Poetics

Related poetry:

1. I had the Glory that will do I had the Glory that will do An Honor, Thought can turn her to When lesser Fames invite With one long “Nay” Bliss’ early shape Deforming Dwindling Gulfing up Time’s possibility....
2. Unlyric Love Song It is time to give that-of-myself which I could not at first: To offer you now at last my least and my worst: Minor, absurd preserves, The shell’s end-curves, A document kept at the back of a drawer, A tin hidden under the floor, Recalcitrant prides and hesitations: To pile them carefully in a desparate […]...
3. Cacoethes Scribendi If all the trees in all the woods were men; And each and every blade of grass a pen; If every leaf on every shrub and tree Turned to a sheet of foolscap; every sea Were changed to ink, and all earth’s living tribes Had nothing else to do but act as scribes, And for […]...
4. With Penne, Inke, And Paper To A Distressed Friend Here is paper, pen, and inke, That your heart and seale may sinke Into such markes as may expresse A Soule much blest in heavinesse. May your paper seeme as fayre As yourselfe when you appeare: May the Letters which you write Looke like black eye-lids on white. May your penne such fancies bring As […]...
5. Authorship You say that father write a lot of books, but what he write I don’t Understand. He was reading to you all the evening, but could you really Make out what he meant? What nice stores, mother, you can tell us! Why can’t father Write like that, I wonder? Did he never hear from his […]...
6. Poetics You know the old story Ann Landers tells About the houseife in her basement doing the wash? She’s wearing her nightie, and she thinks, “Well, hell, I might’s well put this in as well,” and then Being dripped on by a leaky pipe puts on Her son’s football helmet; whereupon The meter reader happens to […]...
7. Paper Boats Day by day I float my paper boats one by one down the running Stream. In bid black letters I write my name on them and the name of The village where I live. I hope that someone in some strange land will find them and Know who I am. I load my little boats […]...
8. The End of the World Here, at the end of the world, The flowers bleed As if they were hearts, The hearts ooze a darkness Like india ink, & poets dip their pens in & they write. “Here, at the end of the world,” They write, Not knowing what it means. “Here, where the sky nurses on black milk, Where […]...
9. I know where Wells grow Droughtless Wells I know where Wells grow Droughtless Wells Deep dug for Summer days Where Mosses go no more away And Pebble safely plays It’s made of Fathoms and a Belt A Belt of jagged Stone Inlaid with Emerald half way down And Diamonds jumbled on It has no Bucket Were I rich A Bucket I would […]...
10. A Scrap of Paper “Will you go to war just for a scrap of paper?” Question Of the German Chancellor to the British Ambassador, August 5, 1914. A mocking question! Britain’s answer came Swift as the light and searching as the flame. “Yes, for a scrap of paper we will fight Till our last breath, and God defend the […]...
11. The Room Through that window-all else being extinct Except itself and me-I saw the struggle Of darkness against darkness. Within the room It turned and turned, dived downward. Then I saw How order might-if chaos wished-become: And saw the darkness crush upon itself, Contracting powerfully; it was as if It killed itself, slowly: and with much pain. […]...
12. Words For A Trumpet Chorale Celebrating The Autumn “The trumpet is a brilliant instrument.” – Dietrich Buxtehude Come and come forth and come up from the cup of Your dumbness, stunned and numb, come with The statues and believed in, Thinking this is nothing, deceived. Come to the summer and sun, Come see upon that height, and that sum In the seedtime of […]...
13. It Is March It is March and black dust falls out of the books Soon I will be gone The tall spirit who lodged here has Left already On the avenues the colorless thread lies under Old prices When you look back there is always the past Even when it has vanished But when you look forward With […]...
14. Dream Song 89: Op. posth. no. 12 In a blue series towards his sleepy eyes They slid like wonder, women tall & small, Of every shape & size, In many languages to lisp ‘We do’ To Henry almost waking. What is the night at all, His closed eyes beckon you. In the Marriage of the Dead, a new routine, He gasped his […]...
15. Covering Two Years This nothingness that feeds upon itself: Pencils that turn to water in the hand, Parts of a sentence, hanging in the air, Thoughts breaking in the mind like glass, Blank sheets of paper that reflect the world Whitened the world that I was silenced by. There were two years of that. Slowly, Whatever splits, dissevers, […]...
16. The Wicked Postman Why do you sit there on the floor so quiet and silent, tell me, Mother dear? The rain is coming in through the open window, making you all Wet, and you don’t mind it. Do you hear the gong striking four? It is time for my brother To come home from school. What has happened […]...
17. Maiden Name Marrying left yor maiden name disused. Its five light sounds no longer mean your face, Your voice, and all your variants of grace; For since you were so thankfully confused By law with someone else, you cannot be Semantically the same as that young beauty: It was of her that these two words were used. […]...
18. An English Wood This valley wood is pledged To the set shape of things, And reasonably hedged: Here are no harpies fledged, No rocs may clap their wings, Nor gryphons wave their stings. Here, poised in quietude, Calm elementals brood On the set shape of things: They fend away alarms From this green wood. Here nothing is that […]...
19. The Geniuses Among Us They take us by surprise, these tall perennials That jut like hollyhocks above the canopy Of all the rest of us-bright testimonials To the scale of human possibility. They come to bloom for every generation, Blazing with extraordinary notions From the taproots of imagination- Dazzling us with incandescent visions. And soon, the things we never […]...
20. A Quick One Before I Go There comes a time in every man’s life When he thinks: I have never had a single Original thought in my life Including this one & therefore I shall Eliminate all ideas from my poems Which shall consist of cats, rice, rain Baseball cards, fire escapes, hanging plants Red brick houses where I shall give […]...
