Poetics

Related poetry:

1. The Last Hero WE laid him to rest with tenderness; Homeward we turned in the twilight’s gold; We thought in ourselves with dumb distress- All the story of earth is told. A beautiful word at the last was said: A great deep heart like the hearts of old Went forth; and the speaker had lost the thread, Or […]...
2. 16-bit Intel 8088 chip with an Apple Macintosh You can’t run Radio Shack programs In its disc drive. Nor can a Commodore 64 Drive read a file You have created on an IBM Personal Computer. Both Kaypro and Osborne computers use The CP/M operating system But can’t read each other’s Handwriting For they format (write On) discs in different […]...
3. How many schemes may die How many schemes may die In one short Afternoon Entirely unknown To those they most concern The man that was not lost Because by accident He varied by a Ribbon’s width From his accustomed route The Love that would not try Because beside the Door It must be competitions Some unsuspecting Horse was tied Surveying […]...
4. Poetics I look for the way Things will turn Out spiralling from a center, The shape Things will take to come forth in So that the birch tree white Touched black at branches Will stand out Wind-glittering Totally its apparent self: I look for the forms Things want to come as From what black wells of […]...
5. Sardis (Revelations, iii. 1-6) “Write to Sardis,” saith the Lord, “And write what He declares, He whose Spirit, and whose word, Upholds the seven stars: All thy works and ways I search, Find thy zeal and love decay’d; Thou art call’d a living church, But thou art cold and dead. “Watch, remember, seek, and strive, Exert […]...
6. Morning Glories Blue and dark-blue rose and deepest rose white and pink they Are everywhere in the diligent cornfield rising and swaying in their reliable Finery in the little fling of their bodies their gear and tackle All caught up in the cornstalks. The reaper’s story is the story of endless work of Work careful and heavy […]...
7. 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 […]...
8. Platonic I knew it the first of the summer, I knew it the same at the end, That you and your love were plighted, But couldn’t you be my friend? Couldn’t we sit in the twilight, Couldn’t we walk on the shore With only a pleasant friendship To bind us, and nothing more? There was not […]...
9. Here Here I am in the garden laughing An old woman with heavy breasts And a nicely mapped face How did this happen Well that’s who I wanted to be At last a woman In the old style sitting Stout thighs apart under A big skirt grandchild sliding On off my lap a pleasant Summer perspiration […]...
10. Picture-Books in Winter Summer fading, winter comes Frosty mornings, tingling thumbs, Window robins, winter rooks, And the picture story-books. Water now is turned to stone Nurse and I can walk upon; Still we find the flowing brooks In the picture story-books. All the pretty things put by, Wait upon the children’s eye, Sheep and shepherds, trees and crooks, […]...
11. Ad Olum CALL me not rebel, though { here at every word {in what I sing If I no longer hail thee { King and Lord { Lord and King I have redeemed myself with all I had, And now possess my fortunes poor but glad. With all I had I have redeemed myself, And escaped at […]...
12. Accidents The barber has accidentally taken off an ear. It lies like Something newborn on the floor in a nest of hair. Oops, says the barber, but it musn’t’ve been a very good Ear, it came off with very little complaint. It wasn’t, says the customer, it was always overly waxed. I tried putting a wick […]...
13. Mrs. Purkapile He ran away and was gone for a year. When he came home he told me the silly story Of being kidnapped by pirates on Lake Michigan And kept in chains so he could not write me. I pretended to believe it, though I knew very well What he was doing, and that he met […]...
14. The Argument Of His Book I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers, Of April, May, of June, and July-flowers. I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes, Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal-cakes. I write of youth, of love, and have access By these to sing of cleanly wantonness. I sing of dews, of rains, and piece by […]...
15. Absence HERE, ever since you went abroad, If there be change no change I see: I only walk our wonted road, The road is only walk’d by me. Yes; I forgot; a change there is Was it of that you bade me tell? I catch at times, at times I miss The sight, the tone, I […]...
16. Removed from Accident of Loss Removed from Accident of Loss By Accident of Gain Befalling not my simple Days Myself had just to earn Of Riches as unconscious As is the Brown Malay Of Pearls in Eastern Waters, Marked His What Holiday Would stir his slow conception Had he the power to dream That put the Dower’s fraction Awaited even […]...
17. Cloony The Clown I’ll tell you the story of Cloony the Clown Who worked in a circus that came through town. His shoes were too big and his hat was too small, But he just wasn’t, just wasn’t funny at all. He had a trombone to play loud silly tunes, He had a green dog and a thousand […]...
18. First Sight Lambs that learn to walk in snow When their bleating clouds the air Meet a vast unwelcome, know Nothing but a sunless glare. Newly stumbling to and fro All they find, outside the fold, Is a wretched width of cold. As they wait beside the ewe, Her fleeces wetly caked, there lies Hidden round them, […]...
19. Being Me! Wild are my ways, wilder than you think You will find me standing a little left of frame You will find me a little away from the meeting place I am that and much more, insignificant me. Yes I am the one with the faraway look Of sailors of vast dreamy oceans I look at […]...
