February 2012
26 posts
1 tag
“A mockingbird leans
from the walnut, bellies,
riffling white, accomplishes...”
– Robert Hass, “Letter to a Poet” (Field Guide, Yale University Press, 1973)
2 tags
this room and everything in it: Open →
rabbit-light:
She left everything open— windows, doors, drawers, cabinets, the little cap on the tube of toothpaste, letting the air in, letting the bugs in, letting everything in—while he, on the other hand, was a firm believer in twisties and double knots, double bagging and double checking to make sure the door was double locked. You could say she trusted while he trussed. He wanted to...
1 tag
“But just when we think we have it,
the personal goes the way of
belief. What...”
– Stephen Dunn, from “Essay on the Personal” (via Whiskey River)
1 tag
“For eleven years I have regretted it,
regretted that I did not do what
I...”
–
Jack Gilbert, “By Small and Small: Midnight to Four A.M.” (Refusing Heaven, Knopf, 2005)
1 tag
“The massive overhead crane comes
when we wave to it, lets down
its heavy claws...”
– Jack Gilbert, “What Song Should We Sing” (Refusing Heaven, Knopf, 2005)
1 tag
this room and everything in it: In Winter →
rabbit-light:
At four o’clock it’s dark. Today, looking out through dusk at three gray women in stretch slacks chatting in front of the post office, their steps left and right and back like some quick folk dance of kindness, I remembered the winter we spent crying in each other’s laps. What could you be thinking at this moment? How lovely and strange the gangly spines of trees...
1 tag
“How I Learned Quiet
Begin with slowness—the drag of a candle’s flame
down to...”
– Oliver de la Paz, “How I Learned Quiet” (via words-in-lines)
2 tags
“Raking lace
at the fringe of the tide,
raking with fingers
the English and...”
– T. Zachary Cotler, from “Supplice” (Poetry, November 2011)
2 tags
Geoffrey Brock, from "Bryant Park at Dusk"
And what I loved was this: The way, when dusk had darkened her pages, As if expecting a kiss,
She closed her eyes and threw her head back, Book open in her lap. Perhaps she was thinking about her story, Or the fall air, or a nap.
I thought she’d leave me then for pastimes More suited to the dark. But she is on intimate terms, it seems, ...
2 tags
John Rybicki, "If"
For Julie
If I could tie a river around my love’s waist like ribbon, make sails out of her blood and pin down death like a squirming bug.
If I could lift and rock each coffin in my arms I would start with hers.
—Poetry, November 2011
2 tags
“They redid King Tut splendid,
once stone-huge as this
yet his wife’s...”
– Marianne Boruch, “Little Wife” (Poetry, November 2011)
2 tags
“Avoid adjectives of scale.
Dandelion broth instead of duck soup.
Don’t even...”
– Dean Young, “Handy Guide” (Poetry, November 2011)
2 tags
“(Elegy for his Hands)
It was late, I was drunk, you were warm
to my hand, I...”
– Robyn Art, Notes About His Hands, Part 4 (via grammatolatry)
2 tags
“Walking through a field with my little brother Seth
I pointed to a place where...”
– David Berman, “Snow” (Actual Air, Open City, 1999) (via Whiskey River)
2 tags
“1. The ring slides back on the finger. 2. The house of the body is love. 3.The...”
– Robyn Art, Myths about Certainty (via grammatolatry)
1 tag
W. W. Norton: How to be Happy: Another Memo to... →
wwnorton:
You start with your own body then move outward, but not too far. Never try to please a city, for example. Nor will the easy intimacy in small towns ever satisfy that need you have only whispered in the dark. A woman is a beginning. She need not be pretty, but must know how to make her own ceilings out of all that’s beautiful in her. Together you must love to exchange gifts in the...
1 tag
3 tags
“The solitary molar of a streetwalker
whose body had gone unclaimed
had a gold...”
– Gottfried Benn (trans. Michael Hofmann), “Circulation” (The Paris Review no. 199, Winter 2011)
1 tag
so much joy it hurts: Flight, Franz Wright →
1 That glass was it filled with alcohol, water, or light At ten I turned you into a religion The solitary four-foot priest of you, I kept the litter manger candle burning, I kept your black half-inch of scripture in the hiding place Destroyer of the world That empty glass 2 In which city was it, in fourth or fifth grade, Mother read in the newspaper you’d be appearing and dressed me up in suit...
2 tags
“I found your beating
heart half-buried
in the woods
and when I
picked it up...”
– Zachary Schomberg, “I Found Your Beating Heart Half-Buried”
2 tags
“There are trees and they are on fire. There are hummingbirds and they are on...”
– Zachary Schomburg, “The Fire Cycle”
1 tag
2 tags
“I am writing a book on how to write a book so I can learn how to properly...”
– Gregory Sherl, Please Move to Vermont and Break My Heart (via grammatolatry)
1 tag
“By the road to the contagious hospital
under the surge of the blue
mottled...”
– William Carlos Williams, “Spring and All” (Spring and All, Contact Publishing, 1923)
2 tags
“When the boy’s head, full of raw torment,
Longs for hazy dreams to swarm...”
