Friday, September 09, 2011

878. The Cure At Troy (Excerpt) - Seamus Heaney

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. Human beings suffer, they torture one another, they get hurt and get hard. No poem or play or song can fully right a wrong inflicted or en...
Monday, September 05, 2011

877. Dear George Orwell - L. E. Sissman

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Dear George Orwell, I never said farewell. There was too much going on: Crabgrass in the lawn and guests to entertain, Light bantering with...
Thursday, September 01, 2011

876. I Am Trying To Get At Something Utterly Heart-broken - Anne Dillard

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Vincent van Gogh, letters, 1873-1890, edited I. Stone, translated Johanna van Gogh I At the end of the road is a small cottage...
Thursday, August 18, 2011

875. To Make A Summer - Josephine Miles

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Sandy says his high-school daughter Keeps exclaiming joy, joy. The burden of my joy lightens With her exclamation. It’s a generality, i...
Wednesday, June 08, 2011

874. First Lines of Poems And No Further

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First lines of poems and no further or, ending at the beginning or, augh! or, . . . “When my propane ran out” “The drunk mechanic is happ...
Thursday, May 19, 2011

873. After the Treaty Between the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians Was Broken - Yannis Ritsos

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AFTER THUCYDIDES Corinth, Argos, Sparta, Athens, Sicyon, and other (how many?) smaller cities— the Greeks have become a thousand fragm...
Sunday, May 01, 2011

872. Spring Azures - Mary Oliver

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. In spring the blue azures bow down at the edges of shallow puddles to drink the black rain water. Then they rise and float away into t...
Friday, April 15, 2011

871. Turbulence - Adrienne Rich

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. There’ll be turbulence. You’ll drop your book to hold your water bottle steady. Your mind, mind has mountains, cliffs of fall may who...
Friday, February 18, 2011

870. So Much Happiness - Naomi Shihab Nye

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For Michael It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness. With sadness there is something to rub against, a wound to tend with ...
Monday, February 07, 2011

869. Monet Refuses The Operation - Lisel Mueller

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. Doctor, you say there are no haloes around the streetlights in Paris and what I see is an aberration caused by old age, an affliction. I t...
Tuesday, January 11, 2011

868. But Wise Men Apprehend What Is Imminent - C. P. Cavafy

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Translated from the Greek by Daniel Mendelsohn "The gods perceive what lies in the future, and mortals, what occurs in the present, but...
Saturday, December 04, 2010

867. The Great American Poem - Billy Collins

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. If this were a novel, it would begin with a character, a man alone on a southbound train or a young girl on a swing by a farmhouse. And as...
Wednesday, November 24, 2010

866. Coda - Jason Shinder

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. And now I know what most deeply connects us after that summer so many years ago, and it isn’t poetry, although it is poetry, and it isn’t ...
Thursday, November 18, 2010

865. Hineni - Stanley F. Chyet

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. here I am again without much to offer by way of moral worth I’ve a rich collection of defeats maybe that’s to your liking? I don’t know, d...
Friday, November 12, 2010

864. Candles - C. P. Cavafy

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Translated from the Greek by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard Days to come stand in front of us like a row of lighted candles— golden, warm...
Friday, November 05, 2010

863. The Laboratory - Wislawa Szymborska

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Translated by Walter Whipple Did it all happen in the laboratory? Beneath one lamp by day and billions by night? Are we a trial generation? ...
Friday, October 22, 2010

862. The City - C. P. Cavafy

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Translated from the Greek by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard   You said: “I’ll go to another country, go to another shore,  find another c...
Friday, October 08, 2010

861. Charles the great - Henri Kadusco

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. Charles the great has come at last, Come at last to stay. He knows not where he’s going, though He thinks he knows the way. He thinks he k...
Sunday, September 05, 2010

860. Black Maps - Mark Strand

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. Not the attendance of stones, nor the applauding wind, shall let you know you have arrived, not the sea that celebrates only depart...
Thursday, July 22, 2010

859. At Great Pond - Mary Oliver

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. 
 At Great Pond 
the sun, rising,
 scrapes his orange breast 
on the thick pines,
 and down tumble 
a few orange feathers into
 the dark w...