PHILIP LARKIN reads This Be The Verse Poets Speak 2023-07-23 | They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you.But they were fucked up in their turn By fools in old-style hats and coats, Who half the time were soppy-stern And half at one another’s throats.Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf.Get out as early as you can, And don’t have any kids yourself.Philip Larkin, "This Be the Verse" from Collected Poems.
T. S. ELIOT reads Little Gidding (Final Stanzas) Poets Speak 2024-10-19 | We shall not cease from explorationAnd the end of all our exploringWill be to arrive where we startedAnd know the place for the first time.Through the unknown, unremembered gateWhen the last of earth left to discoverIs that which was the beginning;At the source of the longest riverThe voice of the hidden waterfallAnd the children in the apple-treeNot known, because not looked forBut heard, half-heard, in the stillnessBetween two waves of the sea.Quick now, here, now, always--A condition of complete simplicity(Costing not less than everything)And all shall be well andAll manner of thing shall be wellWhen the tongues of flames are in-foldedInto the crowned knot of fireAnd the fire and the rose are one.~ From "Four Quartets"
ANNE SEXTON reads Young Poets Speak 2024-10-19 | A thousand doors agowhen I was a lonely kidin a big house with fourgarages and it was summeras long as I could remember,I lay on the lawn at night,clover wrinkling under me,the wise stars bedding over me,my mother’s window a funnelof yellow heat running out,my father’s window, half shut,an eye where sleepers pass,and the boards of the housewere smooth and white as waxand probably a million leavessailed on their strange stalksas the crickets ticked togetherand I, in my brand new body,which was not a woman’s yet,told the stars my questionsand thought God could really seethe heat and the painted light,elbows, knees, dreams, goodnight.~From "All My Pretty Ones"
SEAMUS HEANEY reads The Railway Children Poets Speak 2024-10-18 | When we climbed the slopes of the cuttingWe were eye-level with the white cupsOf the telegraph poles and the sizzling wires.Like lovely freehand they curved for milesEast and miles west beyond us, saggingUnder their burden of swallows.We were small and thought we knew nothingWorth knowing. We thought words travelled the wiresIn the shiny pouches of raindrops,Each one seeded full with the lightOf the sky, the gleam of the lines, and ourselvesSo infinitesimally scaledWe could stream through the eye of a needle.~From "Station Island"
MARY RUEFLE reads Provenance Poets Speak 2024-10-16 | In the fifth gradeI made a horse of papier-mâchéand painted it whiteand named it AuroraWe were all going to the hospitaleach one with his little animalto give to the girl who waslying on her deathbed therewhose name I can't recallA classmate with freckles perhapsor such small feet her footstepsnever mattered muchI did not want to give her anythingIt seemed unfair she got to ride Aurorawhom I made with my own two handsand took aside at birth and said Gowhile I had to walkperhaps for a very long timeI thought perhaps the animalswould all come backtogether and on one daybut they never didAnd so I have had to deal with wildintractable people all my daysand have been led astray in a worldof shattered moonlight and beasts and treeswhere no one ever even curtsies anymoreor has an understudySo I have gone up to the little roomin my face, I am making somethingout of a jar of frecklesand a jar of glueI hated childhoodI hate adulthoodAnd I love being alive~from "Trances of the Blast"
SYLVIA PLATH reads Daddy Poets Speak 2024-10-12 | You do not do, you do not do Any more, black shoeIn which I have lived like a foot For thirty years, poor and white, Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.Daddy, I have had to kill you. You died before I had time——Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, Ghastly statue with one gray toe Big as a Frisco sealAnd a head in the freakish Atlantic Where it pours bean green over blue In the waters off beautiful Nauset. I used to pray to recover you.Ach, du.In the German tongue, in the Polish town Scraped flat by the rollerOf wars, wars, wars.But the name of the town is common. My Polack friendSays there are a dozen or two. So I never could tell where you Put your foot, your root,I never could talk to you.The tongue stuck in my jaw.It stuck in a barb wire snare. Ich, ich, ich, ich,I could hardly speak.I thought every German was you. And the language obsceneAn engine, an engineChuffing me off like a Jew.A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen. I began to talk like a Jew.I think I may well be a Jew.The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna Are not very pure or true.With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck And my Taroc pack and my Taroc packI may be a bit of a Jew.I have always been scared of you,With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo. And your neat mustacheAnd your Aryan eye, bright blue.Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You——Not God but a swastikaSo black no sky could squeak through. Every woman adores a Fascist, The boot in the face, the brute Brute heart of a brute like you.You stand at the blackboard, daddy, In the picture I have of you,A cleft in your chin instead of your foot But no less a devil for that, no not Any less the black man whoBit my pretty red heart in two.I was ten when they buried you. At twenty I tried to dieAnd get back, back, back to you.I thought even the bones would do.But they pulled me out of the sack, And they stuck me together with glue. And then I knew what to do.I made a model of you,A man in black with a Meinkampf lookAnd a love of the rack and the screw. And I said I do, I do.So daddy, I’m finally through.The black telephone’s off at the root, The voices just can’t worm through.If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two——The vampire who said he was you And drank my blood for a year,Seven years, if you want to know.Daddy, you can lie back now.There’s a stake in your fat black heart And the villagers never liked you.They are dancing and stamping on you. They always knew it was you.Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.~From "Ariel"
ROBERT FROST reads The Most of It Poets Speak 2024-10-12 | He thought he kept the universe alone;For all the voice in answer he could wakeWas but the mocking echo of his ownFrom some tree-hidden cliff across the lake.Some morning from the boulder-broken beachHe would cry out on life, that what it wantsIs not its own love back in copy speech,But counter-love, original response.And nothing ever came of what he criedUnless it was the embodiment that crashedIn the cliff’s talus on the other side,And then in the far distant water splashed,But after a time allowed for it to swim,Instead of proving human when it nearedAnd someone else additional to him,As a great buck it powerfully appeared,Pushing the crumpled water up ahead,And landed pouring like a waterfall,And stumbled through the rocks with horny tread,And forced the underbrush—and that was all.~From "A Witness Tree"
RICHARD EBERHART reads The Groundhog Poets Speak 2024-10-12 | In June, amid the golden fields,I saw a groundhog lying dead.Dead lay he; my senses shook,And mind outshot our naked frailty.There lowly in the vigorous summerHis form began its senseless change,And made my senses waver dimSeeing nature ferocious in him.Inspecting close maggots' mightAnd seething cauldron of his being, Half with loathing, half with a strange love,I poked him with an angry stick.The fever arose, became a flameAnd Vigour circumscribed the skies,Immense energy in the sun, And through my frame a sunless trembling.My stick had done nor good nor harm.Then stood I silent in the dayWatching the object, as before;And kept my reverence for knowledge Trying for control, to be still,To quell the passion of the blood;Until I had bent down on my kneesPraying for joy in the sight of decay.And so I left; and I returned In Autumn strict of eye, to seeThe sap gone out of the groundhog,But the bony sodden hulk remainedBut the year had lost its meaning,And in intellectual chains I lost both love and loathing,Mured up in the wall of wisdom.Another summer took the fields againMassive and burning, full of life,But when I chanced upon the spot There was only a little hair left,And bones bleaching in the sunlightBeautiful as architecture;I watched them like a geometer,And cut a walking stick from a birch.It has been three years, now.There is no sign of the groundhog.I stood there in the whirling summer,My hand capped a withered heart,And thought of China and of Greece, Of Alexander in his tent;Of Montaigne in his tower,Of Saint Theresa in her wild lament.~From "Reading the Spirit"
