“Grown-Up” — Edna St. Vincent Millay

grown up

His Day Is Done (Book Acquired, 1.07.2014)

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His Day Is Done: A Nelson Mandela Tribute is a slim hardback book of a poem that takes fewer than five minutes to recite.

Here are the opening lines:

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I’m restraining myself here but oh dear lord this is pretty bad poetry and there’s something that strikes me as utterly crass about the whole business of this little book, although I have no doubt that Angelou’s intentions are the purest (and even publisher Random House’s)—but yeesh.

RIP Amiri Baraka

RIP Amiri Baraka, 1934-2014

“The Unexplorer” — Edna St. Vincent Millay

esvm

Belly, balls, glory, skull (Bukowski)

lost

Last year’s words (T.S. Eliot)

last year

“To Critics” — Robert Herrick

critics

Kafka dream (Roberto Bolaño)

kafka

“Delight becomes pictorial” — Emily Dickinson

delight

“In drear-nighted December” — John Keats

“In drear-nighted December” by  John Keats

In drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy tree,
Thy branches ne’er remember
Their green felicity:
The north cannot undo them
With a sleety whistle through them;
Nor frozen thawings glue them
From budding at the prime.

In drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy brook,
Thy bubblings ne’er remember
Apollo’s summer look;
But with a sweet forgetting,
They stay their crystal fretting,
Never, never petting
About the frozen time.

Ah! would ’twere so with many
A gentle girl and boy!
But were there ever any
Writhed not at passed joy?
The feel of not to feel it,
When there is none to heal it
Nor numbed sense to steel it,
Was never said in rhyme.

“Atalanta” — Charles Olson

atalanta

“A Birthday”– Christina Rossetti

birthday

“Travel” — Edna St. Vincent Millay

travel

“A Poem About Writing Brushes and Inkstones” — Zhang Wencheng

brushes

“The Curtains in the House of the Metaphysician” — Wallace Stevens

Capture

“Heavy” — Tom Clark

heavy

Expectations (Sappho)

sappho