providing more oxygen into the atmosphere; it just makes it easier to breathe.
Jeffrey McDaniel I was sitting on a wooden benchwhen six men wheeled her on a gurney right past me,except she was inside a wooden boxand the lid was closed. She was on her wayto becoming a skeleton. My fatheris definitely a skeleton at this point.Death is confusing. Is my father the bonesthat sit inside a …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Jeffrey McDaniel – Wooden Bench"
Henri Cole (1956 -) Sometimes I arrive with my buds closed,and I am mistaken for scallions,but if you cut a half inch from my stemsand put me in water, I open up and releaseyellow dust from my petal cups,like talcum sprinkled on her shouldersafter she bathes and swallows herthird tranquillizer to erase herself,the sedative piercing …
Anne Sexton (November 9, 1928 – October 4, 1974) On the day of breasts and small hipsthe window pocked with bad rainrain coming on like a minister,we coupled, so sane and insane.We lay like spoons while the sinisterrain dropped like flies on our lipsand our glad eyes and our small hips.“The room is so cold …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Anne Sexton – Song For A Lady"
Emily Jane Brontë (July 30, 1818 – December 19, 1848) Cold in the earth—and the deep snow piled above thee,Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave!Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee,Severed at last by Time's all-severing wave?Now, when alone, do my thoughts no longer hoverOver the mountains, on that northern shore,Resting …
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (March 06, 1806 – June 29, 1861) How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.I love thee to the depth and breadth and heightMy soul can reach, when feeling out of sightFor the ends of being an ideal Grace.I love thee to the level of everyday'sMost quiet need, by sun …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Elizabeth Barrett Browning – Sonnet 43"
Stanley Moss (June 21, 1925 -) I’m sorry, exhausted, except for funds.I wrote a check, the date October 18without the year, to Theresa Monrosefor a hundred dollars, I did not writethe amount longhand.My conversation with friendsis something like the way I wrote that checkwhen I try to tell what I owe them.I don’t get it …
Julia Kasdorf (December 06, 1962 -) I learned from my mother how to lovethe living, to have plenty of vases on handin case you have to rush to the hospitalwith peonies cut from the lawn, black antsstill stuck to the buds. I learned to save jarslarge enough to hold fruit salad for a wholegrieving household, …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Julia Kasdorf – What I Learned From My Mother"
Marcia F Brown When I look at the old carbacked into the cleared-out space in the shed,I can almost understandthose bewildered men who leavetheir softening wives in middle age,up-and-walk-out after decadesof marriage and family, to take upwith some buffed and waxed young thingwith great lines, horsepowerto burn and a dazzling arrayof untested equipment.When I look …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Marcia F Brown – When I Look at the Old Car"
Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto (July 12, 1904 – September 23, 1973) Pablo Neruda If I die, survive me with such sheer forcethat you awaken the furies of the pallid and the cold,from south to south lift your indelible eyes,from sun to sun dream through your singing mouth.I don't want your laughter or your steps …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Pablo Neruda – XCIV If I Die"
Tadeusz Dąbrowski It’s as if you’d woken in a locked cell and foundin your pocket a slip of paper, and on it a single sentencein a language you don’t know.And you’d be sure this sentence was the key to yourlife. Also to this cell.And you’d spend years trying to decipher the sentence,until finally you’d understand …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Tadeusz Dąbrowski – Sentence"
Eunice Odio (October 18, 1919 – March 23, 1974) The whole arboris contained in him.It is his will,an entranceto the clear designof the waters.Heavenly musicwakes in his ear.(When God stirred,the moon never variednor the wind,a rumorof approaching dawn,stillness becomeGod’s silence.)When I saw himof an afternoon—an island facein the air—when I came upon himfrom within,the sprouting …
WS Merwin (September 30, 1927 -) Listenwith the night falling we are saying thank youwe are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railingswe are running out of the glass roomswith our mouths full of food to look at the skyand say thank youwe are standing by the water thanking itstanding by the windows …
Yi Lei (1951-2018) Flame in the cloud at midnightBlankets my bed with light.The scent of winter jasmineRises from a tomb to meet my eyes.I watch you as if from my girlhood.I watch as if from death, anonymousBeneath a dim sky, holding aloftThe burden of my body. Death,Bloodless and unfeeling, is familiar.But what if we could …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Yi Lei – Flame In The Cloud At Midnight"
Ron Padgett (June 17, 1942 -) on a white tableclothwith light blue legs belowin a hotel restaurantin a small town in Polandin 1936is being contemplatedby a manwhose homburgis tiltedat an angleparallel to thatof the pictureon the wallbehind him,a mountain scenewith forest belowin which a lone deerhas turned to look at us.
