id stringlengths 16 16 | title stringlengths 1 203 | author stringlengths 2 40 | poem stringlengths 1 87.3k | labels_l1 listlengths 1 10 | labels_l2 listlengths 0 15 | labels_l1_names listlengths 1 10 | labels_l2_names listlengths 0 15 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
4f35528f7969dcbd | Shooting Star | Arthur Sze | 1 In a concussion,
the mind severs the pain:
you don’t remember flying off a motorcycle,
and landing face first
in a cholla.
But a woman stabbed in her apartment,
by a prowler searching for
money and drugs,
will never forget her startled shriek
die in he... | [
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"Nature",
"Living",
"Time & Brevity",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books",
"Living/Health & Illness"
] |
65cb7eec29c20ce4 | Festubert, 1916 | Edmund Blunden | Tired with dull grief, grown old before my day, I sit in solitude and only hear Long silent laughters, murmurings of dismay, The lost intensities of hope and fear; In those old marshes yet the rifles lie, On the thin breastwork flutter the grey rags, The very books I read are there—and I Dead as the men I loved, wait w... | [
"S3",
"S8"
] | [
"S3-11",
"S8-4"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Social Commentaries/War & Conflict",
"Relationships/Friendship"
] |
8840eaa772024631 | From “Anagrams” [xxiii] | Luke Kennard | A much-needed swan song from Cain, blasting Father K’s bien-pensant ideology and everyone else in his path. A neoliberal trying to ingratiate himself with the construction worker and trustafarian alike, his argu-
ments lighter performed as a he’s right, you Ingram. “You them, but it’s particularly good they? There’s t... | [
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"Arts & Sciences/Theater & Dance"
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0c73d54e26eb2a97 | What We Need | Jo McDougall | It is just as well we do not see, in the shadows behind the hasty tent of the Allen Brothers Greatest Show, Lola the Lion Tamer and the Great Valdini in Nikes and jeans sharing a tired cigarette before she girds her wrists with glistening amulets and snaps the tigers into rage, before he adjusts the glimmering cummerbu... | [
"S3",
"S10"
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"S3-7"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"Arts & Sciences"
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"Social Commentaries/Popular Culture"
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96a9ad2a868eeae9 | Night | Michael Hofmann | It's all right Unless you're either lonely or under attack. That strange effortful Repositioning of yourself. Laundry, shopping, Hours, the telephone—unless misinformed— Only ever ringing for you, if it ever does. The night—yours to decide, Among drink, or books, or lying there. On your back, or curled up. An embar... | [
"S3",
"S4"
] | [
"S4-1"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"History & Politics"
] | [
"History & Politics/Money & Economics"
] |
4228aeafc1e753b2 | [But isn’t midnight intermittent] | Lyn Hejinian | But isn’t midnight intermittent
Or was that just a whispered nine
A snap of blown light low against the flank of a cow
A likeness of something numberless that only I not knowing the sound
might know
It may have been howled by a circling dog being chastised — threatened —
by multiples of it... | [
"S6",
"S10"
] | [
"S10-5"
] | [
"Living",
"Arts & Sciences"
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"Arts & Sciences/Philosophy"
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abf9b12de872b805 | Dream Land | Christina Rossetti | Where sunless rivers weep
Their waves into the deep,
She sleeps a charmed sleep:
Awake her not.
Led by a single star,
She came from very far
To seek where shadows are
Her pleasant lot.
She left the rosy morn,
She left the fields of corn,
For twilight cold and lorn
And water springs.
Through sleep, as ... | [
"S2",
"S10"
] | [
"S2-7",
"S10-5"
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"Nature",
"Arts & Sciences"
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"Arts & Sciences/Philosophy",
"Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals"
] |
adc4e40de96d7153 | [To Love thee Year by Year—] | Rebecca Hazelton | They call it sacrifice— imagine me a tiny poppy
on a field of green felt—brief blip of color,
limitless expanse. I’ve never felt foreign,
or like a lash in his eye. If it’s not love, it’s
very like. Most days it feels the same—
exac... | [
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"S6",
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"Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets",
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fe1e55845f221549 | No Words Can Describe It | Mark Strand | How those fires burned that are no longer, how the weather worsened, how the shadow of the seagull vanished without a trace. Was it the end of a season, the end of a life? Was it so long ago it seems it might never have been? What is it in us that lives in the past and longs for the future, or lives in the future and l... | [
"S6"
] | [] | [
"Living"
] | [] |
3aefaae0d6eb9223 | In Dreams | Kim Addonizio | After eighteen years there’s no real grief left
for the man who was my father.
I hardly think of him anymore,
and those dreams I used to have,
in which he’d be standing in a room of people
I didn’t know—maybe his new friends,
if the dead have friendships—
those dreams no longer trouble my sleep.
He’s not in the... | [
"S1",
"S6",
"S8"
] | [
"S1-3",
"S6-4",
"S8-3"
] | [
"Love",
"Living",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Love/Heartache & Loss",
"Living/Death & Dying",
"Relationships/Family & Ancestors"
] |
c1d2fec2594748f9 | Medical History | Carrie Shipers | I wanted it: arc of red and blue strobing my skin, sirens singing my praises, the cinching embrace of the cot as the ambulance slammed shut and steered away. More than needle-pierce or dragging blade, I wanted the swab of alcohol and cotton, the promise of gauze-covered cure. My mother saved anyone who aske... | [
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58d0360020a597cb | The hard part | Clare Jones | The new root of the fern is the part you eat in famine.
Harsh words are spoken, but they’re not the ones that make you turn.
Where the muscle’s smooth. That’s where it doesn’t fray.
The hard part is what comes easy. The hard part isn’t hard.
It only seems. It only seems. It only seems that way.
The snail inside th... | [
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"S6"
] | [
"S2-5",
"S2-8"
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"Nature",
"Living"
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"Nature/Animals",
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5df40b6a10e6f4af | Wild Is the Wind | Carl Phillips | About what’s past, Hold on when you can, I used to say,And when you can’t, let go, as if memory were one of those
mechanical bulls, easily dismountable, should the ride
turn rough. I lived, in those days, at the forest’s edge —
metaphorically, so it can sometimes seem now, though
the forest was real, as my life be... | [
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"Time & Brevity",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Love/Desire & Erotic Love",
"Love/Realistic & Complicated",
"Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets"
] |
296282757f39a65b | Afterwards | David Baker | A short ride in the van, then the eight of us there in the heat—white shirtsleeves sticking, the women’s gloves off—fanning our faces. The workers had set up a big blue tent to help us at graveside tolerate the sun, which was brutal all afternoon as if stationed above us, though it mov... | [
"S6"
] | [
"S6-4",
"S6-5"
] | [
"Living"
] | [
"Living/Death & Dying",
"Living/Mourning"
] |
15ce12a4286003c8 | Sway | Louis Simpson | Swing and sway with Sammy Kaye
Everyone at Lake Kearney had a nickname:
there was a Bumstead, a Tonto, a Tex,
and, from the slogan of a popular orchestra,
two sisters, Swing and Sway.