EDWIN MUIR reads One Foot in Eden Poets Speak 2024-10-09 | One foot in Eden still, I standAnd look across the other land.The world’s great day is growing late,Yet strange these fields that we have plantedSo long with crops of love and hate.Time’s handiworks by time are haunted,And nothing now can separateThe corn and tares compactly grown.The armorial weed in stillness boundAbove the stalk; these are our own.Evil and good stand thick aroundIn the fields of charity and sinWhere we shall lead our harvest in.Yet still from Eden springs the rootAs clean as on the starting day.Times takes the foliage and the fruitAnd burns the archetypal leafTo shapes of terror and of griefScattered along the winter way.But famished field and blackened treeBear flowers in Eden never known.Blossoms of grief and charityBloom in these darkened fields alone.What had Eden ever to sayOf hope and faith and pity and loveUntil was buried all its dayAnd memory found its treasure trove?Strange blessings never in ParadiseFall from these beclouded skies.~From "One Foot in Eden"
JAMES TATE reads The Lost Pilot Poets Speak 2024-10-06 | for my father, 1922-1944Your face did not rotlike the others—the co-pilot, for example, I saw himyesterday. His face is corn-mush: his wife and daughter, the poor ignorant people, stareas if he will compose soon.He was more wronged than Job. But your face did not rotlike the others—it grew dark,and hard like ebony;the features progressed in theirdistinction. If I could cajoleyou to come back for an evening, down from your compulsiveorbiting, I would touch you, read your face as Dallas, your hoodlum gunner, now,with the blistered eyes, reads his braille editions. I wouldtouch your face as a disinterestedscholar touches an original page. However frightening, I would discover you, and I would notturn you in; I would not make you face your wife, or Dallas, or the co-pilot, Jim. Youcould return to your crazy orbiting, and I would not try to fully understand whatit means to you. All I know is this: when I see you, as I have seen you at leastonce every year of my life, spin across the wilds of the sky like a tiny, African god,I feel dead. I feel as if I were the residue of a stranger’s life, that I should pursue you.My head cocked toward the sky, I cannot get off the ground, and, you, passing over again,fast, perfect, and unwilling to tell me that you are doing well, or that it was mistakethat placed you in that world,and me in this; or that misfortune placed these worlds in us.~From "The Lost Pilot"
DAVID CONSTANTINE reads Boy finds tramp dead Poets Speak 2024-10-05 | But for your comfort, child, who found him curled With crizzled cheeks, his hands in his own ice, Among the trapped dead birds and scraps of girls,His spectacles and broken teeth put by Along the window with a pile of pence, Remember this man was the son of nobody,Father, brother, husband, lover, friend Of nobody, and so by dying aloneWith rats hurt nobody. Perhaps he joinedAnd mended easily with death between Newspaper sheets in drink and did not wake Too soon, at midnight, crying to sleep again,Alive and hung on cold, beyond the embrace Of morning, the warm-handed. He was pressedTogether when you found him, child, but namesHad left his lips of wicked men released Quickly in sunlight and of one who baked Asleep inside a kiln and many at restWith cancer in the casual ward or knocked Under fast wheels. These he conjured with To Christ as instances of mercy, being rackedHimself on boards beside a prolapsed hearth. His vermin died. The morning's broken glass And brightening air could not pick up his breath.Little by little everything in him froze,Everything stopped: the blood in the heart's ways, The spittle in his mouth, his tongue, his voice.~From "Watching for Dolphins"
TED BERRIGAN reads Things to Do in Providence Poets Speak 2024-10-04 | CrashTake Valium Sleep Dream &, forget it. *Wake up new & strange displaced, at home. Read The Providence Evening Bulletin No one you knew got married had children got divorced died got born tho many familiar names flicker & disappear. * Sit watch TV draw blanks swallow pepsi meatballs ... give yourself the needle: "Shit! There's gotta be something to do here!" *JOURNEY TO SHILOH:Seven young men on horses, leaving Texas. They've got to do what's right! So, after a long trip, they'll fight for the South in the War. No war in Texas, but they've heard about it, & they want to fight for their country. Have some adventures & make their folks proud! Two hours later all are dead; one by one they died, stupidly, & they never did find out why!There were no niggers in South Texas! Only the leader, with one arm shot off, survives to head back to Texas: all his friends behind him, dead. What will happen? * Watching him, I cry big tears. His friends were beautiful, with boyish American good manners, cowboys! * Telephone New York: "hello!" "Hello! I'm drunk! & I have no clothes on!" "My goodness," I say. "See you tomorrow." *Wide awake all night reading: The Life of Turner ("He first saw the light in Maiden Lane") A.C. Becker: Wholesale Jewels Catalogue 1912 The Book of Marvels, 1934: The year I was born. No mention of my birth in here. Hmmm. Saturday The Rabbi Stayed Home (that way he got to solve the murder) LIFE on the moon by LIFE Magazine. *My mother wakes up, 4 a.m.: Someone to talk with! Over coffee we chat, two grownups I have two children, I'm an adult now, too. Now we are two people talking who have known each other a long time, Like Edwin & Rudy. Our talk is a great pleasure: my mother a spunky woman. Her name was Peggy Dugan when she was young. Now, 61 years old, she blushes to tell me I was conceived before the wedding! "I've always been embarrassed about telling you til now," she says. "I didn't know what you might think!" "I think its really sweet," I say. "It means I'm really a love child." She too was conceived before her mother's wedding, I know. We talk, daylight comes, & the Providence Morning Journal. My mother leaves for work. I'm still here. *Put out the cat Take in the clothes off of the line Take a walk, buy cigarettes *two teen-agers whistle as I walk up They say: "Only your hairdresser knows for sure!" Then they say, "ulp!" because I am closer to them. They see I am not hippie kid, frail like Mick Jagger, but some horrible 35 year old big guy! The neighborhood I live in is mine! "How'd you like a broken head, kid?" I say fiercely. (but I am laughing & they are not one bit scared.) So, I go home. *Alice Clifford waits me. Soon she'll dieat the Greenwood Nursing Home; my mother'smother, 79 years & 7 months old. But first, a nap, til my mother comes home from work, with the car. * The heart stops briefly when someone dies, a quick pain as you hear the news, & someone passes from your outside life to inside. Slowly the heart adjusts to its new weight, & slowly everything continues, sanely. *Living's a pleasure: I'd like to take the whole trip despite the possible indignities of growing old, moving, to die in poverty, among strangers: that can't be helped. *So, everything, now is just all right. I'm with you. No more last night. *Friday's great10 o'clock morning sun is shining! I can hear today's key sounds fading softly & almost see opening sleep's epic novels.~From "Selected Poems"
RANDALL JARRELL reads The Lost World Poets Speak 2024-10-01 | Text: poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?volume=103&issue=1&page=61
ROBERT W. SERVICE reads The Cremation of Sam McGee Poets Speak 2024-09-29 | There are strange things done in the midnight sun By the men who moil for gold;The Arctic trails have their secret tales That would make your blood run cold;The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, But the queerest they ever did seeWas that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge I cremated Sam McGee.Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.Why he left his home in the South to roam 'round the Pole, God only knows.He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;Though he'd often say in his homely way that "he'd sooner live in hell."On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the Dawson trail.Talk of your cold! through the parka's fold it stabbed like a driven nail.If our eyes we'd close, then the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn't see;It wasn't much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam McGee.And that very night, as we lay packed tight in our robes beneath the snow,And the dogs were fed, and the stars o'erhead were dancing heel and toe,He turned to me, and "Cap," says he, "I'll cash in this trip, I guess;And if I do, I'm asking that you won't refuse my last request."Well, he seemed so low that I couldn't say no; then he says with a sort of moan:"It's the cursèd cold, and it's got right hold till I'm chilled clean through to the bone.Yet 'tain't being dead—it's my awful dread of the icy grave that pains;So I want you to swear that, foul or fair, you'll cremate my last remains."A pal's last need is a thing to heed, so I swore I would not fail;And we started on at the streak of dawn; but God! he looked ghastly pale.He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day of his home in Tennessee;And before nightfall a corpse was all that was left of Sam McGee.There wasn't a breath in that land of death, and I hurried, horror-driven,With a corpse half hid that I couldn't get rid, because of a promise given;It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say: "You may tax your brawn and brains,But you promised true, and it's up to you to cremate those last remains."Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code.In the days to come, though my lips were dumb, in my heart how I cursed that load.In the long, long night, by the lone firelight, while the huskies, round in a ring,Howled out their woes to the homeless snows— O God! how I loathed the thing.And every day that quiet clay seemed to heavy and heavier grow;And on I went, though the dogs were spent and the grub was getting low;The trail was bad, and I felt half mad, but I swore I would not give in;And I'd often sing to the hateful thing, and it hearkened with a grin.Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and a derelict there lay;It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the "Alice May."And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum;Then "Here," said I, with a sudden cry, "is my cre-ma-tor-eum."Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler fire;Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel higher;The flames just soared, and the furnace roared—such a blaze you seldom see;And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed in Sam McGee.Then I made a hike, for I didn't like to hear him sizzle so;And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow.It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, and I don't know why;And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking down the sky.I do not know how long in the snow I wrestled with grisly fear;But the stars came out and they danced about ere again I ventured near;I was sick with dread, but I bravely said: "I'll just take a peep inside.I guess he's cooked, and it's time I looked"; ... then the door I opened wide.And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar;And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and he said: "Please close that door.It's fine in here, but I greatly fear you'll let in the cold and storm—Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it's the first time I've been warm."~From "The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses"
ROBERT LOWELL reads The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket Poets Speak 2024-09-29 | [FOR WARREN WINSLOW, DEAD AT SEA]Let man have dominion over the fishes of the sea and the fowls of the air and the beasts of the whole earth, and every creeping creature that moveth upon the earth.IA brackish reach of shoal off Madaket—The sea was still breaking violently and night Had steamed into our North Atlantic Fleet,When the drowned sailor clutched the drag-net. Light Flashed from his matted head and marble feet, He grappled at the netWith the coiled, hurdling muscles of his thighs:The corpse was bloodless, a botch of reds and whites, Its open, staring eyesWere lustreless dead-lightsOr cabin-windows on a stranded hulk Heavy with sand. We weight the body, close Its eyes and heave it seaward whence it came, Where the heel-headed dogfish barks its nose On Ahab’s void and forehead; and the name Is blocked in yellow chalk.Sailors, who pitch this portent at the sea Where dreadnaughts shall confessIts hell-bent deity,When you are powerlessTo sand-bag this Atlantic bulwark, facedBy the earth-shaker, green, unwearied, chaste In his steel scales: ask for no Orphean luteTo pluck life back. The guns of the steeled fleet Recoil and then repeatThe hoarse salute.IIWhenever winds are moving and their breath Heaves at the roped-in bulwarks of this pier, The terns and sea-gulls tremble at your death In these home waters. Sailor, can you hear The Pequod’s sea wings, beating landward, fall Headlong and break on our Atlantic wall Off ’Sconset, where the yawing S-boats splash The bellbuoy, with ballooning spinnakers, As the entangled, screeching mainsheet clears The blocks: off Madaket, where lubbers lash The heavy surf and throw their long lead squids For blue-fish? Sea-gulls blink their heavy lids Seaward. The winds’ wings beat upon the stones, Cousin, and scream for you and the claws rush At the sea’s throat and wring it in the slush Of this old Quaker graveyard where the bones Cry out in the long night for the hurt beast Bobbing by Ahab’s whaleboats in the East.IIIAll you recovered from Poseidon diedWith you, my cousin, and the harrowed brine Is fruitless on the blue beard of the god, Stretching beyond us to the castles in Spain, Nantucket’s westward haven. To Cape Cod Guns, cradled on the tide,Blast the eelgrass about a waterclockOf bilge and backwash, roil the salt and sand Lashing earth’s scaffold, rockOur warships in the handOf the great God, where time’s contrition blues Whatever it was these Quaker sailors lostIn the mad scramble of their lives. They died When time was open-eyed,Wooden and childish; only bones abideThere, in the nowhere, where their boats were tossed Sky-high, where mariners had fabled news Of IS, the whited monster. What it cost Them is their secret. In the sperm-whale’s slick I see the Quakers drown and hear their cry: “If God himself had not been on our side, If God himself had not been on our side, When the Atlantic rose against us, why, Then it had swallowed us up quick.”IVThis is the end of the whaleroad and the whaleWho spewed Nantucket bones on the thrashed swell And stirred the troubled waters to whirlpools To send the Pequod packing off to hell: This is the end of them, three-quarters fools, Snatching at straws to sailSeaward and seaward on the turntail whale, Spouting out blood and water as it rolls, Sick as a dog to these Atlantic shoals:Clamavimus, O depths. Let the sea-gulls wailFor water, for the deep where the high tide Mutters to its hurt self, mutters and ebbs. Waves wallow in their wash, go out and out, Leave only the death-rattle of the crabs, The beach increasing, its enormous snout Sucking the ocean’s side.This is the end of running on the waves;We are poured out like water. Who will danceThe mast-lashed master of LeviathansUp from this field of Quakers in their unstoned graves?VWhen the whale’s viscera go and the roll Of its corruption overruns this worldBeyond tree-swept Nantucket and Woods Hole And Martha’s Vineyard, Sailor, will your sword Whistle and fall and sink into the fat?In the great ash-pit of JehoshaphatThe bones cry for the blood of the white whale, The fat flukes arch and whack about its ears, The death-lance churns into the sanctuary, tears The gun-blue swingle, heaving like a flail,And hacks the coiling life out: it works and drags And rips the sperm-whale’s midriff into rags, Gobbets of blubber spill to wind and weather, Sailor, and gulls go round the stoven timbers Where the morning stars sing out togetherAnd thunder shakes the white surf and dismembers The red flag hammered in the mast-head. Hide Our steel, Jonas Messias, in Thy side.(Continued in comments)
WILLIAM STAFFORD reads A Ritual to Read to Each Other Poets Speak 2024-09-25 | If you don't know the kind of person I amand I don't know the kind of person you area pattern that others made may prevail in the worldand following the wrong god home we may miss our star.For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,a shrug that lets the fragile sequence breaksending with shouts the horrible errors of childhoodstorming out to play through the broken dike.And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,I call it cruel and maybe the root of all crueltyto know what occurs but not recognize the fact.And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,a remote important region in all who talk:though we could fool each other, we should consider—lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.For it is important that awake people be awake,or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —should be clear: the darkness around us is deep. ~From "The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems"
MICHAEL DONAGHY reads The Present Poets Speak 2024-09-24 | For the present there is just one moon,though every level pond gives back another.But the bright disc shining in the black lagoon,perceived by astrophysicist and lover,is milliseconds old. And even that light'sseven minutes older than its source.And the stars we think we see on moonless nightsare long extinguished. And, of course,this very moment, as you read this line,is literally gone before you know it.Forget the here-and-now. We have no timebut this device of wantonness and wit.Make me this present then: your hand in mine,and we'll live out our lives in it.~From "Collected Poems"
W. S. MERWIN reads In Time Poets Speak 2024-09-21 | The night the world was going to endwhen we heard those explosions not far awayand the loudspeakers telling usabout the vast fires on the backwaterconsuming undisclosed remnantsand warning us over and overto stay indoors and make no signalsyou stood at the open windowthe light of one candle back in the roomwe put on high boots to be readyfor wherever we might have to goand we got out the oysters and satat the small table feeding themto each other first with the forkthen from our mouths to each otheruntil there were none and we stood upand started to dance without musicslowly we danced around and aroundin circles and after a while we hummedwhen the world was about to endall those years all those nights ago~From "The Pupil"
