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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1209fa7c581e43ab | It is not so much that I miss you | Dorothea Grossman | It is not so much that I miss youas the rememberingwhich I suppose is a form of missingexcept more positive,like the time of the blackoutwhen fear was my first responsefollowed by love of the dark. | [
"S8"
] | [] | [
"Relationships"
] | [] |
a8c94518737f5435 | Brother | Mary Ann Hoberman | I had a little brother
And I brought him to my mother
And I said I want another
Little brother for a change.
But she said don’t be a bother
So I took him to my father
And I said this little bother
Of a brother’s very strange.
But he said one little brother
Is exactly like another
And every little brother
Mis... | [
"S6",
"S8",
"S10"
] | [
"S8-3",
"S10-5"
] | [
"Living",
"Relationships",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Philosophy",
"Relationships/Family & Ancestors"
] |
bf5ad728918af945 | Choosing A Profession | Mary Lamb | A Creole boy from the West Indies brought,
To be in European learning taught,
Some years before to Westminster he went,
To a Preparatory school was sent.
When from his artless tale the mistress found
The child had not one friend on English ground,
She ev’n as if she his own mother were,
Made the dark Indian her particu... | [
"S3",
"S9"
] | [
"S3-8",
"S9-4",
"S9-6"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"Activities"
] | [
"Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity",
"Activities/Jobs & Working",
"Activities/Study & Knowledge"
] |
202acb1eac190f49 | Tempus fugit | Samuel Menashe | For John Thornton
Fellow fugitiveForgive yourselfAnd me therebyThus we can liveWhatever’s leftOf time for us,Each day a giftWe take on trust | [
"S6",
"S7"
] | [] | [
"Living",
"Time & Brevity"
] | [] |
62903836d34d6786 | February | James Schuyler | A chimney, breathing a little smoke.
The sun, I can't see
making a bit of pink
I can't quite see in the blue.
The pink of five tulips
at five p.m. on the day before March first.
The green of the tulip stems and leaves
like something I can't remember,
finding a jack-in-the-pulpit
a long time ago and far away.
... | [
"S2",
"S3"
] | [
"S2-4",
"S2-10",
"S3-1"
] | [
"Nature",
"Social Commentaries"
] | [
"Nature/Weather",
"Nature/Winter",
"Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life"
] |
62a9ce9bcee1561a | In that Part of the World | Raza Ali Hasan | I
The sky here is American like the blue of your eyes;
the folds of your eyelids the Hindu Kush mountain.
The rich vein of the Hindu Kush only a stony ridge
cutting across the parched soil of Afghanistan
on which the primal play of progress comes to pass.
II
Locked in, its people:
nomadic, peasant or simply ple... | [
"S3",
"S10"
] | [
"S10-2"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics"
] |
065608429a072b64 | The Lady | Guillaume Apollinaire | Knock knock He has closed his doorThe garden’s lilies have started to rotSo who is the corpse being carried from the houseYou just knocked on his door And trot trot Trot goes little lady mouseTranslated from the French | [
"S2",
"S6"
] | [
"S2-5",
"S2-8",
"S6-4"
] | [
"Nature",
"Living"
] | [
"Nature/Animals",
"Nature/Plants & Fungi",
"Living/Death & Dying"
] |
40192cb097b5ecc7 | Formerly Communist Love Sonnet | Connie Deanovich | The Chinese concubine feeling has left and the
sky hovers like the preparation of a revolutionary speech.
You, my long walk with all that expectation
the sexy lunches, thousands of them,
and then all that religion of eroticism.
Beneath the squeeze on my heart is a stranglehold.
You, like a little Italian porcelai... | [
"S1",
"S3",
"S4",
"S8"
] | [
"S1-4",
"S1-7",
"S4-1"
] | [
"Love",
"Social Commentaries",
"History & Politics",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Love/Infatuation & Crushes",
"Love/Romantic Love",
"History & Politics/Money & Economics"
] |
ec17c4260d4320f0 | Einstein’s Bathrobe | Howard Moss | I wove myself of many delicious strands
Of violet islands and sugar-balls of thread
So faintly green a small white check between
Balanced the field’s wide lawn, a plaid
Gathering in loose folds shaped around him
Those Princeton mornings, slowly stage-lit, when
The dawn took the horizon by surprise
And from the m... | [
"S3",
"S4",
"S10"
] | [
"S3-11",
"S10-9"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"History & Politics",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Sciences",
"Social Commentaries/War & Conflict"
] |
0f4dd95b30a0b327 | Prayer’s End | Brooklyn Copeland | Nature remains faithful by natural light,only. Immeasurable, invisible in the wind. Visible whenblades and branches bend. The windspeaks fluent rain. Despite it the rainfalls strai... | [
"S2"
] | [
"S2-10"
] | [
"Nature"
] | [
"Nature/Weather"
] |
8c335e70b1753448 | The World | Henry Vaughan | I saw Eternity the other night,
Like a great ring of pure and endless light,
All calm, as it was bright;
And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years,
Driv’n by the spheres
Like a vast shadow mov’d; in which the world
And all her train were hurl’d.
The doting lover in his quaintest strain
Did th... | [
"S2",
"S5",
"S6",
"S7",
"S10"
] | [
"S2-9",
"S5-2",
"S5-3",
"S5-4",
"S10-5"
] | [
"Nature",
"Religion",
"Living",
"Time & Brevity",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Philosophy",
"Nature/Stars, Moons, & Space",
"Religion/Christianity",
"Religion/Faith & Doubt",
"Religion/God & the Divine"
] |
9e3bbe738632635d | Satire III | John Donne | Kind pity chokes my spleen; brave scorn forbids Those tears to issue which swell my eyelids; I must not laugh, nor weep sins and be wise; Can railing, then, cure these worn maladies? Is not our mistress, fair Religion, As worthy of all our souls' devotion As virtue was in the first blinded age? Are not heaven's joys as... | [
"S3",
"S4",
"S5",
"S10"
] | [
"S5-2",
"S5-3"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"History & Politics",
"Religion",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Religion/Christianity",
"Religion/Faith & Doubt"
] |
a13358faa8327d4c | from On the Pulse of Morning | Maya Angelou | A Rock, A River, A Tree
Hosts to species long since departed,
Marked the mastodon,
The dinosaur, who left dried tokens
Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.
But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you ma... | [
"S3",
"S4",
"S11"
] | [
"S3-8",
"S3-11",
"S11-4"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"History & Politics",
"Mythology & Folklore"
] | [
"Mythology & Folklore/Heroes & Patriotism",
"Social Commentaries/War & Conflict",
"Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity"
] |
47251cbd90ddb76c | Bitch | Carolyn Kizer | Now, when he and I meet, after all these years,
I say to the bitch inside me, don’t start growling.
He isn’t a trespasser anymore,
Just an old acquaintance tipping his hat.
My voice says, “Nice to see you,”
As the bitch starts to bark hysterically.
