PoetryMTEB/PoetryFoundationSubjectsClassification

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
6946d6c37f3ebbbb	Youth and Art	Robert Browning	It once might have been, once only: We lodged in a street together, You, a sparrow on the housetop lonely, I, a lone she-bird of his feather. Your trade was with sticks and clay, You thumbed, thrust, patted and polished, Then laughed "They will see some day Smith made, and Gibson demolished." My bus...	[ "S1", "S3", "S6", "S8", "S10" ]	[ "S1-5", "S1-6", "S1-9", "S3-4", "S10-3", "S10-4", "S10-5" ]	[ "Love", "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Love/New Love", "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Love/Unrequited Love", "Arts & Sciences/Music", "Arts & Sciences/Painting & Sculpture", "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality" ]
627b28aadadf7f33	Antiquity Calling	Elaine Equi	Looking at Mapplethorpe’s Polaroids, I learn that he liked shoes and armpit crotch-shots of men and women, both shaved and un’—all giving a good whiff to the camera. But best of all are his pictures of ordinary phones which convey a palpable sense of expectancy as if at any moment, one of the fabulous, laconic nude men...	[ "S10" ]	[ "S10-7" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Photography & Film" ]
8badfbc1a4fd2cfb	Firstlings	Louise Imogen Guiney	(January 7, 1915) In the dregs of the year, all steam and rain, In the timid time of the heart again, When indecision is bold and thorough, And action dreams of a dawn in vain, I saw high up over Bloxham vale The ploughshare tilt to the next long trail, And, spying a larder in every furrow, The wagtails crowd l...	[ "S2", "S6" ]	[ "S2-1", "S2-4", "S6-5" ]	[ "Nature", "Living" ]	[ "Nature/Spring", "Nature/Winter", "Living/Mourning" ]
66d153c9425b5722	Coping Prana	Will Alexander	It is the way I breathe through chronic terrifying ferns through a black ungracious stoma it is this uranium rejoinder this impact pointing backwards & when witnessed causes observers to panic to blur & forget & to flee they can’t see my approach my wayward dorsal looming my lettering in black drizzle it i...	[ "S6" ]	[]	[ "Living" ]	[]
e9b72f34ba668884	Parade	Nate Klug	As with this Jet Ski family braiding the lakewith bigger and bigger shocksuntil the one car-sized onecuts his engineand, following him, for an instant they all coastthrough silences of self-made rain—how much is required now to carve, out of the generallivable ...	[ "S3" ]	[]	[ "Social Commentaries" ]	[]
754ee3cd5bbff851	The Little Boy Lost	William Blake	Father, father, where are you going O do not walk so fast.Speak father, speak to your little boy Or else I shall be lost,The night was dark no father was there The child was wet with dew.The mire was deep, & the child did weep And away the vapour flew.	[ "S6", "S8", "S10" ]	[ "S6-7", "S8-3", "S10-5" ]	[ "Living", "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy", "Living/Parenthood", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]
31f4e1d5f2eb6823	The Door	Debra Nystrom	She never said I’m going to die. I was with her nearly every minute that week, reading, sleeping on the cot beside the high-tech bed that kept shifting her slight weight while the window shadowed over, then grew brighter, and she drifted or got changed or was given another shot. None of us said it, though finally ...	[ "S6", "S8" ]	[ "S6-4", "S6-5", "S6-8", "S8-3" ]	[ "Living", "Relationships" ]	[ "Living/Death & Dying", "Living/Mourning", "Living/Youth", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]
fcfa41ac1fb1bb03	Equation	Caroline Caddy	Someone said that working through difficult equations was like walking in a pure and beautiful landscape – the numbers glowing like works of art. And in the same crowded room a woman I though...	[ "S8", "S10" ]	[ "S10-9" ]	[ "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Sciences" ]
cb3928916d800b8d	Unpack Poetic	Trevino L. Brings Plenty	Can’t hear things well if they are things whispering. Nothing gentle to hand on back of hand. A horsehair bow across gut string. A heart is a physical object singing in the chest. Chamber doors oxygenating blood rushing through. Salmon through river climb. When one writes of light as a painted smile across face. Yo...	[ "S2", "S5", "S10" ]	[ "S2-7", "S5-8", "S10-2", "S10-6" ]	[ "Nature", "Religion", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics", "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals", "Religion/The Spiritual" ]
f9efb24cdddbd63e	That autumn was abundant	Marjorie Agosín	That autumn was abundant In Istanbul the ancient and platinum Women with their faces covered and discovered My grandfather arrived on foot to this Ottoman city From the desolate Sebastopol and from other burned villages, From the bloody snow. He spoke about its minarets Certainly he loved the fields of leaves. A...	[ "S5", "S9" ]	[ "S5-6", "S9-7" ]	[ "Religion", "Activities" ]	[ "Religion/Judaism", "Activities/Travels & Journeys" ]
56c4cee2f3fb0565	Great Ships	Adam Zagajewski	This is a poem about the great ships that wandered the oceans And groaned sometimes in deep voices, grumbling about fog and submerged peaks, But usually they sliced the pages of tropical seas in silence, Divided by height, category, and class, just like our commu...	[ "S6", "S7", "S8" ]	[]	[ "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Relationships" ]	[]
fe2611632f5ea710	Sonnet for Angelo Monterosa	Jack Agüeros	Monterosa, your body is dead on Avenue A. Angelo, They found you eyes open staring at the beer Soaked floorboards. Did you want that? Did You mind them filling your back with buckshot? Angelo, I am angry with them all, and you Monterosa Killed and killers, killing and dealing dope. No good You were, no good they ...	[ "S3", "S6" ]	[ "S3-6", "S6-4", "S6-5" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Living" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/Incarceration & Justice", "Living/Death & Dying", "Living/Mourning" ]
ab57e8b5198daed4	Questions and Answers	Frank Lima	My angel, don't think the great stillness is wooing us: We just haven't slept the same among the letters that have a habit of Recognizing us. Those beautiful letters live in Paris all year around. For even the best of men go astray with words within the gentle depths When they are to express something unutterable. ...	[ "S10" ]	[ "S10-6", "S10-8" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books" ]
ab077d76a1fff628	Bushwick: Latex Flat	D. Nurkse	2001 Sadness of just-painted rooms. We clean our tools meticulously, as if currying horses: the little nervous sash brush to be combed and primped, the fat old four-inchers that lap up space to be wrapped and groomed, the ceiling rollers, the little pencils that cover nailheads with oak gloss, ...	[ "S3" ]	[ "S3-1" ]	[ "Social Commentaries" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life" ]
bec54ea0ecb16d59	Devotion: The Garment District	Bruce Smith	In bed as the machinery of morning begins, indistinguishable the subterranean turbines of the A train from the jet engine as it gins the clouds, rips and reseams the length of dungaree on its way to Pittsburgh (with the terrible and subtle cargoes, with ashes and a cat under the seat) from the pulleys of the service el...	[ "S3", "S8" ]	[ "S3-4" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Relationships" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality" ]
c466fd834249c5b0	The Visitor	Idra Novey	Does no dishes, dribbles sauce across the floor. Is more dragon than spaniel, more flammable than fluid. Is the loosening in the knit of me, the mixed-fruit marmalade in the kitchen of me. Wakes my disco and inner hibiscus, the Hector in the ever-mess of my Troy. All wet mattress to my analysis,he’s stayed the loudest ...	[ "S6", "S8" ]	[ "S6-7", "S8-3" ]	[ "Living", "Relationships" ]	[ "Living/Parenthood", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]
bae4cf0ccd546db7	Visiting a dead man on a summer day	Marge Piercy	In flat America, in Chicago, Graceland cemetery on the German North Side. Forty feet of Corinthian candle celebrate Pullman embedded lonely raisin in a cake of concrete. The Potter Palmers float in an island parthenon. Barons of hogfat, railroads and wheat are postmarked with angels and lambs. But the Getty to...	[ "S3", "S4", "S6", "S10" ]	[ "S3-1", "S3-2", "S10-1", "S10-6" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Living", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Architecture & Design", "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life", "Social Commentaries/Class & Labor" ]
31bf0290f89edb13	The Measure	Robert Creeley	I cannot move backward or forward. I am caught in the time as measure. What we think of we think of— of no other reason we think than just to think— each for himself.	[ "S6", "S7", "S10" ]	[ "S10-6" ]	[ "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets" ]
a678cfd4f2a2953c	from The Book of the Dead: Absalom	Muriel Rukeyser	I first discovered what was killing these men. I had three sons who worked with their father in the tunnel: Cecil, aged 23, Owen, aged 21, Shirley, aged 17. They used to work in a coal mine, not steady work for the mines were not going much of the time. A power Co. foreman learned that we made home brew, he forme...	[ "S3", "S4", "S6" ]	[ "S3-2", "S6-6" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Living" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/Class & Labor", "Living/Health & Illness" ]
1280451930336763	Sower	Bei Dao	a sower walks into the great hall it's war out there, he says and you awash in emptiness you've sworn off your duty to sound the alarm I've come in the name of fields it's war out there I walk out from that great hall all four directions a boundless harvest scene I start planning for war rehearsing death and ...	[ "S3", "S4" ]	[ "S3-11", "S4-1" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "History & Politics/Money & Economics" ]
60fb97ab713341cd	Intensive Care Unit	Adrien Stoutenburg	In one corner of the ward somebody was eating a raw chicken. The cheerful nurses did not see. With the tube down my throat I could not tell them. Nor did they notice the horror show on the TV set suspended over my windowless bed. The screen was dead but a torn face was clear. I did not see my own in a mirr...	[ "S6" ]	[ "S6-6" ]	[ "Living" ]	[ "Living/Health & Illness" ]
e6d4cea4f39b15b3	[I have become wealthy in a foreign land]	Johannes Göransson	I have become wealthy in a foreign land gravity makes me sick in my slippery throat the devil makes me lousy with summer like I'm buried in the sun in its sounds with my mother there's something about having a heart beat like traffic like wind I did it afterall: I had a sweaty body in Berlin it was all right ...	[ "S2", "S5", "S6", "S9" ]	[ "S2-2", "S5-8", "S9-7" ]	[ "Nature", "Religion", "Living", "Activities" ]	[ "Nature/Summer", "Religion/The Spiritual", "Activities/Travels & Journeys" ]
d0c85e8724789149	Expression	George Arnold	A hackneyed burden, to a hackneyed air,— “I love thee only,—thou art wondrous fair!” Alas! the poets have worn the theme threadbare! Can I not find some words less tame and old, To paint thy form and face of perfect mould, Thy dewy lips, thy hair of brown and gold? Can I not sing in somewhat fresher strain The love I l...	[ "S10" ]	[ "S10-6" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets" ]
f8887bfb2a88a22e	It would be neat if with the New Year	Jimmy Santiago Baca	for Miguel It would be neat if with the New Year I could leave my loneliness behind with the old year. My leathery loneliness an old pair of work boots my dog vigorously head-shakes back and forth in its jaws, chews on for hours every day in my front yard— rain, sun, snow, or wind in bare feet, pondering my poem...	[ "S6", "S10" ]	[ "S10-6" ]	[ "Living", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets" ]
0ad04acadba72a8b	Parthenogenesis	Brenda Shaughnessy	It’s easy to make more of myself by eating, and sometimes easy’s the thing. To be double-me, half the trouble but not lonely. Making cakes to celebrate any old day. Eating too much: the emperor of being used. Nature, mature and feminized, naturalizes me naturally by creating the feeling of being a natural woman...	[ "S3", "S6", "S9" ]	[ "S9-1" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Activities" ]	[ "Activities/Eating & Drinking" ]