MURIEL RUKEYSER reads Poem Poets Speak 2024-09-20 | 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 would be more or less mad for similar reasons.Slowly I would get to pen and paper,Make my poems for others unseen and unborn.In the day I would be reminded of those men and women,Brave, setting up signals across vast distances,Considering a nameless way of living, of almost unimagined values.As the lights darkened, as the lights of night brightened,We would try to imagine them, try to find each other,To construct peace, to make love, to reconcileWaking with sleeping, ourselves with each other,Ourselves with ourselves. We would try by any meansTo reach the limits of ourselves, to reach beyond ourselves,To let go the means, to wake.I lived in the first century of these wars.~From "The Speed of Darkness"
MAXINE KUMIN reads How It Is Poets Speak 2024-09-18 | Shall I say how it is in your clothes?A month after your death I wear your blue jacket.The dog at the center of my life recognizesyou’ve come to visit, he’s ecstatic.In the left pocket, a hole.In the right, a parking ticketdelivered up last August on Bay State Road.In my heart, a scatter like milkweed,a flinging from the pods of the soul.My skin presses your old outline.It is hot and dry inside.I think of the last day of your life,old friend, how I would unwind it, pasteit together in a different collage,back from the death car idling in the garage,back up the stairs, your praying hands unlaced,reassembling the bits of bread and tuna fishinto a ceremony of sandwich,running the home movie backward to a spacewe could be easy in, a kitchen placewith vodka and ice, our words like living meat.Dear friend, you have excited crowdswith your example. They swelllike wine bags, straining at your seams.I will be years gathering up our words,fishing out letters, snapshots, stains,leaning my ribs against this durable clothto put on the dumb blue blazer of your death.~From "Selected Poems 1960-1990"
ELIZABETH BISHOP reads The Armadillo Poets Speak 2024-09-16 | for Robert LowellThis is the time of yearwhen almost every nightthe frail, illegal fire balloons appear.Climbing the mountain height,rising toward a saintstill honored in these parts,the paper chambers flush and fill with lightthat comes and goes, like hearts.Once up against the sky it's hardto tell them from the stars—planets, that is—the tinted ones:Venus going down, or Mars,or the pale green one. With a wind,they flare and falter, wobble and toss;but if it's still they steer betweenthe kite sticks of the Southern Cross,receding, dwindling, solemnlyand steadily forsaking us,or, in the downdraft from a peak,suddenly turning dangerous.Last night another big one fell.It splattered like an egg of fireagainst the cliff behind the house.The flame ran down. We saw the pairof owls who nest there flying upand up, their whirling black-and-whitestained bright pink underneath, untilthey shrieked up out of sight.The ancient owls' nest must have burned.Hastily, all alone,a glistening armadillo left the scene,rose-flecked, head down, tail down,and then a baby rabbit jumped out,short-eared, to our surprise.So soft!—a handful of intangible ashwith fixed, ignited eyes.Too pretty, dreamlike mimicry!O falling fire and piercing cryand panic, and a weak mailed fistclenched ignorant against the sky!~From "The Complete Poems 1927-1979"
JAMES MERRILL reads The Victor Dog Poets Speak 2024-09-14 | for Elizabeth BishopBix to Buxtehude to Boulez.The little white dog on the Victor labelListens long and hard as he is able.It’s all in a day’s work, whatever plays.From judgment, it would seem, he has refrained. He even listens earnestly to Bloch,Then builds a church upon our acid rock.He’s man’s—no—he’s the Leiermann’s best friend, Or would be if hearing and listening were the same. Does he hear? I fancy he rather smellsThose lemon-gold arpeggios in Ravel’s“Les jets d’eau du palais de ceux qui s’aiment.”He ponders the Schumann Concerto’s tall willow hit By lightning, and stays put. When he surmises Through one of Bach’s eternal boxwood mazes The oboe pungent as a bitch in heat,Or when the calypso decants its raw bay rumOr the moon in Wozzeck reddens ripe for murder, He doesn’t sneeze or howl; just listens harder. Adamant needles bear down on him fromWhirling of outer space, too black, too near—But he was taught as a puppy not to flinch, Much less to imitate his bête noire Blanche Who barked, fat foolish creature, at King Lear.Still others fought in the road’s filth over Jezebel, Slavered on hearths of horned and pelted barons. His forebears lacked, to say the least, forbearance. Can nature change in him? Nothing’s impossible.The last chord fades. The night is cold and fine.His master’s voice rasps through the grooves’ bare groves. Obediently, in silence like the grave’sHe sleeps there on the still-warm gramophoneOnly to dream he is at the première of a Handel Opera long thought lost—Il Cane Minore.Its allegorical subject is his story!A little dog revolving round a spindleGives rise to harmonies beyond belief,A cast of stars . . . Is there in Victor’s heart No honey for the vanquished? Art is art. The life it asks of us is a dog’s life.~From "Collected Poems"
ROBERT LOWELL reads For the Union Dead Poets Speak 2024-09-10 | The old South Boston Aquarium standsin a Sahara of snow now. Its broken windows are boarded.The bronze weathervane cod has lost half its scales.The airy tanks are dry.Once my nose crawled like a snail on the glass;my hand tingledto burst the bubblesdrifting from the noses of the cowed, compliant fish.My hand draws back. I often sigh stillfor the dark downward and vegetating kingdomof the fish and reptile. One morning last March,I pressed against the new barbed and galvanizedfence on the Boston Common. Behind their cage,yellow dinosaur steamshovels were gruntingas they cropped up tons of mush and grassto gouge their underworld garage.Parking spaces luxuriate like civicsandpiles in the heart of Boston.A girdle of orange, Puritan-pumpkin colored girdersbraces the tingling Statehouse,shaking over the excavations, as it faces Colonel Shawand his bell-cheeked Negro infantryon St. Gaudens' shaking Civil War relief,propped by a plank splint against the garage's earthquake.Two months after marching through Boston,half the regiment was dead;at the dedication,William James could almost hear the bronze Negroes breathe. Their monument sticks like a fishbonein the city's throat.Its Colonel is as leanas a compass-needle.He has an angry wrenlike vigilance,a greyhound's gentle tautness;he seems to wince at pleasure,and suffocate for privacy.He is out of bounds now. He rejoices in man's lovely,peculiar power to choose life and die—when he leads his black soldiers to death,he cannot bend his back.On a thousand small town New England greens,the old white churches hold their airof sparse, sincere rebellion; frayed flagsquilt the graveyards of the Grand Army of the Republic.The stone statues of the abstract Union Soldiergrow slimmer and younger each year—wasp-waisted, they doze over musketsand muse through their sideburns . . .Shaw's father wanted no monumentexcept the ditch,where his son's body was thrownand lost with his "niggers."The ditch is nearer.There are no statues for the last war here;on Boylston Street, a commercial photographshows Hiroshima boilingover a Mosler Safe, the "Rock of Ages"that survived the blast. Space is nearer.When I crouch to my television set,the drained faces of Negro school-children rise like balloons.Colonel Shawis riding on his bubble,he waitsfor the blessèd break.The Aquarium is gone. Everywhere,giant finned cars nose forward like fish;a savage servilityslides by on grease.~From "For the Union Dead"
AUDRE LORDE reads Now that I Am Forever with Child Poets Speak 2024-09-07 | How the days wentWhile you were blooming within meI remember each upon each --The swelling changed planes of my body --And how you first fluttered, then jumpedAnd I thought it was my heart.How the days wound downand the turning of winterI recall, with you growing heavyAgainst the wind. I thought Now her handsAre formed, and her hairHas started to curlNow her teeth are doneNow she sneezes.Then the seed opened.I bore you one morning just before spring --My head rang like a fiery pistonMy legs were towers between whichA new world was passing.From thenI can only distinguishOne thread within running hoursYou...flowing through selvesToward You.~From "The First Cities"
PHILIP LARKIN reads Deceptions Poets Speak 2024-09-03 | "Of course I was drugged, and so heavily I did not regainconsciousness until the next morning. I was horrified todiscover that I had been ruined, and for some days I was inconsolable,and cried like a child to be killed or sent back to my aunt."—Mayhew, London Labour and the London PoorEven so distant, I can taste the grief,Bitter and sharp with stalks, he made you gulp.The sun's occasional print, the brisk briefWorry of wheels along the street outsideWhere bridal London bows the other way,And light, unanswerable and tall and wide,Forbids the scar to heal, and drivesShame out of hiding. All the unhurried day,Your mind lay open like a drawer of knives.Slums, years, have buried you. I would not dareConsole you if I could. What can be said,Except that suffering is exact, but whereDesire takes charge, readings will grow erratic?For you would hardly careThat you were less deceived, out on that bed,Than he was, stumbling up the breathless stairTo burst into fulfillment's desolate attic.~From "Less Deceived"