He isn’t an enemy now,
Where are your manners, I say, as I say,
... | [
"S3",
"S6",
"S8"
] | [
"S3-4",
"S8-1",
"S8-4"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"Living",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality",
"Relationships/Breakups & Separation",
"Relationships/Friendship"
] |
60fb0cb3e029d657 | A Report to an Academy | Joel Brouwer | And so among the starry refineries
and cattail ditches of New Jersey
his bus dips from egg-white sky into shadow.
When he next looks up from Kafka a blur
of green sanatorium tile flows by
then presto, Port Authority, full daylight.
He has been cheated of the river, dawn,
a considered fingering of his long
and polished ... | [
"S6",
"S8",
"S9"
] | [
"S8-7",
"S9-7"
] | [
"Living",
"Relationships",
"Activities"
] | [
"Relationships/Marriage & Companionship",
"Activities/Travels & Journeys"
] |
ddcb1f801880a247 | A New National Anthem | Ada Limón | The truth is, I’ve never cared for the National
Anthem. If you think about it, it’s not a good
song. Too high for most of us with “the rockets
red glare” and then there are the bombs.
(Always, always, there is war and bombs.)
Once, I sang it at homecoming and threw
even the tenacious high school band off key.
Bu... | [
"S3",
"S4",
"S10",
"S11"
] | [
"S3-11",
"S10-3",
"S11-4"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"History & Politics",
"Arts & Sciences",
"Mythology & Folklore"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Music",
"Mythology & Folklore/Heroes & Patriotism",
"Social Commentaries/War & Conflict"
] |
dafffe581d5a7581 | A Variation on Machado | Jim Harrison | I worry much about the suffering
of Machado. I was only one when he carried
his mother across the border from Spain to France
in a rainstorm. She died and so did he
a few days later in a rooming house along a dry canal.
To carry Mother he abandoned a satchel
holding his last few years of poetry.
I've traveled to... | [
"S10"
] | [
"S10-6"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets"
] |
45f0f371d1b45a49 | The Quiet Hour | Jonathan David | When the hour is hushed and you lie still,So quiet is the room about meIt seems perhaps that you are gone,Sunken to a marble sleep.I hear no sound; my quiet will,Passive as the lambs at rest,Stirs not the quaint forgetfulnessBut only murmurs, “Sleep is strange!”The low moon at the lattice goingRests no more quietly tha... | [
"S2",
"S6",
"S7",
"S8"
] | [
"S2-9"
] | [
"Nature",
"Living",
"Time & Brevity",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Nature/Stars, Moons, & Space"
] |
bf2ed5348087d8be | A Song on the End of the World | Czeslaw Milosz | On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.
On the day the world ends
Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,
A drunkard grows... | [
"S2",
"S5"
] | [
"S2-7",
"S5-3"
] | [
"Nature",
"Religion"
] | [
"Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals",
"Religion/Faith & Doubt"
] |
12cc047111a44b1c | To the Man Who Shouted “I Like Pork Fried Rice” at Me on the Street | Franny Choi | you want to eat meout. right. what does it taste like | [
"S3",
"S6",
"S8"
] | [
"S3-4"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"Living",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality"
] |
54fcbb23791684db | From “summer, somewhere” | Danez Smith | somewhere, a sun. below, boys brownas rye play the dozens & ball, jumpin the air & stay there. boys become newmoons, gum-dark on all sides, beg bruise-blue water to fly, at least tide, at least spit back a father or two. I won’t get started.history is what it is. it knows what it did.bad dog. bad blood. bad day to be a... | [
"S2",
"S3",
"S5",
"S6",
"S7",
"S10"
] | [
"S2-2",
"S3-8",
"S5-8",
"S6-4",
"S10-5"
] | [
"Nature",
"Social Commentaries",
"Religion",
"Living",
"Time & Brevity",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Philosophy",
"Nature/Summer",
"Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity",
"Religion/The Spiritual",
"Living/Death & Dying"
] |
8dd72df260c6fbc6 | Parachute | Maggie Smith | Because a lie is not a lie if the teller
believes it, the way beautiful things
reassure us of the world’s wholeness,
of our wholeness, is not quite a lie.
Beautiful things believe their own
narrative, the narrative that makes them
beautiful. I almost believed it
until the new mother strapped
her infant to her c... | [
"S6",
"S8"
] | [
"S6-4",
"S6-7",
"S8-3"
] | [
"Living",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Living/Death & Dying",
"Living/Parenthood",
"Relationships/Family & Ancestors"
] |
653cd71706b782a0 | Mechanism | A. R. Ammons | Honor a going thing, goldfinch, corporation, tree,
morality: any working order,
animate or inanimate: it
has managed directed balance,
the incoming and outgoing energies are working right,
some energy left to the mechanism,
some ash, enough energy held
to maintain the ... | [
"S2",
"S3",
"S10"
] | [
"S2-5",
"S2-7",
"S2-8"
] | [
"Nature",
"Social Commentaries",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Nature/Animals",
"Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals",
"Nature/Plants & Fungi"
] |
19d296ac34140e22 | If See No End In Is | Frank Bidart | What none knows is when, not if. Now that your life nears its end when you turn back what you see is ruin. You think, It is a prison. No, it is a vast resonating chamber in which each thing you say or do is new, but the same. What none knows is how to change. Each plateau you reach, if single, limited, only itself, in-... | [
"S1",
"S5",
"S6",
"S8"
] | [
"S1-6",
"S5-3",
"S6-1",
"S6-3",
"S6-4"
] | [
"Love",
"Religion",
"Living",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Love/Realistic & Complicated",
"Religion/Faith & Doubt",
"Living/Aging",
"Living/Coming of Age",
"Living/Death & Dying"
] |
ec3d6c02f0e66a38 | Chamber Thicket | Sharon Olds | As we sat at the feet of the string quartet, in their living room, on a winter night, through the hardwood floor spurts and gulps and tips and shudders came up, and the candle-scent air was thick-alive with pearwood, ebony, spruce, poplar, and horse howled, and cat skreeled, and then, when the Grösse Fugue was a... | [
"S1",
"S8",
"S10"
] | [
"S1-6",
"S1-7",
"S8-3",
"S10-3"
] | [
"Love",
"Relationships",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Love/Realistic & Complicated",
"Love/Romantic Love",
"Arts & Sciences/Music",
"Relationships/Family & Ancestors"
] |
659a9017926e2cf3 | The Lover: A Ballad | Lady Mary Wortley Montagu | At length, by so much importunity press'd,
Take, C——, at once, the inside of my breast;
This stupid indiff'rence so often you blame,
Is not owing to nature, to fear, or to shame:
I am not as cold as a virgin in lead,
Nor is Sunday's sermon so strong in my head:
I know but too well how time flies along,
That we live but... | [
"S1",
"S3",
"S8"
] | [
"S1-5",
"S1-6",
"S3-4"
] | [
"Love",
"Social Commentaries",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Love/New Love",
"Love/Realistic & Complicated",
"Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality"
] |
8729961267adcd39 | Ultima Thule: Dedication to G. W. G. | Henry Wadsworth Longfellow | With favoring winds, o'er sunlit seas, We sailed for the Hesperides, The land where golden apples grow; But that, ah! that was long ago. How far, since then, the ocean streams Have swept us from that land of dreams, That land of fiction and of truth, The lost Atlantis of our youth! Whither, ah, whither? Are not these T... | [
"S2",
"S6",
"S9",
"S11"
] | [
"S2-6",
"S6-1",
"S9-7",
"S11-1",
"S11-3"
] | [
"Nature",
"Living",
"Activities",
"Mythology & Folklore"
] | [
"Mythology & Folklore/Fairy-tales & Legends",
"Mythology & Folklore/Greek & Roman Mythology",
"Nature/Bodies of Water",
"Living/Aging",
"Activities/Travels & Journeys"
] |
bf45a0fa918591a6 | The Animals | W. S. Merwin | All these years behind windows
With blind crosses sweeping the tables
And myself tracking over empty ground
Animals I never saw
I with no voice
Remembering names to invent for them
Will any come back will one
Saying yes
Saying look carefully yes
We will meet again | [
"S8"
] | [
"S8-8"
] | [
"Relationships"
] | [
"Relationships/Pets & Domestic Animals"
] |
fd9d3a87a39b0e1d | Boy and Egg | Naomi Shihab Nye | Every few minutes, he wants
to march the trail of flattened rye grass
back to the house of muttering
hens. He too could make
a bed in hay. Yesterday the egg so fresh
it felt hot in his hand and he pressed it
to his ear while the other children
laughed and ran with a ball, leaving him,
so little yet, too forgetf... | [
"S6",
"S10"
] | [
"S10-5"
] | [
"Living",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Philosophy"
] |
3ad7a454293553fb | Teodoro Luna Confesses After Years to His Brother, Anselmo the Priest, Who Is Required to Understand, But Who Understands Anyway, More Than People Think | Alberto Ríos | I am a slave to the nudity of women.
