Saturday, March 31, 2012

889. Everything - Mary Oliver

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No doubt in Holland, when van Gogh was a boy, there were swans drifting over the green sea of the meadows, and no doubt on some warm af...
Tuesday, March 13, 2012

888. A Winter Night - Tomas Tranströmer

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. The storm puts its mouth to the house and blows to get a tone. I toss and turn, my closed eyes reading the storm’s text. The child’s...
Tuesday, March 06, 2012

887. Olives - Amos Oz

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. Sometimes the taste of these strong olives cured slowly in oil, with cloves of garlic, bay leaves and chillies and lemon and salt, conj...
Sunday, February 12, 2012

886. Portrait Of A Woman - Wislawa Szymborska

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Wislawa Szymborska - Portrait Of A Woman (1) Translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh She must be a variety. ...
Tuesday, January 24, 2012

885. Do Not Expect - Dana Gioia

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Do not expect that if your book falls open to a certain page, that any phrase you read will make a difference today, or that the voices y...
Sunday, December 04, 2011

884. Face To Face - Tomas Tranströmer

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 Face To Face translated by Robin Robertson In February life stood still. The birds refused to fly and the soul grated against the lands...
Saturday, November 26, 2011

883. Letters From Yorkshire - Maura Dooley

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. In February, digging his garden, planting potatoes, he saw the first lapwings return and came indoors to write to me, his knuckles sing...
Tuesday, November 22, 2011

882. Sometimes - Sheenagh Pugh

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. Sometimes things don’t go, after all, from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel faces down frost: green thrives; the crops don’t fail, s...
Monday, October 24, 2011

881. Black Snake - Mary Oliver

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. The flat rock in the center of the garden heats up every morning in the sun. Black snake coils himself there neatly. He has cousins wh...
Thursday, October 20, 2011

880. Writing A Curriculum Vita - Wislawa Szymborska

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Writing A Curriculum Vita (1) Translated from Polish by Graźyna Drabik and Austin Flint What must you do? You must submit an application...
Sunday, October 09, 2011

879. The Country - Billy Collins

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. I wondered about you when you told me never to leave a box of wooden, strike-anywhere matches lying around the house because the mice migh...
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 ...