Adam Clay I take a break from the morning’s workto pay a credit card bill,to take the dog out, to waterthe plants in the hanging baskets,but why not instead take a walkthrough the early August morningbefore the heat wave hits? The body’sstill stretching itself out. The music goesfrom minor to major when you flipthe album, …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Adam Clay – A Joke About How Old We’ve Become"
Grace Paley (December 11, 1922 – August 22, 2007) Here I am in the garden laughingan old woman with sagging breastsand a nicely mapped face how did this happenwell that’s who I wanted to be a last a womanin the old style sittingstout thighs apart undera big skirt …
John Lawrence Ashbery (July 28, 1927 – September 3, 2017) I don't find any direct statements in life. My poetry imitates or reproduces the way knowledge or awareness come to me, which is by fits and starts and by indirection. I don't think poetry arranged in neat patterns would reflect that situation. My poetry is …
Continue reading "For The Love Of Wisdom – John Ashbery – Poetry"
Edward M Hirsch (January 20, 1950 -) Read these poems to yourself in the middle of the night. Turn on a single lamp and read the poem while you’re alone in an otherwise dark room or while someone else sleeps next to you. Read them whem you’re wide awake in the early morning, fully alert. …
Continue reading "For The Love Of Wisdom – Edward M Hirsch – Reading Poetry"
Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto (July 12, 1904 – September 23, 1973), better known by his nickname later, legal name Pablo Neruda A man says yes without knowinghow to decide even what the question is,and is caught up, and then is carried alongand never again escapes from his own cocoon;and that’s how we are, forever …
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 …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Camille Rankine – Inheritance"
Naomi Shihab Nye (March 12, 1952 -) Stripped of a sense of well-being,we downed our water from small disposable bottles.Casting the plastic to streetside,we poured high-potency energy tonics or Cokedown our throats, because this time in historyhad sapped us so thoroughly andwe were desperate.Straws, plastic caps, crushed cans,in a three-block walk you could fill a …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Naomi Shihab Nye – World Of The Future, We Thirsted"
David St. John (July 24, 1949 -) There had beenA microphone hiddenBeneath the bedOf course I didn’t realize itAt the time & in factDidn’t know for yearsUntil one day a standardKhaki book mailerArrived & within itAn oldStained cassette tapeSimply labelled in black marker“Him / Me / September, 1975”& as I listened I knew somethingHad been …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – David St. John – Without Mercy, The Rains Continued"
Kim Addonizio (July 31, 1954 -) Poetry is not a means to an end, but a continuing engagement with being alive.
Stanley Kunitz (July 29, 1905 – May 14, 2006) Poetry is ultimately mythology, the telling of stories of the soul. The old myths, the old gods, the old heroes have never died. They are only sleeping at the bottom of our minds, waiting for our call. We have need of them, for in their sum they …
Continue reading "For The Love Of Wisdom – Stanley Kunitz – Poetry"
Tao Writer (April 17, 1948 -) Always Another Mountain Life is amazing from the time we breathour first breath until the time we exhale our last.But life is not easy. It was never meant to be.Life is meant to be appreciated and enjoyed. Watching hummingbirds hover around the feederWalking barefoot in the desert sand or …
Continue reading "The Poetry Of Tao Writer – Always Another Mountain"
Percy Bysshe Shelley August 04, 1792 – July 08, 1822) Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.