I do not know with what resolve
I could stand against it, a naked woman
Asking of me anything.
An unclothed woman is sometimes other things.
I see her in a dish of green pears.
Anselmo, do you know what I mean if I say
Without clothes
Her breasts are the two lions
In front ... | [
"S1",
"S2",
"S3",
"S5",
"S6",
"S8"
] | [
"S1-1",
"S3-4",
"S5-2"
] | [
"Love",
"Nature",
"Social Commentaries",
"Religion",
"Living",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Love/Desire & Erotic Love",
"Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality",
"Religion/Christianity"
] |
6029e09f09711895 | Football | Louis Jenkins | I take the snap from the center, fake to the right, fade back...
I've got protection. I've got a receiver open downfield...
What the hell is this? This isn't a football, it's a shoe, a man's
brown leather oxford. A cousin to a football maybe, the same
skin, but not the same, a thing made for the earth, not the air.... | [
"S3",
"S9",
"S10"
] | [
"S9-5"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"Activities",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Activities/Sports & Outdoor Activities"
] |
944a3a1084b7bc22 | Epistles to Several Persons: Epistle II: To a Lady on the Characters of Women | Alexander Pope | Nothing so true as what you once let fall,
"Most Women have no Characters at all."
Matter too soft a lasting mark to bear,
And best distinguish'd by black, brown, or fair.
How many pictures of one nymph we view,
All how unlike each other, all how true!
Arcadia's Countess, here, in ermin'd pride,
Is, there, Pastor... | [
"S3",
"S8",
"S10"
] | [
"S3-4"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"Relationships",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality"
] |
7b8b7a8fe6906dcc | from The Vanity of Human Wishes | Samuel Johnson | The Tenth Satire of Juvenal, Imitated
Let observation with extensive view,
Survey mankind, from China to Peru;
Remark each anxious toil, each eager strife,
And watch the busy scenes of crowded life;
Then say how hope and fear, desire and hate,
O’erspread with snares the clouded maze of fate,
Where wav’ring man, betray... | [
"S3",
"S4",
"S10"
] | [
"S10-5"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"History & Politics",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Philosophy"
] |
726e8dc40dbe55a1 | Enter a Cloud | W. S. Graham | 1
Gently disintegrate me
Said nothing at all.
Is there still time to say
Said I myself lying
In a bower of bramble
Into which I have fallen.
Look through my eyes up
At blue with not anything
We could have ever arranged
Slowly taking place.
Above the spires of the fox
Gloves and above the bracken
Tops with ... | [
"S2",
"S3",
"S6",
"S8",
"S9"
] | [
"S2-7",
"S2-9",
"S3-9",
"S8-4",
"S9-7"
] | [
"Nature",
"Social Commentaries",
"Living",
"Relationships",
"Activities"
] | [
"Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals",
"Nature/Stars, Moons, & Space",
"Social Commentaries/Rural & Country Life",
"Relationships/Friendship",
"Activities/Travels & Journeys"
] |
ea90577f09d22936 | Lines to Accompany Flowers for Eve | Carolyn Kizer | who took heroin, then sleeping pills, and who lies in a New York hospital
The florist was told, cyclamen or azalea;
White in either case, for you are pale
As they are, “blooming early and profusely”
Though the azalea grows in sandier soil,
Needing less care; while cyclamen’s fleshy tubers
Are adored, yes, rooted ... | [
"S6"
] | [
"S6-6"
] | [
"Living"
] | [
"Living/Health & Illness"
] |
27694c8084e44913 | Magnitudes | Howard Nemerov | Earth’s Wrath at our assaults is slow to come
But relentless when it does. It has to do
With catastrophic change, and with the limit
At which one order more of Magnitude
Will bring us to a qualitative change
And disasters drastically different
From those we daily have to know about.
As with the speed of light, w... | [
"S2",
"S3",
"S10"
] | [
"S2-9",
"S10-9"
] | [
"Nature",
"Social Commentaries",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Sciences",
"Nature/Stars, Moons, & Space"
] |
e0f26efece19b090 | Valiant En Abyme | Joshua Clover | Our grand peregrinations through these temporary cities,
These pale window box poppies of the laughing class,
Drifting as if time came in the same long dollops as starlight,
Resemble an epic journey as a coffee bean resembles a llama’s foot,
Though the kitchen table may be far from the desert
It’s near in spirit, ... | [
"S3",
"S10"
] | [
"S3-1",
"S3-7",
"S10-2",
"S10-6"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics",
"Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets",
"Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life",
"Social Commentaries/Popular Culture"
] |
bbcc1ebfa8a325d5 | Buried at Springs | James Schuyler | There is a hornet in the room
and one of us will have to go
out the window into the late
August midafternoon sun. I
won. There is a certain challenge
in being humane to hornets
but not much. A launch draws
two lines of wake behind it
on the bay like a delta
with a melted base. Sandy
billows, or so they look,
... | [
"S2",
"S6"
] | [
"S2-2",
"S2-10",
"S6-4",
"S6-5"
] | [
"Nature",
"Living"
] | [
"Nature/Weather",
"Nature/Summer",
"Living/Death & Dying",
"Living/Mourning"
] |
9e9861d39e5d1c6b | Objects In Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear | Alice B. Fogel | It's hard to tell
that the face of the moon
is as much like a man's
as god's. Out yonder,
in the world without us,
who's to say? —
Either we get in the way,
or things make use of us.
