poetry - Encouragement

poetry

Seamus Heaney, "Lightenings i"

Mysteries are all we have.

poetry

Rae Armantrout, "And"

Armantrout begins with a not-so-mundane point: Tense and tenuous / grow from the same root.

poetry

Alice S. Shapiro, "I"

I found myself wondering about the moments we believe build our identity.

poetry

Dana Gioia, "The Present" & Destry McKinney, "The Magic of Having a Glass Mirror in Prison"

You need to be able to see yourself.

poetry

Emily Dickinson, "I fear a Man of frugal Speech"

Instead of defending norms which protect people, we disguise our cowardice as principle.

poetry

Emily Dickinson, "Embarrassment of one another" (662)

This strange poem flirts briefly with the themes of classical political philosophy.

poetry

Emily Dickinson, "I had a daily Bliss"

The big questions swirl around Dickinson's time, too, and are answered in bloodshed.

poetry

Matsuo Bashō, "A caterpillar / this deep in fall"

Our online presence destroyed "for sale: baby shoes, never worn" and William Carlos Williams' "This Is Just To Say."

poetry

Kobayashi Issa, "Yellow Autumn Moon"

The fullness of life stretches toward night.

poetry

Paul Hoover, "To the Choirmaster"

What is the relation between belief and knowledge?

poetry

Tomas Tranströmer, "Kyrie"

What is it like when everyone yearns for a taste of the miraculous, abandoning anyone not part of the throng?

poetry

Sappho, "And I said" (tr. Mary Barnard)

I imagine Sappho's sacrifice of a goat messy in more than one way, as she wants a god to cure her inner turmoil.

poetry

Sappho, "I asked myself" (tr. Mary Barnard)

Our age shuns unfocused activities: we tell 14 year olds they must promptly choose a career and stick to it.

poetry

Sappho, "Standing by my bed" (tr. Mary Barnard)

I am certain if Emily Dickinson were alive today, she would be an extremely horny Tumblr power user.

poetry

Sappho, "Tell everyone" (tr. Mary Barnard)

"I shall / sing beautifully for / my friends' pleasure."

poetry

Kay Ryan, "All Your Horses"

We are brought into the thick of a crisis, one with nearly imperceptible beginnings but severe consequences.

poetry

Sara Miller, "Countermeasures"

Thus you have to turn to the ducks. There is no choice.

poetry

Virginia Konchan, "Zoo"

I'm sitting with "the clay heart of Nature," thinking how malleable the most pristine encounters I've had with the natural world have been.

poetry

Ye Hui, "The Witch"

The witch proclaiming "You see nothing / Clearly" is the one statement of this poem which fits the facts.

poetry

Kay Ryan, "New Rooms"

How do each of us deal with a world continually in flux without any time to think?

poetry

Robin Davidson, "Winter Litany"

I confess I was never patient enough to sit and watch the snow fall for a little while.

basho

Bashō, "Here, where a thousand captains swore"

The only legacy which matters is a space for others.

poetry

Yosa Buson, "The old fisherman"

I wonder if this is aging: refusing to look elsewhere, focusing on the object in front.

poetry

Seamus Heaney, "North"

We travel to see history and find dust.

poetry

Kay Ryan, "Why We Must Struggle"

At some point, the world is in fact a moral order, because it cannot be otherwise.