Rachel Galvin It was interesting to be thinking of something.It was interesting to be thinking. To be thinking. To. It was interesting.It was then she heard the voice the one inside the voice the one she heard.It was then. Was it a poor imitation or was it the real McCoy. Was it.Did she know. Was …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Rachel Galvin – The Real Thing"
Anna Akhmatova (June 23, 1889 – March 05, 1966) I am in the middle of it: chaos and poetry; poetry and love and again, complete chaos. Pain, disorder, occasional clarity; and at the bottom of it all: only love; poetry. Sheer enchantment, fear, humiliation. It all comes with love.
Ellen Bass (June 16, 1947 -) Because the night I gave birth my husband went blind.Hysterical, I guess you’d call it.Because there’d been too many peopleand then there was no one. Onlythis small creature—her tiny cryno bigger than a sequin.Because I’d been pushing too many hours.Even with her soft skull plates shifting,the collar of my …
Sharon Olds (November 19, 1942 -) By the time I was six months old, she knew somethingwas wrong with me. I got looks on my faceshe had not seen on any childin the family, or the extended family,or the neighborhood. My mother took me into the pediatrician with the kind hands,a doctor with a name …
Edward M Hirsch (January 20, 1950 -) I would like to speak in my poems with what the Romantic poets called ‘the true voice of feeling.’ I believe, as Ezra Pound once said, that when it comes to poetry, ‘only emotion endures.’
Edward Hirsch (January 20, 1950 -) I would like to speak in my poems with what the Romantic poets called ‘the true voice of feeling.’ I believe, as Ezra Pound once said, that when it comes to poetry, ‘only emotion endures.’
Allen Ginsberg (June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997)Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does.
Paul Celan (November 23, 1920 – April 20, 1970) A poem, as manifestation of language and thus essentially dialogue, can be a message in a bottle, sent out in the — not always greatly hopeful — belief that somewhere and sometime it could wash up on land, on heartland perhaps. Poems in this sense, too, …
Continue reading "For The Love Of Wisdom – Paul Celan – Poetry"
Maya Angelou (April 04,1928 - May 28, 2014) Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's sizeBut when I start to tell them,They think I'm telling lies.I say,It's in the reach of my armsThe span of my hips,The stride of my step,The curl of my lips.I'm a …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Maya Angelou – Phenomenal Woman"
Pablo Neruda (July 12, 1904 – September 23 1973) And it was at that age . . . poetry arrivedin search of me. I don’t know, I don’t know whereit came from, from winter or a river.I don’t know how or when,no, they were not voices, they were notwords, not silence,but from a street it …
Robert Penn Warren (April 24, 1905–September 15, 1989) For the basic fact about poetry is that it demands participation, from the secret physical echo in muscle and nerve that identifies us with the medium, to the imaginative enactment that stirs the deepest recesses where life-will and values reside. Beyond that, it nourishes our life-will in …
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May Swenson (May 28, 1913 – December 04, 1989) The best poetry has its roots in the subconscious to a great degree. Youth, naivety, reliance on instinct more than learning and method, a sense of freedom and play, even trust in randomness, is necessary to the making of a poem.
