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b27c51e You are a poem--and that is to be the best part of a poet--what makes up the poet's consciousness in his best moods. poetry George Eliot
0285bcd I dragged myself to my feet, and with my hellhound in tow started off once more through the fastness of the wood, feeling, as the poet did before me, that my companion would be with me through the nights and through the days and down the arches of the years, and I should never be rid of him. poetry remembrance Daphne du Maurier
6037b67 Wars, wars, wars': reading up on the region I came across one moment when quintessential Englishness had in fact intersected with this darkling plain. In 1906 Winston Churchill, then the minister responsible for British colonies, had been honored by an invitation from Kaiser Wilhelm II to attend the annual maneuvers of the Imperial German Army, held at Breslau. The Kaiser was 'resplendent in the uniform of the White Silesian Cuirassiers' and his massed and regimented infantry... Strange to find Winston Churchill and Sylvia Plath both choosing the word 'roller,' in both its juggernaut and wavelike declensions, for that scene. war poetry british-overseas-territories cars cavalry churchill englishness german-army german-empire infantry kaiser kaiser-wilhelm-ii silesia sylvia-plath upper-silesia wrocław british-empire germany Christopher Hitchens
2ddb3c8 The hours I spent in this anachronistic, bibliophile, Anglophile retreat were in surreal contrast to the shrieking horror show that was being enacted in the rest of the city. I never felt this more acutely than when, having maneuvered the old boy down the spiral staircase for a rare out-of-doors lunch the next day--terrified of letting him slip and tumble--I got him back upstairs again. He invited me back for even more readings the following morning but I had to decline. I pleaded truthfully that I was booked on a plane for Chile. 'I am so sorry,' said this courteous old genius. 'But may I then offer you a gift in return for your company?' I naturally protested with all the energy of an English middle-class upbringing: couldn't hear of such a thing; pleasure and privilege all mine; no question of accepting any present. He stilled my burblings with an upraised finger. 'You will remember,' he said, 'the lines I will now speak. You will always remember them.' And he then recited the following: The title (Sonnet XXIX of Dante Gabriel Rossetti)--'Inclusiveness'--may sound a trifle sickly but the enfolded thought recurred to me more than once after I became a father and Borges was quite right: I have never had to remind myself of the words. I was mumbling my thanks when he said, again with utter composure: 'While you are in Chile do you plan a call on General Pinochet?' I replied with what I hoped was equivalent aplomb that I had no such intention. 'A pity,' came the response. 'He is a true gentleman. He was recently kind enough to award me a literary prize.' It wasn't the ideal note on which to bid Borges farewell, but it was an excellent illustration of something else I was becoming used to noticing--that in contrast or corollary to what Colin MacCabe had said to me in Lisbon, sometimes it was also the right people who took the wrong line. poetry jorge-luis-borges pinochet Christopher Hitchens
c5fa88d We do not admire their president. We know why the White House is white. We do not find their children irresistible; We do not agree they should inherit the earth. poems poetry us united-states-of-america native-americans whites usa united-states race-relations Alice Walker
ed0e752 "Havin loved enough and lost enough, I'm no longer searching, just opening, no longer trying to make sense of pain but trying to be a soft and sturdy home in which real things can land. These are the irritations that rub into a pearl. So we can talk for a while but then we must listen, the way rocks listen to the sea. And we can churn at all that goes wrong but then we must lay all distractions down and water every living seed. And yes, on nights like tonight I too feel along. But seldom do I face it squarely enough to see that it's a door into the endless berath that has no breather, pain poetry optimism Mark Nepo
536956f They were wrong about the sun. It does not go down into the underworld at night. The sun leaves merely and the underworld emerges. It can happen at any moment. It can happen in the morning, you in the kitchen going through your mild routines. Plate, cup, knife. All at once there's no blue, no green, no warning. poetry underworld Margaret Atwood
b488979 "All at once, something wonderful happened, although at first, it seemed perfectly ordinary. A female goldfinch suddenly hove into view. She lighted weightlessly on the head of a bankside purple thistle and began emptying the seedcase, sowing the air with down. The lighted frame of my window filled. The down rose and spread in all directions, wafting over the dam's waterfall and wavering between the tulip trunks and into the meadow. It vaulted towards the orchard in a puff; it hovered over the ripening pawpaw fruit and staggered up the steep faced terrace. It jerked, floated, rolled, veered, swayed. The thistle down faltered down toward the cottage and gusted clear to the woods; it rose and entered the shaggy arms of pecans. At last it strayed like snow, blind and sweet, into the pool of the creek upstream, and into the race of the creek over rocks down. It shuddered onto the tips of growing grasses, where it poised, light, still wracked by errant quivers. I was holding my breath. Is this where we live, I thought, in this place in this moment, with the air so light and wild? The same fixity that collapses stars and drives the mantis to devour her mate eased these creatures together before my eyes: the thick adept bill of the goldfinch, and the feathery coded down. How could anything be amiss? If I myself were lighter and frayed, I could ride these small winds, too, taking my chances, for the pleasure of being so purely played. The thistle is part of Adam's curse. "Cursed is the ground for thy sake, in sorrow shalt thou eat of it; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee." A terrible curse: But does the goldfinch eat thorny sorrow with the thistle or do I? If this furling air is fallen, then the fall was happy indeed. If this creekside garden is sorrow, then I seek martyrdom. I was weightless; my bones were taut skins blown with buoyant gas; it seemed that if I inhaled too deeply, my shoulders and head would waft off. Alleluia." fate seeing free light poem prayer nature poetry freedom joy spirit wonder faith beauty religion science god philosophy ring-the-bells enoughness exultant illumination intricacy joyfulness living-in-the-present-moment religious-diversity stalking-the-gaps the-tree-with-the-lights-in-it gaps philosopher-s-stone multiplicity praying prayers hallelujah life-force seeking exploration praise joyful mindfulness epiphany tolerance grace energy disbelief watching growth belief fearless humility consciousness walking fire mystery curiosity power soul poet creation Annie Dillard