Swing jitterbugged, hopping around
on the dance floor, working up a sweat.
Sway was beautiful. My heart went out to her
when she... | [
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"Love/Infatuation & Crushes",
"Love/Unrequited Love",
"Arts & Sciences/Music",
"Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality"
] |
8b2821332001eb72 | The Progress of Poesy: A Pindaric Ode | Thomas Gray | I.1. Awake, Æolian lyre, awake, And give to rapture all thy trembling strings. From Helicon's harmonious springs A thousand rills their mazy progress take: The laughing flowers, that round them blow, Drink life and fragrance as they flow. Now the rich stream of music winds along Deep, majestic, smooth, and str... | [
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"Mythology & Folklore/Greek & Roman Mythology",
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] |
24c85c576d3beb4a | Unfinished Novel | Michael Hartnett | Ah yes - they justify it all, the brats,
hungry or asleep and gorged with milk.
Each drop's (yes, the milk they drink is yours)
another line unwritten, another page
crumpled like a pufiball on the floor.
Your limpid dialogue is reduced
to the basic syllables of the cave
and the quick infant minds grow huge, whil... | [
"S6"
] | [
"S6-7"
] | [
"Living"
] | [
"Living/Parenthood"
] |
bb97a3d5bceeeaf7 | Widening Income Inequality | Frederick Seidel | I live a life of appetite and, yes, that's right,
I live a life of privilege in New York,
Eating buttered toast in bed with cunty fingers on Sunday morning.
Say that again?
I have a rule—
I never give to beggars in the street who hold their hands out.
I woke up this morning in my air-conditioning.
At the end of ... | [
"S3",
"S10"
] | [
"S3-2"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Social Commentaries/Class & Labor"
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206f270a1127dbd4 | Sabbath lie | Yehuda Amichai | On Friday, at twilight of a summer day
While the smells of food and prayer rose from every house
And the sound of the Sabbath angels’ wings was in the air,
While still a child I started to lie to my father:
“I went to another synagogue.”
I don’t know if he believed me or not
But the taste of the lie was good and ... | [
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"Relationships/Family & Ancestors",
"Relationships/Home Life"
] |
acfc4507ddcd1b1d | Confession of a Stolen Kiss | Charles d'Orleans | My ghostly fader, I me confess,
First to God and then to you,
That at a window, wot ye how,
I stale a kosse of gret swetness,
Which don was out avisiness—
But it is doon, not undoon, now.
My ghostly fader, I me confess,
First to God and then to you.
But I restore it shall, doutless,
Agein, if so be that I mow;... | [
"S1"
] | [
"S1-1",
"S1-6"
] | [
"Love"
] | [
"Love/Desire & Erotic Love",
"Love/Realistic & Complicated"
] |
28107bfa07dfac22 | Video Cuisine | Maxine Kumin | They are weighing the babies again on color television.
They are hanging these small bags of bones up in canvas slings
to determine which ones will receive the dried-milk mush,
the concentrate made out of ground-up trash fish.
For years we have watched them, back-lit by the desert,
these miles of dusty hands holdi... | [
"S2",
"S3",
"S4",
"S6",
"S9"
] | [
"S4-1",
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] |
87dbef258eea3b1a | I Accidentally Ate Some Chicken and Now I’m in Love with Harry Whittington | Sharon Mesmer | Harry Whittington: the man accidentally shot by Dick Cheney
Have you ever been in a situation
where somebody you thought was your friend
did something that hurt you very much,
and then they tried to blame it on you,
and then you had a heart attack?
Just wondering.
I thought Jack Abramoff was my buddy—
a small f... | [
"S3",
"S4",
"S10"
] | [
"S3-7",
"S10-2"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"History & Politics",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics",
"Social Commentaries/Popular Culture"
] |
3a5f7f7159363288 | Hugh Selwyn Mauberley [Part I] | Ezra Pound | (Life and Contacts) “Vocat aestus in umbram” Nemesianus Ec. IV.
E. P. ODE POUR L’ÉLECTION DE SON SÉPULCHRE For three years, out of key with his time,He strove to resuscitate the dead art Of poetry; to maintain “the sublime” In the old sense. Wron... | [
"S3",
"S10"
] | [
"S10-6"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets"
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ba99c23b54130a1f | What About This | Frank Stanford | A guy comes walking out of the garden
Playing Dark Eyes on the accordian.
We’re sitting on the porch,
Drinking and spitting, lying.
We shut our eyes, snap our fingers.
Dewhurst goes out to his truck
Like he doesn’t believe what he’s seeing
And brings back three-half-pints.
A little whirlwind occurs in the road,... | [
"S3",
"S8"
] | [
"S3-6",
"S3-11",
"S8-4"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Social Commentaries/War & Conflict",
"Social Commentaries/Incarceration & Justice",
"Relationships/Friendship"
] |
32335bd4050ef827 | Driving toward the Lac Qui Parle River | Robert Bly | I
I am driving; it is dusk; Minnesota.
The stubble field catches the last growth of sun.
The soybeans are breathing on all sides.
Old men are sitting before their houses on car seats
In the small towns. I am happy,
The moon rising above the turkey sheds.
II
The small world of the car
Plunges through the de... | [
"S2"
] | [
"S2-7"
] | [
"Nature"
] | [
"Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals"
] |
73fb9d15e293dfd4 | Faustine | Algernon Charles Swinburne | Ave Faustina Imperatrix, morituri te salutant.
Lean back, and get some minutes' peace; Let your head lean Back to the shoulder with its fleece Of locks, Faustine. The shapely silver shoulder stoops, Weighed over clean With state of splendid hair that droops Each side, Faustine. Let me go over y... | [
"S1",
"S6",
"S8",
"S11"
] | [
"S1-1",
"S1-4",
"S1-6"
] | [
"Love",
"Living",
"Relationships",
"Mythology & Folklore"
] | [
"Love/Desire & Erotic Love",
"Love/Infatuation & Crushes",
"Love/Realistic & Complicated"
] |
208530ed9e9853e3 | The New Intelligence | Timothy Donnelly | After knowledge extinguished the last of the beautiful
fires our worship had failed to prolong, we walked
back home through pedestrian daylight, to a residence
humbler than the one left behind. A door without mystery,
a room without theme. For the hour that we spend
complacent at the window overlooking the garden,... | [
"S6",
"S8"
] | [] | [
"Living",
"Relationships"
] | [] |
21d557252e9e7694 | Rakestreet | Harry Clifton | Would you believe it, I got lost again And all roads led to Rakestreet. Which was which, The short road or the long? A girl of ten Behind her counter, drew me a thumbnail sketch Of space in time. The Big House was, she said, Five minutes away, or seven hundred years. Nephin, nebulous in its hat of cloud, ... | [
"S3"
] | [
"S3-1"
] | [
"Social Commentaries"
] | [
"Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life"
] |
80b1f6402b1b676e | Season of skinny candles | Marge Piercy | A row of tall skinny candles burns
quickly into the night
air, the shames raised
over the rest
for its hard work.