Tao Writer (April 17, 1948 -) A Heart Attack I had just closed the doorWhen it came from all directionsA weight upon my chestA pain not previously knownCaused by a swelling of my heart.The veins contracting downthe back of my neck.My left arm, stiffens in pain.Training or memoryI know not which...AspirinI find the bottle but …
Every man or woman who is sane, every man or woman who has the feeling of being a person in the world, and for whom the world means something, every happy person, is in infinite debt to a woman. Donald Woods Winnicott (April 07, 1896 – January 25, 1971) Tao Writer (April 17, 1948 -) …
Continue reading "The Poetry Of Tao Writer – Remembering Mom"
CK Williams (November 4, 1936 – September 20, 2015) I don’t have to spend so much time mastering my craft, because I pretty much have that under control. But it’s still hard to find the right inspiration and the right voice and the right music to embody the inspiration. That’s the primary business of the …
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Elizabeth Bishop (February 8, 1911 – October 6, 1979) About the size of an old-style dollar bill,American or Canadian,mostly the same whites, gray greens, and steel grays-this little painting (a sketch for a larger one?)has never earned any money in its life.Useless and free., it has spent seventy yearsas a minor family relic handed along …
Langston Hughes (February 1, 1902 – May 22, 1967) Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby. The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk. The rain makes running pools in the gutter. The rain plays a little sleep-song on …
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Donald Andrew Hall (September 20, 1928 – June 23, 2018) You should stare at a poem long enough so that you have one hundred reasons for using every comma, one hundred reasons for every line break, one hundred reasons for every and or or.
Still, I must not forget that I once managed to put these things into writing. Blanchot Paul Kane (March 23, 1950 -) When the high-pitched sounds of the August continuocirculated like breezes through the immovable heat,time was a single leaf drifting upwards, then down.In the emptying out, the vacating of routine,the laboring fullness came to pass, and …
May Swenson (May 28, 1913 – December 4, 1989) I’m on a search, although I didn’t deliberately set out to make a search in poetry. I have a philosophical bent which harks back to a religious background that I abandoned. Other poets may not be on any search other than into their own selves. But …
Continue reading "For The Love Of Wisdom – May Swenson – Poetry"
May Sarton pen name of Eleanore Marie Sarton (May 3, 1912 – July 16, 1995) Between me and everything I see.The glass is pain.How to slide it away,Unblur my vision? “We must rinse the eye,”My old friend, the poet,Used to say.But that was in BelgiumMany years ago. Raymond is deadAnd I am in exile,Old and …
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Rod McKuen (April 29, 1933 – January 29, 2015) How true is truthhow absolute?If I say lovedo I mean loving youto the intrusion of all elseand of all others?And do I knowif I mean that? There are wild rosesthat have bloomedfar into December,seemingly without a reason.And some faithful treesstay barren all year long.Proving, I suppose,the …
Linda Pastan May 27, 1932 -) I often write poems in my head to distract myself during hard times. … Years ago, after a car crash, while I lay waiting for the ambulance, I actually finished a poem I had been working on, determined not to die before I had it right.
May Swenson (May 28, 1913 – December 4, 1989) The best poetry has its roots in the subconscious to a great degree. Youth, naivety, reliance on instinct more than learning and method, a sense of freedom and play, even trust in randomness, is necessary to the making of a poem.
A Kiss is still…an osculatory apposition of the orbicularis oris and levator labii muscles with posterior involvement of the sternocleidomastoids, commonly in a dexterous orientation. Onur Gunturkun of Ruhr Jane Ebihara The Last Kiss First, in your seventies and alone, you read that those whocount such things say an average person kisses for a totalof …
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Nikki Giovanni (June 7, 1943 -) The night loves the stars as they play about the darkness … the day loves the light caressing the sun … We love … those who do … because we live in a world requiring light and darkness … partnership and solitude … sameness and difference … the familiar …
Continue reading "For The Love Of Wisdom – Nikki Giovanni – Love"
Charles Simic (May 09, 1938 -) There's no preparation for poetry. Four years of grave digging with a nice volume of poetry or a book of philosophy in one's pocket would serve as well as any university.