ecbdab8 Every poet begins (however 'unconsciously') by rebelling more strongly against the fear of death than all other men and women do. poetry Harold Bloom
cc6c1c6 "Outside the study hall the next fall, the fall of our senior year, the Nabisco plant baked sweet white bread twice a week. If I sharpened a pencil at the back of the room I could smell the baking bread and the cedar shavings from the pencil.... Pretty soon all twenty of us - our class - would be leaving. A core of my classmates had been together since kindergarten. I'd been there eight years. We twenty knew by bored heart the very weave of each other's socks.... The poems I loved were in French, or translated from the Chinese, Portuguese, Arabic, Sanskrit, Greek. I murmured their heartbreaking sylllables. I knew almost nothing of the diverse and energetic city I lived in. The poems whispered in my ear the password phrase, and I memorized it behind enemy lines: There is a world. There is another world. I knew already that I would go to Hollins College in Virginia; our headmistress sent all her problems there, to her alma mater. "For the English department," she told me.... But, "To smooth off her rough edges," she had told my parents. They repeated the phrase to me, vividly. I had hopes for my rough edges. I wanted to use them as a can opener, to cut myself a hole in the world's surface, and exit through it. Would I be ground, instead, to a nub? Would they send me home, an ornament to my breed, in a jewelry bag?" poetry awakening college Annie Dillard
ca1bd59 "Oh, Youth may listen patiently, While sad Experience tells her tale, But Doubt sits smiling in his eye, For ardent Hope will still prevail! He hears how feeble Pleasure dies, By guilt destroyed, and pain and woe; He turns to Hope--and she replies, "Believe it not-it is not so!" poetry hope life Anne Brontë
bb39ab4 Colorless green ideas sleep furiously three old owls on a chest of drawers were screwing the daughter of the doctor. But then the mother called them, colorless green ideas slepp furiously. irony poetry sestina linguistics semantics pastiche Umberto Eco
9ed98d1 One day the English language is going to perish. The easy spokenness of it will perish and go black and crumbly -- maybe -- and it will become a language like Latin that learned people learn. And scholars will write studies of and and and and and , and everyone will see that the sitcom is the great American art form. American poetry will perish with the language; the sitcoms, on the other hand, are new to human evolution and therefore will be less perishable. television poetry sitcom language Nicholson Baker
e8657a9 "Last year I had a very unusual experience. I was awake, with my eyes closed, when I had a dream. It was a small dream about time. I was dead, I guess, in deep blank space high up above many white stars. My own consciousness had been disclosed to me, and I was happy. Then I saw far below me a long, curved band of color. As I came closer, I saw that it stretched endlessly in either direction, and I understood that I was seeing all the time of the planet where I had lived. It looked like a woman's tweed scarf; the longer I studied any one spot, the more dots of color I saw. There was no end to the deepness and variety of dots. At length I started to look for my time, but, although more and more specks of color and deeper and more intricate textures appeared in the fabric, I couldn't find my time, or any time at all that I recognized as being near my time. I couldn't make out so much as a pyramid. Yet as I looked at the band of time, all the individual people, I understood with special clarity, were living at that very moment with great emotion, in intricate, detail, in their individual times and places, and they were dying and being replaced by ever more people, one by one, like stitches in which wholly worlds of feeling and energy were wrapped in a never-ending cloth. I remembered suddenly the color and texture of our life as we knew it- these things had been utterly forgotten- and I thought as I searched for it on the limitless band, "that was a good time then, a good time to be living." And I began to remember our time. I recalled green fields with carrots growing, one by one, in slender rows. Men and women in bright vests and scarves came and pulled the carrots out of the soil and carried them in baskets to shaded kitchens, where they scrubbed them with yellow brushes under running water. I saw white-faced cattle lowing and wading in creeks. I saw May apples in forests, erupting through leaf-strewn paths. Cells on the root hairs of sycamores split and divided, and apples grew spotted and striped in the fall. Mountains kept their cool caves and squirrels raced home to their nests through sunlight and shade. I remembered the ocean, and I seemed to be in the ocean myself, swimming over orange crabs that looked like coral, or off the deep Atlantic banks where whitefish school. Or again I saw the tops of poplars, and the whole sky brushed with clouds in pallid streaks, under which wild ducks flew with outstretched necks, and called, one by one, and flew on. All these things I saw. Scenes grew in depth and sunlit detail before my eyes, and were replaced by ever more scenes, as I remember the life of my time with increasing feeling. At last I saw the earth as a globe in space, and I recalled the ocean's shape and the form of continents, saying to myself with surprise as I looked at the planet, "yes, that's how it was then, that part there was called France." I was filled with the deep affection of nostalgia- and then I opened my eyes. fate seeing free light poem prayer nature poetry freedom joy spirit wonder faith beauty religion science god philosophy ring-the-bells enoughness exultant illumination intricacy joyfulness living-in-the-present-moment religious-diversity stalking-the-gaps the-tree-with-the-lights-in-it gaps philosopher-s-stone multiplicity praying prayers hallelujah life-force seeking exploration praise joyful mindfulness epiphany tolerance grace energy disbelief watching growth belief fearless humility consciousness walking fire mystery curiosity power soul poet creation Annie Dillard
e74d8b4 Tell her I was young once and star-bright Who am now invisible . . . poetry henry-and-cato iris-murdoch invisible young Iris Murdoch
6744dc1 Those people who shoot endless time-lapse films of unfurling roses and tulips have the wrong idea. They should train their cameras instead on the melting of pack ice, the green filling of ponds, the tidal swings...They should film the glaciers of Greenland, some of which creak along at such a fast clip that even the dogs bark at them. They should film the invasion of the southernmost Canadian tundra by the northernmost spruce-fir forest, which is happening right now at the rate of a mile every 10 years. When the last ice sheet receded from the North American continent, the earth rebounded 10 feet. Wouldn't that have been a sight to see? fate seeing free light poem prayer nature poetry freedom joy spirit wonder faith beauty religion science god philosophy ring-the-bells enoughness exultant illumination intricacy joyfulness living-in-the-present-moment religious-diversity stalking-the-gaps the-tree-with-the-lights-in-it gaps philosopher-s-stone multiplicity praying prayers hallelujah life-force seeking exploration praise joyful mindfulness epiphany tolerance grace energy disbelief watching growth belief fearless humility consciousness walking fire mystery curiosity power soul poet creation Annie Dillard