Darkness rushes in
after the sun sinks
like a bright plug pulled.
Our eyes drown in night
thick as ink pudding.
When even the moon
starves to a sliver
of quicksilver
the little candles poke
ho... | [
"S5",
"S6",
"S7",
"S9"
] | [
"S5-6",
"S9-1"
] | [
"Religion",
"Living",
"Time & Brevity",
"Activities"
] | [
"Religion/Judaism",
"Activities/Eating & Drinking"
] |
e113e570944f65e6 | “Although the wind ...” | Izumi Shikibu | Although the wind
blows terribly here,
the moonlight also leaks
between the roof planks
of this ruined house. | [
"S5",
"S6"
] | [
"S5-1",
"S5-8",
"S6-5"
] | [
"Religion",
"Living"
] | [
"Religion/Buddhism",
"Religion/The Spiritual",
"Living/Mourning"
] |
b75d247779341bd6 | To Be Walang Hiya | Barbara Jane Reyes | Bubblegum lip gloss kissed, Our lifelines, our mirrors,I was never a singkil princess These are Luminous Mysteries — Knuckle cracking, polished toes, Our notebooks, our language,I was never a Santacruzan queen To witness, to make way,Black eyeliner, push up bra Our... | [
"S3"
] | [
"S3-4",
"S3-8"
] | [
"Social Commentaries"
] | [
"Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality",
"Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity"
] |
0667c82216067f70 | The Lilies | Karenne Wood | When I learned I might have cancer,
I bought fifteen white lilies. Easter was gone:
the trumpets were wilted, plants crooked with roots
bound in pots. I dug them into the garden,
knowing they would not bloom for another year.
All summer, the stalks stood like ramshackle posts
while I waited for results. By autumn... | [
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"S6",
"S9"
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"S2-8",
"S6-6",
"S9-2"
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"Nature",
"Living",
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] | [
"Nature/Plants & Fungi",
"Living/Health & Illness",
"Activities/Gardening & Farming"
] |
e755298fd9d45d26 | Thalassography | Sarah Holland-Batt | I have known these estuaries —
the channels and canals, the backwaters
that flush and eddy to the Pacific,
I have skimmed that muddied slurry,
felt the nip in the throat
where the salt in the air is the salt of the coast,
I have tacked where the tide is incomplete:
no rollers and breakers,
only an ebb that roc... | [
"S2",
"S6",
"S7"
] | [
"S2-5",
"S2-6"
] | [
"Nature",
"Living",
"Time & Brevity"
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"Nature/Animals",
"Nature/Bodies of Water"
] |
6fe264073adb413c | The Unthinkable | Simon Armitage | A huge purple door washed up in the bay overnight,its paintwork blistered and peeled from weeks at sea.The town storyteller wasted no time in getting to work:the beguiling, eldest girl of a proud, bankrupt farmerhad slammed that door in the face of a Freemason’s son,who in turn had bulldozed both farm and familyover th... | [
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"Activities",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics",
"Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets",
"Activities/Travels & Journeys"
] |
3be0c9166a23aec6 | Rhapsody | Frank O'Hara | 515 Madison Avenue
door to heaven? portal
stopped realities and eternal licentiousness
or at least the jungle of impossible eagerness
your marble is bronze and your lianas elevator cables
swinging from the myth of ascending
I would join
or declining the challenge of racial attractions
they zing on (into the lyn... | [
"S1",
"S8"
] | [
"S1-1"
] | [
"Love",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Love/Desire & Erotic Love"
] |
184d6401d8725064 | “I came upon the gnawed torso of a seal” | Melanie Braverman | I came upon the gnawed torso of a seal, silver fur agleam against the sand like a coin thrown down in a losing bet. What left this bounty of meat on the beach to rot? I watched the neighbor’s small boys skirt the dead seal the way sandpipers tease themselves in the surf, dodging up and back along the body’s shore. “It’... | [
"S2",
"S6"
] | [
"S2-5",
"S6-4"
] | [
"Nature",
"Living"
] | [
"Nature/Animals",
"Living/Death & Dying"
] |
c5a0c0ec5ced56aa | Performance Anxiety | Jim Johnstone | I write: the tall grass is a third wish
then back away
from the field. If I move
back
far enough, everyone in the front row
will be still.
Be still—
you’re witnessing my first time.
A ballooning ballroom expanding
until the beat drops,
a letdown
letting you down gently
before the DJ jumps up, afraid to play... | [
"S10"
] | [
"S10-6"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets"
] |
d3b7a6becf2964a9 | Okean Means Endless | Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach | “It took the herd six hours,”
the Blue Planet voiceover explains,
orcas pushing a blue whale calf
under. Keet, our son points
at the screen, naming them all
one whale, from the greek kētos,
water-monster, “The seas bathed
in calf’s blood.” More, our son
asks, More okean, watches the red
beneath them spreading,... | [
"S2",
"S6",
"S8",
"S9",
"S10"
] | [
"S2-5",
"S2-6",
"S6-4",
"S6-7",
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"S8-3",
"S9-1",
"S10-7"
] | [
"Nature",
"Living",
"Relationships",
"Activities",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Photography & Film",
"Nature/Animals",
"Nature/Bodies of Water",
"Living/Death & Dying",
"Living/Parenthood",
"Living/Youth",
"Relationships/Family & Ancestors",
"Activities/Eating & Drinking"
] |
53171ae78c7c4783 | The View from an Attic Window | Howard Nemerov | for Francis and Barbara
1
Among the high-branching, leafless boughs
Above the roof-peaks of the town,
Snowflakes unnumberably come down.
I watched out of the attic window
The laced sway of family trees,
Intricate genealogies
Whose strict, reserved gentility,
Trembling, impossible to bow,
Received the appallin... | [
"S2",
"S6",
"S8"
] | [
"S2-4",
"S2-8",
"S2-10",
"S6-4",
"S6-7",
"S8-5",
"S8-7"
] | [
"Nature",
"Living",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Nature/Weather",
"Nature/Winter",
"Nature/Plants & Fungi",
"Living/Death & Dying",
"Living/Parenthood",
"Relationships/Home Life",
"Relationships/Marriage & Companionship"
] |
a82e7fd3c33d283c | Fabrication of Ancestors | Alan Dugan | For old Billy Dugan, shot in the ass in the Civil war, my father said.
The old wound in my ass
has opened up again, but I
am past the prodigies
of youth’s campaigns, and weep
where I used to laugh
in war’s red humors, half
in love with silly-assed pains
and half not feeling them.