JOHN CROWE RANSOM reads The Equilibrists Poets Speak 2024-09-02 | Full of her long white arms and milky skinHe had a thousand times remembered sin.Alone in the press of people traveled he,Minding her jacinth, and myrrh, and ivory.Mouth he remembered: the quaint orificeFrom which came heat that flamed upon the kiss,Till cold words came down spiral from the head.Grey doves from the officious tower illsped.Body: it was a white field ready for love,On her body's field, with the gaunt tower above,The lilies grew, beseeching him to take,If he would pluck and wear them, bruise and break.Eyes talking: Never mind the cruel words,Embrace my flowers, but not embrace the swords.But what they said, the doves came straightway flyingAnd unsaid: Honor, Honor, they came crying.Importunate her doves. Too pure, too wise,Clambering on his shoulder, saying, Arise,Leave me now, and never let us meet,Eternal distance now command thy feet.Predicament indeed, which thus discoversHonor among thieves, Honor between lovers.O such a little word is Honor, they feel!But the grey word is between them cold as steel.At length I saw these lovers fully were comeInto their torture of equilibrium;Dreadfully had forsworn each other, and yetThey were bound each to each, and they did not forget.And rigid as two painful stars, and twirledAbout the clustered night their prison world,They burned with fierce love always to come near,But honor beat them back and kept them clear.Ah, the strict lovers, they are ruined now!I cried in anger. But with puddled browDevising for those gibbeted and braveCame I descanting: Man, what would you have?For spin your period out, and draw your breath,A kinder saeculum begins with Death.Would you ascend to Heaven and bodiless dwell?Or take your bodies honorless to Hell ?In Heaven you have heard no marriage is,No white flesh tinder to your lecheries,Your male and female tissue sweetly shapedSublimed away, and furious blood escaped.Great lovers lie in Hell, the stubborn onesInfatuate of the flesh upon the bones;Stuprate, they rend each other when they kiss,The pieces kiss again, no end to this.But still I watched them spinning, orbited nice.Their flames were not more radiant than their ice.I dug in the quiet earth and wrought the tombAnd made these lines to memorize their doom:—EPITAPHEquilibrists lie here; stranger, tread light;Close, but untouching in each other's sight;Mouldered the lips arid ashy the tall skull.Let them lie perilous and beautiful.~From "Selected Poems"
RICHARD WILBUR reads An Event Poets Speak 2024-08-31 | As if a cast of grain leapt back to the hand,A landscapeful of small black birds, intentOn the far south, convene at some commandAt once in the middle of the air, at once are goneWith headlong and unanimous consentFrom the pale trees and fields they settled on.What is an individual thing? They rollLike a drunken fingerprint across the sky!Or so I give their image to my soulUntil, as if refusing to be caughtIn any singular vision of my eyeOr in the nets and cages of my thought,They tower up, shatter, and madden spaceWith their divergences, are each aloneSwallowed from sight, and leave me in this placeShaping these images to make them stay:Meanwhile, in some formation of their own,They fly me still, and steal my thoughts away.Delighted with myself and with the birds,I set them down and give them leave to be.It is by words and the defeat of words,Down sudden vistas of the vain attempt,That for a flying moment one may seeBy what cross-purposes the world is dreamt.~From "Things of This World"
GALWAY KINNELL reads Saint Francis and the Sow Poets Speak 2024-08-27 | The budstands for all things,even for those things that don’t flower,for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing; though sometimes it is necessaryto reteach a thing its loveliness,to put a hand on its browof the flowerand retell it in words and in touchit is lovelyuntil it flowers again from within, of self-blessing; as Saint Francisput his hand on the creased foreheadof the sow, and told her in words and in touch blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow began remembering all down her thick length, from the earthen snout all the waythrough the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail, from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine down through the great broken heartto the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them:the long, perfect loveliness of sow.~From "Mortal Acts, Mortal Words"
ANTHONY HECHT reads A Hill Poets Speak 2024-08-25 | In Italy, where this sort of thing can occur,I had a vision once – though you understandIt was nothing at all like Dante's, or the visions of saints,And perhaps not a vision at all. I was with some friends,Picking my way through a warm, sunlit piazzaIn the early morning. A clear fretwork of shadowsFrom huge umbrellas littered the pavement and madeA sort of lucent shallows in which was mooredA small navy of carts. Books, coins, old maps,Cheap landscapes and ugly religious printsWere all on sale. The colors and noiseLike the flying hands were gestures of exultation,So that even the bargainingRose to the ear like a voluble godliness.And then, when it happened, the noises suddenly stopped,And it got darker; pushcarts and people dissolvedAnd even the great Farnese Palace itselfWas gone, for all its marble; in its placeWas a hill, mole-colored and bare. It was very cold,Close to freezing, with a promise of snow.The trees were like old ironwork gathered for scrapOutside a factory wall. There was no wind,And the only sound for a while was the little clickOf ice as it broke in the mud under my feet.I saw a piece of ribbon snagged on a hedge,But no other sign of life. And then I heardWhat seemed the crack of a rifle. A hunter, I guessed;At least I was not alone. But just after thatCame the soft and papery crashOf a great branch somewhere unseen falling to earth.And that was all, except for the cold and silenceThat promised to last forever, like the hill.Then prices came through, and fingers, and I was restoredTo the sunlight and my friends. But for more than a weekI was scared by the plain bitterness of what I had seen.All this happened about ten years ago,And it hasn't troubled me since, but at last, today,I remembered that hill; it lies just to the leftOf the road north of Poughkeepsie; and as a boyI stood before it for hours in wintertime.~From "The Hard Hours"
T. S. ELIOT reads The Hollow Men Poets Speak 2024-08-24 | IWe are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning togetherHeadpiece filled with straw. Alas!Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaninglessAs wind in dry grass Or rats’ feet over broken glassIn our dry cellarShape without form, shade without colour. Paralysed force, gesture without motion;Those who have crossedWith direct eyes, to death’s other KingdomRemember us—if at all—not as lost Violent souls, but only As the hollow men The stuffed men.IIEyes I dare not meet in dreams In death’s dream kingdom These do not appear:There, the eyes are Sunlight on a broken column There, is a tree swingingAnd voices are In the wind’s singing More distant and more solemn Than a fading star.Let me be no nearer In death’s dream kingdom Let me also wearSuch deliberate disguisesRat’s coat, crowskin, crossed stavesIn a fieldBehaving as the wind behaves No nearer—Not that final meeting In the twilight kingdomIIIThis is the dead landThis is cactus landHere the stone imagesAre raised, here they receiveThe supplication of a dead man’s handUnder the twinkle of a fading star.Is it like thisIn death’s other kingdomWaking aloneAt the hour when we are Trembling with tenderness Lips that would kissForm prayers to broken stone.IVThe eyes are not here There are no eyes here In this valley of dying stars In this hollow valleyThis broken jaw of our lost kingdomsIn this last of meeting places We grope together And avoid speechGathered on this beach of the tumid riverSightless, unless The eyes reappear As the perpetual starMultifoliate rose Of death’s twilight kingdom The hope only Of empty men.VHere we go round the prickly pear Prickly pear prickly pear Here we go round the prickly pear At five o’clock in the morning.Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow For Thine is the KingdomBetween the conception And the creationBetween the emotion And the response Falls the Shadow Life is very longBetween the desire And the spasm Between the potency And the existence Between the essence And the descent Falls the Shadow For Thine is the KingdomFor Thine is Life isFor Thine is theThis is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.~From "Poems: 1909–1925"
LOUISE GLÜCK reads The Red Poppy Poets Speak 2024-08-23 | The great thingis not havinga mind. Feelings:oh, I have those; theygovern me. I havea lord in heavencalled the sun, and openfor him, showing himthe fire of my own heart, firelike his presence.What could such glory beif not a heart? Oh my brothers and sisters,were you like me once, long ago,before you were human? Did youpermit yourselvesto open once, who would neveropen again? Because in truthI am speaking nowthe way you do. I speakbecause I am shattered.~From "The Wild Iris"