Half-way around the globe
from where they started,
the static sound of starlings
echoes off the barn roof.
Spiders weave in t... | [
"S2"
] | [
"S2-9",
"S2-10"
] | [
"Nature"
] | [
"Nature/Weather",
"Nature/Stars, Moons, & Space"
] |
8749beccb2d58565 | Fragment 5: Whom should I choose for my Judge? | Samuel Taylor Coleridge | Whom should I choose for my Judge? the earnest, impersonal reader, Who, in the work, forgets me and the world and himself! Ye who have eyes to detect, and Gall to Chastise the imperfect, Have you the heart, too, that loves, feels and rewards the Compleat? What is the meed of thy Song? 'Tis the ceaseless, the thousandfo... | [
"S1",
"S8",
"S10"
] | [
"S10-3",
"S10-6",
"S10-8"
] | [
"Love",
"Relationships",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Music",
"Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets",
"Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books"
] |
df4be407977706ad | Young Man | John Haines | I seemed always standing before a door to which I had no key, although I knew it hid behind it a gift for me. Until one day I closed my eyes a moment, stretched then looked once more. And not surprised, I did not mind it when the hinges creaked and, smiling, Death held out his hands to me. | [
"S6"
] | [
"S6-4"
] | [
"Living"
] | [
"Living/Death & Dying"
] |
0affdddaac3942ad | A History of Sexual Preference | Robin Becker | We are walking our very public attraction
through eighteenth-century Philadelphia.
I am simultaneously butch girlfriend
and suburban child on a school trip,
Independence Hall, 1775, home
to the Second Continental Congress.
Although she is wearing her leather jacket,
although we have made love for the first time
... | [
"S3",
"S4",
"S8",
"S11"
] | [
"S3-1",
"S3-4",
"S8-6",
"S11-4"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"History & Politics",
"Relationships",
"Mythology & Folklore"
] | [
"Mythology & Folklore/Heroes & Patriotism",
"Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life",
"Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality",
"Relationships/LGBTQ+"
] |
12573c9dd32680db | The Mermaid in the Hospital | Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill | She awoke
to find her fishtail
clean gone
but in the bed with her
were two long, cold thingammies.
You'd have thought they were tangles of kelp
or collops of ham.
"They're no doubt
taking the piss,
it being New Year's Eve.
Half the staff legless
with drink
and the other half
playing pranks.
Still, this is... | [
"S2",
"S3",
"S6",
"S11"
] | [
"S3-4",
"S11-1"
] | [
"Nature",
"Social Commentaries",
"Living",
"Mythology & Folklore"
] | [
"Mythology & Folklore/Fairy-tales & Legends",
"Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality"
] |
ae07b3bd554a1f60 | Graciela | Gary Soto | Wedding night
Graciela bled lightly—
But enough to stain his thighs—
And left an alphabet
Of teeth marks on his arm.
At this, he was happy.
They drank mescal
In bed like the rich
And smoked cigarettes.
She asleep
And the bottle empty, he hid
A few coins in her left shoe,
Earrings in the right.
They worked ... | [
"S2",
"S3",
"S6",
"S8"
] | [
"S3-4"
] | [
"Nature",
"Social Commentaries",
"Living",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality"
] |
06dbb27ed226ee74 | Pastime with Good Company | Henry VIII, King of England | Pastime with good company I love and shall unto I die. Grudge whoso will, but none deny, So God be pleased, this live will I. For my pastance Hunt, sing, and dance. My heart is set All godely sport To my comfort. Who shall me let? Youth will have needs daliance, Of good or ill some pastance. Company me thinketh then be... | [
"S3",
"S6",
"S7",
"S8",
"S10"
] | [
"S6-3",
"S8-4",
"S10-5"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"Living",
"Time & Brevity",
"Relationships",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Philosophy",
"Living/Coming of Age",
"Relationships/Friendship"
] |
cf2ebbc2b6736815 | Introduction | John Yau | It had to be from someone whose grandparents were born in Shanghai
not the city’s greatest citizens, but certainly among the sober ones
to make their small now eroded mark
It had to be from a distant or dissolute descendant (yes, moi)
who can sing praises unworthy of even a flicker of your attention
Doesn’t this s... | [
"S3",
"S4",
"S8",
"S10"
] | [
"S8-3",
"S10-6"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"History & Politics",
"Relationships",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets",
"Relationships/Family & Ancestors"
] |
9b1e4355a2f84905 | Early Elegy: Smallpox | Claudia Emerson | The world has certified itself rid of all but the argument: to eradicate or not the small stock of variola frozen, quarantined—a dormancy it has refused, just once, for a woman behind a sterile lens, her glass slide a clearest, most becoming pane. How could it resist slipping away with her, that discrete first pock? | [
"S6"
] | [
"S6-6"
] | [
"Living"
] | [
"Living/Health & Illness"
] |
a91c2aea034822ce | From “Anagrams” [xxx] | Luke Kennard | +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
++++... | [
"S3",
"S6",
"S8",
"S10"
] | [
"S3-4",
"S10-10"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"Living",
"Relationships",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Theater & Dance",
"Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality"
] |
8c28acc4c1802ef6 | geography test | Saaro Umar | the archivist enters the room
with a bag of oranges
she
broke one on the walk over
her shirt tucked under bra strings
of juice
draw down her chin
he
is sitting at the table when she enters
facing the open window that
exits to
a skyl... | [
"S1",
"S2",
"S3",
"S4",
"S6",
"S8",
"S10"
] | [
"S1-1",
"S2-7",
"S3-4",
"S8-3",
"S8-5",
"S10-2"
] | [
"Love",
"Nature",
"Social Commentaries",
"History & Politics",
"Living",
"Relationships",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Love/Desire & Erotic Love",
"Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics",
"Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals",
"Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality",
"Relationships/Family & Ancestors",
"Relationships/Home Life"
] |
57c424308dd618a9 | Haiku | Frank Lima | For Frank O'Hara
I
The lights are out
The cats are hungry
The room is full of gangsters
II
The dishes are dirty
The icebox is empty
I dream of celery and a compass
III
The roof is upstairs
The window next door
A guitar in the shower
IV
The hours disappear in my room
Where is my blue pistol
The door-god ... | [
"S3"
] | [
"S3-1"
] | [
"Social Commentaries"
] | [
"Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life"
] |
3d61cb158b32e173 | After Making Love We Hear Footsteps | Galway Kinnell | For I can snore like a bullhorn
or play loud music
or sit up talking with any reasonably sober Irishman
and Fergus will only sink deeper
into his dreamless sleep, which goes by all in one flash,
but let there be that heavy breathing
or a stifled come-cry anywhere in the house
and he will wrench himself awake
an... | [
"S1",
"S3",
"S6",
"S8"
] | [
"S1-1",
"S1-6",
"S3-4",
"S6-7",
"S8-3",
"S8-5",
"S8-7"
] | [
"Love",
"Social Commentaries",
"Living",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Love/Desire & Erotic Love",
"Love/Realistic & Complicated",
"Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality",
"Living/Parenthood",
"Relationships/Family & Ancestors",
"Relationships/Home Life",
"Relationships/Marriage & Companionship"
] |
