National Poetry Month: April 21st

April 21, 2015

Life is Fine by Langston Hughes I went down to the river, I set down on the bank. I tried to think but couldn’t, So I jumped in and sank. I came up once and hollered! I came up twice and cried! If that water hadn’t a-been so cold I might’ve sunk and died. But […]


National Poetry Month: April 20th

April 20, 2015

Eating Poetry by Mark Strand Ink runs from the corners of my mouth. There is no happiness like mine. I have been eating poetry. The librarian does not believe what she sees. Her eyes are sad and she walks with her hands in her dress. The poems are gone. The light is dim. The dogs […]


National Poetry Month: April 19th

April 19, 2015

In Goya’s Greatest Scenes… by Lawrence Ferlinghetti In Goya’s greatest scenes we seem to see the people of the world exactly at the moment when they first attained the title of ‘suffering humanity’ They writhe upon the page in a veritable rage of adversity


National Poetry Month: April 18th

April 18, 2015

Spring by Edna St. Vincent Millay To what purpose, April, do you return again? Beauty is not enough. You can no longer quiet me with the redness Of little leaves opening stickily. I know what I know. The sun is hot on my neck as I observe The spikes of the crocus. The smell of […]


National Poetry Month: April 17th

April 17, 2015

The Revenant by Billy Collins I am the dog you put to sleep, as you like to call the needle of oblivion, come back to tell you this simple thing: I never liked you – not one bit. When I licked your face, I thought of biting off your nose. When I watched you toweling […]


National Poetry Month: April 16th

April 16, 2015

A Box of Pastels by Ted Kooser I once held on my knees a simple wooden box in which a rainbow lay dusty and broken. It was a set of pastels that had years before belonged to the painter Mary Cassatt, and all of the colors she’d used in her work lay open before me. […]


National Poetry Month: April 15th

April 15, 2015

Swimming By Night by James Merrill A light going out in the forehead Of the house by the ocean, Into warm black its feints of diamond fade. Without clothes, without caution Plunging past gravity– Wait! Where before Had been floating nothing, is a gradual body Half remembered, astral with phosphor, Yours, risen from its tomb […]


National Poetry Month: April 14th

April 14, 2015

The Want of Peace by Wendell Berry All goes back to the earth, and so I do not desire pride of excess or power, but the contentments made by men who have had little: the fisherman’s silence receiving the river’s grace, the gardener’s musing on rows. I lack the peace of simple things. I am […]


National Poetry Month: April 13th

April 13, 2015

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. […]


National Poetry Month: April 12th

April 12, 2015

Three for the Mona Lisa by John Stone 1 It is not what she did at 10 o’clock last evening accounts for the smile It is that she plans to do it again tonight.


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