Wednesday, May 30, 2007

421. Sestina - Elizbeth Bishop

›
. September rain falls on the house. In the failing light, the old grandmother sits in the kitchen with the child beside the Little Marvel S...
Tuesday, May 29, 2007

420. Love - Czeslaw Milosz

›
Love means to learn to look at yourself The way one looks at distant things For you are only one thing among many. And whoever sees that way...
Saturday, May 26, 2007

419. Being Listened To - John Fox

›
. When someone deeply listens to you, it is like holding out a dented cup you've had since childhood and watching it fill up with cold, ...
Friday, May 25, 2007

418. The God Abandons Antony - C. P. Cavafy (1)

›
Translated from the Greek by Edmund Keely and Philip Sherrard When suddenly at midnight you hear an invisible procession going by with exqui...
Thursday, May 24, 2007

417. Homer's Seeing-Eye Dog - William Matthews

›
. Most of the time he worked, a sort of sleep with a purpose, so far as I could tell. How he got from the dark of sleep to the dark of wakin...
Wednesday, May 23, 2007

416. Virginia Woolf Gathers Mushrooms - William Dickey

›
. She is not easy to see. she wears something anonymous: not the dress she has not got and so (sigh of relief) cannot go the the party she w...
Tuesday, May 22, 2007

415. A Large Number - Wislawa Szymborska

›
Translated from the Polish by Joanna Trzeciak Four billion people on this earth, but my imagination is the way it's always been: bad wit...
Monday, May 21, 2007

414. Where Do Your People Come From? - Pattiann Rogers

›
. Great-grandfather originated inside the seamless shell of a hickory nut, being enabled, thereby, to see in blindness the future brightness...
Friday, May 18, 2007

413. Ann Griffiths - Sally Roberts Jones

›
. In little time I stake my claim To all the panoply of fame. My words are air, their manuscript Forgetful flesh, a bony crypt To lay these ...
Thursday, May 17, 2007

412. Ordinance On Winning - Naomi Lazard

›
Congratulations. The suspense is over. You are the winner. The doubts you have had concerning the rules of the contest, about the ability an...
Wednesday, May 16, 2007

411. The Cloister - William Matthews

›
. The last light of a July evening drained into the streets below: My love and I had hard things to say and hear, and we sat over wine, falt...
Tuesday, May 15, 2007

410. A Tale Begun - Wislawa Szymborska

›
. The world is never ready for the birth of a child. Our ships are not yet back from Vinland. We still have to get over the St. Gotthard pas...
Monday, May 14, 2007

409. The Silence Of The World Before Bach - Lars Gustafsson

›
Translated from the Swedish by the poet and Australian poet Philip Martin There must have been a world before the Trio Sonata in D, a world ...
Sunday, May 13, 2007

408. How to Read This Story to Your Children - Kathleen Flenniken

›
. When you woof for the dog, imagine him gray at the muzzle, profound and gentle, but with a taste for tasseled loafers. The clock in the h...
Saturday, May 12, 2007

407. On A Painting - Su Tung P'O

›
Su Tung P'O (1036-1101) - On A Painting By Wang The Clerk Of Yen Ling (Translated from the Chinese by Kenneth Rexroth) The slender bambo...
Friday, May 11, 2007

406. Reading Cavafy In Translation - Mairi Macinnes

›
He would never have liked me, A woman who's ample and hopeful and hard-working, Bothered by sentiment, neither stylish no austere. Yet t...
Thursday, May 10, 2007

405. Our Ancestors' sort Lives- Wislava Szymborska

›
. Few of them made it to thirty'. Old age was the privilege of rocks and trees. Childhood ended as fast as wolf cubs grow. One had to hu...
Wednesday, May 09, 2007

404. The Signature Of All Things - Kenneth Rexroth

›
Kenneth Rexroth - The Signature Of All Things I My head and shoulders, and my book In the cool shade, and my body Stretched bathing in t...
Monday, May 07, 2007

403. Teaching The Ape To Write - James Tate

›
They didn't have much trouble teaching the ape to write poems: first they strapped him into the chair then tied his pencil around his ha...
Saturday, May 05, 2007

402. For Theodore Roethke - James Schevill

›
I How he rolled down night streets Like a barrel heaved from side to side; How his heavy, high forehead, Great chunk of a headstone, Loomed ...