01d4fb04567345b1 | The Bethlehem Nursing Home | Rodney Torreson | A birdbath ministers to the lawn chairs, all toppled: a recliner on its face, metal arms trying to push it up; an overturned rocker, curvature of the spine. Armchairs on their sides, webbing unraveled. One faces the flowers. A director's chair folded, as if prepared to be taken up. | [
"S3",
"S6"
] | [
"S6-1"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"Living"
] | [
"Living/Aging"
] |
66e100aad86d31b2 | The Lady and the Tramp | Bruce Guernsey | As my mother’s memory dims she’s losing her sense of smell and can’t remember the toast blackening the kitchen with smoke or sniff how nasty the breath of the dog that follows her yet from room to room, unable, himself, to hear his own bark. It’s thus they get around, the wheezing old hound stone deaf ... | [
"S6",
"S8"
] | [
"S6-1",
"S8-3",
"S8-5",
"S8-8"
] | [
"Living",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Living/Aging",
"Relationships/Family & Ancestors",
"Relationships/Home Life",
"Relationships/Pets & Domestic Animals"
] |
3a41e14cc9fdf5f3 | Murderer [Part IV] | Curzio Malaparte | IV
So it did not come as a surprise—a relief, almost—when we heard the tac-tac-tac of machine guns and the thud of grenades rising up from the woods below. The Germans were advancing again through the tangle of bomb-shattered branches, clearing a path with axe-blows, foreheads crushed beneath the overhang of great ste... | [
"S3",
"S6"
] | [
"S3-6",
"S3-11",
"S6-4"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"Living"
] | [
"Social Commentaries/War & Conflict",
"Social Commentaries/Incarceration & Justice",
"Living/Death & Dying"
] |
f4dac4cf490074bd | Geology | Robert King | I know the origin of rocks, settling out of water, hatching crystals from fire, put under pressure in various designs I gathered pretty, picnic after picnic. And I know about love, a little, igneous lust, the slow affections of the sedimentary, the pressure on earth out of sight to rise up into material, something soli... | [
"S1",
"S2",
"S8",
"S10"
] | [
"S1-1",
"S1-6",
"S10-9"
] | [
"Love",
"Nature",
"Relationships",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Love/Desire & Erotic Love",
"Love/Realistic & Complicated",
"Arts & Sciences/Sciences"
] |
a0610d14bcb67e1c | Topoi | Ed Roberson | 1 . MORNING
The year and its
as like as eggs,
the days
in their crates of season
we break open
and the yolk
of fresh sun we scramble
the runny light into
a firm
break
of the night's winter
helping of the fast.
*
Yellow dishes—
... | [
"S2",
"S6",
"S10"
] | [
"S2-6",
"S2-7",
"S2-9",
"S10-2"
] | [
"Nature",
"Living",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics",
"Nature/Bodies of Water",
"Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals",
"Nature/Stars, Moons, & Space"
] |
4ecb5d88fe851679 | Castro Moves Into the Havana Hilton | Sandra M. Castillo | “History always dresses us for the wrong occasions.”
—Ricardo Pau-Llosa
Camera Obscura
The afternoon lightening his shadow,
Fidel descends from the mountains,
the clean-shaven lawyer turned guerilla,
his eyes focused on infinity,
El Jefe Máximo con sus Barbudos,
rebels with rosary beads
on their 600-mile proce... | [
"S3",
"S4",
"S10"
] | [
"S10-7"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"History & Politics",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Photography & Film"
] |
917389ab2be3f932 | I Walk’d the Other Day | Henry Vaughan | I walk’d the other day, to spend my hour, Into a field, Where I sometimes had seen the soil to yield A gallant flow’r; But winter now had ruffled all the bow’r And curious store I knew there heretofore. Yet I, whose search lov’d not to peep and peer I’ th’ face of things, Thought with... | [
"S2",
"S5",
"S10"
] | [
"S2-7",
"S5-2",
"S5-3",
"S5-4",
"S10-5"
] | [
"Nature",
"Religion",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Philosophy",
"Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals",
"Religion/Christianity",
"Religion/Faith & Doubt",
"Religion/God & the Divine"
] |
ab87e9779c0d4574 | Oration: Half-Moon in Vermont | Norman Dubie | A horse is shivering flies off its ribs, grazing
Through the stench of a sodden leachfield.
On the broken stairs of a trailer
A laughing fat girl in a T-shirt is pumping
Milk from her swollen breasts, cats
Lapping at the trails. There's a sheen of rhubarb
On her dead fingernail. It's a humid morning.
Tonight, wi... | [
"S3",
"S6",
"S7",
"S8"
] | [
"S3-2",
"S3-7",
"S8-3",
"S8-5"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"Living",
"Time & Brevity",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Social Commentaries/Class & Labor",
"Social Commentaries/Popular Culture",
"Relationships/Family & Ancestors",
"Relationships/Home Life"
] |
4cd8cb94a9e30853 | Bees | Rae Armantrout | If not being (something)
is the same as being,
then I will live forever.
•
Round shadow inside
the sunflower’s
corona.
•
If I lived forever
would the present’s noose
be looser?
•
Moon shadow
made of angry bees,
confined. Come in. | [
"S2",
"S6"
] | [
"S2-5",
"S2-8",
"S2-9"
] | [
"Nature",
"Living"
] | [
"Nature/Animals",
"Nature/Plants & Fungi",
"Nature/Stars, Moons, & Space"
] |
2ce263941cca60ef | Elegy | Sergey Gandlevsky | along the street the outcast pauses
his earring makes him special
a useless worker of the disgraceful
he’s stood at the crossroads of years
the traffic light contains three colors
but none give him permission to cross
I live OK and work at present
as word processor (from the root “cess”)
and in the process wan... | [
"S6",
"S8",
"S9"
] | [
"S6-4",
"S8-3",
"S9-4"
] | [
"Living",
"Relationships",
"Activities"
] | [
"Living/Death & Dying",
"Relationships/Family & Ancestors",
"Activities/Jobs & Working"
] |
f70908d81b0774c0 | Flies | Alice Oswald | This is the day the flies fall awake mid-sentence
and lie stunned on the windowsill shaking with speeches
only it isn’t speech it is trembling sections of puzzlement which
break off suddenly as if the questioner had been shot
this is one of those wordy days
when they drop from their winter quarters in the curtains ... | [
"S2",
"S6",
"S7"
] | [
"S2-5"
] | [
"Nature",
"Living",
"Time & Brevity"
] | [
"Nature/Animals"
] |
6ab7b214496da7cb | The Lights of London | Louise Imogen Guiney | The evenfall, so slow on hills, hath shot Far down into the valley’s cold extreme, Untimely midnight; spire and roof and stream Like fleeing specters, shudder and are not. The Hampstead hollies, from their sylvan plot Yet cloudless, lean to watch as in a dream, From chaos climb with many a sudden gleam, London, one mom... | [
"S3"
] | [
"S3-1"
] | [
"Social Commentaries"
] | [
"Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life"
] |
ea70420ba9005604 | Against Translation | Alan R. Shapiro | The songs swept down from the northern steppes
with cinerary horse
and sword and vestment
in the wake of battle
suicidal for a bronze
translation of flesh burnt
to a vertical vapor trail
of fame which, so they claimed,
would be undying
by which they meant
the dying would be just
prolonged
a little longer
a... | [
"S3",
"S6",
"S7"
] | [
"S3-11",
"S6-4",
"S6-5",
"S6-7"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"Living",
"Time & Brevity"
] | [
"Social Commentaries/War & Conflict",
"Living/Death & Dying",
"Living/Mourning",
"Living/Parenthood"
] |
c6bfac76abe4a5b2 | Hap | Thomas Hardy | If but some vengeful god would call to me
From up the sky, and laugh: “Thou suffering thing,
Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,
That thy love's loss is my hate's profiting!”
Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die,
Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;
Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I
Had willed an... | [
"S1",
"S5",
"S6",
"S8"
] | [
"S1-8",
"S5-4",
"S6-5",
"S8-1"
] | [
"Love",
"Religion",
"Living",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Love/Classic Love",
"Religion/God & the Divine",
"Living/Mourning",
"Relationships/Breakups & Separation"
] |
4632f78072f6a373 | Flaxman | Margaret Fuller | We deemed the secret lost, the spirit gone,
Which spake in Greek simplicity of thought,
And in the forms of gods and heroes wrought
Eternal beauty from the sculptured stone,—
A higher charm than modern culture won
With all the wealth of metaphysic lore,
Gifted to analyze, dissect, explore.
A many-colored light f... | [
"S10",
"S11"
] | [
"S10-4",
"S10-9",
"S11-3",
"S11-4"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences",
"Mythology & Folklore"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Painting & Sculpture",
"Arts & Sciences/Sciences",
"Mythology & Folklore/Greek & Roman Mythology",
"Mythology & Folklore/Heroes & Patriotism"
] |
43e0bb3561e0b648 | In My Sights, Sister | Rachel Galvin | My eyes are polished smooth by sight, they clot like crystals in storm glass,
like my sister brewing beakers of toxin. If we had seen
what had been done, what the helicopter pilot did in our name,
what the special ops team did in our name, what they did
with their hands in our name. What if it were my sister,
what... | [
"S3",
"S4",
"S6",
"S8"
] | [
"S3-11",
"S6-4",
"S8-3"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"History & Politics",
"Living",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Social Commentaries/War & Conflict",
"Living/Death & Dying",
"Relationships/Family & Ancestors"
] |
85467cd17dd89f3b | [“Speciously individual ...”] | Alan Dugan | Speciously individual
like a solid piece of spit
floating in a cuspidor
I dream of free bravery
but am a social being.
I should do something
to get out of here
but float around in the culture
wondering what it will grow. | [
"S3"
] | [] | [
"Social Commentaries"
] | [] |
34753fa6caec1cb9 | Cloudy Day | Jimmy Santiago Baca | It is windy today. A wall of wind crashes against,
windows clunk against, iron frames
as wind swings past broken glass
and seethes, like a frightened cat
in empty spaces of the cellblock.
In the exercise yard
we sat huddled in our prison jackets,
on our haunches against the fence,
and the wind carried our words... | [
"S2",
"S3",
"S6"
] | [
"S2-10",
"S3-6"
] | [
"Nature",
"Social Commentaries",
"Living"
] | [
"Nature/Weather",
"Social Commentaries/Incarceration & Justice"
] |
117eafb2103887c2 | Dreams in War Time | Amy Lowell | II wandered through a house of many rooms.It grew darker and darker,Until, at last, I could only find my wayBy passing my fingers along the wall.Suddenly my hand shot through an open window,And the thorn of a rose I could not seePricked it so sharplyThat I cried aloud. III dug a grave under an oak-tree.With infini... | [
"S6",
"S8",
"S10"
] | [
"S10-5"
] | [
"Living",
"Relationships",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Philosophy"
] |
12d7720781407118 | Ballad of Birmingham | Dudley Randall | (On the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama, 1963)
“Mother dear, may I go downtown
Instead of out to play,
And march the streets of Birmingham
In a Freedom March today?”
“No, baby, no, you may not go,
For the dogs are fierce and wild,
And clubs and hoses, guns and jails
Aren’t good for a little child.”
... | [
"S3",
"S4"
] | [
"S3-6",
"S3-8",
"S3-11"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"History & Politics"
] | [
"Social Commentaries/War & Conflict",
"Social Commentaries/Incarceration & Justice",
"Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity"
] |
85406692ff9cb9eb | Shiver & You Have Weather | Matthea Harvey | In the aftermath of calculus
your toast fell butter-side down.
Squirrels swarmed the lawns
in flight patterns. The hovercraft
helped the waves along. From
every corner there was perspective.
On the billboards the diamonds
were real, in the stores, only zirconia.
I cc’ed you. I let you know.
Sat down to write t... | [
"S3",
"S6"
] | [
"S3-7"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"Living"
] | [
"Social Commentaries/Popular Culture"
] |
75a699c9554e7194 | Advent | Nate Klug | In the middle of Decemberto start overto assume againan orderat the endof wonderto conjureand then to keepslow dirty sleetwithin its streetlight | [
"S5"
] | [
"S5-2"
] | [
"Religion"
] | [
"Religion/Christianity"
] |
55a23c58956c7ee7 | Dol and Roger | Laetitia Pilkington | Nay, Doll, quoth Roger, now you're caught, I'll never let you goTill you consent, —To what? says Doll, Zounds, Doll, why, do'stn't know? She faintly screamed, and vowed she would If hurt, cry out aloud; Ne'er fear, says he, then seized the fair, She sighed—and sighed—and vowed,—A'nt I a Man, quoth Roge... | [
"S1",
"S3",
"S8"
] | [
"S3-4",
"S8-1"
] | [
"Love",
"Social Commentaries",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality",
"Relationships/Breakups & Separation"
] |
755345d2492fbda7 | The Human Seasons | John Keats | Four Seasons fill the measure of the year; There are four seasons in the mind of man:He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear Takes in all beauty with an easy span:He has his Summer, when luxuriously Spring's honied cud of youthful thought he lovesTo ruminate, and by such dreaming high Is nearest unto ... | [
"S5",
"S6",
"S7",
"S10"
] | [
"S6-1",
"S6-3",
"S6-6",
"S10-5"
] | [
"Religion",
"Living",
"Time & Brevity",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Philosophy",
"Living/Aging",
"Living/Coming of Age",
"Living/Health & Illness"
] |
230216803a8d57cb | Conversation 12: On Hieroglyphs | Rosmarie Waldrop | Champollion fainted, she says, once he had wrested their secret from the hieroglyphs and saw them turn transparent. The serpent no longer with power to strike, but biting its tail. I smell my salts, my packets of words, panicked. I’m no longer sure whether they shape my reality or have too little mass to interact with ... | [
"S10",
"S11"
] | [
"S10-2"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences",
"Mythology & Folklore"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics"
] |
0770f6711c5a894e | October 1973 | Carolyn Kizer | Last night I dreamed I ran through the streets of New York
Looking for help for you, Nicanor.