I have to sit up with
an indo... | [
"S3",
"S4",
"S6",
"S8"
] | [
"S3-11",
"S8-3"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"History & Politics",
"Living",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Social Commentaries/War & Conflict",
"Relationships/Family & Ancestors"
] |
d5bf4bf3faa627bb | Abd el-Hadi Fights a Superpower | Taha Muhammad Ali | In his life
he neither wrote nor read.
In his life he
didn’t cut down a single tree,
didn’t slit the throat
of a single calf.
In his life he did not speak
of the New York Times
behind its back,
didn’t raise
his voice to a soul
except in his saying:
“Come in, please,
by God, you can’t refuse.”
... | [
"S3",
"S4"
] | [
"S3-6"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"History & Politics"
] | [
"Social Commentaries/Incarceration & Justice"
] |
01cc90f4a06f3bf5 | Still Burning | Gerald Stern | Me trying to understand say whence
say whither, say what, say me with a pencil walking,
say reading the dictionary, say learning medieval
Latin, reading Spengler, reading Whitehead,
William James I loved him, swimming breaststroke
and thinking for an hour, how did I get here?
Or thinking in line, say the 69 stree... | [
"S3",
"S6",
"S7",
"S9",
"S10"
] | [
"S3-1",
"S9-5",
"S9-7",
"S10-6",
"S10-8"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"Living",
"Time & Brevity",
"Activities",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets",
"Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books",
"Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life",
"Activities/Sports & Outdoor Activities",
"Activities/Travels & Journeys"
] |
ca85b3474b4bd645 | My Father | Jessie B. Rittenhouse | My father was a tall man and yet the ripened ryeWould come above his shoulders, the spears shot up so high.My father was a tall man and yet the tasseled cornWould hide him when he cut the stalks upon a frosty morn.The green things grew so lushly in the valley of my birth,Where else could one witness the luxuriance of e... | [
"S8",
"S9"
] | [
"S8-3",
"S9-4"
] | [
"Relationships",
"Activities"
] | [
"Relationships/Family & Ancestors",
"Activities/Jobs & Working"
] |
a41232236f7e1b27 | Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady | Alexander Pope | What beck'ning ghost, along the moon-light shade
Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade?
'Tis she!—but why that bleeding bosom gor'd,
Why dimly gleams the visionary sword?
Oh ever beauteous, ever friendly! tell,
Is it, in heav'n, a crime to love too well?
To bear too tender, or too firm a heart,
To act a lover's ... | [
"S6",
"S7"
] | [
"S6-4",
"S6-5"
] | [
"Living",
"Time & Brevity"
] | [
"Living/Death & Dying",
"Living/Mourning"
] |
935c90d38a4a94a2 | Waving Goodbye | Gerald Stern | I wanted to know what it was like before we
had voices and before we had bare fingers and before we
had minds to move us through our actions
and tears to help us over our feelings,
so I drove my daughter through the snow to meet her friend
and filled her car with suitcases and hugged her
as an animal would, press... | [
"S8",
"S9"
] | [
"S8-3",
"S9-7"
] | [
"Relationships",
"Activities"
] | [
"Relationships/Family & Ancestors",
"Activities/Travels & Journeys"
] |
38d61849bf76f8c7 | A Brief Treatise on Etymology | Eduardo Chirinos | If someone tells you that your poem is nostalgic,
take it as a compliment. There's no greater
praise. In Greek, nostos means "return" andalgia "pain." What's a poem without the return
of pain? If they tell you that your poem is
melancholic, take that as a compliment, too. In
Greek, melan means "black" and khole "... | [
"S10"
] | [
"S10-6"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets"
] |
6aedf0184e7dd2ad | Dirce | Walter Savage Landor | Stand close around, ye Stygian set, With Dirce in one boat conveyed! Or Charon, seeing, may forget That he is old and she a shade. | [
"S11"
] | [] | [
"Mythology & Folklore"
] | [] |
0f9613123819f8fd | Talking among Ourselves | Charlie Smith | In the rental cottage it comes to me,
how the four lives of myself
and my brothers
crisscross
like tracer bullets,
and how, from a distance maybe,
if you had the right kind of glasses,
there might appear to be a target
we all were aiming at
beyond that black escutcheon of cloud
above Santa Rosa Bay
as we lie... | [
"S6",
"S8"
] | [
"S8-1",
"S8-3"
] | [
"Living",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Relationships/Breakups & Separation",
"Relationships/Family & Ancestors"
] |
aecc12569407d7d8 | My First Best Friend | Jack Prelutsky | My first best friend is Awful Ann—
she socked me in the eye.
My second best is Sneaky Sam—
he tried to swipe my pie.
My third best friend is Max the Rat—
he trampled on my toes.
My fourth best friend is Nasty Nell—
She almost broke my nose.
My fifth best friend is Ted the Toad—
he kicked me in the knee.