JOHN BERRYMAN reads The Song of the Tortured Girl Poets Speak 2024-08-21 | After a little I could not have told---But no one asked me this---why I was there.I asked. The ceiling of that place was highAnd there were sudden noises, which I made.I must have stayed there a long time today:My cup of soup was gone when they brought me back.Often "Nothing worse now can come to us"I thought, the winter the young men stayed away,My uncle died, and mother cracked her crutch.And then the strange room where the brightest lightDoes not shine on the strange men: shines on me.I feel them stretch my youth and throw a switch.Through leafless branches the sweet wind blowsMaking a mild sound, softer than a moan;High in a pass once where we put our tent,Minutes I lay awake to hear my joy.--- I no longer remember what they want. --Minutes I lay awake to hear my joy.~From "John Berryman Collected Poems, 1937-1971"
SIEGFRIED SASSOON reads Everyone Sang Poets Speak 2024-08-20 | Everyone suddenly burst out singing;And I was filled with such delightAs prisoned birds must find in freedom,Winging wildly across the whiteOrchards and dark-green fields; on - on - and out of sight.Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted;And beauty came like the setting sun:My heart was shaken with tears; and horrorDrifted away ... O, but EveryoneWas a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.~From "Collected Poems: 1908 - 1956"
ROBERT DUNCAN reads A Glimpse and And If He Had Been Wrong for Me Poets Speak 2024-08-18 | A GLIMPSE Come, yellow broomand lavender in bloom,the path runs down to the shady stream,and yet by your magic and the loud bees' hum, perfume of sage and lavender in bloom,hot and dreaming in the morning sun,I ever from where I am return,as if from this boyhood privacymy life burnd on in a smoke of me,mixt with sage in the summer air and lavender,and the stream from its shaderuns down to the bay and beyond to the sea.AND IF HE HAD BEEN WRONG FOR MEyet he was there, and all my thirstgatherd in the thought of him that year,a tall liquid presence of the man,a river running in the sound of him,sun dazzle in the shallows, shadowsin the pool beneath the rocks.It is a place of early lonely thought,impatient revery of a cool green.It is a glass of waterever just pourd for me, a memorykept silent come to speak.~From "Ground Work: Before the War"
ELIZABETH BISHOP reads In the Waiting Room Poets Speak 2024-08-17 | In Worcester, Massachusetts,I went with Aunt Consueloto keep her dentist's appointmentand sat and waited for herin the dentist's waiting room.It was winter. It got darkearly. The waiting roomwas full of grown-up people,arctics and overcoats,lamps and magazines.My aunt was insidewhat seemed like a long timeand while I waited I readthe National Geographic(I could read) and carefullystudied the photographs:the inside of a volcano,black, and full of ashes;then it was spilling overin rivulets of fire.Osa and Martin Johnsondressed in riding breeches,laced boots, and pith helmets.A dead man slung on a pole--"Long Pig," the caption said.Babies with pointed headswound round and round with string;black, naked women with neckswound round and round with wirelike the necks of light bulbs.Their breasts were horrifying.I read it right straight through.I was too shy to stop.And then I looked at the cover:the yellow margins, the date.Suddenly, from inside,came an oh! of pain-- Aunt Consuelo's voice --not very loud or long.I wasn't at all surprised;even then I knew she wasa foolish, timid woman.I might have been embarrassed,but wasn't. What took mecompletely by surprisewas that it was me:my voice, in my mouth.Without thinking at allI was my foolish aunt,I--we--were falling, falling,our eyes glued to the coverof the National Geographic,February, 1918.I said to myself: three daysand you'll be seven years old.I was saying it to stopthe sensation of falling offthe round, turning world.into cold, blue-black space.But I felt: you are an I,you are an Elizabeth,you are one of them.Why should you be one, too?I scarcely dared to lookto see what it was I was.I gave a sidelong glance-- I couldn't look any higher --at shadowy gray knees,trousers and skirts and bootsand different pairs of handslying under the lamps.I knew that nothing strangerhad ever happened, that nothingstranger could ever happen.Why should I be my aunt,or me, or anyone?What similarities--boots, hands, the family voiceI felt in my throat, or eventhe National Geographicand those awful hanging breasts--held us all togetheror made us all just one?How--I didn't know anyword for it--how "unlikely". . .How had I come to be here,like them, and overheara cry of pain that could havegot loud and worse but hadn't?The waiting room was brightand too hot. It was slidingbeneath a big black wave,another, and another.Then I was back in it.The War was on. Outside,in Worcester, Massachusetts,were night and slush and cold,and it was still the fifthof February, 1918.~From "The Complete Poems: 1927-1979"
ALLEN TATE reads Ode to the Confederate Dead Poets Speak 2024-08-16 | Row after row with strict impunityThe headstones yield their names to the element,The wind whirrs without recollection;In the riven troughs the splayed leavesPile up, of nature the casual sacramentTo the seasonal eternity of death;Then driven by the fierce scrutinyOf heaven to their election in the vast breath,They sough the rumour of mortality.Autumn is desolation in the plotOf a thousand acres where these memories growFrom the inexhaustible bodies that are not Dead, but feed the grass row after rich row.Think of the autumns that have come and gone!--Ambitious November with the humors of the year,With a particular zeal for every slab,Staining the uncomfortable angels that rotOn the slabs, a wing chipped here, an arm there:The brute curiosity of an angel's stareTurns you, like them, to stone,Transforms the heaving airTill plunged to a heavier world belowYou shift your sea-space blindlyHeaving, turning like the blind crab. Dazed by the wind, only the wind The leaves flying, plungeYou know who have waited by the wallThe twilight certainty of an animal,Those midnight restitutions of the bloodYou know--the immitigable pines, the smoky friezeOf the sky, the sudden call: you know the rage,The cold pool left by the mounting flood,Of muted Zeno and Parmenides.You who have waited for the angry resolutionOf those desires that should be yours tomorrow,You know the unimportant shrift of deathAnd praise the visionAnd praise the arrogant circumstanceOf those who fallRank upon rank, hurried beyond decision--Here by the sagging gate, stopped by the wall. Seeing, seeing only the leaves Flying, plunge and expireTurn your eyes to the immoderate past,Turn to the inscrutable infantry risingDemons out of the earth they will not last.Stonewall, Stonewall, and the sunken fields of hemp,Shiloh, Antietam, Malvern Hill, Bull Run.Lost in that orient of the thick and fastYou will curse the setting sun. Cursing only the leaves crying Like an old man in a stormYou hear the shout, the crazy hemlocks pointWith troubled fingers to the silence whichSmothers you, a mummy, in time. The hound bitchToothless and dying, in a musty cellarHears the wind only. Now that the salt of their bloodStiffens the saltier oblivion of the sea,Seals the malignant purity of the flood,What shall we who count our days and bowOur heads with a commemorial woeIn the ribboned coats of grim felicity,What shall we say of the bones, unclean,Whose verdurous anonymity will grow?The ragged arms, the ragged heads and eyesLost in these acres of the insane green?The gray lean spiders come, they come and go;In a tangle of willows without lightThe singular screech-owl's tightInvisible lyric seeds the mindWith the furious murmur of their chivalry. We shall say only the leaves Flying, plunge and expireWe shall say only the leaves whisperingIn the improbable mist of nightfallThat flies on multiple wing:Night is the beginning and the endAnd in between the ends of distractionWaits mute speculation, the patient curseThat stones the eyes, or like the jaguar leapsFor his own image in a jungle pool, his victim.What shall we say who have knowledge Carried to the heart? Shall we take the actTo the grave? Shall we, more hopeful, set up the graveIn the house? The ravenous grave? Leave nowThe shut gate and the decomposing wall:The gentle serpent, green in the mulberry bush, Riots with his tongue through the hush--Sentinel of the grave who counts us all!~From "Selected Poems by Allen Tate"