20. Ode To Modern Art Come on in and stay a while I’ll photograph you emerging from the revolving door Like Frank O’Hara dating the muse of modern art Talking about the big Pollock show is better Than going to it on a dismal Saturday afternoon When my luncheon partner is either the author or the subject Of The Education […]...
21. Ione, Dead the Long Year Empty are the ways, Empty are the ways of this land And the flowers Bend over with heavy heads. They bend in vain. Empty are the ways of this land Where Ione Walked once, and now does not walk But seems like a person just gone....
22. The Owners Of The Little Box Line the inside of the little box With your precious skin And make yourself cozy Just as you would in your own home Make space voyages inside her Gather stars make time squirt its milk And sleep in the clouds Just don’t go around pretending You’re more important than her length And wiser than her […]...
23. San Francisco This poem was found written on a paper bag by Richard Brautigan in a laundromat in San Francisco. The author is unknown. By accident, you put Your money in my Machine (#4) By accident, I put My money in another Machine (#6) On purpose, I put Your clothes in the Empty machine full Of water […]...
24. In the Days of the Golden Rod Across the meadow in brooding shadow I walk to drink of the autumn’s wine­ The charm of story, the artist’s glory, To-day on these silvering hills is mine; On height, in hollow, where’er I follow, By mellow hillside and searing sod, Its plumes uplifting, in light winds drifting, I see the glimmer of golden-rod. In […]...
25. Sonnet 76: Why is my verse so barren of new pride? Why is my verse so barren of new pride? So far from variation or quick change? Why with the time do I not glance aside To new-found methods, and to compounds strange? Why write I still all one, ever the same, And keep invention in a noted weed, That every word doth almost tell my […]...
26. Aftermath I learnt to write to you in happier days, And every letter was a piece I chipped From off my heart, a fragment newly clipped From the mosaic of life; its blues and grays, Its throbbing reds, I gave to earn your praise. To make a pavement for your feet I stripped My soul for […]...
27. Time to play It is a pristine page, clean on the blue screen Where I compose, I don’t expect it to stay that way As words glow from blunt, abused fingers, as insistent Sounds in my head translate into sentence structures, As lips articulate the rhythms and the sounds of the Jumbled lexis as swiftly as I can […]...
28. Martha “Once…Once upon a time…” Over and over again, Martha would tell us her stories, In the hazel glen. Hers were those clear gray eyes You watch, and the story seems Told by their beautifulness Tranquil as dreams. She’d sit with her two slim hands Clasped round her bended knees; While we on our elbows lolled, […]...
29. 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. […]...
30. 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 […]...
31. 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 […]...
32. Psalm 119 part 11 Breathing after holiness. Ver. 5,33 O that the Lord would guide my ways To keep his statutes still! O that my God would grant me grace To know and do his will! Ver. 29 O send thy Spirit down to write Thy law upon my heart! Nor let my tongue indulge deceit, Nor act the […]...
33. TO WILLIAM E. CHANNING The pages of thy book I read, And as I closed each one, My heart, responding, ever said, “Servant of God! well done!” Well done! Thy words are great and bold; At times they seem to me, Like Luther’s, in the days of old, Half-battles for the free. Go on, until this land revokes The […]...
34. Autumn He told his life story to Mrs. Courtly Who was a widow. ‘Let us get married shortly’, He said. ‘I am no longer passionate, But we can have some conversation before it is too late.’...
35. Zeroing In “I am a landscape,” he said, “a landscape and a person walking in that landscape. There are daunting cliffs there, And plains glad in their way Of brown monotony. But especially There are sinkholes, places Of sudden terror, of small circumference And malevolent depths.” “I know,” she said. “When I set forth To walk in […]...
36. Jigsaw Puzzles and You There were long hyphens in our day- When no one spoke; no one exhaled As we contemplated the broken puzzles- The broken tiles all over the floor Some might have called us mad- Insane – in this ceramic nightmare Of yoga knees and bloody feet- Empty bottles scattered on a garden mat And still we […]...
37. What News Here, ever since you went abroad, If there be change, no change I see, I only walk our wonted road, The road is only walkt by me. Yes; I forgot; a change there is; Was it of that you bade me tell? I catch at times, at times I miss The sight, the tone, I […]...
38. Historion No man hath dared to write this thing as yet, And yet I know, how that the souls of all men great At times pass athrough us, And we are melted into them, and are not Save reflexions of their souls. Thus am I Dante for a space and am One Francois Villon, ballad-lord and […]...
39. Conversation We smile at each other And I lean back against the wicker couch. How does it feel to be dead? I say. You touch my knees with your blue fingers. And when you open your mouth, A ball of yellow light falls to the floor And burns a hole through it. Don’t tell me, I […]...
40. What Kind Of A Person “What kind of a person are you,” I heard them say to me. I’m a person with a complex plumbing of the soul, Sophisticated instruments of feeling and a system Of controlled memory at the end of the twentieth century, But with an old body from ancient times And with a God even older than […]...