21. Daybreak In Alabama When I get to be a composer I’m gonna write me some music about Daybreak in Alabama And I’m gonna put the purtiest songs in it Rising out of the ground like a swamp mist And falling out of heaven like soft dew. I’m gonna put some tall tall trees in it And the scent […]...
22. At the Aquarium of the Pacific I saw a brilliant angelfish whose tail And fins shimmered yellow until it turned And silver spread like an undercoat of fur When stroked against the nap, across its scales. Black as caviar and rimmed with gold, Its eyes, though flat as dimes, looked deep as wells. The clownfish cruising by above the shells, Its […]...
23. Sonnet XIII: Letters and Lines To the Shadow Letters and lines we see are soon defac’d, Metals do waste and fret with canker’s rust, The diamond shall once consume to dust, And freshest colors with foul stains disgrac’d; Paper and ink can paint but naked words, To write with blood of force offends the sight; And if with tears I […]...
24. Some Like Poetry Write it. Write. In ordinary ink On ordinary paper: they were given no food, They all died of hunger. “All. How many? It’s a big meadow. How much grass For each one?” Write: I don’t know. History counts its skeletons in round numbers. A thousand and one remains a thousand, As though the one had […]...
25. Broadway Under Grand Central’s tattered vault maybe half a dozen electric stars still lit One saxophone blew, and a sheer black scrim Billowed over some minor constellation Under repair. Then, on Broadway, red wings In a storefront tableau, lustrous, the live macaws Preening, beaks opening and closing Like those animated knives that unfold all night In […]...
26. Identity 1) An individual spider web Identifies a species: An order of instinct prevails through all accidents of circumstance, though possibility is High along the peripheries of Spider webs: you can go all around the fringing attachments and find Disorder ripe, Entropy rich, high levels of random, numerous occasions of accident: 2) the possible settings Of […]...
27. Try To Remember Some Details Try to remember some details. Remember the clothing Of the one you love So that on the day of loss you’ll be able to say: last seen Wearing such-and-such, brown jacket, white hat. Try to remember some details. For they have no face And their soul is hidden and their crying Is the same as […]...
28. The Daylight is Dying The daylight is dying Away in the west, The wild birds are flying In silence to rest; In leafage and frondage Where shadows are deep, They pass to its bondage – The kingdom of sleep. And watched in their sleeping By stars in the height, They rest in your keeping, Oh, wonderful night. When night […]...
29. Impossibility, like Wine Impossibility, like Wine Exhilarates the Man Who tastes it; Possibility Is flavorless Combine A Chance’s faintest Tincture And in the former Dram Enchantment makes ingredient As certainly as Doom...
30. The Revival 1 Unfold! unfold! Take in His light, 2 Who makes thy cares more short than night. 3 The joys which with His day-star rise, 4 He deals to all but drowsy eyes; 5 And (what the men of this world miss) 6 Some drops and dews of future bliss. 7 Hark! how his winds have […]...
31. Still I Rise You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I’ll rise. Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? ‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells Pumping in my living room. Just like moons and like […]...
32. The Red Blaze is the Morning The Red Blaze is the Morning The Violet is Noon The Yellow Day is falling And after that is none But Miles of Sparks at Evening Reveal the Width that burned The Territory Argent that Never yet consumed...
33. Daylight is Dying The daylight is dying Away in the west, The wild birds are flying In silence to rest; In leafage and frondage Where shadows are deep, They pass to its bondage The kingdom of sleep And watched in their sleeping By stars in the height, They rest in your keeping, O wonderful night. When night doth […]...
34. We miss a Kinsman more We miss a Kinsman more When warranted to see Than when withheld of Oceans From possibility A Furlong than a League Inflicts a pricklier pain, Till We, who smiled at Pyrenees Of Parishes, complain....
35. Gods 1 THOUGHT of the Infinite-the All! Be thou my God. 2 Lover Divine, and Perfect Comrade! Waiting, content, invisible yet, but certain, Be thou my God. 3 Thou-thou, the Ideal Man! Fair, able, beautiful, content, and loving, Complete in Body, and dilate in Spirit, Be thou my God. 4 O Death-(for Life has served its […]...
36. Petropolis From a fearful height, a wandering light, But does a star glitter like this, crying? Transparent star, wandering light Your brother, Petropolis, is dying. From a fearful height, earthly dreams are alight, And a green star is crying. Oh star, if you are the brother of water and light, Your brother, Petropolis, is dying. A […]...
37. At leisure is the Soul At leisure is the Soul That gets a Staggering Blow The Width of Life before it spreads Without a thing to do It begs you give it Work But just the placing Pins Or humblest Patchwork Children do To Help its Vacant Hands...
38. The Man Who Could Write Boanerges Blitzen, servant of the Queen, Is a dismal failure is a Might-have-been. In a luckless moment he discovered men Rise to high position through a ready pen. Boanerges Blitzen argued therefore “I, With the selfsame weapon, can attain as high.” Only he did not possess when he made the trial, Wicked wit of C-lv-n, […]...
39. Warning to Children Children, if you dare to think Of the greatness, rareness, muchness Fewness of this precious only Endless world in which you say You live, you think of things like this: Blocks of slate enclosing dappled Red and green, enclosing tawny Yellow nets, enclosing white And black acres of dominoes, Where a neat brown paper parcel […]...
40. Coloring Book Each picture is heartbreakingly banal, A kitten and a ball of yarn, A dog and bone. The paper is cheap, easily torn. A coloring book’s authority is derived From its heavy black lines As unalterable as the ten commandments Within which minor decisions are possible: The dog black and white, The kitten gray. Under the […]...