Marie Howe Do you sometimes want to wake up to the singularitywe once were?so compact nobodyneeded a bed, or food or money —nobody hiding in the school bathroomor home alonepulling open the drawerwhere the pills are kept.For every atom belonging to me as goodBelongs to you. Remember?There was no Nature. Nothem. No teststo determine if the elephantgrieves her calf or …
Barbara Ras (1949 -) But you can have the fig tree and its fat leaves like clown handsgloved with green. You can have the touch of a single eleven-year-old fingeron your cheek, waking you at one a.m. to say the hamster is back.You can have the purr of the cat and the soulful lookOf the …
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Billy Collins (March 22, 1941 -) The name of the author is the first to gofollowed obediently by the title, the plot,the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novelwhich suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of,as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbordecided to retire to the southern hemisphere of …
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Robert Browning (May 07, 1812 – December 12, 1889) Out of your whole life give but a moment!All of your life that has gone before,All to come after it,—so you ignore,So you make perfect the present, —condense,In a rapture of rage, for perfection’s endowment,Thought and feeling and soul and sense—Merged in a moment which gives …
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Kathleen Jamie (May 13, 1962 -) When we were young, we were told that poetry is about voice, about finding a voice and speaking with this voice, but the older I get I think it's not about voice, it's about listening and the art of listening, listening with attention. I don't just mean with the …
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She told him what had kept her away was Death. But he rejected that excuse—for Death, he said, can never come between lovers. Naguib Mahdouz (December 11, 1911 – August 30, 2006) Tao Writer (April 17, 1948 -) The Crushing Weight Of GoodBye I never thought the last time we said, “Good bye,” would be …
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You ask where you will lie after your death? Where lie the souls unborn? Seneca Tao Writer (April 17, 1948 -) A Serendipitous Occasion We exchanged our vows betweena rising full moon and an ocean setting suna top a dune made of sand,Two different points of reference,not an ending or a beginning,but a blending of …
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Alfred Lord Tennyson (August 06, 1809 – October 06, 1892) Flower in the crannied wall,I pluck you out of the crannies,I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,Little flower—but if I could understandWhat you are, root and all, and all in all,I should know what God and man is. Flowers in the crannied …
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Tao Writer (April 17, 1948 -) Desires At what pointdo we no longerdesireour desires?Like a dreamforgottenin an instant.The detailsno longer alive—Hiding therein the cornersof the forebodingdark shadows.Do we forget,So that we mightdream again,of the thingswe so desire?
Mark Strand (April 11, 1934 - November 29, 2014) It will be strangeKnowing at last it couldn’t go on forever,The certain voice telling us over and overThat nothing would change,And remembering too,Because by then it will all be done with, the wayThings were, and how we had wasted time as thoughThere was nothing to do,When, …
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Billy Collins (March 22, 1941 -) Early on, I noticed that you always say itto each of your childrenas you are getting off the phone with themjust as you never fail to say itto me whenever we arrive at the end of a call.It’s all new to this only child.I never heard my parents say …
Yusef Komunyakaa (April 29, 1941 -) Attempt to write every day, to read everything, to listen, to be in the world, to challenge ideas and to question ourselves. Because it’s not just poetry; it’s the experience of inquiry… Be aware of the small things in the world, not necessarily the monumental things. The small things …
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Léo Dangel (1941 - 2016) In the early afternoon my motherwas doing the dishes. I climbedonto the kitchen table, I supposeto play, and fell asleep there.I was drowsy and awake, though,as she lifted me up, carried meon her arms into the living room,and placed me on the davenport,but I pretended to be asleepthe whole time, …
Barbara Ras (1949 -) But you can have the fig tree and its fat leaves like clown handsgloved with green. You can have the touch of a single eleven-year-old fingeron your cheek, waking you at one a.m. to say the hamster is back.You can have the purr of the cat and the soulful lookOf the …
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Nina Bogin (January 02, 1954 -) At the crossroads, hens scratched circlesinto the white dust. There was a shopwhere I bought coffee and eggs, coarse-grainedchocolate almost too sweet to eat.When I walked up the road, the string sackheavy on my arm, I thoughtthat my legs could take me anywhere,into any country, any life.The air, dazzling …
Robert von Ranke Graves (July 24, 1895 – December 07, 1985) The butterfly, the cabbage white,(His honest idiocy of flight)Will never now, it is too late,Master the art of flying straight,Yet has — who knows so well as I? —A just sense of how not to fly:He lurches here and here by guessAnd God and …