My si... | [
"S8"
] | [
"S8-4"
] | [
"Relationships"
] | [
"Relationships/Friendship"
] |
8ed515bbd70eba3e | Ghost Choir | Carl Phillips | What injures the hive injures the bee, says Marcus Aurelius. I say
not wanting to hurt another, this late, should maybe more than
count, still, as a form of love. Be wild. Bewilder. Not that they
hadn’t, of course, known unkindnesses, and been themselves
unkind. When the willow’s leaves, back again, unfold all alon... | [
"S1",
"S6",
"S8"
] | [
"S8-1"
] | [
"Love",
"Living",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Relationships/Breakups & Separation"
] |
c8bfc2da5329ac95 | Plurality | Louis MacNeice | It is patent to the eye that cannot face the sun
The smug philosophers lie who say the world is one;
World is other and other, world is here and there,
Parmenides would smother life for lack of air
Precluding birth and death; his crystal never breaks—
No movement and no breath, no progress nor mistakes,
Nothing b... | [
"S3",
"S4",
"S5",
"S6",
"S7",
"S10"
] | [
"S3-2",
"S3-11",
"S4-1",
"S5-3",
"S10-5",
"S10-8"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"History & Politics",
"Religion",
"Living",
"Time & Brevity",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Philosophy",
"Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books",
"Social Commentaries/War & Conflict",
"Social Commentaries/Class & Labor",
"History & Politics/Money & Economics",
"Religion/Faith & Doubt"
] |
a0bd6296fc059ce0 | Deep Ulster | Harry Clifton | It was there, the elemental center, All the time. Eternally present, repeating itself Like seasons, where the times and dates For swallows and household fires are written down, The grouse are counted, the quotas of stocked rainbows. All that love of order, for its own sake. Only the hill-farms, and the high... | [
"S2",
"S3",
"S4"
] | [
"S2-7"
] | [
"Nature",
"Social Commentaries",
"History & Politics"
] | [
"Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals"
] |
82c1a1d8a0c6118e | from The Unfollowing: 7 | Lyn Hejinian | To begin with, I am faced with mountains to circumambulate, since I can't cut
through them
I enter the folds of a human adventure
On every door there hangs a figurehead and this one comes to face me as the
door swings shut
I will proceed with good will—the best of wills—anxiously
Bird of daughte... | [
"S2"
] | [
"S2-5"
] | [
"Nature"
] | [
"Nature/Animals"
] |
e81af3cd4a53ec13 | from The Faerie Queene: Book I, Canto I | Edmund Spenser | Lo I the man, whose Muse whilome did maske, As time her taught in lowly Shepheards weeds, Am now enforst a far unfitter taske, For trumpets sterne to chaunge mine Oaten reeds, And sing of Knights and Ladies gentle deeds; Whose prayses having slept in silence long, Me, all too meane, the sacred Muse areeds To blazon bro... | [
"S11"
] | [] | [
"Mythology & Folklore"
] | [] |
1cb3d439427132af | A Sequence of Sonnets on the Death of Robert Browning | Algernon Charles Swinburne | I The clearest eyes in all the world they read With sense more keen and spirit of sight more true Than burns and thrills in sunrise, when the dew Flames, and absorbs the glory round it shed, As they the light of ages quick and dead, Closed now, forsake us: yet the shaft that slew Can slay no... | [
"S6",
"S10"
] | [
"S6-4",
"S6-5",
"S10-6"
] | [
"Living",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets",
"Living/Death & Dying",
"Living/Mourning"
] |
635284da412c7651 | It’s Hard to Keep a Clean Shirt Clean | June Jordan | Poem for Sriram Shamasunder
And All of Poetry for the People
It’s a sunlit morning
with jasmine blooming
easily
and a drove of robin redbreasts
diving into the ivy covering
what used to be
a backyard fence
or doves shoving aside
the birch tree leaves
when
a young man walks among
the flowers
to my doorway
... | [
"S9"
] | [
"S9-4"
] | [
"Activities"
] | [
"Activities/Jobs & Working"
] |
8e1558393a64eda1 | A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy's Day | John Donne | 'Tis the year's midnight, and it is the day's, Lucy's, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks; The sun is spent, and now his flasks Send forth light squibs, no constant rays; The world's whole sap is sunk; The general balm th' hydroptic earth hath drunk, Whither, as to the bed's feet, ... | [
"S5",
"S6",
"S7"
] | [
"S5-2",
"S6-1",
"S6-4"
] | [
"Religion",
"Living",
"Time & Brevity"
] | [
"Religion/Christianity",
"Living/Aging",
"Living/Death & Dying"
] |
c203d491ebb74854 | Recycling | Landis Everson | How did the valentines age so fast? Most of the names are forgotten. Billy, Billy, Billy, Jill I think strangers sent them out like advertising hoping I'd surrender. But Jill, Jill, Jill and Billy Bill, shared memories aren't easily kept. Secrets wash out of the ocean blank all over. I am sitting on a beach chair somew... | [
"S3",
"S6",
"S8"
] | [
"S3-4",
"S6-1"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"Living",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality",
"Living/Aging"
] |
41c5c99e7aa8252c | Early Frost | Scott Cairns | This morning the world’s white face reminds us
that life intends to become serious again.
And the same loud birds that all summer long
annoyed us with their high attitudes and chatter
silently line the gibbet of the fence a little stunned,
chastened enough.
They look as if they’re waiting for things
to grow wors... | [
"S2",
"S8"
] | [
"S2-5",
"S2-8",
"S2-10",
"S8-5",
"S8-8"
] | [
"Nature",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Nature/Weather",
"Nature/Animals",
"Nature/Plants & Fungi",
"Relationships/Home Life",
"Relationships/Pets & Domestic Animals"
] |
63e141a7c1138841 | Travels of Marco | Mark Levine | I was in Asia Minor
in pursuit of distant honor
in a suit of finest armor
in a forest of pine or
planks. I was not lost. Regina
(my sextant) stared into the refiner’s
flare as evening grew maligner.
I was in Kazakhstan
collecting rarest poppies. My capstan
gave out. I could ... | [
"S9"
] | [
"S9-7"
] | [
"Activities"
] | [
"Activities/Travels & Journeys"
] |
10683166efd68cf7 | Montana Pastoral | J. V. Cunningham | I am no shepherd of a child’s surmises.
I have seen fear where the coiled serpent rises,
Thirst where the grasses burn in early May
And thistle, mustard, and the wild oat stay.
There is dust in this air. I saw in the heat
Grasshoppers busy in the threshing wheat.
So to this hour. Through the warm dusk I drove
To... | [
"S2"
] | [] | [
"Nature"
] | [] |
2a99384679502214 | Prose Poem ("The morning coffee.") | Ron Padgett | The morning coffee. I'm not sure why I drink it. Maybe it's the ritual
of the cup, the spoon, the hot water, the milk, and the little heap of
brown grit, the way they come together to form a nail I can hang the
day on. It's something to do between being asleep and being awake.
Surely there's something better to do,... | [
"S6",
"S9"
] | [
"S9-1"
] | [
"Living",
"Activities"
] | [
"Activities/Eating & Drinking"
] |
6904cff97f68219d | To a Dead Lover | Louise Bogan | The dark is thrown Back from the brightness, like hair Cast over a shoulder. I am alone, Four years older; Like the chairs and the walls Which I once watched brighten With you beside me. I was to waken Never like this, whatever came or was taken. The stalk grows, the year beats on the wind. Apples come, and the month f... | [
"S1",
"S6",
"S7",
"S8"
] | [
"S1-3",
"S6-4",
"S6-5",
"S8-1"
] | [
"Love",
"Living",
"Time & Brevity",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Love/Heartache & Loss",
"Living/Death & Dying",
"Living/Mourning",
"Relationships/Breakups & Separation"
] |
b5bb07542ef6411b | Paradise Lost: Book 3 (1674 version) | John Milton | HAil holy Light, ofspring of Heav'n first-born, Or of th' Eternal Coeternal beam May I express thee unblam'd? since God is light, And never but in unapproached light Dwelt from Eternitie, dwelt then in thee, Bright effluence of bright essence increate. Or hear'st thou rather pure Ethereal stream, Whose Fountain who sha... | [
"S5"
] | [
"S5-2",
"S5-4"
] | [
"Religion"
] | [
"Religion/Christianity",
"Religion/God & the Divine"
] |
e7e0dd5f85a1fc80 | The Snake Doctors | Frank Stanford | for Nicholas Fuhrmann
I Pig
I was in the outhouse
I heard somebody at the pump
I looked out the chink hole
It was the two fishermen
They stole fish
One man gave the other one some money
He flipped a fifty-cent piece up
I lost it in the sun
I saw the snake doctors riding each other
The other man said “You l... | [
"S3",
"S9",
"S11"
] | [
"S3-6",
"S9-7"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"Activities",
"Mythology & Folklore"
] | [
"Social Commentaries/Incarceration & Justice",
"Activities/Travels & Journeys"
] |
c655deb6fa9cd596 | Valentine | Lorna Dee Cervantes | Cherry plums suck a week’s soak,
overnight they explode into the scenery of before
your touch. The curtains open on the end of our past.