CECIL DAY-LEWIS reads Overtures to Death Poets Speak 2024-08-12 | It is not you I fear, but the humiliationsYou mercifully use to deaden grief –The downward graph of natural joys.Imagination’s slump, the blunted ear.I hate this cold and politic self-defenceOf hardening arteries and nervesGrown dull with time serving. I see that the heart livesBy self-betrayal, by circumspection is killed.That boy, whose glance makes heaven open and edgesEach dawning pain with gold, must learn to disbelieve:The wildfire lust of the eyes will gutter downTo age’s dim recalcitrance.Have we not seen how quick this young girl’s thoughts,Wayward and burning as a charm of goldfinchesAlarmed from thistle-tops, turn intoSpite or a cupboard love or clipped routine?Nearing the watershed and the difficult passes,Man wraps up closer against the chillIn his familiar habits: and at the topPauses, seeing your kingdom like a net beneath him spread.Some climbed to this momentous peak of the worldAnd facing the horizon – that notorious pure womanWho lures to cheat the last embraceHurled themselves down upon an easier doom.One the rare air made dizzy renouncedEarth, and the avalanche took him at his word:One wooed perfection – he’s bedded deep in the glacier, perfectAnd null, the prince and image of despair.The best, neither hoarding nor squanderingThe radiant flesh and the receptiveSpirit, stepped on together in the rhythm of comrades whoHave found a route on earth’s true reckoning based.They have not known the false humility,The shamming-dead of the senses beneath your hunter’s hand;But life’s green standards they’ve advancedTo the limit of your salt unyielding zone.~From "Collected Poems"
RANDALL JARRELL reads The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner Poets Speak 2024-08-12 | From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.~From "The Complete Poems"
ANNE SEXTON reads Her Kind Poets Speak 2024-08-10 | I have gone out, a possessed witch,haunting the black air, braver at night;dreaming evil, I have done my hitchover the plain houses, light by light:lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.A woman like that is not a woman, quite.I have been her kind.I have found the warm caves in the woods,filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,closets, silks, innumerable goods;fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:whining, rearranging the disaligned.A woman like that is misunderstood.I have been her kind.I have ridden in your cart, driver,waved my nude arms at villages going by,learning the last bright routes, survivorwhere your flames still bite my thighand my ribs crack where your wheels wind.A woman like that is not ashamed to die.I have been her kind.~From "To Bedlam and Part Way Back"
DELMORE SCHWARTZ reads Lincoln Poets Speak 2024-08-09 | Manic-depressive Lincoln, national hero! How just and true that this great nation, being conceived In liberty by fugitives should find —Strange ways and plays of monstrous History—This Hamlet-type to be the President—This failure, this unwilling bridegroom, This tricky lawyer full of black despair— He grew a beard, becoming President, And took a shawl as if he guessed his role, Though with the beard he fled cartoonists’ blacks, And many laughed and were contemptuous, And some for four years spoke of killing him— He was a politician—of the heart!— He lived from hand to mouth in moral things! He understood quite well Grant’s drunkenness! It was for him, before Election Day, That at Cold Harbor Grant threw lives away In hopeless frontal attack against Lee’s breastworks! O how he was the Hamlet-man, and this, After a life of failure made him right, After he ran away on his wedding day, Writing a coward’s letter to his bride— How with his very failure, he out-tricked The florid Douglas and the abstract Davis, And all the vain men who, surrounding him, Smiled in their vanity and sought his place— Later, they made him out a prairie Christ To sate the need coarse in the national heart— His wife went insane, Mary Todd too often Bought herself dresses. And his child died. And he would not condemn young men to death For having slept, in weakness. And he spoke More than he knew and all that he had felt Between outrageous joy and black despair Before and after Gettysburg’s pure peak— He studied law, but knew in his own soul Despair’s anarchy, terror and error, —Instruments had to be taken from his office And from his bedroom in such days of horror, Because some saw that he might kill himself: When he was young, when he was middle-aged, How just and true was he, our national hero! Sometimes he could not go home to face his wife, Sometimes he wished to hurry or end his life! But do not be deceived. He did not win, And, it is plain, the South could never win (Despite the gifted Northern generals!) —Capitalismus is not mocked, O no! This stupid deity decided the War— In fact, the North and South were losers both: —Capitalismus won the Civil War— —Capitalismus won the Civil War, Yet, in the War’s cruel Colosseum, Some characters fulfilled their natures’ surds, Grant the drunkard, Lee the noble soldier, John Brown in whom the Bible soared and cried, Booth the unsuccessful Shakespearean, —Each in some freedom walked and knew himself, Then most of all when all the deities Mixed with their barbarous stupidity To make the rock, root, and rot of the war— “This is the way each only life becomes, Tossed on History’s ceaseless insane sums!”~From "Genesis: Book One"
STEVIE SMITH reads Mother Among the Dustbins Poets Speak 2024-08-08 | Mother, among the dustbins and the manureI feel the measure of my humanity, an allureAs of the presence of God, I am sureIn the dustbins, in the manure, in the cat at play,Is the presence of God, in a sure wayHe moves there. Mother, what do you say?I too have felt the presence of God in the broomI hold, in the cobwebs in the room,But most of all in the silence of the tomb.Ah! but that thought that informs the hope of our kindIs but an empty thing, what lies behind? —Naught but the vanity of a protesting mindThat would not die. This is the thought that bouncesWithin a conceited head and trouncesInquiry. Man is most frivolous when he pronounces.Well Mother, I shall continue to think as I do,And I think you would be wise to do so too,Can you question the folly of man in the creation of God?Who are you?~From "Collected Poems and Drawings by Stevie Smith"
JANE KENYON reads Let Evening Come Poets Speak 2024-08-07 | Let the light of late afternoonshine through chinks in the barn, moving up the bales as the sun moves down.Let the cricket take up chafing as a woman takes up her needles and her yarn. Let evening come.Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned in long grass. Let the stars appearand the moon disclose her silver horn.Let the fox go back to its sandy den. Let the wind die down. Let the shed go black inside. Let evening come.To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop in the oats, to air in the lung let evening come.Let it come, as it will, and don’t be afraid. God does not leave us comfortless, so let evening come.~From "Collected Poems"
JENNY JOSEPH reads The Lost Sea Poets Speak 2024-08-05 | You have stood on a quayside in the flat grey morningWatching the rotting pierhead swim to viewThrough mist on the estuary, as if it moved,As if the sea still rose beneath its boards.And heard at noon the brittle seaweed crunchUnder the slipping shoes of a tired childShortcutting from the village, along the pathSalt has not lined for many a high tide now. The little railway faltered long agoWaving antennae over the mud banksThat turned it back in smooth indifference.With nothing on the other side to reachIt settles now for grass and butterflies.Ships must have called here often, for on the pierShreds of tyres still cling that once stove offThe vulnerable white sides of pleasure boats.Among the stinking debris in that hutBeneath the swarm of flies on a dead catRemains of nets lie rolled.Family men in inland garden suburbsCollected maybe pebbles and precious glassFrom what was once a shore.And knew the names of birds flown South long since,And cadged sweets from the trippers when they cameAnd owned the place again when they had gone.Nobody bombed the place. There was no armyTrampled its heart out. Nor did the nearby townAccount for this desertion. Merely it was:The land built up here, or the sea receded.Over the years the fish bypassed the shallowsAnd those that came the fishermen could not get.High tide beyond their reach, and the cold moonHauled only over mud. The sea forsook.Nothing to do that would not have been useless. So we did nothingBut watch that shore die as the sea receded.~From "Selected Poems"
THOM GUNN reads The Discovery of the Pacific Poets Speak 2024-08-04 | They lean against the cooling car, backs pressedUpon the dusts of a brown continent,And watch the sun, now Westward of their West,Fall to the ocean. Where it led they went.Kansas to California. Day by dayThey travelled emptier of the things they knew.They improvised new habits on the way,But lost the occasions, and then lost them too.One night, no one and nowhere, she had wokenTo resin-smell and to the firs' slight sound,And through their sleeping-bag had felt the brokenTight-knotted surfaces of the naked ground.Only his lean quiet body cupping hersKept her from it, the extreme chill. By degreesShe fell asleep. Around them in the firsThe wind probed, tiding through forked estuaries.And now their skin is caked with road, the grimeMerely reflecting sunlight as it fails.They leave their clothes among the rocks they climb,Blunt leaves of iceplant nuzzle at their soles.Now they stand chin-deep in the sway of ocean,Firm West, two stringy bodies face to face,And come, together, in the water's motion,The full caught pause of their embrace.~From "Moly"