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Louise Glück (April 22, 1943 -) Now that she is old,the young men don't approach herso the nights are free,the streets at dusk that were so dangeroushave become as safe as the meadow. By midnight, the town's quiet.Moonlight reflects off the stone walls;on the pavement, you can hear the nervous soundsof the men rushing home …
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Tao Writer (April 17, 1948 -) Moments If I could master just one art,it would be the art of letting go:of people I have known and loved,of places I’ve traveled to and livedof sunsets and full moons I’ve witnessed.I would let go of this momentas quickly as it appears, faster if I could.I would let go …
William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) I have eatenthe plumsthat were inthe icebox and whichyou were probablysavingfor breakfast Forgive methey were deliciousso sweetand so cold
Alan Lightman (November 28, 1948 -) Excerpt From Song of Two Worlds So much I’ve lost,I have nothingExcept a fierce hungerTo fathom this world.Naked, I knock on the door,Wearing only my questions. One thousand questions, and each givesAn answer, which then forms a question.The questions and answers will meld with each otherLike colors of light,Like …
Sandy Denny (January 06, 1947 – April 21, 1978) Across the morning sky, all the birds are leavingHow can they know that it’s time to go?Before the winter fire, I’ll still be dreamingI do not count the timeWho knows where the time goes?Who knows where the time goes?Sad, deserted shore, your fickle friends are leavingAh, …
Lucie Brock Broido (May 22, 1956 – March 6, 2018) If my own voice falters, tell them hubris was my way of adoring you.The hollow of the hulk of you, so feverish in life, cut open, Reveals ten thousand rags of music in your thoracic cavity.The hands are received bagged and examination reveals no injury. …
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Tao Writer (April 17, 1948 -) I Will Write All Day I will write all day, today, not try to squeezecreativity between a this or a that,between nowhere and somewhere to be.My imagination will stretch with thebright morning shadowscreeping slowlyacross the green shimmering leaves.I will see a flower and create a dedication,dive into a juicy, …
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Naomi Shihab Nye (March 12, 1952 -) To me the world of poetry is a house with thousands of glittering windows. Our words and images, land to land, era to era, shed light on one another. Our words dissolve the shadows we imagine fall between.
Derek Walcott (January 23, 1930 - March 17, 2017) The time will comewhen with elation,You will greet yourself arrivingat your own door, in your own mirror,and each will smile at the other’s welcome,and say, Sit here. Eat.You will love again the stranger who was your Self.Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heartto itself, to …
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Pablo Neruda (July 12, 1904 - September 23, 1973) Now we will count to twelveand we will all keep still.For once on the face of the earth,let's not speak in any language;let's stop for one second,and not move our arms so much.It would be an exotic momentwithout rush, without engines;we would all be togetherin a …
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Pablo Neruda (July 12, 1904 - September 23, 1973) And it was at that age . . . poetry arrivedin search of me. I don't know, I don't know whereit came from, from winter or a river.I don't know how or when,no, they were not voices, they were notwords, not silence,but from a street it …
Billy Collins (March 22, 1941 -) This morning as I walked along the lakeshore,I fell in love with a wrenand later in the day with a mousethe cat had dropped under the dining room table.In the shadows of an autumn evening,I fell for a seamstressstill at her machine in the tailor’s window,and later for a …
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Marge Piercy (March 31, 1936 -) Almost always with cats, the endcomes creeping over the two of you—she stops eating, his back legsno longer support him, she leansto your hand and purrs but cannotrise—sometimes a whimper of painalthough they are stoic. They seedeath clearly though hooded eyes.Then there is the long weepytrip to the vet, …
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Arthur Rimbaud (October 20, 1854 – November 10, 1891) I went off with my hands in my torn coat pockets;My overcoat too was becoming ideal;I travelled beneath the sky, Muse! and I was your vassal;Oh dear me! what marvelous loves I dreamed of!My only pair of breeches had a big whole in them.– Stargazing Tom …
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Fleur Adcock (February 10, 1934 -) Literally thin-skinned, I suppose, my facecatches the wind off the snow-line and flusheswith a flush that will never wholly settle. Well:that was a metropolitan vanity,wanting to look young for ever, to pass. I was never a pre-Raphaelite beautynor anything but pretty enough to satisfymen who need to be seen …
Franz Kafka (July 3, 1883 – June 3, 1924) Music creates new, subtler, more complicated, and therefore more dangerous pleasures… But poetry aims at clarifying the wilderness of pleasures, at intellectualizing, purifying, and therefore humanizing them. Music is a multiplication of sensuous life; poetry, on the other hand, disciplines and elevates it.