Pink trumpets on the vines bare to the hummingbirds.
Butterflies unclasp from the purse of their couplings, they
light and open on the doubled hands of eucalyptus fronds.
They s... | [
"S1",
"S2",
"S6",
"S8"
] | [
"S1-6",
"S2-5",
"S2-7",
"S2-8"
] | [
"Love",
"Nature",
"Living",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Love/Realistic & Complicated",
"Nature/Animals",
"Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals",
"Nature/Plants & Fungi"
] |
a582ddbed2e7589e | On Some Lines by Tranströmer | Jake Crist | I find myself in the deep corridor
that would have been dark
if my right hand wasn’t shining like a torch.
— Tomas Tranströmer
One of those idle hours I did not want
To participate in “group,” when it seemed
Impossible I’d know a word to haunt
Again, or make me laugh, or spur that dream
To roam myself the range... | [
"S5",
"S6",
"S10"
] | [
"S5-8",
"S10-6"
] | [
"Religion",
"Living",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets",
"Religion/The Spiritual"
] |
6b5f1fb797c889d7 | Immigrant Song | Sun Yung Shin | All birds—even those that do not fly
—have wings
A constant confession
Admission of omission
This is your punctuated equilibrium
And everything in between
Slow it down
The moment of extinction
The death of the last individual of a species
(Let’s put it aside for now)
Stay with it
This is our gene flow
How d... | [
"S2",
"S8"
] | [
"S2-5",
"S8-3"
] | [
"Nature",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Nature/Animals",
"Relationships/Family & Ancestors"
] |
2b35c32e8bbdc224 | Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape | John Ashbery | The first of the undecoded messages read: “Popeye sits in thunder,
Unthought of. From that shoebox of an apartment,
From livid curtain’s hue, a tangram emerges: a country.”
Meanwhile the Sea Hag was relaxing on a green couch: “How pleasant
To spend one’s vacation en la casa de Popeye,” she scratched
Her cleft chin... | [
"S2",
"S3",
"S10"
] | [
"S2-7",
"S3-7",
"S10-2"
] | [
"Nature",
"Social Commentaries",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics",
"Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals",
"Social Commentaries/Popular Culture"
] |
656fe24bd4579c87 | Making a Fist | Naomi Shihab Nye | We forget that we are all dead men conversing with dead men.
— | [
"S6",
"S8",
"S9",
"S10"
] | [
"S6-4",
"S8-3",
"S9-7",
"S10-5"
] | [
"Living",
"Relationships",
"Activities",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Philosophy",
"Living/Death & Dying",
"Relationships/Family & Ancestors",
"Activities/Travels & Journeys"
] |
4fbfa9c47b8fcf0a | Busy Day at the Office | Margaret Fishback | This is a day when I covered no ground.
Just pushed and shuffled my papers around,
Nudged at letters and winced at bills,
Sorting them out into different hills,
Hunted fretfully for a ruler,
Worried the overworked water cooler,
Sharpened pencils and filled my pen,
Then shuffled my papers around again. | [
"S9"
] | [
"S9-4"
] | [
"Activities"
] | [
"Activities/Jobs & Working"
] |
4f9c74cc7cf6799a | Retroduction to American History | Allen Tate | Cats walk the floor at midnight; that enemy of fog,
The moon, wraps the bedpost in receding stillness; sleep
Collects all weary nothings and lugs away the towers,
The pinnacles of dust that feed the subway.
What stiff unhappy silence waits on sleep
Struts like an officer; tongues next-door bewitch
Themselves with... | [
"S2",
"S3",
"S5",
"S9",
"S10",
"S11"
] | [
"S2-1",
"S2-4",
"S3-1",
"S3-7",
"S5-3",
"S9-7",
"S10-5",
"S10-6",
"S10-8",
"S11-3",
"S11-4"
] | [
"Nature",
"Social Commentaries",
"Religion",
"Activities",
"Arts & Sciences",
"Mythology & Folklore"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Philosophy",
"Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets",
"Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books",
"Mythology & Folklore/Greek & Roman Mythology",
"Mythology & Folklore/Heroes & Patriotism",
"Nature/Spring",
"Nature/Winter",
"Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life",
"Social Commentaries/Popular Cul... |
245752bf51be2cd5 | The News | Wendy Xu | Tossing off expletives into the sea
of cab lights, I lounge ever more
than I work. I wear my silk pants
to the middle-of-America themed bar
as if white-collar were this Halloween's
hottest new costume. It sinks
like a stone, this attention to the lives
of others. I think I have evolved to respect
my social obli... | [
"S3",
"S9"
] | [
"S3-2",
"S9-1"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"Activities"
] | [
"Social Commentaries/Class & Labor",
"Activities/Eating & Drinking"
] |
6dae1de563b7a319 | Are You Seeing Your Own Death and Selling It to Me? | Essa Ranapiri | you lie on your back
arms close to your sides
the body as a card run through the slit of the EFTPOS machine
and stopped
rubbed off on a coin or two a set of eyes lingering underneath
when you move them you can feel the iris brush against the profile of Queen Elizabeth
or a native bird
it costs actual material mo... | [
"S3",
"S4",
"S6",
"S8"
] | [
"S3-4",
"S4-1",
"S6-4"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"History & Politics",
"Living",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality",
"History & Politics/Money & Economics",
"Living/Death & Dying"
] |
e467e71c373bf209 | A Girl | Michael Field | A Girl, Her soul a deep-wave pearl Dim, lucent of all lovely mysteries; A face flowered for heart’s ease, A brow’s grace soft as seas Seen through faint forest-trees: A mouth, the lips apart, Like aspen-leaflets trembling in the breeze From her tempestuous heart. Such: and our souls so ... | [
"S1",
"S2",
"S3",
"S6",
"S8"
] | [
"S1-4",
"S1-7",
"S3-4"
] | [
"Love",
"Nature",
"Social Commentaries",
"Living",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Love/Infatuation & Crushes",
"Love/Romantic Love",
"Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality"
] |
e4a42a752ba1b740 | New Folk | Terrance Hayes | I said Folk was dressed in Blues but hairier and hemped.
After "We acoustic banjo disciples!" Jebediah said, "When
and whereforth shall the bucolic blacks with good tempers
come to see us pluck as Elizabeth Cotton intended?"