0b2e777 On Beauty No, we could not itemize the list of sins they can't forgive us. The beautiful don't lack the wound. It is always beginning to snow. Of sins they can't forgive us speech is beautifully useless. It is always beginning to snow. The beautiful know this. Speech is beautifully useless. They are the damned. The beautiful know this. They stand around unnatural as statuary. They are the damned and so their sadness is perfect, delicate as an egg placed in your palm. Hard, it is decorated with their face and so their sadness is perfect. The beautiful don't lack the wound. Hard, it is decorated with their face. No, we could not itemize the list. Cape Cod, May 1974 poetry Zadie Smith
e8d7740 Po kazdej wojnie ktos musi posprzatac. war poetry sprzątać wojna polish Wisława Szymborska
3b41102 "Say you could view a time-lapse film of our planet: what would you see? Transparent images moving through light, "an infinite storm of beauty." The beginning is swaddled in mists, blasted by random blinding flashes. Lava pours and cools; seas boil and flood. Clouds materialize and shift; now you can see the earth's face through only random patches of clarity. The land shudders and splits, like pack ice rent by a widening lead. Mountains burst up, jutting and dull and soften before your eyes, clothed in forests like felt. The ice rolls up, grinding green land under water forever; the ice rolls back. Forests erupt and disappear like fairy rings. The ice rolls up-mountains are mowed into lakes, land rises wet from the sea like a surfacing whale- the ice rolls back. A blue-green streaks the highest ridges, a yellow-green spreads from the south like a wave up a strand. A red dye seems to leak from the north down the ridges and into the valleys, seeping south; a white follows the red, then yellow-green washes north, then red spreads again, then white, over and over, making patterns of color too swift and intricate to follow. Slow the film. You see dust storms, locusts, floods, in dizzying flash frames. Zero in on a well-watered shore and see smoke from fires drifting. Stone cities rise, spread, and then crumble, like patches of alpine blossoms that flourish for a day an inch above the permafrost, that iced earth no root can suck, and wither in a hour. New cities appear, and rivers sift silt onto their rooftops; more cities emerge and spread in lobes like lichen on rock. The great human figures of history, those intricate, spirited tissues that roamed the earth's surface, are a wavering blur whose split second in the light was too brief an exposure to yield any images. The great herds of caribou pour into the valleys and trickle back, and pour, a brown fluid. Slow it down more, come closer still. A dot appears, like a flesh-flake. It swells like a balloon; it moves, circles, slows, and vanishes. This is your life." fate seeing free light poem prayer nature poetry freedom joy spirit wonder faith beauty religion science god philosophy ring-the-bells enoughness exultant illumination intricacy joyfulness living-in-the-present-moment religious-diversity stalking-the-gaps the-tree-with-the-lights-in-it gaps philosopher-s-stone multiplicity praying prayers hallelujah life-force seeking exploration praise joyful mindfulness epiphany tolerance grace energy disbelief watching growth belief fearless humility consciousness walking fire mystery curiosity power soul poet creation Annie Dillard
099ad33 Shadow is the blue patch where the light doesn't hit. It is mystery itself, and mystery is the ancients' ultima Thule, the modern explorer's Point of Relative Inaccessibility, that boreal point most distant from all known lands. There the twin oceans of beauty and horror meet. The great glaciers are calving. Ice that sifted to earth as snow in the time of Christ shears from the pack with a roar and crumbles to water. It could be that our instruments have not looked deeply enough. The RNA deep in the mantis's jaw is a beautiful ribbon. Did the crawling Polyphemus moth have in its watery heart one cell, and in that cell one special molecule, and that molecule one hydrogen atom, and round that atom's nucleus one wild, distant electron that split showed a forest, swaying? fate seeing free light poem prayer nature poetry freedom joy spirit wonder faith beauty religion science god philosophy exultant illumination intricacy joyfulness religious-diversity stalking-the-gaps the-tree-with-the-lights-in-it gaps philosopher-s-stone multiplicity praying prayers hallelujah life-force seeking exploration praise joyful mindfulness epiphany tolerance grace energy disbelief watching growth belief fearless humility walking fire mystery curiosity power soul poet creation Annie Dillard
0829536 "Xerxes, I read, 'halted his unwieldy army for days that he might contemplate to his satisfaction' the beauty of a single sycamore. You are Xerxes in Persia. Your army spreads on a vast and arid peneplain...you call to you all your sad captains, and give the order to halt. You have seen the tree with the lights in it, haven't you? You must have. Xerxes buffeted on a plain, ambition drained in a puff. Your men are bewildered...there is nothing to catch the eye in this flatness, nothing but a hollow, hammering sky, a waste of sedge in the lee of windblown rocks, a meager ribbon of scrub willow tracing a slumbering watercourse...and that sycamore. You saw it; you will stand rapt and mute, exalted, remembering or not remembering over a period of days to shade your head with your robe. "He had its form wrought upon a medal of gold to help him remember it the rest of his life." We all ought to have a goldsmith following us around. But it goes without saying, doesn't it, Xerxes, that no gold medal worn around your neck will bring back the glad hour, keep those lights kindled so long as you live, forever present? Pascal saw it; he grabbed pen and paper and scrawled the one word, and wore it sewn in his shirt the rest of his life. I don't know what Pascal saw. I saw a cedar. Xerxes saw a sycamore." fate seeing free light poem prayer nature poetry freedom joy spirit wonder faith beauty religion science god philosophy enoughness exultant illumination intricacy joyfulness living-in-the-present-moment religious-diversity stalking-the-gaps the-tree-with-the-lights-in-it gaps philosopher-s-stone multiplicity praying prayers hallelujah life-force seeking exploration praise joyful mindfulness epiphany tolerance grace energy disbelief watching growth belief fearless humility consciousness walking fire mystery curiosity power soul poet creation Annie Dillard