4eba446da78fee26	long way home	Quraysh Ali Lansana	john lord knows you still vexed reckon me too if my wife stole off durin sleepy night god an de devil only souls up at dat hour even if i knows she bout to be sold south even if i knows she was leevin an you did you so troubled when i talk about leevin call me a fool call me cudjo five years wid you...	[ "S3", "S4" ]	[ "S3-8" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity" ]
8ab87a4bc2b1a3a2	The Yellowhammer's Nest	John Clare	Just by the wooden brig a bird flew up, Frit by the cowboy as he scrambled down To reach the misty dewberry—let us stoop And seek its nest—the brook we need not dread, 'Tis scarcely deep enough a bee to drown, So it sings harmless o'er its pebbly bed —Ay here it is, stuck close beside the bank Beneath the bunch ...	[ "S2", "S9" ]	[ "S2-5", "S2-7", "S9-5" ]	[ "Nature", "Activities" ]	[ "Nature/Animals", "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals", "Activities/Sports & Outdoor Activities" ]
e68916d9d9c6d0dc	Morning Is Morning	Ricardo Alberto Maldonado	I have some explaining to do — 5 o’clock meant I would speculate about artichokes (Greek) and the unfarmed mackerel. Anyway, the men would present us with a bed of carrot and potatoes + 1 cup of broth. Our husbandry in sharp mustard suit, laden with trial pieces for the fondue. I would prefer not to. I had such ...	[ "S5", "S9" ]	[ "S5-2", "S9-1", "S9-4" ]	[ "Religion", "Activities" ]	[ "Religion/Christianity", "Activities/Eating & Drinking", "Activities/Jobs & Working" ]
860ea86d86923cab	All the Dead Soldiers	Thomas McGrath	In the chill rains of the early winter I hear something— A puling anger, a cold wind stiffened by flying bone— Out of the north ... and remember, then, what’s up there: That ghost-bank: home: Amchitka: boot hill .... They must be very tired, those ghosts; no flesh sustains them And the bones rust in the rain. Re...	[ "S3", "S6" ]	[ "S3-11", "S6-4" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Living" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Living/Death & Dying" ]
1d1a6b3380c314d8	Pomegranate	D. H. Lawrence	You tell me I am wrong. Who are you, who is anybody to tell me I am wrong? I am not wrong. In Syracuse, rock left bare by the viciousness of Greek women, No doubt you have forgotten the pomegranate trees in flower, Oh so red, and such a lot of them. Whereas at Venice, Abhorrent, green, slippery city Whose Doges...	[ "S1", "S2" ]	[ "S1-3" ]	[ "Love", "Nature" ]	[ "Love/Heartache & Loss" ]
1ddb34b6374e38b4	The Matrix	Amy Lowell	Goaded and harassed in the factory That tears our life up into bits of days Ticked off upon a clock which never stays,Shredding our portion of Eternity,We break away at last, and steal the key Which hides a world empty of hours; ways Of space unroll, and Heaven overlaysThe leafy, sun-lit earth of Fantasy. Bey...	[ "S3", "S6", "S7", "S9" ]	[ "S9-4" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Activities" ]	[ "Activities/Jobs & Working" ]
3bca257bc33ca17d	The Last Hour	Christian Wiman	Lean and sane in the last hour of a long fast or fiercer discipline he could touch dust into a sudden surge of limbs and speak leaves in the night air above him, inhabit quiet so wholly he heard roots inch into the unfeeling earth, rings increasing inside of that tree. Without moving, hardly breathing, ...	[ "S1", "S2", "S5", "S6" ]	[ "S1-1", "S2-7", "S5-8" ]	[ "Love", "Nature", "Religion", "Living" ]	[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love", "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals", "Religion/The Spiritual" ]
6948390e5e8032c8	In a Word, a World	C. D. Wright	I love them all. I love that a handful, a mouthful, gets you by, a satchelful can land you a job, a well-chosen clutch of them could get you laid, and that a solitary word can initiate a stampede, and therefore can be formally outlawed—even by a liberal court bent on defending a constitution guaranteeing unimpeded ...	[ "S10" ]	[ "S10-2" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics" ]
bb7bae84aface80a	Government Spending	Patricia Lockwood	The government spent a Patricia on me,“a huge waste,” it lamented, “when we couldhave been spending it on another Nixon,”the government spent all its beautyon the great light leap on the deer-crossing sign — there was hardly anybeauty left for anything else in America,and looking around them the governmentsaid, ...	[ "S3", "S4" ]	[ "S3-2", "S4-1" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/Class & Labor", "History & Politics/Money & Economics" ]
ea45962ce3d3ee50	Useless! Useless!	Jack Kerouac	Useless! Useless! —heavy rain driving into the sea	[ "S2", "S6" ]	[ "S2-6", "S2-10" ]	[ "Nature", "Living" ]	[ "Nature/Weather", "Nature/Bodies of Water" ]
dd51197b6b4e64c5	When I Die	Donald Revell	We shelter an angel whom we never cease to offend. We ought to be the guardians of that angel. —Jean Cocteau A scherzo of thumbnail butterflies, white ones, Covers the hillside. God is more Adorable than music. Nevertheless, On a given morning, as the wind drops, Music pries Heaven apart from itself, Like flower...	[ "S2", "S5", "S6", "S10" ]	[ "S2-5", "S2-7", "S2-8", "S5-4", "S6-4", "S10-3" ]	[ "Nature", "Religion", "Living", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Music", "Nature/Animals", "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals", "Nature/Plants & Fungi", "Religion/God & the Divine", "Living/Death & Dying" ]
21ee5e0104138359	The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket	Robert Lowell	[FOR WARREN WINSLOW, DEAD AT SEA] Let man have dominion over the fishes of the sea and the fowls of the air and the beasts of the whole earth, and every creeping creature that moveth upon the earth. I A brackish reach of shoal off Madaket— The sea was still breaking violently and night Had steamed into our North A...	[ "S2", "S3", "S4", "S5", "S6", "S8" ]	[ "S2-6", "S5-2", "S5-4", "S6-4", "S6-5", "S8-3" ]	[ "Nature", "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Religion", "Living", "Relationships" ]	[ "Nature/Bodies of Water", "Religion/Christianity", "Religion/God & the Divine", "Living/Death & Dying", "Living/Mourning", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]
17829392a9690389	Innocence	Thomas Traherne	But that which most I wonder at, which most I did esteem my bliss, which most I boast, And ever shall enjoy, is that within I felt no stain, nor spot of sin. No darkness then did overshade, But all within was pure and bright, No guilt did crush, nor fear invade But all my soul was full of light. A joyful se...	[ "S5", "S6", "S7" ]	[ "S5-3", "S5-4" ]	[ "Religion", "Living", "Time & Brevity" ]	[ "Religion/Faith & Doubt", "Religion/God & the Divine" ]
83aa0ddf1e0d879e	“If you’re fond of road-blocks, this one can’t be beat:”	Richard Wilbur	If you’re fond of road-blocks, this one can’t be beat: A big tree in the middle of the street.	[ "S10" ]	[ "S10-2" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics" ]
a2f67286e36ed4de	Eighth Sky	Michael Palmer	It is scribbled along the body Impossible even to say a word An alphabet has been stored beneath the ground It is a practice alphabet, work of the hand Yet not, not marks inside a box For example, this is a mirror box Spinoza designed such a box and called it the Eighth Sky called it the Nevercadabra House as...	[ "S10" ]	[ "S10-2", "S10-6" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics", "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets" ]
1f48977303c90aa9	The Cap and Bells	William Butler Yeats	The jester walked in the garden: The garden had fallen still; He bade his soul rise upward And stand on her window-sill. It rose in a straight blue garment, When owls began to call: It had grown wise-tongued by thinking Of a quiet and light footfall; But the young queen would not listen; She rose in her pale n...	[ "S1", "S8" ]	[ "S1-3", "S1-4", "S1-9" ]	[ "Love", "Relationships" ]	[ "Love/Heartache & Loss", "Love/Infatuation & Crushes", "Love/Unrequited Love" ]
f1a1b94ee620a8e6	Morituri Salutamus: Poem for the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Class of 1825 in Bowdoin College	Henry Wadsworth Longfellow	Tempora labuntur, tacitisque senescimus annis, Et fugiunt freno non remorante dies. Ovid, Fastorum, Lib. vi. "O Cæsar, we who are about to die Salute you!" was the gladiators' cry In the arena, standing face to face With death and with the Roman populace. O ye familiar scenes,—ye groves of pine, That once were mine a...	[ "S6", "S9" ]	[ "S6-1", "S9-6" ]	[ "Living", "Activities" ]	[ "Living/Aging", "Activities/Study & Knowledge" ]
f58bca275e11ce37	Crossing the Bar	Alfred, Lord Tennyson	Sunset and evening star, And one clear call for me! And may there be no moaning of the bar, When I put out to sea, But such a tide as moving seems asleep, Too full for sound and foam, When that which drew from out the boundless deep Turns again home. Twilight and evening bell, ...	[ "S2", "S6" ]	[ "S2-6", "S6-1" ]	[ "Nature", "Living" ]	[ "Nature/Bodies of Water", "Living/Aging" ]
de6cf932193597dc	Transactions	Rae Armantrout	1What do we like bestabout ourselves?Our inabilityto be content.We might see thisrestlessnessas a chipnot yet cashed in. 2You appear because you’re lonelymaybe. You would not say that.You come to tell meyou’re saving moneyby cooking for yourself.You’ve figured outwhat units you’ll needto exchange for uni...	[ "S6" ]	[]	[ "Living" ]	[]
b39462ee10c32465	More Sky Please	John Hennessy	More sky please push open the apartment shutters crowbar the paint factory’s broken window frames rip tar paper from the caving roof push it back crack it open blast an airshaft through the neighboring buildings snap it back expose the bird-ridden drafts the wren’s been busy here mornings year-round churr and chip...	[ "S2", "S3" ]	[ "S2-5", "S2-6", "S2-9", "S3-1" ]	[ "Nature", "Social Commentaries" ]	[ "Nature/Animals", "Nature/Bodies of Water", "Nature/Stars, Moons, & Space", "Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life" ]
9cac18b5e6a6819e	Women Like Me	Wendy Rose	making promises they can’t keep. For you, Grandmother, I said I would pull each invading burr and thistle from your skin, cut out the dizzy brittle eucalypt, take from the ground the dark oily poison– all to restore you happy and proud, the whole of you transformed and bursting into tomorrow. But whe...	[ "S2", "S3", "S4", "S8" ]	[ "S3-8", "S8-3" ]	[ "Nature", "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Relationships" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]
8d100b2a97ec2d5a	Hymn to Life	Timothy Donnelly	There were no American lions. No pygmy mammoths leftor giant short-faced bears, which towered over ten feet highwhen rearing up on their haunches. There were no stout-legged llamas, stilt-legged llamas, no single Yukon horse. The lastof the teratorns, its wingspan broader than the room inwhich I’m writing now, had long...	[ "S2", "S6", "S7", "S8" ]	[ "S2-5", "S2-7", "S2-10", "S6-7", "S8-5" ]	[ "Nature", "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Relationships" ]	[ "Nature/Weather", "Nature/Animals", "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals", "Living/Parenthood", "Relationships/Home Life" ]
51e5984fac118da5	No King, No King of Kings	Raza Ali Hasan	has ever lit up our hearts like this. No king. See Bhutto in Karachi, 1972. His path strewn with rose petals, sprinkled with attar, leads him, not to the sea with its crashing surf and screaming gulls but into the alleys and passageways of a slum. Ferdowsi in Shahnamah tags it for the interim as “the place of wor...	[ "S3", "S4", "S10", "S11" ]	[ "S10-7", "S11-4" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Arts & Sciences", "Mythology & Folklore" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Photography & Film", "Mythology & Folklore/Heroes & Patriotism" ]
7ffebabe1b7dcc98	The Journey	David Ignatow	I am looking for a past I can rely on in order to look to death with equanimity. What was given me: my mother’s largeness to protect me, my father’s regularity in coming home from work at night, his opening the door silently and smiling, pleased to be back and the lights on in all the rooms through which ...	[ "S6", "S8", "S10" ]	[ "S8-5", "S10-5" ]	[ "Living", "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy", "Relationships/Home Life" ]
2e25139cddb864b3	Blackamoors, Villa La Pietra	Yusef Komunyakaa	I was here before the blackamoors were photographed & cataloged, when they first ran up to me & then receded into their poses, descendants of archival Hamites destined to serve their brothers & sisters in a red baroque room, each silent as an iron doorstop. Some peered ...	[ "S3", "S10" ]	[ "S3-8", "S10-4" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Painting & Sculpture", "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity" ]