William Rose Benét (February 2, 1886 – May 4, 1950) The poet (artist) must write as it pleases him to write. If he writes what other people tell him to write, he may get some good verse, but he won’t get poetry. When I write to please myself, I may write some very bad verse, …
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Ted Hughes (August 17, 1930 - October 28, 1998) The inmost spirit of poetry, in other words, is at bottom, in every recorded case, the voice of pain — and the physical body, so to speak, of poetry, is the treatment by which the poet tries to reconcile that pain with the world. 🎂Happy Birthday …
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Ella Wheeler Wilcox (November 5, 1850–October 30, 1919) To sin by silence, when we should protest,Makes cowards out of men. The human raceHas climbed on protest. Had no voice been raisedAgainst injustice, ignorance, and lust,The inquisition yet would serve the law,And guillotines decide our least disputes.The few who dare, must speak and speak againTo right …
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James Broughton (November 10, 1913 – May 17, 1999) Had my soul tottered off to sleeptaking my potency with it?Had they both retired before I couldleaving me a classroom somnambulist?Why else should I at sixty-onefeel myself shriveling into fadeout? Then on a cold seminar Mondayin walked an unannounced redeemerdisguised as a taciturn studentBrisk and …
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Donald Andrew Hall (September 20, 1928 – June 23, 2018) It discovers by nightwhat the day hid from it.Sometimes it turns itselfinto an animal.In summer it takes long walksby itself where meadowsfold back from ditches.Once it stood stillin a quiet row of machines.Who knowswhat it is thinking? 🌹Donald Andrew Hall (September 20, 1928 – June …
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If we fall in love deeply enough, we fall through our sense of two, into the One. So if you fall in love, fall totally into love, so you fall into the One. Adyashanti Tao Writer (April 17, 1948 -) Until Now I never understood themeaning of love poetry,until now.I never cried so many tearsfor …
There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year's course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word 'happy' would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. Carl Jung Tao Writer (April 17, 1948 -) …
Jenny Joseph (May 07, 1932 - January 08, 2018) Warning When I am an old woman I shall wear purpleWith a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer glovesAnd satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.I shall sit down on the …
The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances; if there is any reaction, both are transformed. Carl G Jung Tao Writer (April 17, 1948 -) Here We Are, Again I don’t know where you came from —a dream I had long ago,now remembered?Perhaps we met as travelers doat a crossroad …
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May Sarton (May 3, 1912–July 16, 1995) Canticle 6 Alone one is never lonely: the spirit adventures, wakingIn a quiet garden, in a cool house, abiding single there;The spirit adventures in sleep, the sweet thirst-slakingWhen only the moon’s reflection touches the wild hair.There is no place more intimate than the spirit alone:It finds a lovely …
William Wordsworth (April 07, 1770 – April 23, 1850) Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotions recollected in tranquility.
Anne Sexton November 9, 1928 – October 4, 1974) The beautiful feeling after writing a poem is on the whole better even than after sex, and that’s saying a lot.
Tao Writer (April 17, 1948 -) Say It! “Say it,”came a voice from everywherewith a body nowhere.“Say what,” I questioned.“Say I am Love,”the voice replied.“I am Love,”I whispered in a thoughtnot moving my lips.“Say it louder!”the voice exclaimed!“I am Love”I spoke in a soundgreater than silencestill less then audible.“Say it as if everycell in your …