a20bbb6 They lay together in a sheltered place among the ruins of Brasilia while deathbeams from Chinese EMVs played like blue searchlights on broken ceramic walls. war poetry poetic-prose sci-fi Dan Simmons
261ce2f The city had changed beyond recognition. Wrecking balls and bulldozers had leveled the old buildings to rubble. The dust of construction hung permanently over the streets. Gated mansions reached up to the northern foothills, while slums fanned out from the city's southern limits. I feared an aged that had lost its heart, and I was terrified at the thought of so many useless hands. Our traditions were our pacifiers and we put ourselves to sleep with the lullaby of a once-great civilation and culture. Ours was the land of poetry flowers, and nightingales--and poets searching for rhymes in history's junkyards. The lottery was our faith and greed our fortune. Our intellectuals were sniffing cocaine and delivering lectures in the back rooms of dark cafes. We bought plastic roses and decorated our lawns and courtyards with plaster swans. We saw the future in neon lights. We had pizza shops, supermarkets, and bowling alleys. We had trafric jams, skyscrapers, and air thick with noise and pollution. We had illiterate villagers who came to the capital with scraps of paper in their hands, begging for someone to show them the way to this medical clinic or that government officee. the streets of Tehran were full of Mustangs and Chevys bought at three times the price they sold for back in America, and still our oil wasn't our own. Still our country wasn't our own. poetry howl ginsberg Jasmin Darznik
b7b37ff Versifying left her cold. Poems were too close to prayer, rousing regrettable passions. Waiting for God to rescue you when it was up to you. Poetry and prayer put ideas in people's heads that got them killed, distracting them from the ruthless mechanism of the world. poems prayer world poetry verse self-reliance Colson Whitehead
b6d1563 In the midst of the ubiquitous dealings with prostituted signs, the thing-poem was capable of opening up the prospect of returning to credible experiences of meaning. It did this by tying language to the gold standard of what things themselves communicate. Where randomness is disabled, authority should shine forth. poetry communication being randomness rilke thing-poem Peter Sloterdijk
7b725b2 The reason for the existence of the perfection conjured up in these fourteen lines is that it possesses ... the authorization to form a message that appeals from within itself. This power of appeal is exquisitely evident in the object evoked here. The perfect thing is that which articulates an entire principle of being. The poem has to perform no more and no less than to perceive the principle of being in the thing and adapt it to its own existence - with the aim of becoming a construct with an equal power to convey a message. poetry being rilke thing-poem Peter Sloterdijk
15b30be As we know, Rilke, under the influence of Auguste Rodin, whom he had assisted between 1905 and 1906 in Meudon as a private secretary, turned away from the art nouveau-like, sensitized-atmospheric poetic approach of his early years to pursue a view of art determined more strongly by the priority of the object. The proto-modern pathos of making way for the object without depicting it in a manner 'true to nature', like that of the old masters, led in Rilke's case to the concept of the thing-poem - and thus to a temporarily convincing new answer to the question of the source of aesthetic and ethical authority. From that point, it would be the things themselves from which all authority would come - or rather: from this respectively current singular thing that turns to me by demanding my full gaze. This is only possible because thing-being would now no longer mean anything but this: having something to say. poetry rodin rilke thing-poem Peter Sloterdijk
309de7e What the poet has to say to the torso of the supposed Apollo, however, is more than a note on an excursion to the antiquities collection. The author's point is not that the thing depicts an extinct god who might be of interest to the humanistically educated, but that the god in the stone constitutes a thing-construct that is still on air. We are dealing with a document of how newer message ontology outgrew traditional theologies. Here, being itself is understood as having more power to speak and transmit, and more potent authority, than God, the ruling idol of religions. In modern times, even a God can find himself among the pretty figures that no longer mean anything to us - assuming they do not become openly irksome. The thing filled with being, however, does not cease to speak to us when its moment has come. poetry god being rilke thing-poem poet Peter Sloterdijk
7b427fe from under the ground, from under the waters, they clutch at us, they clutch at us, we won't let go. grief loss poetry dreams poetic dreaming grieving nightmares nightmare Margaret Atwood
daff311 "In the "Republic," Plato vigorously attacked the oral, poetized form as a vehicle for communicating knowledge. He pleaded for a more precise method of communication and classification ("The Ideas"), one which would favor the investigation of facts, principles of reality, human nature, and conduct. What the Greeks meant by "poetry" was radically different from what we mean by poetry. Their "poetic" expression was a product of a collective psyche and mind. The mimetic form, a technique that exploited rhythm, meter and music, achieved the desired psychological response in the listener. Listeners could memorize with greater ease what was sung than what was said. Plato attacked this method because it discouraged disputation and argument. It was in his opinion the chief obstacle to abstract, speculative reasoning - he called it "a poison, and an enemy of the people." poetry media-criticism the-republic plato media Marshall McLuhan
d19fcc1 The heart, I think, which is the home of all things rhythmic, is where learned poems go to live. poems poetry memorization Bill Richardson
10fcb2d If I can write just one poem that will turn the minds of a few to a more decent outlook...what does it matter if I compose a bad line or lose my reputation as a craftsman?...I used to think it very important to write only good poetry. Over and over I worked it to make it as flawless as I could. What does it matter now, when men are dying for their hopes and their ideals? If I live or die as a poet it won't matter, but anyone who believes in democracy and freedom and love and culture and peace ought to be busy now. He cannot wait for the tomorrow. war poetry meaning purpose propaganda Nancy Milford
c3c7d89 Minutes, foolish mortal, are the base mineral that you must not let go of without extracting their gold! time poetry Charles Baudelaire
1a43e1c -- !Ella llora, insensata, porque ella ha vivido! !Y porque vive! Pero, lo que ella deplora Sobre todo, lo que la hace temblar hasta las rodillas, Es que manana, !ah! !tendra que vivir todavia! !Manana, pasado manana y siempre! - !Como nosotros! poetry Charles Baudelaire