1f02f48f44a614d4	The Ode on a Grecian Urn	Patricia Lockwood	Is worth any number of old ladies. A grandmother hung from a cliff like a tense moment in an action movie and the Ode, speaking itself with its hand on one heart, steadfastly refused to save her, in fact it did that thing where it ground each finger out with a motorcycle boot and then ate its cigarette for emph...	[ "S6", "S10" ]	[ "S6-1", "S10-6" ]	[ "Living", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Living/Aging" ]
eb4b8ff0e86f1c46	Ah! Sun-flower	William Blake	Ah Sun-flower! weary of time, Who countest the steps of the Sun: Seeking after that sweet golden clime Where the travellers journey is done. Where the Youth pined away with desire, And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow: Arise from their graves and aspire, Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.	[ "S2", "S5" ]	[ "S2-8", "S5-2" ]	[ "Nature", "Religion" ]	[ "Nature/Plants & Fungi", "Religion/Christianity" ]
d0e99e8afe3f42cf	Incidents of Travel in Poetry	Frank Lima	Happy Birthday Kenneth Koch/Feb 27 We went to all those places where they restore sadness and joyand call it art. We were piloted by Auden who becameUnbearably acrimonious when we dropped off Senghor into thesteamy skies of his beloved West Africa. The termites and antswere waiting for him to unearth the sun in Elissa...	[ "S6", "S9", "S10" ]	[ "S9-7", "S10-6" ]	[ "Living", "Activities", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Activities/Travels & Journeys" ]
3c472978d1be6e30	To a Poor Old Woman	William Carlos Williams	Highlight Actions Enable or disable annotations munching a plum on the street a paper bag of them in her hand They taste good to her They taste good to her. They taste good to her You can see it by the way she gives herself to the one half sucked out in her handComfortedComforted When originally published i...	[ "S3", "S4", "S9" ]	[ "S4-1", "S9-1" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Activities" ]	[ "History & Politics/Money & Economics", "Activities/Eating & Drinking" ]
387ffae6164b30f4	Contentment	Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.	“Man wants but little here below” Little I ask; my wants are few; I only wish a hut of stone, (A very plain brown stone will do,) That I may call my own;— And close at hand is such a one, In yonder street that fronts the sun. Plain food is quite enough for me; Three courses are as good as ten;— If Nature can sub...	[ "S3", "S4", "S10" ]	[ "S3-2", "S4-1" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/Class & Labor", "History & Politics/Money & Economics" ]
60d43a044f4f3f81	A Little Closer to the Edge	Ocean Vuong	Young enough to believe nothing will change them, they step, hand-in-hand, into the bomb crater. The night full of black teeth. His faux Rolex, weeks from shattering against her cheek, now dims like a miniature moon behind her hair. In this version the snake is headless — stilled like a cord unraveled from the ...	[ "S1", "S3", "S6", "S7", "S8" ]	[ "S1-1", "S1-6", "S3-4", "S6-7", "S8-3", "S8-5", "S8-6" ]	[ "Love", "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Relationships" ]	[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love", "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality", "Living/Parenthood", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors", "Relationships/Home Life", "Relationships/LGBTQ+" ]
bc7baaeadba8356d	The Goose Fish	Howard Nemerov	On the long shore, lit by the moon To show them properly alone, Two lovers suddenly embraced So that their shadows were as one. The ordinary night was graced For them by the swift tide of blood That silently they took at flood, And for a little time they prized Themselves emparadised. Then, as if shaken by ...	[ "S1", "S2", "S8" ]	[ "S1-1", "S1-6", "S2-6", "S8-8" ]	[ "Love", "Nature", "Relationships" ]	[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love", "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Nature/Bodies of Water", "Relationships/Pets & Domestic Animals" ]
928d19213df0fe2c	Meeting at Night	Robert Browning	I The grey sea and the long black land; And the yellow half-moon large and low; And the startled little waves that leap In fiery ringlets from their sleep, As I gain the cove with pushing prow, And quench its speed i' the slushy sand. II Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach; Three fields to cross till a farm appears; ...	[ "S1", "S2", "S8" ]	[ "S1-4", "S1-7", "S2-6", "S2-7" ]	[ "Love", "Nature", "Relationships" ]	[ "Love/Infatuation & Crushes", "Love/Romantic Love", "Nature/Bodies of Water", "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals" ]
bd92f82c6c8e20d4	The Lie	Don Paterson	As was my custom, I’d risen a full hour before the house had woken to make surethat everything was in order with The Lie,his drip changed and his shackles all secure.I was by then so practiced in this choreI’d counted maybe thirteen years or moresince last I’d felt the urge to meet his eye.Such, I liked to think, was o...	[ "S6" ]	[]	[ "Living" ]	[]
f8a7b1e4035a4863	At St. Malachy’s Church	Paula Cunningham	i.m. Marty Crickard I came to light a candle for a friendbut Jesus had a really bad mustacheand those were only pinpricks in his palmsso I passed on.I came to light a candle for a friendbut Joseph’s hands were manicuredand soft as Fairy Liquid handsI could not light one there so I passed on.In the corner was a fellow ...	[ "S5", "S6", "S8" ]	[ "S5-2", "S5-8", "S6-4", "S6-5", "S8-4" ]	[ "Religion", "Living", "Relationships" ]	[ "Religion/Christianity", "Religion/The Spiritual", "Living/Death & Dying", "Living/Mourning", "Relationships/Friendship" ]
6751e28fb6bb0661	Heart Valve	Elizabeth Arnold	They told me there’d be painso when I felt it, sitting at my beat-up farm deskthat looks out glass doors onto the browning garden—plain sparrows bathing in the cube-shaped fountainso violently they drain it, the white-throats with their wobbly two-note song on the long way south still, and our dogs out like lights and ...	[ "S6" ]	[ "S6-6" ]	[ "Living" ]	[ "Living/Health & Illness" ]
ae8b32763af38c05	Safety	Rupert Brooke	Dear! of all happy in the hour, most blest He who has found our hid security, Assured in the dark tides of the world that rest, And heard our word, ‘Who is so safe as we?’ We have found safety with all things undying, The winds, and morning, tears of men and mirth, The deep night, and birds singing, a...	[ "S3", "S4", "S6", "S7" ]	[ "S3-11", "S6-4" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Living", "Time & Brevity" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Living/Death & Dying" ]
da0122e0ee6b6b8f	The Old Codger’s Lament	Carl Rakosi	Who can say now, “When I was young, the country was very beautiful? Oaks and willows grew along the rivers and there were many herbs and flowering bushes. The forests were so dense the deer slipped through the cottonwoods and maples unseen.” Who would listen? Who will carry even the vicarious tone of that time? ...	[ "S6" ]	[ "S6-1" ]	[ "Living" ]	[ "Living/Aging" ]
b8e02171c9dc1877	Burning in the Rain	Richard Blanco	Someday compassion would demand I set myself free of my desire to recreate my father, indulge in my mother’s losses, strangle lovers with words, forcing them to confess for me and take the blame. Today was that day: I tossed them, sheet by sheet on the patio and gathered them into a pyre. I wanted to let them go...	[ "S6", "S8", "S10" ]	[ "S8-3", "S10-6" ]	[ "Living", "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]
e201bf7fc064a8e9	The Intellectual	Karl Shapiro	What should the wars do with these jigging fools? The man behind the book may not be man, His own man or the book’s or yet the time’s, But still be whole, deciding what he can In praise of politics or German rimes; But the intellectual lights a cigarette And offers it lit to the lady, whose odd smile Is the mere...	[ "S3", "S8", "S10" ]	[ "S3-4", "S10-8" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality" ]
56531de4881ad9bc	Shore Line	Carl Rakosi	We speak of mankind. Why not wavekind? Barrel-chested military water rushes in a mass to break the shore earth into stonekind.Pphlooph pphlooph the waves grope indistinctly for the shore. As delicate as a butterfly along a cheek a boat with...	[ "S2" ]	[ "S2-6" ]	[ "Nature" ]	[ "Nature/Bodies of Water" ]
8cbf75540697efde	Tom O’ Bedlam among the Sunflowers	Thomas James	To have gold in your back yard and not know it. . . I woke this morning before your dream had shredded And found a curious thing: flowers made of gold, Six-sided—more than that—broken on flagstones, Petals the color of a wedding band. You are sleeping. The morning comes up gold. Perhaps I made those flowers in my...	[ "S1", "S2", "S8" ]	[ "S1-3", "S2-8" ]	[ "Love", "Nature", "Relationships" ]	[ "Love/Heartache & Loss", "Nature/Plants & Fungi" ]
31ab09dd7173599d	The Lake Isle of Innisfree	William Butler Yeats	I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade. And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where ...	[ "S2" ]	[ "S2-7" ]	[ "Nature" ]	[ "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals" ]
155d7707023672db	Harvest Gathering	Phoebe Cary	The last days of the summer: bright and clear Shines the warm sun down on the quiet land, Where corn-fields, thick and heavy in the ear, Are slowly ripening for the laborer’s hand; Seed-time and harvest — since the bow was set, Not vainly has man hoped your coming yet! To the quick rush of sickles, joyously ...	[ "S2", "S3", "S9" ]	[ "S2-2", "S9-4" ]	[ "Nature", "Social Commentaries", "Activities" ]	[ "Nature/Summer", "Activities/Jobs & Working" ]
9ab88b6dab51a7c8	Tutto Sciolto	James Joyce	A birdless heaven, sea-dusk and a star Sad in the west; And thou, poor heart, love’s image, fond and far, Rememberest: Her silent eyes and her soft foam-white brow And fragrant hair, Falling as in the silence falleth now Dusk from the air. Ah, why wilt thou remember these, or why, Poor heart, repine, If the sweet love ...	[ "S1", "S8" ]	[ "S1-4", "S1-9" ]	[ "Love", "Relationships" ]	[ "Love/Infatuation & Crushes", "Love/Unrequited Love" ]
7c1391aeb068cdd9	On What Planet	Kenneth Rexroth	Uniformly over the whole countryside The warm air flows imperceptibly seaward; The autumn haze drifts in deep bands Over the pale water; White egrets stand in the blue marshes; Tamalpais, Diablo, St. Helena Float in the air. Climbing on the cliffs of Hunter’s Hill We look out over fifty miles of sinuous Interp...	[ "S2", "S8", "S9" ]	[ "S2-7", "S8-4", "S9-5" ]	[ "Nature", "Relationships", "Activities" ]	[ "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals", "Relationships/Friendship", "Activities/Sports & Outdoor Activities" ]
f5af5fb44f5c724a	Natural History	Rae Armantrout	1 Discomfort marks the boundary. One early symptom was the boundary. The invention of hunger. I could use energy. To serve. Elaborate systems in the service of far-fetched demands. The great termite mounds serve as air-conditioners. Temperature within must never vary more than 2 degrees.2 Which came first ...	[ "S10" ]	[ "S10-2" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics" ]
a5550bfcc40511c7	Finding a Box of Family Letters	Dana Gioia	The dead say little in their letters they haven't said before. We find no secrets, and yet how different every sentence sounds heard across the years. My father breaks my heart simply by being so young and handsome. He's half my age, with jet-black hair. Look at him in his navy uniform grinning beside his dive...	[ "S6", "S7", "S8" ]	[ "S8-3" ]	[ "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Relationships" ]	[ "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]
f97674ce81bc8303	Song	John Fuller	You don’t listen to what I say. When I lean towards you in the car You simply smile and turn away. It’s been like this most of the day, sitting and sipping, bar after bar: You don’t listen to what I say. You squeeze a lemon from a tray, And if you guess how dear you are You simply smile and turn away. Beyond t...	[ "S8" ]	[]	[ "Relationships" ]	[]
1a64d9e1f9a90576	Going to Zero	Peter Balakian	1. A canvas with less turpentine, more hard edges, less bleeding, that was good for beauty, Frankenthaler in Art News in the dining car crammed with parkas and laptops micro-waved cellophane, plastic plates and canvas bags, and the valley under fog as the cows disappeared and when the green came back into view ...	[ "S3", "S4", "S6", "S7", "S10" ]	[ "S3-1", "S3-11", "S6-5", "S10-1", "S10-4" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Architecture & Design", "Arts & Sciences/Painting & Sculpture", "Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life", "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Living/Mourning" ]