We stole my Uncle Windchime's minivan, penned a simple
ballad about the drag of lovelessne... | [
"S3",
"S9",
"S10"
] | [
"S3-8",
"S9-7",
"S10-3"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"Activities",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Music",
"Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity",
"Activities/Travels & Journeys"
] |
24ab4fad100df997 | Purple Anemones | D. H. Lawrence | Who gave us flowers?Heaven? The white God?
Nonsense!
Up out of hell,
From Hades;
Infernal Dis!
Jesus the god of flowers—?
Not he.Or sun-bright Apollo, him so musical?
Him neither.
Who then?Say who.
Say it—and it is Pluto,
Dis
The dark one
Proserpine’s master.
Who contradicts—?
When she broke forth from... | [
"S2",
"S3",
"S6",
"S8",
"S11"
] | [
"S2-8",
"S3-4",
"S8-7",
"S11-3"
] | [
"Nature",
"Social Commentaries",
"Living",
"Relationships",
"Mythology & Folklore"
] | [
"Mythology & Folklore/Greek & Roman Mythology",
"Nature/Plants & Fungi",
"Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality",
"Relationships/Marriage & Companionship"
] |
ca626c17ccda8ab3 | Blues for Alice | Clark Coolidge | When you get in on a try you never learn it back
umpteen times the tenth part of a featured world
in black and in back it’s roses and fostered nail
bite rhyme sling slang, a song that teaches without
travail of the tale, the one you longing live
and singing burn
It’s insane to remain a trope, of a rinsing out
or... | [
"S6",
"S10"
] | [
"S10-2",
"S10-6"
] | [
"Living",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics",
"Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets"
] |
efb19e785b78f48a | Woodcut | Thomas McGrath | It is autumn but early. No crow cries from the dry woods.
The house droops like an eyelid over the leprous hill.
In the bald barnyard one horse, a collection of angles
Cuts at the flies with a spectral tail. A blind man’s
Sentence, the road goes on. Lifts as the slope lifts it.
Comes now one who has been conquered... | [
"S2",
"S10"
] | [
"S2-3",
"S2-7",
"S10-4"
] | [
"Nature",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Painting & Sculpture",
"Nature/Fall",
"Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals"
] |
3b8cb1ac287762e3 | Canto LXXXI | Ezra Pound | Zeus lies in Ceres’ bosom
Taishan is attended of loves
under Cythera, before sunrise
And he said: “Hay aquí mucho catolicismo—(sounded
catolithismo
y muy poco reliHion.”
and he said: “Yo creo que los reyes de... | [
"S3",
"S4",
"S6",
"S9",
"S10",
"S11"
] | [
"S3-11",
"S9-7",
"S10-8",
"S11-3"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"History & Politics",
"Living",
"Activities",
"Arts & Sciences",
"Mythology & Folklore"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books",
"Mythology & Folklore/Greek & Roman Mythology",
"Social Commentaries/War & Conflict",
"Activities/Travels & Journeys"
] |
6c9015f81a930c25 | Sun In Days | Meghan O'Rourke | 1 I tried to live that way for a while, amongthe trees, the green breeze, chewing Bubblicious and by the edge of the pool spitting it out. The book open on my chest, a towelat my back the diving board thwoking,and leaving never arrived Cut it outmy mother said my brother clowning around with a water ... | [
"S6",
"S7",
"S8",
"S10"
] | [
"S6-3",
"S6-6",
"S8-3",
"S10-5"
] | [
"Living",
"Time & Brevity",
"Relationships",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Philosophy",
"Living/Coming of Age",
"Living/Health & Illness",
"Relationships/Family & Ancestors"
] |
966ff3c77289d2b4 | Venus Transiens | Amy Lowell | Tell me,
Was Venus more beautiful
Than you are,
When she topped
The crinkled waves,
Drifting shoreward
On her plaited shell?
Was Botticelli’s vision
Fairer than mine;
And were the painted rosebuds
He tossed his lady
Of better worth
Than the words I blow about you
To cover your too great loveliness
As with... | [
"S1",
"S8",
"S10"
] | [
"S1-7",
"S8-6",
"S10-4"
] | [
"Love",
"Relationships",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Love/Romantic Love",
"Arts & Sciences/Painting & Sculpture",
"Relationships/LGBTQ+"
] |
c6fe39818e4f3cf1 | Marking Him | Margaret Hasse | Does my little son miss the smell
of his first mother? I wonder
as the mewl of his mouth
opens toward a plastic bottle
that is not her breast.
Sudden new mother,
I bury my nose deep
into his skullcap of ringlets,
his starry cheesiness.
In her good-bye letter to him
sealed in his album
with a birth certificat... | [
"S1",
"S6",
"S8"
] | [
"S1-6",
"S6-2",
"S6-7",
"S8-3"
] | [
"Love",
"Living",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Love/Realistic & Complicated",
"Living/Birth & Infancy",
"Living/Parenthood",
"Relationships/Family & Ancestors"
] |
36dcc49c34bba69a | Star of the Nativity | Joseph Brodsky | In the cold season, in a locality accustomed to heat more than
to cold, to horizontality more than to a mountain,
a child was born in a cave in order to save the world;
it blew as only in deserts in winter it blows, athwart.
To Him, all things seemed enormous: His mother’s breast, the steam
out of the ox’s nostril... | [
"S5"
] | [
"S5-2",
"S5-4"
] | [
"Religion"
] | [
"Religion/Christianity",
"Religion/God & the Divine"
] |
116fde45ab635219 | The Ship and Her Makers | John Masefield | THE ORE
Before Man’s labouring wisdom gave me birth
I had not even seen the light of day;
Down in the central darkness of the earth,
Crushed by the weight of continents I lay,
Ground by the weight to heat, not knowing then
The air, the light, the noise, the world of men.
THE TRE... | [
"S2",
"S3",
"S4",
"S9"
] | [
"S2-6",
"S2-8",
"S4-1",
"S9-7"
] | [
"Nature",
"Social Commentaries",
"History & Politics",
"Activities"
] | [
"Nature/Bodies of Water",
"Nature/Plants & Fungi",
"History & Politics/Money & Economics",
"Activities/Travels & Journeys"
] |
a8312584214f8334 | Above Pate Valley | Gary Snyder | We finished clearing the last
Section of trail by noon,
High on the ridge-side
Two thousand feet above the creek
Reached the pass, went on
Beyond the white pine groves,
Granite shoulders, to a small
Green meadow watered by the snow,
Edged with Aspen—sun
Straight high and blazing
But the air was cool.