d650cfe "Because you rubbed my shoulder last night a poem poetry Alice Walker
cab925d Pero yo ya no soy yo, ni mi casa es ya mi casa. spanish poetry romance-sonámbulo Federico García Lorca
faab106 "We tried to educate ourselves. I would invite the girls to my rooms, and we took turns reading poetry in English to improve our understanding of the language. One of our favorites was Thomas Hood's "Song of the Shirt," and another . . . Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Mask of Anarchy." . . . "Rise like lions after slumber In unvanquishable number! Which in sleep had fallen on you- Ye are many, they are few!" poem poetry Howard Zinn
b593b29 Chesterton never achieves a great poem because his poems are compilations of statements not intensely felt but only intensely meant. poetry Hugh Kenner
5e32d11 I had to send away for the beacuse they are not available in any store. They look the same as any sunglasses with a light tint and silvery frames, but instead of filtering out the harmful rays of the sun. they filter out the harmful sight of you -- poetry Billy Collins
0fbcba7 The fly lands on the swatter. The movie runs backwards and catches fire in the projector. This species apes us well by talking only about itself words poetry Billy Collins
05177f1 You are turning me like someone turning a globe in her hand, and yes, I have another side like a China no one, not even me, has ever seen. So describe to me what's there, say what you are looking at and I will close my eyes so I can see it too, the oxcarts and all the lively flags. I love the sound of your voice like a little saxophone telling me what I could never know unless I dug a hole all the way down through the core of myself. poetry Billy Collins
bf485c4 Eastern Standard Time Poetry speaks to all people, it is said, but here I would like to address only those in my own time zone, this proper slice of longitude that runs from pole to snowy pole down the globe through Montreal to Bogota. Oh, fellow inhabitants of this singular band, sitting up in your many beds this morning-- the sun falling through the windows and casting a shadow on the sundial-- consider those in other zones who cannot hear these words. They are not slipping into a bathrobe as we are, or following the smell of coffee in a timely fashion. Rather, they are at work already, leaning on copy machines, hammering nails into a house-frame. They are not swallowing a vitamin like us; rather they are smoking a cigarette under a half moon, even jumping around on a dance floor, or just now sliding under the covers, pulling down the little chains on their bed lamps. But we are not like these others, for at this very moment on the face of the earth, we are standing under a hot shower, or we are eating our breakfast, considered by people of all zones to be the most important meal of the day. Later, when the time is right, we might sit down with the boss, wash the car, or linger at a candle-lit table, but now is the hour for pouring the juice and flipping the eggs with one eye on the toaster. So let us slice a banana and uncap the jam, lift our brimming spoons of milk, and leave it to the others to lower a flag or spin absurdly in a barber's chair-- those antipodal oddballs, always early or late. Let us praise Sir Stanford Fleming the Canadian genius who first scored with these lines the length of the spinning earth. Let us move together through the rest of this day passing in unison from light to shadow, coasting over the crest of noon into the valley of the evening and then, holding hands, slip into the deeper valley of night. poetry morning night Billy Collins
b36fe20 "I feel like the secretary to the morning whose only/ responsibility is to take down its bright, airy dictation/ poetry writing small-joys mundane Billy Collins
58e48a8 "...My voice is stained with bloody light, and I see irises dry up at its touch; in my song I wear the finery of a white-faced clown. Love, sweet Love, hides under a spider. The sun, another spider, hides me under legs of gold. I will not find my fortune, for I am like Love himself, poetry love Federico García Lorca
db0b843 I will be glad to go. There is no poetry here. It is as I have always set forth: joy comes of its own free will; it cannot be belabored. poetry joy Jack Vance
5488822 So about an hour later we are in the taxi shooting along empty country roads towards town. The April light is clear as an alarm. As we pass them it gives a sudden sense of every object existing in space on its own shadow. I wish I could carry this clarity with me into the hospital where distinctions tend to flatten and coalesce. I wish I had been nicer to him before he got crazy. These are my two wishes. illness poem poetry dementia clarity parents children Anne Carson
44b7533 SMART My dad gave me one dollar bill 'Cause I'm his smartest son, And I swapped it for two shiny quarters 'Cause two is more than one! And then I took the quarters And traded them to Lou For three dimes - I guess he don't know That three is more than two! Just then, along came old blind Bates And just 'cause he can't see He gave me four nickels for my three dimes, And four is more than three! And I took the nickels to Hiram Coombs Down at the seed-feed store, And the fool gave me five pennies for them, And five is more than four! And then I went and showed my dad, And he got red in the cheeks And closed his eyes and shook his head - Too proud of me to speak! poetry humor where-the-sidewalk-ends Shel Silverstein
208a1fd "I used to write poetry when I was younger," Jess said. She had kept a notebook by her bed, in case some line or image came to her in her dreams, but she had always been a sound sleeper, and no Xanadus or nightingales woke her. She read Coleridge or Keats and felt that they had covered the great subjects so well that she had nothing to add about beauty, or immortality of the soul. "Now I just read." She spoke cheerfully, without a hint of wistfulness. She was indignant sometimes, but never wistful. Opinionated, but still hopeful in her opinions. Oh, Jess, George thought, no one has hurt you yet." poetry protective jess-and-george jess-bach Allegra Goodman
4141d28 Yo me salgo desnudo a la calle, maduro de versos perdidos. I step naked into the street ripe with lost poems. poetry life night Federico García Lorca
7badb97 My mother always closes her bedroom drapes tight before going to bed at night. I open mine as wide as possible. I like to see everything, I say. What's there to see? Moon. Air. Sunrise. All that light on your face in the morning. Wakes you up. I like to wake up. light poem poetry drapes waking-up sleeping morning Anne Carson
821fc1f The basic rules of male-female relations were imparted atmospherically in our family, no direct speech allowed. sex poem relationships poetry male-female-relationships men-and-women Anne Carson
7cc8857 As tree shapes from mist / Her young death / Loose / In you. grief poetry Anne Carson