But my few friends who are rich or influential
were temporarily absent from their penthouses or hotel suites.
They had gone to the opera, or flown for the weekend to Bermuda.
At last I found one or two of them at home,
p... | [
"S3",
"S4",
"S8"
] | [
"S3-2",
"S3-11",
"S8-4"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"History & Politics",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Social Commentaries/War & Conflict",
"Social Commentaries/Class & Labor",
"Relationships/Friendship"
] |
c401c3da8a3031d9 | A Stone Knife | James Schuyler | December 26, 1969
Dear Kenward,
What a pearl
of a letter knife. It's just
the thing I needed, something
to rest my eyes on, and always
wanted, which is to say
it's that of which I
felt the lack but
didn't know of, of no
real use and yet
essential as a button
box, or maps, green
... | [
"S2",
"S8"
] | [
"S8-4"
] | [
"Nature",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Relationships/Friendship"
] |
510ad330a51cc811 | On Clothes | Kahlil Gibran | And the weaver said, Speak to us of
Clothes.
And he answered:
Your clothes conceal much of your beauty,
yet they hide not the unbeautiful.
And though you seek in garments the
freedom of privacy you may find in them
a harness and a chain.
Would that you could meet the sun
and the wind with m... | [
"S2",
"S6"
] | [] | [
"Nature",
"Living"
] | [] |
6904c9da710d4351 | Reemergence of the Noose | Patricia Smith | Some lamp sputters
its dusty light
across some desk.
Some hand, shaking,
works the strained
rope, twisting and knifing,
weaving, tugging tight
a bellowing circle. Randy
Travis, steamy drawl
and hiccup on the staticky
AM, backs the ritual
of drooping loop.
Sweat drips an awful
hallelujah. God glares
askanc... | [
"S3",
"S4",
"S5"
] | [
"S3-6",
"S3-8",
"S5-4"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"History & Politics",
"Religion"
] | [
"Social Commentaries/Incarceration & Justice",
"Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity",
"Religion/God & the Divine"
] |
e50f5d224b72cb63 | The Mailman | Franz Wright | From the third floor window
you watch the mailman’s slow progress
through the blowing snow.
As he goes from door to door
he might be searching
for a room to rent,
unsure of the address,
which he keeps stopping to check
in the outdated and now
obliterated clipping
he holds, between thickly gloved fingers,
clo... | [
"S8",
"S9"
] | [
"S8-5",
"S9-4"
] | [
"Relationships",
"Activities"
] | [
"Relationships/Home Life",
"Activities/Jobs & Working"
] |
611941bb7f734cd5 | "I, being born a woman and distressed" | Edna St. Vincent Millay | I, being born a woman and distressed
By all the needs and notions of my kind,
Am urged by your propinquity to find
Your person fair, and feel a certain zest
To bear your body’s weight upon my breast:
So subtly is the fume of life designed,
To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,
And leave me once again undone, ... | [
"S1",
"S3"
] | [
"S1-1",
"S1-6",
"S3-4"
] | [
"Love",
"Social Commentaries"
] | [
"Love/Desire & Erotic Love",
"Love/Realistic & Complicated",
"Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality"
] |
4df5ea11c3d618ed | So | Michael Lally | I wait and wonder
what I’d do
if someone said pick your 60 best poems.
Pick all of them? Or any?
Maybe commit suicide, but everyone would say
“It’s because he’s really gay,” or maybe
“really not gay.”
*
Read Anne Waldman and Teren... | [
"S1",
"S3",
"S6",
"S7"
] | [
"S1-1",
"S3-4",
"S6-2"
] | [
"Love",
"Social Commentaries",
"Living",
"Time & Brevity"
] | [
"Love/Desire & Erotic Love",
"Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality",
"Living/Birth & Infancy"
] |
918d94a506643d39 | Christmas | Bill Manhire | Evening: the nervous suburbs levitate.Height does us no harm, now we are high above the mineral pools,above the flash hotel whose only use is treachery.Someone knocks on a door and you crouch behind the bed.Down in the bar, the small girls toast their parents,the brother breaks a large bone for its marrow.I’m thinking ... | [
"S5",
"S8"
] | [
"S5-2",
"S8-3"
] | [
"Religion",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Religion/Christianity",
"Relationships/Family & Ancestors"
] |
54c251006756e4a5 | If Ever There Was One | Miller Williams | She could tell he loved her. He wanted her there
sitting in the front pew when he preached.
He liked to watch her putting up her hair
and ate whatever she cooked and never broached
the subject of the years before they met.
He was thoughtful always. He let her say
whether or not they did anything in bed
and tried... | [
"S1",
"S3",
"S6",
"S8"
] | [
"S1-6",
"S3-4",
"S8-7"
] | [
"Love",
"Social Commentaries",
"Living",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Love/Realistic & Complicated",
"Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality",
"Relationships/Marriage & Companionship"
] |
d9226a60af423fa0 | The Watchman of Ephraim | Paul Hoover | The workman made it; therefore it is not God —Hosea
Hear the word of the Lord,ye children of Pittsburgh, of Calistoga and Tlaquepaque,ye hierophants and wishbones,teraphim and household plants, for I am a jealous God betrayed.My lover, whom I uplifted,has fallen to other affections.Weep for her outcast state,... | [
"S1",
"S3",
"S5",
"S8"
] | [
"S1-3",
"S3-4",
"S5-8",
"S8-1"
] | [
"Love",
"Social Commentaries",
"Religion",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Love/Heartache & Loss",
"Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality",
"Religion/The Spiritual",
"Relationships/Breakups & Separation"
] |
234eee7df54e8fea | White of snow or white of page is not | Rebecca Seiferle | the white of your skin, for skin, except
when truly albino, always has some other color
sleeping within it—a hint of red maple leaf,
a touch of the blue ice at the edge of a melting
stream, a richness implied of its many layers,
the deltas of cells and blood, that deep fecundity
that lies within and makes the ski... | [
"S2",
"S6"
] | [
"S2-5"
] | [
"Nature",
"Living"
] | [
"Nature/Animals"
] |
29d031a41b1cf006 | Sankt Georg | Michael Hofmann | Sankt Georg, what was it, questionable, doubtful, shady, twilit,
a something area, something Jan said, and he was born in Hamburg,
and went to school here, so he would know.
