All Poems

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© John Ashbery

Oh there once was a woman
and she kept a shop
selling trinkets to tourists
not far from a dock
who came to see what life could be
far back on the island.

"Are you the new person drawn toward me?"

© Walt Whitman

Are you the new person drawn toward me?

To begin with, take warning, I am surely far different from what you suppose;

Nabokovs Blues

© William Matthews

The wallful of quoted passages from his work,
with the requisite specimens pinned next
to their literary cameo appearances, was too good

A Version of Alcman’s (fl. 630 BCE) “Sleep” poem . . .

Dormant are pinnacles and streams of the mountains,
Chasms and bluffs and crawlers fed by the dark earth;
Dormant are wild animals and that tribe of bees
And monsters out of the sea’s dark syntax;
Dormant are clans of birds with wings that envelop.

Beginning My Studies

© Walt Whitman

BEGINNING my studies, the first step pleas'd me so much,
The mere fact, consciousness-these forms-the power of motion,
The least insect or animal-the senses-eyesight-love;
The first step, I say, aw'd me and pleas'd me so much,
I have hardly gone, and hardly wish'd to go, any farther,
But stop and loiter all the time, to sing it in extatic songs.

Cloudy Day

© James Russell Lowell

It is windy today. A wall of wind crashes against,
windows clunk against, iron frames
as wind swings past broken glass
and seethes, like a frightened cat
in empty spaces of the cellblock.

Allie

© Robert Graves

Allie, call the birds in,

The birds from the sky.

American Smooth

© Rita Dove

We were dancing—it must have

been a foxtrot or a waltz,

Publication is the Auction (788)

© Emily Dickinson

Publication is the Auction
Of the Mind of Man
Poverty be justifying
For so foul a thing

All through eternity

© Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi

They have together
since the beginning of time-
Side by side, step by step.

Rotting Symbols

© Eileen Myles

Soon I shall take more
I will get more light
and I'll know what I think
about that

Heaven

© Emily Dickinson

"Heaven" has different Signsto me
Sometimes, I think that Noon
Is but a symbol of the Place
And when again, at Dawn,

Song for Ishtar

© Denise Levertov

The moon is a sow
and grunts in my throat
Her great shining shines through me
so the mud of my hollow gleams
and breaks in silver bubbles

Marlburyes Fate

When London's fatal bills were blown abroad

And few but Specters travel'd on the road,

Q & A

Where analgesia may be found to ease the infinite, minute scars of the day;
What final interlude will result, picked bit by bit from the morning's hurry, the lunch-hour boredom, the fevers of the night;
Why this one is cherished by the gods, and that one not;
How to win, and win again, and again, staking wit alone against a sea of time;
Which man to trust and, once found, how far—