cf81a39 THE NEXT DAY WAS RAIN-SOAKED and smelled of thick sweet caramel, warm coconut and ginger. A nearby bakery fanned its daily offerings. A lapis lazuli sky was blanketed by gunmetal gray clouds as it wept crocodile tears across the parched Los Angeles landscape. When Ivy was a child and she overheard adults talking about their break-ups, in her young feeble-formed mind, she imagined it in the most literal of essences. She once heard her mother speaking of her break up with an emotionally unavailable man. She said they broke up on 69th Street. Ivy visualized her mother and that man breaking into countless fragments, like a spilled box of jigsaw pieces. And she imagined them shattered in broken shards, being blown down the pavement of 69th Street. For some reason, on the drive home from Marcel's apartment that next morning, all Ivy could think about was her mother and that faceless man in broken pieces, perhaps some aspects of them still stuck in cracks and crevices of the sidewalk, mistaken as grit. She couldn't get the image of Marcel having his seizure out of her mind. It left a burning sensation in the center of her chest. An incessant flame torched her lungs, chest, and even the back door of her tongue. Witnessing someone you cared about experiencing a seizure was one of those things that scribed itself indelibly on the canvas of your mind. It was gut-wrenching. Graphic and out-of-body, it was the stuff that post traumatic stress syndrome was made of. sex emotion poetry meaning beauty inspiration humor love wisdom black-authors black-history deity literary-fiction scorpios valentine-s-day wilmington rebirth prose foodies stress knowledge new-york Brandi L. Bates
78d8a71 "Many terribly quiet customers exist but none more terribly quiet than Man his footsteps pass so perilously soft across the sea in marble winter up the stiff blue waves and every Tuesday down he grinds the unastonishable earth with horse and shatter shatters too the cheeks of birds and traps them in his forest headlights salty silvers roll into his net, he weaves it just for that, this terribly quiet customer he dooms poetry sophocles translation hamlet Sophocles Carson Anne
eeced15 Oh look, here's Death at the gate! Punctual as ever. poetry Anne Carson
1b132ac CHORUS Many are the shapes of things divine. Many are the unexpected acts of gods. What we imagined did not come to pass -- God found a way to be surprising. That's how this went. poetry Anne Carson
1f602bf "No I do not like blaming. Because for me it's enough if someone is other than bad--not too much out of hand, conscious at least of the justice that helps the city, a healthy man. No I shall not lay blame. Because fools are a species that never ends. poetry philosophy translation greek Simonides of Ceos
4f14022 Registration Day' by Gavin Gunhold (1899-- ) Toronto Review of Poetry, 1947 On registration day at taxidermy school I distinctly saw the eyes of the stuffed moose Move. poetry humor moose taxidermy taxidermy-school school Gordon Korman
795a852 For that you should read the original. In very great poetry the music often comes through even when one doesn't know language. I loved Dante passionately before I knew a word of Italian. poetry Donna Tartt
cf06fb9 "Con un coltello, un coltellino, in un giorno di festa, tra le due e le tre, si uccisero i due uomini dell'amore. Con un coltello, un coltellino che lo contiene una mano, ma che penetra sottile fra le carni stupite, e si ferma nel punto violence poetry death italiano Federico García Lorca
a18de70 You, Reader I wonder how you are going to feel when you find out that I wrote this instead of you, that it was I who got up early to sit in the itchen and mention with a pen the rain-soaked windows, the ivy wallpaper, and the goldfish circling in its bowl. Go ahead and turn aside, bite your lip and tear out the page, but, listen- it was just a matter of time before one of us happened to notice the unlit candles and the clock humming on the wall. Plus, nothing happened that morning- a song on the radio, a car whistling along the road outside- and I was only thinking about the shakers of salt and pepper that were standing side by side on a place mat. I wondered if they had become friends after all these years or if they were still strangers to one another like you and I who manage to be known and unknown to each other at the same time- me at this table with a bowl of pears, you leaning in a doorway somewhere near some blue hydrageas, reading this. poetry reader Billy Collins
a4aa61f Thank-You Notes Under the vigilant eye of my mother I had to demonstrate my best penmanship By thanking Uncle Gerry for the toy soldiers- Little red members of the Coldstream Guards- And thanking Aunt Helen for the pistol and holster, But now I am writing other notes Alone at a small cherry desk with a breeze coming in an open window, thanking everyone I happen to see on my long walk to the post office today and anyone who ever gave me directions or placed a hand on my shoulder, or cut my hair or fixed my car. And while I am at it, thanks to everyone who happened to die on the same day that I was born. Thank you for stepping aside to make room for me, for giving up you seat, getting out of the way, to be blunt. I waited until midnight on that day in March before I appeared, all slimy and squinting, in order to leave time for enough of the living to drive off a bridge or collapse in a hallway so that I could enter without causing a stir. So I am writing now to thank everyone who drifted off that day like smoke from a row of blown-out candles- for giving up your only flame. One day, I will follow your example and step politely out of the path of an oncoming infant, but not right now with the subtropical sun warming this page and the wind stirring the fronds of the palmettos, and me about to begin another note on my very best stationary to the ones who are making room today for the daily host of babies, descending like bees with their wings and stingers, ready to get busy with all their earthly joys and tasks. poetry Billy Collins
95ece53 "There are dewdrops on the nightingale's wings, bright beads of moon distilled by hope. On the marble fountain poetry Federico García Lorca
833a6f6 "...I see fetal sciences in you, mummified poems, and bones of my romantic secrets and old innocence. Shall I hang you on the wall of my emotional museum, beside the dark, chill, sleeping irises of my evil? Or shall I spread you over the pines --suffering book of my love-- poetry Federico García Lorca
87de990 "Naked solitude with neither gesture nor word. Transparent in the orchard, smooth as oil on the hill. Silent solitude with neither fragrance nor weathervane, weighing on the backwaters, drowsy and alone. Lofty solitude, all brow and bright stars, like a huge pallid head, lopped off. Round solitude that leaves in our hands soft lilies of pensive frost. poetry love Federico García Lorca