760d114b164313eb	Bluegrass	Gabriel Gomez	I. sound knots pinned to a fabric-less body form of oak bone a barreled chest the presence of acoustic music over the instrument resting on your lap a limited vehicle but you knew that having learned tablature the guitar posed in sculpture clear its throat by reaching the oval gap flushed agains...	[ "S6", "S7", "S8", "S9", "S10" ]	[ "S8-3", "S9-1", "S10-3" ]	[ "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Relationships", "Activities", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Music", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors", "Activities/Eating & Drinking" ]
534afad15c13fad3	What to Say Upon Being Asked to Be Friends	Julian Talamantez Brolaski	Why speak of hate, when I do bleed for love? Not hate, my love, but Love doth bite my tongue Till I taste stuff that makes my rhyming rough So flatter I my fever for the one For whom I inly mourn, though seem to shun. A rose is arrows is eros, so what If I confuse the shade that I’ve become With winedark substan...	[ "S1", "S8", "S10" ]	[ "S1-3", "S1-9", "S8-4", "S10-2" ]	[ "Love", "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Love/Heartache & Loss", "Love/Unrequited Love", "Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics", "Relationships/Friendship" ]
470741354a6588e5	Number Man	Carl Sandburg	(for the ghost of Johann Sebastian Bach) He was born to wonder about numbers. He balanced fives against tens and made them sleep together and love each other. He took sixes and sevens and set them wrangling and fighting over raw bones. He woke up twos and fours out of baby sleep and touched them back to sleep...	[ "S9", "S10" ]	[]	[ "Activities", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[]
08fcba221d3112a9	In Houston	Gail Mazur	I’d dislocated my life, so I went to the zoo. It was December but it wasn’t December. Pansies just planted were blooming in well-groomed beds. Lovers embraced under the sky’s Sunday blue. Children rode around and around on pastel trains. I read the labels stuck on every cage the way people at museums do, art bein...	[ "S3", "S8" ]	[ "S3-1", "S8-8" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Relationships" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life", "Relationships/Pets & Domestic Animals" ]
8d020c7c2ebd30bc	“The Altar” by George Herbert	Connie Voisine	Tulips panted against the wall. So much need to feed a crisp stem	[ "S2", "S3", "S5", "S9", "S10" ]	[ "S2-8", "S3-1", "S5-2", "S9-7", "S10-6" ]	[ "Nature", "Social Commentaries", "Religion", "Activities", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Nature/Plants & Fungi", "Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life", "Religion/Christianity", "Activities/Travels & Journeys" ]
a7287fd60a265a5c	A Dancer’s Life	Donald Justice	The lights in the theater fail. The long racks Of costumes abandoned by the other dancers Trouble Celeste. The conductor asks If she is sad because autumn is coming on, But when autumn comes she is merely pregnant and bored. On her way back from the holidays, a man Who appears to have no face rattles the door To...	[ "S6", "S7", "S9", "S10" ]	[ "S9-4", "S10-10" ]	[ "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Activities", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Theater & Dance", "Activities/Jobs & Working" ]
c144c40f52128731	my dream about the second coming	Lucille Clifton	mary is an old woman without shoes. she doesn’t believe it. not when her belly starts to bubble and leave the print of a finger where no man touches. not when the snow in her hair melts away. not when the stranger she used to wait for appears dressed in lights at her kitchen table. she is an old woman and doe...	[ "S5" ]	[ "S5-2", "S5-3" ]	[ "Religion" ]	[ "Religion/Christianity", "Religion/Faith & Doubt" ]
5379b3309654bc43	There was an Old Person of Nice	Edward Lear	There was an old person of Nice,Whose associates were usually Geese.They walked out together, in all sorts of weather.That affable person of Nice!	[ "S6", "S8", "S9", "S10" ]	[ "S6-1", "S8-8", "S9-5" ]	[ "Living", "Relationships", "Activities", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Living/Aging", "Relationships/Pets & Domestic Animals", "Activities/Sports & Outdoor Activities" ]
11bbfc08e31e5941	The Only Mexican	David Tomas Martinez	The only Mexican that ever was Mexican, fought in the revolution and drank nightly, and like all machos, crawled into work crudo, letting his breath twirl, then clap and sing before sandpaper juiced the metal. The only Mexican to never sit in a Catholic pew was born on Halloween, and ate his lunch wrapped in foil a...	[ "S8" ]	[ "S8-3" ]	[ "Relationships" ]	[ "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]
586bbeb2a2938d97	Exuberance	Dolores Hayden	Exuberance sips bootleg gin from a garter flaskwith a ruby monogram “E.”She wears a red dress one size too small,eyes wide, she flirts with everyone, daresLincoln Beachey to fly until he runs out of gas,rides a dead engine all the way down.She watches Ormer Locklear climbout of the cockpit two hundred feet up,tap dance...	[ "S3", "S4", "S9" ]	[ "S3-2", "S4-1", "S9-5", "S9-7" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Activities" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/Class & Labor", "History & Politics/Money & Economics", "Activities/Sports & Outdoor Activities", "Activities/Travels & Journeys" ]
f51dbdd92b4c13de	Cold Sore Lip Red Coat	Hoa Nguyen	What if I ate too much food there being Not enough money immigranty And save all the ketchup packets George Carlin record on the record player saying how many ways you can curse and they are all funny (small brown bird with a black neck and a beak full of fluff for a...	[ "S3", "S4", "S6", "S8", "S9", "S10" ]	[ "S4-1", "S6-8", "S8-5", "S9-1" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Living", "Relationships", "Activities", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "History & Politics/Money & Economics", "Living/Youth", "Relationships/Home Life", "Activities/Eating & Drinking" ]
9ac6749493724afc	Of the Last Verses in the Book	Edmund Waller	When we for age could neither read nor write, The subject made us able to indite. The soul, with nobler resolutions deckt, The body stooping, does herself erect: No mortal parts are requisite to raise Her, that unbodied can her Maker praise. The seas are quiet, when the winds give o’er, So calm are we, when passions ar...	[ "S6", "S7", "S10" ]	[ "S6-1", "S10-5", "S10-8" ]	[ "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy", "Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books", "Living/Aging" ]
844ac40498ddbf79	Bears at Raspberry Time	Hayden Carruth	Fear. Three bears are not fear, mother and cubs come berrying in our neighborhood like any other family. I want to see them, or any distraction. Flashlight poking across the brook into briary darkness, but they have gone, noisily. I go to bed. Fear. Unwritten books already titled. Some idiot will shoot the...	[ "S6", "S8" ]	[ "S6-1", "S8-8" ]	[ "Living", "Relationships" ]	[ "Living/Aging", "Relationships/Pets & Domestic Animals" ]
1640f045946106a1	And I in My Bed Again	Hilda Morley	Last night tossed in my bed the sound of the rain turned me around, a leaf in a dried gully from side to side, the sound of the rain took me apart, opened to what is it? breath caught in ...	[ "S2", "S6" ]	[]	[ "Nature", "Living" ]	[]
de4fdf1655589193	A Baroque Wall-Fountain in the Villa Sciarra	Richard Wilbur	for Dore and Adja Under the bronze crown Too big for the head of the stone cherub whose feet A serpent has begun to eat, Sweet water brims a cockle and braids down Past spattered mosses, breaks On the tipped edge of a second shell, and fills The massive third below. It spills In threads ...	[ "S10" ]	[ "S10-1", "S10-4" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Architecture & Design", "Arts & Sciences/Painting & Sculpture" ]
2b5e8f1fb6cacfd1	Question	May Swenson	Body my house my horse my hound what will I do when you are fallen Where will I sleep How will I ride What will I hunt Where can I go without my mount all eager and quick How will I know in thicket ahead is danger or treasure when Body my good bright dog is dead How will it be to lie in the sky without...	[ "S2", "S6" ]	[ "S6-4" ]	[ "Nature", "Living" ]	[ "Living/Death & Dying" ]
325aa36c8679ed7f	Afterwards	Margaret Postgate Cole	Oh, my beloved, shall you and I Ever be young again, be young again?	[ "S3", "S6" ]	[ "S3-11", "S6-4", "S6-5" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Living" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Living/Death & Dying", "Living/Mourning" ]
257e94c98f7b0fb5	In Memory of My Heavy Metal Years	Jeff Derksen	There goes the aluminum, the antimony, the arsenic the barium, the cadmium, the cesium, the gadolinium the lead the mercury the nickel, the thalium, and the tin. There goes that job spraying lawns with chemicals, driving the Merc three-quarter ton with a tank on the back and no brakes through West Vancouve...	[ "S6" ]	[ "S6-3" ]	[ "Living" ]	[ "Living/Coming of Age" ]
2fe20aa8b7ebc6ab	Cadmus and Harmonia	Matthew Arnold	Far, far from here, The Adriatic breaks in a warm bay Among the green Illyrian hills; and there The sunshine in the happy glens is fair, And by the sea, and in the brakes. The grass is cool, the sea-side air Buoyant and fresh, the mountain flowers More virginal and sweet than ours. And there, they say, two bright and a...	[ "S2", "S6", "S8", "S11" ]	[ "S2-6", "S2-7", "S2-8", "S6-1", "S8-3", "S8-7", "S11-3", "S11-4" ]	[ "Nature", "Living", "Relationships", "Mythology & Folklore" ]	[ "Mythology & Folklore/Greek & Roman Mythology", "Mythology & Folklore/Heroes & Patriotism", "Nature/Bodies of Water", "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals", "Nature/Plants & Fungi", "Living/Aging", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors", "Relationships/Marriage & Companionship" ]
838549923b4aae17	[It’s no use / Mother dear...]	Sappho	It’s no use Mother dear, I can’t finish my weaving You may blame Aphrodite soft as she is she has almost killed me with love for that boy	[ "S1", "S9", "S11" ]	[ "S1-1", "S1-4", "S9-3", "S11-3" ]	[ "Love", "Activities", "Mythology & Folklore" ]	[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love", "Love/Infatuation & Crushes", "Mythology & Folklore/Greek & Roman Mythology", "Activities/Indoor Activities" ]
e552c2012c6a0a7f	This	A. R. Ammons	time will wash away so clean not a cry will be left in it	[ "S6", "S7" ]	[]	[ "Living", "Time & Brevity" ]	[]
04ae9a1d9522197e	A one ended boomerang	Samuel Wagan Watson	For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return. — Leonardo da Vinci An hourglass constricted, the whore inside of me who is watching the clock, monitoring the time, this wasted time to get off, get going, lunar cycle g...	[ "S1", "S6", "S7" ]	[ "S1-1" ]	[ "Love", "Living", "Time & Brevity" ]	[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love" ]
17688cf20e53cf68	I know that He exists. (365)	Emily Dickinson	I know that He exists. Somewhere – in silence – He has hid his rare life From our gross eyes. ’Tis an instant’s play – ’Tis a fond Ambush – Just to make Bliss Earn her own surprise! But – should the play Prove piercing earnest – Should the glee – glaze – In Death’s – stiff – stare – Would not the fun Look ...	[ "S5", "S6" ]	[ "S5-3", "S5-4", "S6-4" ]	[ "Religion", "Living" ]	[ "Religion/Faith & Doubt", "Religion/God & the Divine", "Living/Death & Dying" ]
1650640ca4891c04	Nighttime	Yusef Komunyakaa	Did a big brain raise us into mountains to range over the valley, to see the approach before whoever it was knew they would walk a path between dusk & dawn half-awake? An eye squinted, & sex as idea made the lids dance. Now...	[ "S6" ]	[]	[ "Living" ]	[]
8b538a5068fe0b22	Counsel to Unreason	Léonie Adams	These lovers’ inklings which our loves enmesh, Lost to the cunning and dimensional eye, Though tenemented in the selves we see, Not more perforce than azure to the sky, Were necromancy-juggled to the flesh, And startled from no daylight you or me. For trance and silvemess those moons commend, Which blanch the wa...	[ "S1", "S8" ]	[ "S1-6" ]	[ "Love", "Relationships" ]	[ "Love/Realistic & Complicated" ]