A little isthmus between the Alster with its freshwater sailors
and the railway station, always a reliable drag on things anywhere in Europe
... | [
"S3"
] | [
"S3-1"
] | [
"Social Commentaries"
] | [
"Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life"
] |
c1aece1a1070b58d | The Lost Colony | Susan Stewart | They never learned to tell
one bird from another, a shrubfrom a weedy sapling,
or when the season hadforced a flower’s bloom, not
even if a berry
had ripened into poison.
And yet they drew endless
distinctions between
colors and polish andcoarseness of weave,
and would not lettheir daughters marry out.They didn... | [
"S3",
"S4",
"S6"
] | [] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"History & Politics",
"Living"
] | [] |
d8b896700233501c | A DeafBlind Poet | John Lee Clark | A Deaf Blind poet doesn’t like to read sitting up. A Deaf Blind poet likes to read Braille magazines on the john. A Deaf Blind poet is in the habit of composing nineteenth-century letters and pressing Alt+S.
A Deaf Blind poet is a terrible student. A Deaf Blind poet does a lot of groundbreaking research. A Deaf Blind ... | [
"S3",
"S4",
"S6",
"S9",
"S10"
] | [
"S4-1",
"S9-4",
"S10-6"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"History & Politics",
"Living",
"Activities",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets",
"History & Politics/Money & Economics",
"Activities/Jobs & Working"
] |
cbaea52f5232f8ef | Book 5, Epigram 20: In Misum & Mopsam. | Thomas Bastard | Misus and Mopsa hardly could agree, Striving about superiority. The text which says that man and wife are one, Was the chief argument they stood upon. She held they both one woman should become, He held both should be man, and both but one. So they contended daily, but the strife Could not be ended, till ... | [
"S1",
"S3",
"S8"
] | [
"S1-6",
"S3-4",
"S8-1",
"S8-5"
] | [
"Love",
"Social Commentaries",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Love/Realistic & Complicated",
"Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality",
"Relationships/Breakups & Separation",
"Relationships/Home Life"
] |
737d181e8baeefdb | Ballad of the Clyde’s Water | Marion McCready | After Lorca
mother’s malisonThe burr of the wind is seeping through the door,
pink stumps of rhubarb are breaking through the soil.
Though it is February I have the mind of autumn.
Though it is February | [
"S2",
"S6",
"S8"
] | [
"S2-6",
"S6-4",
"S6-5",
"S6-7",
"S8-3"
] | [
"Nature",
"Living",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Nature/Bodies of Water",
"Living/Death & Dying",
"Living/Mourning",
"Living/Parenthood",
"Relationships/Family & Ancestors"
] |
a914ea5c424f0f82 | From “Celestial House” | Victoria Martinez | The following poems and collages were created for Victoria Martinez’s solo show, Celestial House, at Loyola University Museum of Art (LUMA) as odes to the homes and Chicago neighborhoods the artists grew up in. All collages are by Victoria Martinez and all poems are by José Olivarez.
Victoria MartinezPantry Secrets, 2... | [
"S1",
"S2",
"S3",
"S4",
"S8",
"S9",
"S10"
] | [
"S1-1",
"S2-8",
"S2-9",
"S3-4",
"S4-1",
"S8-3",
"S8-5",
"S9-4",
"S10-6"
] | [
"Love",
"Nature",
"Social Commentaries",
"History & Politics",
"Relationships",
"Activities",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Love/Desire & Erotic Love",
"Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets",
"Nature/Plants & Fungi",
"Nature/Stars, Moons, & Space",
"Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality",
"History & Politics/Money & Economics",
"Relationships/Family & Ancestors",
"Relationships/Home Life",
"Activities/Jobs & Working"
] |
df9ac9e7d9245fc2 | Paradise Lost: Book 2 (1674 version) | John Milton | HIgh on a Throne of Royal State, which far Outshon the wealth of Ormus and of Ind, Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand Showrs on her Kings Barbaric Pearl and Gold, Satan exalted sat, by merit rais'd To that bad eminence; and from despair Thus high uplifted beyond hope, aspires Beyond thus high, insatiate to pu... | [
"S5"
] | [
"S5-2",
"S5-4"
] | [
"Religion"
] | [
"Religion/Christianity",
"Religion/God & the Divine"
] |
8993fb691e2cfde0 | A Wedding | James Tate | She was in terrible pain the whole day,
as she had been for months: a slipped disc,
and there is nothing more painful. She
herself was a nurse’s aide, also a poet
just beginning to make a name for her
nom de plume. As with most things in life,
it happened when she was changing channels
on her television. The luc... | [
"S6",
"S8"
] | [
"S8-7"
] | [
"Living",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Relationships/Marriage & Companionship"
] |
68ea7740aa3ca474 | In Memory of George Calderon | Laurence Binyon | Wisdom and Valour, Faith, Justice,—the lofty names Of virtue’s quest and prize,— What is each but a cold wraith Until it lives in a man And looks thro’ a man’s eyes? On Chivalry as I muse, The spirit so high and clear It cannot soil with aught It meets of foul misuse; It turns wherever burns The flame of a brave thou... | [
"S3",
"S6",
"S8"
] | [
"S3-11",
"S6-5",
"S8-4"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"Living",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Social Commentaries/War & Conflict",
"Living/Mourning",
"Relationships/Friendship"
] |
3276eee5caf6e349 | The Pit | John Fuller | From the beginning, the egg cradled in pebbles,
The drive thick with fledglings, to the known last
Riot of the senses, is only a short pass.
Earth to be forked over is more patient,
Bird hungers more, flower dies sooner.
But if not grasped grows quickly, silently.
We are restless, not remembering much.
The pain ... | [
"S6"
] | [] | [
"Living"
] | [] |
c56d716fa581c607 | What is it to be human? | Waldo Williams | What is staying alive? To possess
A great hall inside of a cell.
What is it to know? The same root
Underneath the branches.
What is it to believe? Being a carer
Until relief takes over.
And to forgive? On fours through thorns
To keep company to an old enemy.
What is it to sing? To receive breath
From the geniu... | [
"S3",
"S6",
"S7",
"S10"
] | [] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"Living",
"Time & Brevity",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [] |
eef422e5b7187c2d | Sentimental | Albert Goldbarth | The light has traveled unthinkable thousands of miles to be
condensed, recharged, and poured off the white white pages
of an open Bible the country parson holds in front of this couple
in a field, in July, in the sap and the flyswirl of July
in upper Wisconsin, where their vows buzz in a ring in the air
like the f... | [
"S9",
"S10"
] | [
"S9-6",
"S10-6"
] | [
"Activities",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets",
"Activities/Study & Knowledge"
] |
dc46e9e255c5f85d | Winter Journal: Wind Thumbs through Woods | Emily Wilson | slant hand of beech leaves
shag of oaks before water
When did you go missing from me?
That passage between limb and slipped skin
gouged hickories, the ermine-bright birch
through all that is traveling slopeward
circleting leaf through branch weave
corymbs of curled leaves
lone cedar documen... | [
"S2"
] | [
"S2-4",
"S2-7",
"S2-8"
] | [
"Nature"
] | [
"Nature/Winter",
"Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals",
"Nature/Plants & Fungi"
] |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.