9d9ac96 On Not Finding You at Home Usually you appear at the front door when you hear my steps on the gravel, but today the door was closed, not a wisp of pale smoke from the chimney. I peered into a window but there was nothing but a table with a comb, some yellow flowers in a glass of water and dark shadows in the corners of the room. I stood for a while under the big tree and listened to the wind and the birds, your wind and your birds, your dark green woods beyong the clearing. This is not what it is like to be you, I realized after a few of your magnificent clouds flew over the rooftop. It is just me thinking about being you. And before I headed back down the hill, I walked in a circle around your house, making an invisible line which you would have to cross before dark. poetry you me waiting Billy Collins
a0221d7 "Theme It's a sunny weekday in early May and after a ham sandwich and a cold bottle of beer on the brick terrace, I am consumed by the wish to add something to one of the ancient themes- youth dancing with his eyes closed, for example, in the shadows of corruption and death, or the rise and fall of illustrious men strapped to the turning wheel of mischance and disaster. There is a slight breeze, just enough to bend the yellow tulips on their stems, but that hardly helps me echo the longing for immortality despite the roaring juggernaut of time, or the painful motif of Nature's cyclial return versus man's blind rush to the grave. I could loosen my shirt and lie down in the soft grass, sweet now after its first cutting, but that would not produce a record of the pursuit of the moth of eternal beauty or the despondency that attends the eventual dribble of the once gurgling fountain of creativity. So, as far as great topics go, that seems to leave only the fall from exuberant maturity into sudden, headlong decline- a subject that fills me with silence and leaves me with no choice but to spend the rest of the day sniffing the jasmine vine and surrendering to the ivory goverance of the piano by picking out with my index finger the melody notes of "Easy to Love," a song in which Cole Porter expresses, with put-on nonchalance, the hopelessness of a love brimming with desire and a hunger for affection, but met only and always with frosty disregard." hopelessness immortality poetry love Billy Collins
35d936c I Love You' Early on, I noticed that you always say it to each of your children as you are getting off the phone with them just as you never fail to say it to me whenever we arrive at the end of a call. It's all new to this only child. I never heard my parents say it, at least not on such a regular basis, nor did it ever occur to me to miss it. To say I love you pretty much every day would have seemed strangely obvious, like saying I'm looking at you when you are standing there looking at someone. If my parents had started saying it a lot, I would have started to worry about them. Ofcourse, I always like hearing it from you. That is never a cause for concern. The problem is I now find myself saying it back if only because just saying good-bye then hanging up would make me seem discourteous. But like Bartleby, I would prefer not to say it so often, would prefer instead to save it for special occasions, like shouting it out as I leaped into the red mouth of a volcano with you standing helplessly on the smoking rim, or while we are desperately clasping hands before our plane plunges into the Gulf of Mexico, which are only two of the examples I had in mind, but enough, as it turns out, to make me want to say it to you now, and what better place than in the final couplet of a poem where, as every student knows, it really counts. poetry Billy Collins
847ba5e I would rather eat at the bar, but such behavior is regarded by professionals as a form of denial, so here I am seated alone at a table with a white tablecloth attended by an elderly waiter with no name- ideal conditions for dining alone according to the connoisseurs of this minor talent. I have brought neither book nor newspaper since reading material is considered cheating. Eating alone, they say, means eating alone, not in the company of Montaigne or the ever-engaging Nancy Mitford. Nor do I keep glancing up as if waiting for someone who inevitably fails to appear- a sign of moral weakness to those who take this practice seriously. poetry Billy Collins
f4e2165 The older poets were Ethelbert Miller, Kenneth Carroll, Brian Gilmore. It is important that I tell you their names, that you know that I have never achieved anything alone. poets theory poetry ta-nehisi-coates-quote Ta-Nehisi Coates
1918d6f "VI. Wisdom: The Voice of God Ninety percent of what's wrong with you could be cured with a hot bath, says God through the manhole covers, but you want magic, to win the lottery you never bought a ticket for. (Tenderly, the monks chant, embrace the suffering.) The voice never panders, offers no five-year plan, no long-term solution, no edicts from a cloudy white beard hooked over ears. It is small and fond and local. Don't look for your initials in the geese honking overhead or to see through the glass even poetry wisdom Mary Karr
22d7d9b "They walked slowly, taking the shortest way, deliberately cutting through Campo delle Fava to avoid the crowds in Calle della Bissa. When they arrived at the foot of the Rialto bridge, they looked up at it, horrified. Anthill, termites, wasps. Ignoring these thoughts, they locked arms and started up, eyes on their feet and the area immediately in front of them. Up, up, up as feet descended towards them, but they ignored them and didn't stop. Up, up, up and across the top, shoving their way through the motionless people, deaf to their admiration. Then down, down, down, the momentum of their descent making them more formidable, They saw the feet of the people coming up towards them dance to the side at their approach, hardened their hearts to their protests, and plunged ahead. Then left and into the underpass, where they stopped, Brunetti's pulse raced and Paola leaned helpless on his arm. "I can't stand it any more," Paola said and pressed her forehead against his shoulder." poetry Donna Leon
a31ca64 Mathematics isn't just science, it is poetry - our efforts to crystallise the unglimpsed connections between things. Poetry that bridges and magnifies the mysteries of the galaxy. But the signs and symbols and equations sentients employ to express these connections are not discoveries but the teasing out of secrets that have always existed. poetry James Luceno
c38eac9 "It is interesting that a guy like W.E.B. Du Bois, who actually did very little, I should imagine, with his hands, wrote about "I am the smoke king." Without the labor, both free and slave, of African Americans this country would still be a wilderness." america poetry us w-e-b-du-bois usa labor united-states race-relations race Nikki Giovanni
1618365 Poezje pisze sie lzami, powiesc krwia, a historie rozczarowaniem. history poetry krew poezja powieść rozczarowanie łzy dissapointment historia polish tears novel Carlos Ruiz Zafón
9a93031 Banal sexism aside, I find myself tempted to read as one thick stacked act of revenge for all that life withheld from Emily. But the poetry shows traces of a deeper explanation. As if anger could be a kind of vocation for some women. It is a chilly thought. revenge poem poetry wuthering-heights emily-bronte sexism Anne Carson