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Youth and Art

Robert Browning

It once might have been, once only: We lodged in a street together, You, a sparrow on the housetop lonely, I, a lone she-bird of his feather. Your trade was with sticks and clay, You thumbed, thrust, patted and polished, Then laughed "They will see some day Smith made, and Gibson demolished." My bus...

[ "S1", "S3", "S6", "S8", "S10" ]

[ "S1-5", "S1-6", "S1-9", "S3-4", "S10-3", "S10-4", "S10-5" ]

[ "Love", "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Love/New Love", "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Love/Unrequited Love", "Arts & Sciences/Music", "Arts & Sciences/Painting & Sculpture", "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality" ]

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Antiquity Calling

Elaine Equi

Looking at Mapplethorpe’s Polaroids, I learn that he liked shoes and armpit crotch-shots of men and women, both shaved and un’—all giving a good whiff to the camera. But best of all are his pictures of ordinary phones which convey a palpable sense of expectancy as if at any moment, one of the fabulous, laconic nude men...

[ "S10" ]

[ "S10-7" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Photography & Film" ]

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Firstlings

Louise Imogen Guiney

(January 7, 1915) In the dregs of the year, all steam and rain, In the timid time of the heart again, When indecision is bold and thorough, And action dreams of a dawn in vain, I saw high up over Bloxham vale The ploughshare tilt to the next long trail, And, spying a larder in every furrow, The wagtails crowd l...

[ "S2", "S6" ]

[ "S2-1", "S2-4", "S6-5" ]

[ "Nature", "Living" ]

[ "Nature/Spring", "Nature/Winter", "Living/Mourning" ]

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Coping Prana

Will Alexander

It is the way I breathe through chronic terrifying ferns through a black ungracious stoma it is this uranium rejoinder this impact pointing backwards & when witnessed causes observers to panic to blur & forget & to flee they can’t see my approach my wayward dorsal looming my lettering in black drizzle it i...

[ "S6" ]

[]

[ "Living" ]

[]

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Parade

Nate Klug

As with this Jet Ski family braiding the lakewith bigger and bigger shocksuntil the one car-sized onecuts his engineand, following him, for an instant they all coastthrough silences of self-made rain—how much is required now to carve, out of the generallivable ...

[ "S3" ]

[]

[ "Social Commentaries" ]

[]

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The Little Boy Lost

William Blake

Father, father, where are you going O do not walk so fast.Speak father, speak to your little boy Or else I shall be lost,The night was dark no father was there The child was wet with dew.The mire was deep, & the child did weep And away the vapour flew.

[ "S6", "S8", "S10" ]

[ "S6-7", "S8-3", "S10-5" ]

[ "Living", "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy", "Living/Parenthood", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]

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The Door

Debra Nystrom

She never said I’m going to die. I was with her nearly every minute that week, reading, sleeping on the cot beside the high-tech bed that kept shifting her slight weight while the window shadowed over, then grew brighter, and she drifted or got changed or was given another shot. None of us said it, though finally ...

[ "S6", "S8" ]

[ "S6-4", "S6-5", "S6-8", "S8-3" ]

[ "Living", "Relationships" ]

[ "Living/Death & Dying", "Living/Mourning", "Living/Youth", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]

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Equation

Caroline Caddy

Someone said that working through difficult equations was like walking in a pure and beautiful landscape – the numbers glowing like works of art. And in the same crowded room a woman I though...

[ "S8", "S10" ]

[ "S10-9" ]

[ "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Sciences" ]

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Unpack Poetic

Trevino L. Brings Plenty

Can’t hear things well if they are things whispering. Nothing gentle to hand on back of hand. A horsehair bow across gut string. A heart is a physical object singing in the chest. Chamber doors oxygenating blood rushing through. Salmon through river climb. When one writes of light as a painted smile across face. Yo...

[ "S2", "S5", "S10" ]

[ "S2-7", "S5-8", "S10-2", "S10-6" ]

[ "Nature", "Religion", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics", "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals", "Religion/The Spiritual" ]

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That autumn was abundant

Marjorie Agosín

That autumn was abundant In Istanbul the ancient and platinum Women with their faces covered and discovered My grandfather arrived on foot to this Ottoman city From the desolate Sebastopol and from other burned villages, From the bloody snow. He spoke about its minarets Certainly he loved the fields of leaves. A...

[ "S5", "S9" ]

[ "S5-6", "S9-7" ]

[ "Religion", "Activities" ]

[ "Religion/Judaism", "Activities/Travels & Journeys" ]

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Great Ships

Adam Zagajewski

This is a poem about the great ships that wandered the oceans And groaned sometimes in deep voices, grumbling about fog and submerged peaks, But usually they sliced the pages of tropical seas in silence, Divided by height, category, and class, just like our commu...

[ "S6", "S7", "S8" ]

[]

[ "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Relationships" ]

[]

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Sonnet for Angelo Monterosa

Jack Agüeros

Monterosa, your body is dead on Avenue A. Angelo, They found you eyes open staring at the beer Soaked floorboards. Did you want that? Did You mind them filling your back with buckshot? Angelo, I am angry with them all, and you Monterosa Killed and killers, killing and dealing dope. No good You were, no good they ...

[ "S3", "S6" ]

[ "S3-6", "S6-4", "S6-5" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "Living" ]

[ "Social Commentaries/Incarceration & Justice", "Living/Death & Dying", "Living/Mourning" ]

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Questions and Answers

Frank Lima

My angel, don't think the great stillness is wooing us: We just haven't slept the same among the letters that have a habit of Recognizing us. Those beautiful letters live in Paris all year around. For even the best of men go astray with words within the gentle depths When they are to express something unutterable. ...

[ "S10" ]

[ "S10-6", "S10-8" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books" ]

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Bushwick: Latex Flat

D. Nurkse

2001 Sadness of just-painted rooms. We clean our tools meticulously, as if currying horses: the little nervous sash brush to be combed and primped, the fat old four-inchers that lap up space to be wrapped and groomed, the ceiling rollers, the little pencils that cover nailheads with oak gloss, ...

[ "S3" ]

[ "S3-1" ]

[ "Social Commentaries" ]

[ "Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life" ]

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Devotion: The Garment District

Bruce Smith

In bed as the machinery of morning begins, indistinguishable the subterranean turbines of the A train from the jet engine as it gins the clouds, rips and reseams the length of dungaree on its way to Pittsburgh (with the terrible and subtle cargoes, with ashes and a cat under the seat) from the pulleys of the service el...

[ "S3", "S8" ]

[ "S3-4" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "Relationships" ]

[ "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality" ]

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The Visitor

Idra Novey

Does no dishes, dribbles sauce across the floor. Is more dragon than spaniel, more flammable than fluid. Is the loosening in the knit of me, the mixed-fruit marmalade in the kitchen of me. Wakes my disco and inner hibiscus, the Hector in the ever-mess of my Troy. All wet mattress to my analysis,he’s stayed the loudest ...

[ "S6", "S8" ]

[ "S6-7", "S8-3" ]

[ "Living", "Relationships" ]

[ "Living/Parenthood", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]

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Visiting a dead man on a summer day

Marge Piercy

In flat America, in Chicago, Graceland cemetery on the German North Side. Forty feet of Corinthian candle celebrate Pullman embedded lonely raisin in a cake of concrete. The Potter Palmers float in an island parthenon. Barons of hogfat, railroads and wheat are postmarked with angels and lambs. But the Getty to...

[ "S3", "S4", "S6", "S10" ]

[ "S3-1", "S3-2", "S10-1", "S10-6" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Living", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Architecture & Design", "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life", "Social Commentaries/Class & Labor" ]

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The Measure

Robert Creeley

I cannot move backward or forward. I am caught in the time as measure. What we think of we think of— of no other reason we think than just to think— each for himself.

[ "S6", "S7", "S10" ]

[ "S10-6" ]

[ "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets" ]

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from The Book of the Dead: Absalom

Muriel Rukeyser

I first discovered what was killing these men. I had three sons who worked with their father in the tunnel: Cecil, aged 23, Owen, aged 21, Shirley, aged 17. They used to work in a coal mine, not steady work for the mines were not going much of the time. A power Co. foreman learned that we made home brew, he forme...

[ "S3", "S4", "S6" ]

[ "S3-2", "S6-6" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Living" ]

[ "Social Commentaries/Class & Labor", "Living/Health & Illness" ]

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Sower

Bei Dao

a sower walks into the great hall it's war out there, he says and you awash in emptiness you've sworn off your duty to sound the alarm I've come in the name of fields it's war out there I walk out from that great hall all four directions a boundless harvest scene I start planning for war rehearsing death and ...

[ "S3", "S4" ]

[ "S3-11", "S4-1" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics" ]

[ "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "History & Politics/Money & Economics" ]

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Intensive Care Unit

Adrien Stoutenburg

In one corner of the ward somebody was eating a raw chicken. The cheerful nurses did not see. With the tube down my throat I could not tell them. Nor did they notice the horror show on the TV set suspended over my windowless bed. The screen was dead but a torn face was clear. I did not see my own in a mirr...

[ "S6" ]

[ "S6-6" ]

[ "Living" ]

[ "Living/Health & Illness" ]

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[I have become wealthy in a foreign land]

Johannes Göransson

I have become wealthy in a foreign land gravity makes me sick in my slippery throat the devil makes me lousy with summer like I'm buried in the sun in its sounds with my mother there's something about having a heart beat like traffic like wind I did it afterall: I had a sweaty body in Berlin it was all right ...

[ "S2", "S5", "S6", "S9" ]

[ "S2-2", "S5-8", "S9-7" ]

[ "Nature", "Religion", "Living", "Activities" ]

[ "Nature/Summer", "Religion/The Spiritual", "Activities/Travels & Journeys" ]

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Expression

George Arnold

A hackneyed burden, to a hackneyed air,— “I love thee only,—thou art wondrous fair!” Alas! the poets have worn the theme threadbare! Can I not find some words less tame and old, To paint thy form and face of perfect mould, Thy dewy lips, thy hair of brown and gold? Can I not sing in somewhat fresher strain The love I l...

[ "S10" ]

[ "S10-6" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets" ]

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It would be neat if with the New Year

Jimmy Santiago Baca

for Miguel It would be neat if with the New Year I could leave my loneliness behind with the old year. My leathery loneliness an old pair of work boots my dog vigorously head-shakes back and forth in its jaws, chews on for hours every day in my front yard— rain, sun, snow, or wind in bare feet, pondering my poem...