Ate a c... | [
"S2",
"S9"
] | [
"S2-7",
"S9-4"
] | [
"Nature",
"Activities"
] | [
"Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals",
"Activities/Jobs & Working"
] |
30967f0b6eb062e8 | Buick | Karl Shapiro | As a sloop with a sweep of immaculate wing on her delicate spine
And a keel as steel as a root that holds in the sea as she leans,
Leaning and laughing, my warm-hearted beauty, you ride, you ride,
You tack on the curves with parabola speed and a kiss of goodbye,
Like a thoroughbred sloop, my new high-spirited spiri... | [
"S3",
"S4"
] | [
"S4-1"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"History & Politics"
] | [
"History & Politics/Money & Economics"
] |
41b6d832883e0ae0 | Last Days | Maxine Kumin | We visit by phone as the morphine haze retreats, late afternoon, most days. Our mingled past is set against the pin- hole lights of cars cruising the blacked-out streets: we four in the college smoker popping No-Doz, honors students carrying heavy course loads tipped sideways by sex, one by one discarding ... | [
"S6",
"S8"
] | [
"S6-1"
] | [
"Living",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Living/Aging"
] |
e8972417479c60c0 | Winter: A Dirge | Robert Burns | The wintry west extends his blast,And hail and rain does blaw;Or, the stormy north sends driving forthThe blinding sleet and snaw:While tumbling brown, the burn comes down,And roars frae bank to brae;And bird and beast in covert rest,And pass the heartless day.The sweeping blast, the sky o’ercast,The joyless winter-day... | [
"S2"
] | [
"S2-4"
] | [
"Nature"
] | [
"Nature/Winter"
] |
0d65da451e429482 | Nocturne Militaire | Thomas McGrath | Miami Beach: wartime
Imagine or remember how the road at last led us
Over bridges like prepositions, linking a drawl of islands.
The coast curved away like a question mark, listening slyly
And shyly whispered the insomniac Atlantic.
But we were uncertain of both question and answer,
Stiff and confused and bemused... | [
"S3"
] | [
"S3-11"
] | [
"Social Commentaries"
] | [
"Social Commentaries/War & Conflict"
] |
bbc35a7c307184cc | Forever and a Day | Samuel Menashe | No more than that
Dead cat shall I
Escape the corpse
I kept in shape
For the day off
Immortals take | [
"S6"
] | [
"S6-4"
] | [
"Living"
] | [
"Living/Death & Dying"
] |
e7101653fa3020e2 | Maxims 1 | Anthony Madrid | The ampalaya, no matter how bitter,
Is sweet to those who like it.
The hardest person to awaken
Is a lover feigning sleep.
The basketball held underwater
Wants violently to come up.
Easily split asunder is that
Which never was united.
The water is cold at first, for it
Takes time to heat the pipe.
The kids ru... | [
"S10"
] | [
"S10-5"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Philosophy"
] |
233f768f56b81d63 | Black Coffin with Milk | Michael Farrell | Take the measure of wooden speech with a wooden tongue
The sound waves crash in, like a handful of grasshoppers
Take the nails and bang them into the weeping painting
The kids are shouting what they’re for: it’s making noise
Making noise and drinking milk with a magnifying glass
The ancestor’s dead from reading bo... | [
"S2",
"S6",
"S10"
] | [
"S2-5",
"S6-4",
"S6-8",
"S10-4",
"S10-8"
] | [
"Nature",
"Living",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Painting & Sculpture",
"Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books",
"Nature/Animals",
"Living/Death & Dying",
"Living/Youth"
] |
dcdbf5899435adae | Annunication | C. Dale Young | I learned to hide my wings almost immediately,
learned to tuck and bandage them down.
Long before the accident, before the glass shattering
and that scene going dim, dimmer, and then dark,
before the three fractures at the axis, three cracks
in the bone, it had already begun. My voice
had begun to deepen, the sou... | [
"S5",
"S6"
] | [
"S5-2",
"S5-3",
"S6-3"
] | [
"Religion",
"Living"
] | [
"Religion/Christianity",
"Religion/Faith & Doubt",
"Living/Coming of Age"
] |
7ddf4cca65d791c6 | For My Wife | Wesley McNair | How were we to know, leaving your two kids behind in New Hampshire for our honeymoon at twenty-one, that it was a trick of cheap hotels in New York City to draw customers like us inside by displaying a fancy lobby? Arriving in our fourth-floor room, we found a bed, a scarred bureau, and a bathroom door with a cut on on... | [
"S1",
"S3",
"S8",
"S9"
] | [
"S3-4",
"S9-7"
] | [
"Love",
"Social Commentaries",
"Relationships",
"Activities"
] | [
"Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality",
"Activities/Travels & Journeys"
] |
767410e845e8855f | From “Moon Sonnet” | Lily Zhou | Based on the Chinese myth of Chang’e
Saturday. The good bread set out for the dogs to eat.The rabbit hurt on milk & tall willows
that I’ve bound to storefront. The headlines saythe waves are coming in today. The waves
& spoiled fruit & all the lives I’ve wastedplaying archer. At least this side of the kingdom
will ... | [
"S2",
"S11"
] | [
"S2-5",
"S2-10",
"S11-1"
] | [
"Nature",
"Mythology & Folklore"
] | [
"Mythology & Folklore/Fairy-tales & Legends",
"Nature/Weather",
"Nature/Animals"
] |
143ff9098099ddbe | The Pear | Ruth Stone | There hangs this bellied pear, let no rake doubt,Meat for the tongue and febrile to the skin,Wasting for the mildew and the rot, A tallow rump slow rounded, a pelt thinAnd for the quickest bite; so, orchard bred,Heaviest downward from the shaking stem.Whose fingers curve around the ripened headLust to split so fine a d... | [
"S2",
"S3",
"S8"
] | [
"S2-8",
"S3-4"
] | [
"Nature",
"Social Commentaries",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Nature/Plants & Fungi",
"Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality"
] |
581afa1d44e5af78 | Healers | Sophie Collins | I encountered a scaffoldoutside the Holy Trinity Church in Vladimir, Russia.At first I didn’t notice herslumped against the side of the church — she was pretty small for a scaffold, pretty un-assuming. Her safety meshwas torn in places and sun-bleached all overand threatened to dislodgedue to a forceful wind that was t... | [
"S5",
"S10"
] | [
"S5-2",
"S10-1"
] | [
"Religion",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Architecture & Design",
"Religion/Christianity"
] |
727395909c970187 | A Brief History of Hysteria | Libby Burton | All of this magic is death:
your vicious little organ singing like a drunk uncle,
the beautiful, white-headed children
that passed through y... | [
"S3",
"S6"
] | [
"S3-4",
"S6-7"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"Living"
] | [
"Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality",
"Living/Parenthood"
] |
f9850370ea163e25 | Sleeping with Boa | May Swenson | I show her how to put her arms around me,
but she’s much too small.
What’s worse, she doesn’t understand.
And
although she lies beside me, sticking
out her tongue, it’s herself she licks.
She likes my stroking hand.
And
even lets me kiss.
But at my demand:
“Now, do it to me, like this,”
she backs off with a ... | [
"S8"
] | [
"S8-6",
"S8-8"
] | [
"Relationships"
] | [
"Relationships/LGBTQ+",
"Relationships/Pets & Domestic Animals"
] |
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