334381d "Almost Myself On a twilight road, I met a young man with my face. A denizen of some distant dust devil in drifter denim. We stood and eyed each other, then, with a look of mutual disdain, we parted. poem poetry doppelgänger drifter hitchhiking poems-on-life supernatural-mystery twin-soul twilight Stewart Stafford
a1dbbe3 Czemu ty sie, zla godzino, z niepotrzebnym mieszasz lekiem? Jestes - a wiec musisz minac. Miniesz - a wiec to jest piekne poetry upływ-czasu złe-czasy poezja time-passing polish Wisława Szymborska
f8a4407 "You were wrong," he murmured ruefully, resting his cheek on top of Amy's head. "You weren't safe with me." "I feel like Psyche kissing Cupid in the dark," Amy said dreamily. Richard drew Amy's arms around his back under his cloak. "Feel. No wings." Amy could hear the smile in the Gentian's voice. "Does that mean if I unmask you, you won't fly away?" Richard tightened his grip on Amy's arms. "Don't even consider it." "You could give me three trials, like Psyche." "With what as the prize at the end? Me, or membership in the League?" Amy managed the difficult feat of looking at him askance with her nose only inches from his. "It would be much easier for me to answer that question if I knew who you were." "What's in a name? A Gentian by any other name would--" "Be an entirely different flower," interjected Amy, swatting him on the arm. "I refuse to be fobbed off with poor imitations of Shakespeare." "If you don't like Romeo and Juliet, how about a sonnet?" Richard suggested. "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art--" "Not that easily deterred." Amy extricated herself from Richard's arms - and his cloak, which had tangled around her knees - and hopped off the window seat. "Damnation," muttered Richard. "I'll ignore that,"offered Amy generously. "And we can go straight to the crucial question of how I'm going to help you restore the monarchy" poetry unexpected-rendezvous richard Lauren Willig
614a80e "You don't have any apples to offer while you're at it, do you?" she asked sourly. "Satan tempting Eve in the garden? Not a terribly flattering role for me, is it? And you're overdressed for the part." Amy's blush rivalled the hue of the dangerous fruit they had been discussing. Somehow, Lord Richard's frankly admiring gaze made the yellow muslin of her gown feel as insubstantial as a string of fig leaves. Amy covered her confusion by saying quickly, "Might I ask a favour, my lord?" "A phoenix feather from the farthest deserts of Arabia? The head of a dragon on a bejewelled platter?" "Nothing quite that complicated," replied Amy, marvelling once again at the chameleon quality of the man beside her. How could anyone be so utterly infuriating at one moment and equally charming the next? Untrustworthy, she reminded herself. Mercurial. Changeable. "A dragon's head wouldn't be much use to me just now, unless it could offer me directions." Richard crooked an arm. "Tell me where you need to be, and I'll escort you." Amy tentatively rested her hand on the soft blue fabric of his coat. "That's quite a generous offer when you don't know where I'm going." "Ten leagues beyond the wide world's end?" suggested Richard with a lazy grin. "Methinks it is no journey?" Amy matched the quotation triumphantly, and was rewarded by the admiring light that flamed in Lord Richard's eyes." poetry directions richard garden-of-eden Lauren Willig
f85e10e "You either a poet or a homosexual." "Oh, shit, that's fucked up. Why can't I be both?" poets poetry homosexuals Paul Beatty
c8839a2 In India when I was a boy they had great big green lizards there, and if you shouted or shot them their tails would fall off. There was only one boy in the school who could catch lizards intact. No one knew quite how he did it. He had a special soft way of going up to them, and he'd bring them back with their tails on. That strikes me as the best analogy I can give you. To try and catch your poem without its tail falling off. poetry the-paris-review Lawrence Durrell
2aa4788 Those who sit in the house of grief will someday sit in the garden. poetry grieving Gregory Maguire
51cccea At that moment Sonny noticed that the other car had not kept going but had parked a few feet ahead, still blocking his way. At that same moment his lateral vision caught sight of another man in the darkened tollbooth to his right. But he did not have time to think about that because two men came out of the car parked in front and walked toward him. The toll collector still had not appeared. And then in the fraction of a second before anything actually happened, Santino Corleone he knew he was a dead man. And in that moment his mind was lucid, drained of all violence, as if the hidden fear finally real and present had purified him. violence murder poetry Mario Puzo
bf83c84 "When I reached the vestibule of my apartment building, the campus police closed in on me. I heard Professor Edelstein shout, it's okay, he's a poet. Matter of fact, the best black ... the best poet writing today." The cops instantly backed off. I was protected by poetic immunity. I had permission to act crazy." poets poetry Paul Beatty
a81ba54 ...with no morning the day is sold. poetry philiplevine Philip Levine
b6e7ac3 Poetry... it consumed Sappho's young years, it nourished Goethe's old age. Drug, the Greeks called it, both poison and medicine. poetry medicinea poison Umberto Eco
8b885a6 "...Maybe it's the fault of our language but dreams are innocent and pictorial. Then let our dreams speak for us side by side, leg over leg, an electroencephalographic kiss poetry Phillip Lopate
8fd2ec8 Words shouldn't be dirty or clean But definitely sweet, On the tongue, in the mind. poetry Jane Yolen
1f287da It gives the war a whole new dimension, you know, hearing from someone right there in the thick of it. They really connected with it.' 'Maybe it reminds them of school,' she suggests. 'Didn't someone describe the trenches as ninety-nine per cent boredom and one per cent terror?' 'I don't know about boredom. God, the chaos of it, the brutality. And it's so vivid. I'd definitely be interested in reading his poetry, if only to see how he can go from describing, you know, people getting their guts blown out, to writing about love.' 'Maybe it's not that much of a leap,' she says. war poetry love Paul Murray
cec1c63 Not in all ways (of course), but the animals you know have power: they have abilities humans lack, could be dangerous, could bring life, mean things that mean things. nature poetry Jonathan Safran Foer
d0fc02b "Be careful... What the dude said, ain't it? ... One lived in the woods and didn't pay his taxes. Musta been before Lyme disease, when you could still get by with that shit. You know the dude I talkin' about. Said to watch out for jobs you got to dress up for." "Thoreau." "Yeah, that's him." poetry jobs thoreau Lawrence Block
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