[ "S6", "S10" ]

[ "S10-6" ]

[ "Living", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets" ]

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Parthenogenesis

Brenda Shaughnessy

It’s easy to make more of myself by eating, and sometimes easy’s the thing. To be double-me, half the trouble but not lonely. Making cakes to celebrate any old day. Eating too much: the emperor of being used. Nature, mature and feminized, naturalizes me naturally by creating the feeling of being a natural woman...

[ "S3", "S6", "S9" ]

[ "S9-1" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Activities" ]

[ "Activities/Eating & Drinking" ]

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long way home

Quraysh Ali Lansana

john lord knows you still vexed reckon me too if my wife stole off durin sleepy night god an de devil only souls up at dat hour even if i knows she bout to be sold south even if i knows she was leevin an you did you so troubled when i talk about leevin call me a fool call me cudjo five years wid you...

[ "S3", "S4" ]

[ "S3-8" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics" ]

[ "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity" ]

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The Yellowhammer's Nest

John Clare

Just by the wooden brig a bird flew up, Frit by the cowboy as he scrambled down To reach the misty dewberry—let us stoop And seek its nest—the brook we need not dread, 'Tis scarcely deep enough a bee to drown, So it sings harmless o'er its pebbly bed —Ay here it is, stuck close beside the bank Beneath the bunch ...

[ "S2", "S9" ]

[ "S2-5", "S2-7", "S9-5" ]

[ "Nature", "Activities" ]

[ "Nature/Animals", "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals", "Activities/Sports & Outdoor Activities" ]

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Morning Is Morning

Ricardo Alberto Maldonado

I have some explaining to do — 5 o’clock meant I would speculate about artichokes (Greek) and the unfarmed mackerel. Anyway, the men would present us with a bed of carrot and potatoes + 1 cup of broth. Our husbandry in sharp mustard suit, laden with trial pieces for the fondue. I would prefer not to. I had such ...

[ "S5", "S9" ]

[ "S5-2", "S9-1", "S9-4" ]

[ "Religion", "Activities" ]

[ "Religion/Christianity", "Activities/Eating & Drinking", "Activities/Jobs & Working" ]

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All the Dead Soldiers

Thomas McGrath

In the chill rains of the early winter I hear something— A puling anger, a cold wind stiffened by flying bone— Out of the north ... and remember, then, what’s up there: That ghost-bank: home: Amchitka: boot hill .... They must be very tired, those ghosts; no flesh sustains them And the bones rust in the rain. Re...

[ "S3", "S6" ]

[ "S3-11", "S6-4" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "Living" ]

[ "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Living/Death & Dying" ]

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Pomegranate

D. H. Lawrence

You tell me I am wrong. Who are you, who is anybody to tell me I am wrong? I am not wrong. In Syracuse, rock left bare by the viciousness of Greek women, No doubt you have forgotten the pomegranate trees in flower, Oh so red, and such a lot of them. Whereas at Venice, Abhorrent, green, slippery city Whose Doges...

[ "S1", "S2" ]

[ "S1-3" ]

[ "Love", "Nature" ]

[ "Love/Heartache & Loss" ]

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The Matrix

Amy Lowell

Goaded and harassed in the factory That tears our life up into bits of days Ticked off upon a clock which never stays,Shredding our portion of Eternity,We break away at last, and steal the key Which hides a world empty of hours; ways Of space unroll, and Heaven overlaysThe leafy, sun-lit earth of Fantasy. Bey...

[ "S3", "S6", "S7", "S9" ]

[ "S9-4" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Activities" ]

[ "Activities/Jobs & Working" ]

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The Last Hour

Christian Wiman

Lean and sane in the last hour of a long fast or fiercer discipline he could touch dust into a sudden surge of limbs and speak leaves in the night air above him, inhabit quiet so wholly he heard roots inch into the unfeeling earth, rings increasing inside of that tree. Without moving, hardly breathing, ...

[ "S1", "S2", "S5", "S6" ]

[ "S1-1", "S2-7", "S5-8" ]

[ "Love", "Nature", "Religion", "Living" ]

[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love", "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals", "Religion/The Spiritual" ]

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In a Word, a World

C. D. Wright

I love them all. I love that a handful, a mouthful, gets you by, a satchelful can land you a job, a well-chosen clutch of them could get you laid, and that a solitary word can initiate a stampede, and therefore can be formally outlawed—even by a liberal court bent on defending a constitution guaranteeing unimpeded ...

[ "S10" ]

[ "S10-2" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics" ]

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Government Spending

Patricia Lockwood

The government spent a Patricia on me,“a huge waste,” it lamented, “when we couldhave been spending it on another Nixon,”the government spent all its beautyon the great light leap on the deer-crossing sign — there was hardly anybeauty left for anything else in America,and looking around them the governmentsaid, ...

[ "S3", "S4" ]

[ "S3-2", "S4-1" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics" ]

[ "Social Commentaries/Class & Labor", "History & Politics/Money & Economics" ]

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Useless! Useless!

Jack Kerouac

Useless! Useless! —heavy rain driving into the sea

[ "S2", "S6" ]

[ "S2-6", "S2-10" ]

[ "Nature", "Living" ]

[ "Nature/Weather", "Nature/Bodies of Water" ]

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When I Die

Donald Revell

We shelter an angel whom we never cease to offend. We ought to be the guardians of that angel. —Jean Cocteau A scherzo of thumbnail butterflies, white ones, Covers the hillside. God is more Adorable than music. Nevertheless, On a given morning, as the wind drops, Music pries Heaven apart from itself, Like flower...

[ "S2", "S5", "S6", "S10" ]

[ "S2-5", "S2-7", "S2-8", "S5-4", "S6-4", "S10-3" ]

[ "Nature", "Religion", "Living", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Music", "Nature/Animals", "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals", "Nature/Plants & Fungi", "Religion/God & the Divine", "Living/Death & Dying" ]

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The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket

Robert Lowell

[FOR WARREN WINSLOW, DEAD AT SEA] Let man have dominion over the fishes of the sea and the fowls of the air and the beasts of the whole earth, and every creeping creature that moveth upon the earth. I A brackish reach of shoal off Madaket— The sea was still breaking violently and night Had steamed into our North A...

[ "S2", "S3", "S4", "S5", "S6", "S8" ]

[ "S2-6", "S5-2", "S5-4", "S6-4", "S6-5", "S8-3" ]

[ "Nature", "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Religion", "Living", "Relationships" ]

[ "Nature/Bodies of Water", "Religion/Christianity", "Religion/God & the Divine", "Living/Death & Dying", "Living/Mourning", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]

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Innocence

Thomas Traherne

But that which most I wonder at, which most I did esteem my bliss, which most I boast, And ever shall enjoy, is that within I felt no stain, nor spot of sin. No darkness then did overshade, But all within was pure and bright, No guilt did crush, nor fear invade But all my soul was full of light. A joyful se...

[ "S5", "S6", "S7" ]

[ "S5-3", "S5-4" ]

[ "Religion", "Living", "Time & Brevity" ]

[ "Religion/Faith & Doubt", "Religion/God & the Divine" ]

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“If you’re fond of road-blocks, this one can’t be beat:”

Richard Wilbur

If you’re fond of road-blocks, this one can’t be beat: A big tree in the middle of the street.

[ "S10" ]

[ "S10-2" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics" ]

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Eighth Sky

Michael Palmer

It is scribbled along the body Impossible even to say a word An alphabet has been stored beneath the ground It is a practice alphabet, work of the hand Yet not, not marks inside a box For example, this is a mirror box Spinoza designed such a box and called it the Eighth Sky called it the Nevercadabra House as...

[ "S10" ]

[ "S10-2", "S10-6" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics", "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets" ]

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The Cap and Bells

William Butler Yeats

The jester walked in the garden: The garden had fallen still; He bade his soul rise upward And stand on her window-sill. It rose in a straight blue garment, When owls began to call: It had grown wise-tongued by thinking Of a quiet and light footfall; But the young queen would not listen; She rose in her pale n...

[ "S1", "S8" ]

[ "S1-3", "S1-4", "S1-9" ]

[ "Love", "Relationships" ]

[ "Love/Heartache & Loss", "Love/Infatuation & Crushes", "Love/Unrequited Love" ]

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Morituri Salutamus: Poem for the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Class of 1825 in Bowdoin College

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Tempora labuntur, tacitisque senescimus annis, Et fugiunt freno non remorante dies. Ovid, Fastorum, Lib. vi. "O Cæsar, we who are about to die Salute you!" was the gladiators' cry In the arena, standing face to face With death and with the Roman populace. O ye familiar scenes,—ye groves of pine, That once were mine a...

[ "S6", "S9" ]

[ "S6-1", "S9-6" ]

[ "Living", "Activities" ]

[ "Living/Aging", "Activities/Study & Knowledge" ]

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Crossing the Bar

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Sunset and evening star, And one clear call for me! And may there be no moaning of the bar, When I put out to sea, But such a tide as moving seems asleep, Too full for sound and foam, When that which drew from out the boundless deep Turns again home. Twilight and evening bell, ...

[ "S2", "S6" ]

[ "S2-6", "S6-1" ]

[ "Nature", "Living" ]

[ "Nature/Bodies of Water", "Living/Aging" ]

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Transactions

Rae Armantrout

1What do we like bestabout ourselves?Our inabilityto be content.We might see thisrestlessnessas a chipnot yet cashed in. 2You appear because you’re lonelymaybe. You would not say that.You come to tell meyou’re saving moneyby cooking for yourself.You’ve figured outwhat units you’ll needto exchange for uni...

[ "S6" ]

[]

[ "Living" ]

[]

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More Sky Please

John Hennessy

More sky please push open the apartment shutters crowbar the paint factory’s broken window frames rip tar paper from the caving roof push it back crack it open blast an airshaft through the neighboring buildings snap it back expose the bird-ridden drafts the wren’s been busy here mornings year-round churr and chip...

[ "S2", "S3" ]

[ "S2-5", "S2-6", "S2-9", "S3-1" ]

[ "Nature", "Social Commentaries" ]

[ "Nature/Animals", "Nature/Bodies of Water", "Nature/Stars, Moons, & Space", "Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life" ]

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Women Like Me

Wendy Rose

making promises they can’t keep. For you, Grandmother, I said I would pull each invading burr and thistle from your skin, cut out the dizzy brittle eucalypt, take from the ground the dark oily poison– all to restore you happy and proud, the whole of you transformed and bursting into tomorrow. But whe...

[ "S2", "S3", "S4", "S8" ]

[ "S3-8", "S8-3" ]

[ "Nature", "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Relationships" ]

[ "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]

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Hymn to Life

Timothy Donnelly

There were no American lions. No pygmy mammoths leftor giant short-faced bears, which towered over ten feet highwhen rearing up on their haunches. There were no stout-legged llamas, stilt-legged llamas, no single Yukon horse. The lastof the teratorns, its wingspan broader than the room inwhich I’m writing now, had long...

[ "S2", "S6", "S7", "S8" ]

[ "S2-5", "S2-7", "S2-10", "S6-7", "S8-5" ]

[ "Nature", "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Relationships" ]

[ "Nature/Weather", "Nature/Animals", "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals", "Living/Parenthood", "Relationships/Home Life" ]

51e5984fac118da5

No King, No King of Kings

Raza Ali Hasan

has ever lit up our hearts like this. No king. See Bhutto in Karachi, 1972. His path strewn with rose petals, sprinkled with attar, leads him, not to the sea with its crashing surf and screaming gulls but into the alleys and passageways of a slum. Ferdowsi in Shahnamah tags it for the interim as “the place of wor...

[ "S3", "S4", "S10", "S11" ]

[ "S10-7", "S11-4" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Arts & Sciences", "Mythology & Folklore" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Photography & Film", "Mythology & Folklore/Heroes & Patriotism" ]

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The Journey

David Ignatow

I am looking for a past I can rely on in order to look to death with equanimity. What was given me: my mother’s largeness to protect me, my father’s regularity in coming home from work at night, his opening the door silently and smiling, pleased to be back and the lights on in all the rooms through which ...