JANE HIRSHFIELD reads For What Binds Us Poets Speak 2024-08-02 | There are names for what binds us:strong forces, weak forces.Look around, you can see them:the skin that forms in a half-empty cup,nails rusting into the places they join,joints dovetailed on their own weight.The way things stay so solidlywherever they've been set down—and gravity, scientists say, is weak.And see how the flesh grows backacross a wound, with a great vehemence,more strongthan the simple, untested surface before.There's a name for it on horses,when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,as all flesh,is proud of its wounds, wears themas honors given out after battle,small triumphs pinned to the chest—And when two people have loved each othersee how it is like ascar between their bodies,stronger, darker, and proud;how the black cord makes of them a single fabricthat nothing can tear or mend.~From "Of Gravity & Angels"
ROBERT MORGAN reads Bellrope Poets Speak 2024-07-30 | The line through the hold in the dankvestibule ceiling ended ina powerful knot worn slick, swingingin the breeze from those passing. Halfan hour before service UncleAllen pulled the call to worship,hauling down the rope like the startingcord of a motor, and the toweranswered and answered, fadingas the clapper lolled aside. I watchedhim before Sunday school heave onthe line as on a wellrope. Andthe wheel creaked up there as heavybuckets emptied out their startle and spread a cold splash to farthestcoves and hollows, then sucked the ropeback into the loft, leaving justthe knot within reach, tremblingwith its high connections.~From "At the Edge of the Orchard Country"
W. S. MERWIN reads Dusk in Winter Poets Speak 2024-07-29 | The sun sets in the cold without friendsWithout reproaches after all it has done for usIt goes down believing in nothingWhen it has gone I hear the stream running after itIt has brought its flute it is a long way~From "The Lice"
ROBERT HASS reads Late Spring Poets Speak 2024-07-29 | And then in mid-May the first morning of steady heat,the morning, Lief says, when you wake up, put on shorts, and that’s it for the day,when you pour coffee and walk outside, blinking in the sun.Strawberries have appeared in the markets, and peaches will soon;squid is so cheap in the fishstores you begin to consult Japanese and Italian cookbooks for the various and ingenious ways of preparing ika and calamari;and because the light will enlarge your days, your dreams at night will be as strange as the jars of octopus you saw once in a fisherman’s boat under the summer moon;and after swimming, white wine; and the sharing of stories before dinner is prolonged because the relations of the children in the neighborhood have acquired village intensity and the stories take longer telling;and there are the nights when the fog rolls in that nobody likes – hey, fog, the Miwok sang, who lived here first, you better go home, pelican is beating your wife –and after dark in the first cool hour, your children sleep so heavily in their beds exhausted from play, it is a pleasure to watch them,Leif does not move a muscle as he lies there; no, wait; it is Luke who lies there in his eight year-old-body,Leif is taller than you are and he isn’t home; when he is, his feet will extend past the end of the mattress, and Kristen is at the corner in the dark, talking to neighborhood boys;things change; there is no need for this dream-compelled narration; the rhythm will keep me awake, changing.~From "Human Wishes"
ROBERT CREELEY reads Like They Say Poets Speak 2024-07-27 | Underneath the tree on somesoft grass I sat, Iwatched two happywoodpeckers be dis-turbed by my presence. Andwhy not, I thought tomyself, whynot.~From "The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley: 1945-1975"
DAVID WAGONER reads Lost Poets Speak 2024-07-26 | Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside youAre not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,Must ask permission to know it and be known.The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,I have made this place around you.If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.No two trees are the same to Raven.No two branches are the same to Wren.If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knowsWhere you are. You must let it find you.~From "Riverbed"
EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY reads Renascence Poets Speak 2024-07-26 | All I could see from where I stoodWas three long mountains and a wood;I turned and looked another way,And saw three islands in a bay.So with my eyes I traced the lineOf the horizon, thin and fine,Straight around till I was comeBack to where I'd started from;And all I saw from where I stoodWas three long mountains and a wood. Over these things I could not see;These were the things that bounded me;And I could touch them with my hand,Almost, I thought, from where I stand.And all at once things seemed so smallMy breath came short, and scarce at all. But, sure, the sky is big, I said;Miles and miles above my head;So here upon my back I'll lieAnd look my fill into the sky.And so I looked, and, after all,The sky was not so very tall.The sky, I said, must somewhere stop,And—sure enough!—I see the top!The sky, I thought, is not so grand;I 'most could touch it with my hand!And reaching up my hand to try,I screamed to feel it touch the sky. I screamed, and—lo!—InfinityCame down and settled over me;Forced back my scream into my chest,Bent back my arm upon my breast,And, pressing of the UndefinedThe definition on my mind,Held up before my eyes a glassThrough which my shrinking sight did passUntil it seemed I must beholdImmensity made manifold;Whispered to me a word whose soundDeafened the air for worlds around,And brought unmuffled to my earsThe gossiping of friendly spheres,The creaking of the tented sky,The ticking of Eternity. I saw and heard, and knew at lastThe How and Why of all things, past,And present, and forevermore.The Universe, cleft to the core,Lay open to my probing senseThat, sick'ning, I would fain pluck thenceBut could not,—nay! But needs must suckAt the great wound, and could not pluckMy lips away till I had drawnAll venom out.—Ah, fearful pawn!For my omniscience paid I tollIn infinite remorse of soul. All sin was of my sinning, allAtoning mine, and mine the gallOf all regret. Mine was the weightOf every brooded wrong, the hateThat stood behind each envious thrust,Mine every greed, mine every lust. And all the while for every grief,Each suffering, I craved reliefWith individual desire,—Craved all in vain! And felt fierce fireAbout a thousand people crawl;Perished with each,—then mourned for all! A man was starving in Capri;He moved his eyes and looked at me;I felt his gaze, I heard his moan,And knew his hunger as my own.I saw at sea a great fog bankBetween two ships that struck and sank;A thousand screams the heavens smote;And every scream tore through my throat. No hurt I did not feel, no deathThat was not mine; mine each last breathThat, crying, met an answering cryFrom the compassion that was I.All suffering mine, and mine its rod;Mine, pity like the pity of God. Ah, awful weight! InfinityPressed down upon the finite Me!My anguished spirit, like a bird,Beating against my lips I heard;Yet lay the weight so close aboutThere was no room for it without.And so beneath the weight lay IAnd suffered death, but could not die. Long had I lain thus, craving death,When quietly the earth beneathGave way, and inch by inch, so greatAt last had grown the crushing weight,Into the earth I sank till IFull six feet under ground did lie,And sank no more,—there is no weightCan follow here, however great.From off my breast I felt it roll,And as it went my tortured soulBurst forth and fled in such a gustThat all about me swirled the dust. Deep in the earth I rested now;Cool is its hand upon the browAnd soft its breast beneath the headOf one who is so gladly dead.And all at once, and over allThe pitying rain began to fall;I lay and heard each pattering hoofUpon my lowly, thatched roof,And seemed to love the sound far moreThan ever I had done before.For rain it hath a friendly soundTo one who's six feet underground;And scarce the friendly voice or face:A grave is such a quiet place. The rain, I said, is kind to comeAnd speak to me in my new home.I would I were alive againTo kiss the fingers of the rain,To drink into my eyes the shineOf every slanting silver line,To catch the freshened, fragrant breezeFrom drenched and dripping apple-trees.For soon the shower will be done,And then the broad face of the sunWill laugh above the rain-soaked earthUntil the world with answering mirthShakes joyously, and each round dropRolls, twinkling, from its grass-blade top. How can I bear it; buried here,While overhead the sky grows clearAnd blue again after the storm?O, multi-colored, multiform,Beloved beauty over me,That I shall never, never seeAgain! Spring-silver, autumn-gold,That I shall never more behold!Sleeping your myriad magics through,Close-sepulchred away from you!O God, I cried, give me new birth,And put me back upon the earth!Upset each cloud's gigantic gourdAnd let the heavy rain, down-pouredIn one big torrent, set me free,Washing my grave away from me! (See comment)