– Arthur Rimbaud (trans. Jeremy Harding), “The Seekers of Lice” (Illuminations)
1 tag
“Lately, I am capable only of small things.
Is it enough
to feel the heart...”
– Olena Kalytiak Davis, “Postcard” (And Her Soul Out of Nothing, University of Wisconsin Press, 1997)
January 2012
33 posts
1 tag
“to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything...”
– Ellen Bass, “The Thing Is” (Mules of Love, BOA, 2002)
1 tag
“In an effort to get people to look
into each other’s eyes more,
and also...”
– Jeffrey McDaniel, “The Quiet World” (Forgiveness Parade, Manic D Press, 1998)
1 tag
“Because yesterday morning from the steamy window
we saw a pair of red foxes...”
– Robert Hass, “Happiness” (Sun Under Wood, Ecco, 1996)
3 tags
“To write so that a beggar
would take it for money.
And the dying
would take...”
– Ewa Lipska (trans. Stanislaw Baranczak and Claire Cavanagh), “Envoy”
1 tag
“because this is what you do. get up.
blame the liquor for the heaviness. call...”
– Marty McConnell, “Survival poem #17” (via words-in-lines)
1 tag
“When I knocked the coffee cup
from its ledge, and it broke
into the shower,...”
– Karen Schubert, Breaking (via grammatolatry)
2 tags
“It’s said it takes seven years
to grow completely new skin cells.
To think,...”
– Brett Elizabeth Jenkins, December 21st, 2002 (via holdonmagnolia)
1 tag
“While talking to my mother I neaten things. Spines of books by the phone....”
– Anne Carson, “Lines” (via words-in-lines)
1 tag
“We wanted to confess our sins but there were no takers.
White clouds refused to...”
– Czeslaw Milosz, “At a Certain Age” (via grammatolatry)
1 tag
“I don’t even know which sadness
it was came up
in me when we were...”
–
Robert Hass, “On Squaw Peak” (Human Wishes, Ecco, 1989)
1 tag
“What if I did not mention death to get started
or how love fails in our...”
– Robert Hass, “Thin Air” (Human Wishes, Ecco, 1989)
1 tag
“Many are making love. Up above, the angels
in the unshaken ether and crystal of...”
–
Robert Hass, “Privilege of Being” (Human Wishes, Ecco, 1989)
1 tag
“Pleasure is so hard to remember. It goes
so quick from the mind. That day in...”
– Robert Hass, “Santa Lucia II” (Human Wishes, Ecco, 1989)
1 tag
Robert Hass, "January"
Three clear days and then a sudden storm— the waxwings, having feasted on the pyracantha, perch in the yard on an upended pine, and face into the slanting rain. I think they are a little drunk.
I was making this gathering—which pleased me, the waxwings that always pass through at this time of year, the discarded Christmas tree they perched in,...
1 tag
Larry Levis, "The Spirit Says, You Are Nothing"
leshommesmedegoutent:
But you were young, and you had Plenty of time: Going west,
You slept on the train and did not smile. Under you the plains widened, turned silver.
You slept with your mouth open.
You were nothing, You were snow falling through the ribs Of the dead.
You were all I had.
— L. Levis
1 tag
“In the field behind her house, she said,
fennel grew high and green
in early...”
–
Robert Hass, “Cuttings: Stories in Bed” (Human Wishes, Ecco, 1989)
1 tag
“Summoned by conscious recollection, she
would be smiling, they might be in a...”
–
Robert Hass, “Misery and Splendor” (Human Wishes, Ecco, 1989)
2 tags
Sappho, fr. 22
] ]work ]face ] ] if not, winter ]no pain ] ]I bid you sing of Gongyla, Abanthis, taking up your lyre as (now again) longing floats around you,
you beauty. For her dress when you saw it stirred you. And I rejoice. In fact she herself once blamed me Kyprogeneia
because I prayed this word: I want
...
1 tag
“They put on rising, and they rose.
They put on falling, and they fell.
They...”
–
Robert Hass, “Cuttings: The Lovers Undressing” (Human Wishes, Ecco, 1989)
1 tag
“The young composer, working that summer at an artist’s colony, had watched...”
– Robert Hass, “A Story About the Body” (Human Wishes, Ecco, 1989)
1 tag
“If I when my wife is sleeping
and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the...”
– William Carlos Williams, “Danse Russe” (Al Que Quiere!, 1917)
2 tags
“In some ways it’s simple. Here
is the weight of a hand, a box
of...”
– Erin Elizabeth Smith, “A Box of Paperclips” (via Verse Daily)
2 tags
“We can be free
in degrees. The dream,
for example, tries
to do its part:
a...”
– Emily Kendal Frey, “The Greatest Brightness Acts Near the Greatest Darkness”
2 tags
Charles Wright, "Homage to Paul Cézanne"
At night, in the fish-light of the moon, the dead wear our white shirts To stay warm, and litter the fields. We pick them up in the mornings, dewy pieces of paper and scraps of cloth. Like us, they refract themselves. Like us, They keep on saying the same thing, trying to get it right. Like us, the water unsettles their names.
Sometimes they lie like leaves in their little arks, and curl up at...