[ "S6", "S8", "S10" ]

[ "S8-5", "S10-5" ]

[ "Living", "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy", "Relationships/Home Life" ]

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Blackamoors, Villa La Pietra

Yusef Komunyakaa

I was here before the blackamoors were photographed & cataloged, when they first ran up to me & then receded into their poses, descendants of archival Hamites destined to serve their brothers & sisters in a red baroque room, each silent as an iron doorstop. Some peered ...

[ "S3", "S10" ]

[ "S3-8", "S10-4" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Painting & Sculpture", "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity" ]

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The Ode on a Grecian Urn

Patricia Lockwood

Is worth any number of old ladies. A grandmother hung from a cliff like a tense moment in an action movie and the Ode, speaking itself with its hand on one heart, steadfastly refused to save her, in fact it did that thing where it ground each finger out with a motorcycle boot and then ate its cigarette for emph...

[ "S6", "S10" ]

[ "S6-1", "S10-6" ]

[ "Living", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Living/Aging" ]

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Ah! Sun-flower

William Blake

Ah Sun-flower! weary of time, Who countest the steps of the Sun: Seeking after that sweet golden clime Where the travellers journey is done. Where the Youth pined away with desire, And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow: Arise from their graves and aspire, Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.

[ "S2", "S5" ]

[ "S2-8", "S5-2" ]

[ "Nature", "Religion" ]

[ "Nature/Plants & Fungi", "Religion/Christianity" ]

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Incidents of Travel in Poetry

Frank Lima

Happy Birthday Kenneth Koch/Feb 27 We went to all those places where they restore sadness and joyand call it art. We were piloted by Auden who becameUnbearably acrimonious when we dropped off Senghor into thesteamy skies of his beloved West Africa. The termites and antswere waiting for him to unearth the sun in Elissa...

[ "S6", "S9", "S10" ]

[ "S9-7", "S10-6" ]

[ "Living", "Activities", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Activities/Travels & Journeys" ]

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To a Poor Old Woman

William Carlos Williams

Highlight Actions Enable or disable annotations munching a plum on the street a paper bag of them in her hand They taste good to her They taste good to her. They taste good to her You can see it by the way she gives herself to the one half sucked out in her handComfortedComforted When originally published i...

[ "S3", "S4", "S9" ]

[ "S4-1", "S9-1" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Activities" ]

[ "History & Politics/Money & Economics", "Activities/Eating & Drinking" ]

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Contentment

Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

“Man wants but little here below” Little I ask; my wants are few; I only wish a hut of stone, (A very plain brown stone will do,) That I may call my own;— And close at hand is such a one, In yonder street that fronts the sun. Plain food is quite enough for me; Three courses are as good as ten;— If Nature can sub...

[ "S3", "S4", "S10" ]

[ "S3-2", "S4-1" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Social Commentaries/Class & Labor", "History & Politics/Money & Economics" ]

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A Little Closer to the Edge

Ocean Vuong

Young enough to believe nothing will change them, they step, hand-in-hand, into the bomb crater. The night full of black teeth. His faux Rolex, weeks from shattering against her cheek, now dims like a miniature moon behind her hair. In this version the snake is headless — stilled like a cord unraveled from the ...

[ "S1", "S3", "S6", "S7", "S8" ]

[ "S1-1", "S1-6", "S3-4", "S6-7", "S8-3", "S8-5", "S8-6" ]

[ "Love", "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Relationships" ]

[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love", "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality", "Living/Parenthood", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors", "Relationships/Home Life", "Relationships/LGBTQ+" ]

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The Goose Fish

Howard Nemerov

On the long shore, lit by the moon To show them properly alone, Two lovers suddenly embraced So that their shadows were as one. The ordinary night was graced For them by the swift tide of blood That silently they took at flood, And for a little time they prized Themselves emparadised. Then, as if shaken by ...

[ "S1", "S2", "S8" ]

[ "S1-1", "S1-6", "S2-6", "S8-8" ]

[ "Love", "Nature", "Relationships" ]

[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love", "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Nature/Bodies of Water", "Relationships/Pets & Domestic Animals" ]

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Meeting at Night

Robert Browning

I The grey sea and the long black land; And the yellow half-moon large and low; And the startled little waves that leap In fiery ringlets from their sleep, As I gain the cove with pushing prow, And quench its speed i' the slushy sand. II Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach; Three fields to cross till a farm appears; ...

[ "S1", "S2", "S8" ]

[ "S1-4", "S1-7", "S2-6", "S2-7" ]

[ "Love", "Nature", "Relationships" ]

[ "Love/Infatuation & Crushes", "Love/Romantic Love", "Nature/Bodies of Water", "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals" ]

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The Lie

Don Paterson

As was my custom, I’d risen a full hour before the house had woken to make surethat everything was in order with The Lie,his drip changed and his shackles all secure.I was by then so practiced in this choreI’d counted maybe thirteen years or moresince last I’d felt the urge to meet his eye.Such, I liked to think, was o...

[ "S6" ]

[]

[ "Living" ]

[]

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At St. Malachy’s Church

Paula Cunningham

i.m. Marty Crickard I came to light a candle for a friendbut Jesus had a really bad mustacheand those were only pinpricks in his palmsso I passed on.I came to light a candle for a friendbut Joseph’s hands were manicuredand soft as Fairy Liquid handsI could not light one there so I passed on.In the corner was a fellow ...

[ "S5", "S6", "S8" ]

[ "S5-2", "S5-8", "S6-4", "S6-5", "S8-4" ]

[ "Religion", "Living", "Relationships" ]

[ "Religion/Christianity", "Religion/The Spiritual", "Living/Death & Dying", "Living/Mourning", "Relationships/Friendship" ]

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Heart Valve

Elizabeth Arnold

They told me there’d be painso when I felt it, sitting at my beat-up farm deskthat looks out glass doors onto the browning garden—plain sparrows bathing in the cube-shaped fountainso violently they drain it, the white-throats with their wobbly two-note song on the long way south still, and our dogs out like lights and ...

[ "S6" ]

[ "S6-6" ]

[ "Living" ]

[ "Living/Health & Illness" ]

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Safety

Rupert Brooke

Dear! of all happy in the hour, most blest He who has found our hid security, Assured in the dark tides of the world that rest, And heard our word, ‘Who is so safe as we?’ We have found safety with all things undying, The winds, and morning, tears of men and mirth, The deep night, and birds singing, a...

[ "S3", "S4", "S6", "S7" ]

[ "S3-11", "S6-4" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Living", "Time & Brevity" ]

[ "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Living/Death & Dying" ]

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The Old Codger’s Lament

Carl Rakosi

Who can say now, “When I was young, the country was very beautiful? Oaks and willows grew along the rivers and there were many herbs and flowering bushes. The forests were so dense the deer slipped through the cottonwoods and maples unseen.” Who would listen? Who will carry even the vicarious tone of that time? ...

[ "S6" ]

[ "S6-1" ]

[ "Living" ]

[ "Living/Aging" ]

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Burning in the Rain

Richard Blanco

Someday compassion would demand I set myself free of my desire to recreate my father, indulge in my mother’s losses, strangle lovers with words, forcing them to confess for me and take the blame. Today was that day: I tossed them, sheet by sheet on the patio and gathered them into a pyre. I wanted to let them go...

[ "S6", "S8", "S10" ]

[ "S8-3", "S10-6" ]

[ "Living", "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]

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The Intellectual

Karl Shapiro

What should the wars do with these jigging fools? The man behind the book may not be man, His own man or the book’s or yet the time’s, But still be whole, deciding what he can In praise of politics or German rimes; But the intellectual lights a cigarette And offers it lit to the lady, whose odd smile Is the mere...

[ "S3", "S8", "S10" ]

[ "S3-4", "S10-8" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality" ]

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Shore Line

Carl Rakosi

We speak of mankind. Why not wavekind? Barrel-chested military water rushes in a mass to break the shore earth into stonekind.Pphlooph pphlooph the waves grope indistinctly for the shore. As delicate as a butterfly along a cheek a boat with...

[ "S2" ]

[ "S2-6" ]

[ "Nature" ]

[ "Nature/Bodies of Water" ]

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Tom O’ Bedlam among the Sunflowers

Thomas James

To have gold in your back yard and not know it. . . I woke this morning before your dream had shredded And found a curious thing: flowers made of gold, Six-sided—more than that—broken on flagstones, Petals the color of a wedding band. You are sleeping. The morning comes up gold. Perhaps I made those flowers in my...

[ "S1", "S2", "S8" ]

[ "S1-3", "S2-8" ]

[ "Love", "Nature", "Relationships" ]

[ "Love/Heartache & Loss", "Nature/Plants & Fungi" ]

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The Lake Isle of Innisfree

William Butler Yeats

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade. And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where ...

[ "S2" ]

[ "S2-7" ]

[ "Nature" ]

[ "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals" ]

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Harvest Gathering

Phoebe Cary

The last days of the summer: bright and clear Shines the warm sun down on the quiet land, Where corn-fields, thick and heavy in the ear, Are slowly ripening for the laborer’s hand; Seed-time and harvest — since the bow was set, Not vainly has man hoped your coming yet! To the quick rush of sickles, joyously ...

[ "S2", "S3", "S9" ]

[ "S2-2", "S9-4" ]

[ "Nature", "Social Commentaries", "Activities" ]

[ "Nature/Summer", "Activities/Jobs & Working" ]

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Tutto Sciolto

James Joyce

A birdless heaven, sea-dusk and a star Sad in the west; And thou, poor heart, love’s image, fond and far, Rememberest: Her silent eyes and her soft foam-white brow And fragrant hair, Falling as in the silence falleth now Dusk from the air. Ah, why wilt thou remember these, or why, Poor heart, repine, If the sweet love ...

[ "S1", "S8" ]

[ "S1-4", "S1-9" ]

[ "Love", "Relationships" ]

[ "Love/Infatuation & Crushes", "Love/Unrequited Love" ]

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On What Planet

Kenneth Rexroth

Uniformly over the whole countryside The warm air flows imperceptibly seaward; The autumn haze drifts in deep bands Over the pale water; White egrets stand in the blue marshes; Tamalpais, Diablo, St. Helena Float in the air. Climbing on the cliffs of Hunter’s Hill We look out over fifty miles of sinuous Interp...

[ "S2", "S8", "S9" ]

[ "S2-7", "S8-4", "S9-5" ]

[ "Nature", "Relationships", "Activities" ]

[ "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals", "Relationships/Friendship", "Activities/Sports & Outdoor Activities" ]

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Natural History

Rae Armantrout

1 Discomfort marks the boundary. One early symptom was the boundary. The invention of hunger. I could use energy. To serve. Elaborate systems in the service of far-fetched demands. The great termite mounds serve as air-conditioners. Temperature within must never vary more than 2 degrees.2 Which came first ...

[ "S10" ]

[ "S10-2" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics" ]

a5550bfcc40511c7

Finding a Box of Family Letters

Dana Gioia

The dead say little in their letters they haven't said before. We find no secrets, and yet how different every sentence sounds heard across the years. My father breaks my heart simply by being so young and handsome. He's half my age, with jet-black hair. Look at him in his navy uniform grinning beside his dive...

[ "S6", "S7", "S8" ]

[ "S8-3" ]

[ "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Relationships" ]

[ "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]

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Song

John Fuller

You don’t listen to what I say. When I lean towards you in the car You simply smile and turn away. It’s been like this most of the day, sitting and sipping, bar after bar: You don’t listen to what I say. You squeeze a lemon from a tray, And if you guess how dear you are You simply smile and turn away. Beyond t...

[ "S8" ]

[]

[ "Relationships" ]

[]

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Going to Zero

Peter Balakian

1. A canvas with less turpentine, more hard edges, less bleeding, that was good for beauty, Frankenthaler in Art News in the dining car crammed with parkas and laptops micro-waved cellophane, plastic plates and canvas bags, and the valley under fog as the cows disappeared and when the green came back into view ...

[ "S3", "S4", "S6", "S7", "S10" ]

[ "S3-1", "S3-11", "S6-5", "S10-1", "S10-4" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Architecture & Design", "Arts & Sciences/Painting & Sculpture", "Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life", "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Living/Mourning" ]

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Bluegrass

Gabriel Gomez

I. sound knots pinned to a fabric-less body form of oak bone a barreled chest the presence of acoustic music over the instrument resting on your lap a limited vehicle but you knew that having learned tablature the guitar posed in sculpture clear its throat by reaching the oval gap flushed agains...

[ "S6", "S7", "S8", "S9", "S10" ]

[ "S8-3", "S9-1", "S10-3" ]

[ "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Relationships", "Activities", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Music", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors", "Activities/Eating & Drinking" ]

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What to Say Upon Being Asked to Be Friends

Julian Talamantez Brolaski

Why speak of hate, when I do bleed for love? Not hate, my love, but Love doth bite my tongue Till I taste stuff that makes my rhyming rough So flatter I my fever for the one For whom I inly mourn, though seem to shun. A rose is arrows is eros, so what If I confuse the shade that I’ve become With winedark substan...

[ "S1", "S8", "S10" ]

[ "S1-3", "S1-9", "S8-4", "S10-2" ]

[ "Love", "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Love/Heartache & Loss", "Love/Unrequited Love", "Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics", "Relationships/Friendship" ]

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Number Man

Carl Sandburg

(for the ghost of Johann Sebastian Bach) He was born to wonder about numbers. He balanced fives against tens and made them sleep together and love each other. He took sixes and sevens and set them wrangling and fighting over raw bones. He woke up twos and fours out of baby sleep and touched them back to sleep...

[ "S9", "S10" ]

[]

[ "Activities", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[]

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In Houston

Gail Mazur

I’d dislocated my life, so I went to the zoo. It was December but it wasn’t December. Pansies just planted were blooming in well-groomed beds. Lovers embraced under the sky’s Sunday blue. Children rode around and around on pastel trains. I read the labels stuck on every cage the way people at museums do, art bein...

[ "S3", "S8" ]

[ "S3-1", "S8-8" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "Relationships" ]

[ "Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life", "Relationships/Pets & Domestic Animals" ]

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“The Altar” by George Herbert

Connie Voisine

Tulips panted against the wall. So much need to feed a crisp stem

[ "S2", "S3", "S5", "S9", "S10" ]

[ "S2-8", "S3-1", "S5-2", "S9-7", "S10-6" ]

[ "Nature", "Social Commentaries", "Religion", "Activities", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Nature/Plants & Fungi", "Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life", "Religion/Christianity", "Activities/Travels & Journeys" ]

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A Dancer’s Life

Donald Justice

The lights in the theater fail. The long racks Of costumes abandoned by the other dancers Trouble Celeste. The conductor asks If she is sad because autumn is coming on, But when autumn comes she is merely pregnant and bored. On her way back from the holidays, a man Who appears to have no face rattles the door To...

[ "S6", "S7", "S9", "S10" ]

[ "S9-4", "S10-10" ]

[ "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Activities", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Theater & Dance", "Activities/Jobs & Working" ]

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my dream about the second coming

Lucille Clifton

mary is an old woman without shoes. she doesn’t believe it. not when her belly starts to bubble and leave the print of a finger where no man touches. not when the snow in her hair melts away. not when the stranger she used to wait for appears dressed in lights at her kitchen table. she is an old woman and doe...

[ "S5" ]

[ "S5-2", "S5-3" ]

[ "Religion" ]

[ "Religion/Christianity", "Religion/Faith & Doubt" ]

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There was an Old Person of Nice

Edward Lear

There was an old person of Nice,Whose associates were usually Geese.They walked out together, in all sorts of weather.That affable person of Nice!

[ "S6", "S8", "S9", "S10" ]

[ "S6-1", "S8-8", "S9-5" ]

[ "Living", "Relationships", "Activities", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Living/Aging", "Relationships/Pets & Domestic Animals", "Activities/Sports & Outdoor Activities" ]

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The Only Mexican

David Tomas Martinez

The only Mexican that ever was Mexican, fought in the revolution and drank nightly, and like all machos, crawled into work crudo, letting his breath twirl, then clap and sing before sandpaper juiced the metal. The only Mexican to never sit in a Catholic pew was born on Halloween, and ate his lunch wrapped in foil a...

[ "S8" ]

[ "S8-3" ]

[ "Relationships" ]

[ "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]

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Exuberance

Dolores Hayden

Exuberance sips bootleg gin from a garter flaskwith a ruby monogram “E.”She wears a red dress one size too small,eyes wide, she flirts with everyone, daresLincoln Beachey to fly until he runs out of gas,rides a dead engine all the way down.She watches Ormer Locklear climbout of the cockpit two hundred feet up,tap dance...

[ "S3", "S4", "S9" ]

[ "S3-2", "S4-1", "S9-5", "S9-7" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Activities" ]

[ "Social Commentaries/Class & Labor", "History & Politics/Money & Economics", "Activities/Sports & Outdoor Activities", "Activities/Travels & Journeys" ]

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Cold Sore Lip Red Coat

Hoa Nguyen

What if I ate too much food there being Not enough money immigranty And save all the ketchup packets George Carlin record on the record player saying how many ways you can curse and they are all funny (small brown bird with a black neck and a beak full of fluff for a...

[ "S3", "S4", "S6", "S8", "S9", "S10" ]

[ "S4-1", "S6-8", "S8-5", "S9-1" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Living", "Relationships", "Activities", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "History & Politics/Money & Economics", "Living/Youth", "Relationships/Home Life", "Activities/Eating & Drinking" ]

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Of the Last Verses in the Book

Edmund Waller

When we for age could neither read nor write, The subject made us able to indite. The soul, with nobler resolutions deckt, The body stooping, does herself erect: No mortal parts are requisite to raise Her, that unbodied can her Maker praise. The seas are quiet, when the winds give o’er, So calm are we, when passions ar...

[ "S6", "S7", "S10" ]

[ "S6-1", "S10-5", "S10-8" ]

[ "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy", "Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books", "Living/Aging" ]

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Bears at Raspberry Time

Hayden Carruth

Fear. Three bears are not fear, mother and cubs come berrying in our neighborhood like any other family. I want to see them, or any distraction. Flashlight poking across the brook into briary darkness, but they have gone, noisily. I go to bed. Fear. Unwritten books already titled. Some idiot will shoot the...

[ "S6", "S8" ]

[ "S6-1", "S8-8" ]

[ "Living", "Relationships" ]

[ "Living/Aging", "Relationships/Pets & Domestic Animals" ]

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And I in My Bed Again

Hilda Morley

Last night tossed in my bed the sound of the rain turned me around, a leaf in a dried gully from side to side, the sound of the rain took me apart, opened to what is it? breath caught in ...

[ "S2", "S6" ]

[]

[ "Nature", "Living" ]

[]

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A Baroque Wall-Fountain in the Villa Sciarra

Richard Wilbur

for Dore and Adja Under the bronze crown Too big for the head of the stone cherub whose feet A serpent has begun to eat, Sweet water brims a cockle and braids down Past spattered mosses, breaks On the tipped edge of a second shell, and fills The massive third below. It spills In threads ...

[ "S10" ]

[ "S10-1", "S10-4" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Architecture & Design", "Arts & Sciences/Painting & Sculpture" ]

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Question

May Swenson

Body my house my horse my hound what will I do when you are fallen Where will I sleep How will I ride What will I hunt Where can I go without my mount all eager and quick How will I know in thicket ahead is danger or treasure when Body my good bright dog is dead How will it be to lie in the sky without...

[ "S2", "S6" ]

[ "S6-4" ]

[ "Nature", "Living" ]

[ "Living/Death & Dying" ]

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Afterwards

Margaret Postgate Cole

Oh, my beloved, shall you and I Ever be young again, be young again?

[ "S3", "S6" ]

[ "S3-11", "S6-4", "S6-5" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "Living" ]

[ "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Living/Death & Dying", "Living/Mourning" ]

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In Memory of My Heavy Metal Years

Jeff Derksen

There goes the aluminum, the antimony, the arsenic the barium, the cadmium, the cesium, the gadolinium the lead the mercury the nickel, the thalium, and the tin. There goes that job spraying lawns with chemicals, driving the Merc three-quarter ton with a tank on the back and no brakes through West Vancouve...

[ "S6" ]

[ "S6-3" ]

[ "Living" ]

[ "Living/Coming of Age" ]

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Cadmus and Harmonia

Matthew Arnold

Far, far from here, The Adriatic breaks in a warm bay Among the green Illyrian hills; and there The sunshine in the happy glens is fair, And by the sea, and in the brakes. The grass is cool, the sea-side air Buoyant and fresh, the mountain flowers More virginal and sweet than ours. And there, they say, two bright and a...

[ "S2", "S6", "S8", "S11" ]

[ "S2-6", "S2-7", "S2-8", "S6-1", "S8-3", "S8-7", "S11-3", "S11-4" ]

[ "Nature", "Living", "Relationships", "Mythology & Folklore" ]

[ "Mythology & Folklore/Greek & Roman Mythology", "Mythology & Folklore/Heroes & Patriotism", "Nature/Bodies of Water", "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals", "Nature/Plants & Fungi", "Living/Aging", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors", "Relationships/Marriage & Companionship" ]

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[It’s no use / Mother dear...]

Sappho

It’s no use Mother dear, I can’t finish my weaving You may blame Aphrodite soft as she is she has almost killed me with love for that boy

[ "S1", "S9", "S11" ]

[ "S1-1", "S1-4", "S9-3", "S11-3" ]

[ "Love", "Activities", "Mythology & Folklore" ]

[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love", "Love/Infatuation & Crushes", "Mythology & Folklore/Greek & Roman Mythology", "Activities/Indoor Activities" ]

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This

A. R. Ammons

time will wash away so clean not a cry will be left in it

[ "S6", "S7" ]

[]

[ "Living", "Time & Brevity" ]

[]

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A one ended boomerang

Samuel Wagan Watson

For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return. — Leonardo da Vinci An hourglass constricted, the whore inside of me who is watching the clock, monitoring the time, this wasted time to get off, get going, lunar cycle g...

[ "S1", "S6", "S7" ]

[ "S1-1" ]

[ "Love", "Living", "Time & Brevity" ]

[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love" ]

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I know that He exists. (365)

Emily Dickinson

I know that He exists. Somewhere – in silence – He has hid his rare life From our gross eyes. ’Tis an instant’s play – ’Tis a fond Ambush – Just to make Bliss Earn her own surprise! But – should the play Prove piercing earnest – Should the glee – glaze – In Death’s – stiff – stare – Would not the fun Look ...

[ "S5", "S6" ]

[ "S5-3", "S5-4", "S6-4" ]

[ "Religion", "Living" ]

[ "Religion/Faith & Doubt", "Religion/God & the Divine", "Living/Death & Dying" ]

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Nighttime

Yusef Komunyakaa

Did a big brain raise us into mountains to range over the valley, to see the approach before whoever it was knew they would walk a path between dusk & dawn half-awake? An eye squinted, & sex as idea made the lids dance. Now...

[ "S6" ]

[]

[ "Living" ]

[]

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Counsel to Unreason

Léonie Adams

These lovers’ inklings which our loves enmesh, Lost to the cunning and dimensional eye, Though tenemented in the selves we see, Not more perforce than azure to the sky, Were necromancy-juggled to the flesh, And startled from no daylight you or me. For trance and silvemess those moons commend, Which blanch the wa...

[ "S1", "S8" ]

[ "S1-6" ]

[ "Love", "Relationships" ]

[ "Love/Realistic & Complicated" ]