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Spinning by Kevin Griffith : American Life in Poetry #217 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006

© Ted Kooser

American literature is rich with poems about the passage of time, and the inevitability of change, and how these affect us. Here is a poem by Kevin Griffith, who lives in Ohio, in which the years accelerate by their passing.

Spinning

The Chairs That No One Sits In

© Billy Collins

You see them on porches and on lawns
down by the lakeside,
usually arranged in pairs implying a couple

My Grandmother's Love Letters

© Hart Crane

There are no stars to-night
But those of memory.
Yet how much room for memory there is
In the loose girdle of soft rain.

Paradise Lost: Book XI (1674)

© Patrick Kavanagh

He added not, for Adam at the newes
Heart-strook with chilling gripe of sorrow stood,
That all his senses bound; Eve, who unseen
Yet all had heard, with audible lament
Discover'd soon the place of her retire.

February Twilight

© Sara Teasdale

I stood beside a hill
Smooth with new-laid snow,
A single star looked out
From the cold evening glow.

Memorials Of A Tour In Scotland,

© William Wordsworth

TOO frail to keep the lofty vow
That must have followed when his brow
Was wreathed--"The Vision" tells us how--
With holly spray,
He faltered, drifted to and fro,
And passed away.

Paradise Lost: Book IX

© Patrick Kavanagh

So gloz'd the Tempter, and his proem tun'd.
Into the heart of Eve his words made way,
Though at the voice much marvelling; at length,
Not unamaz'd, she thus in answer spake:

One Year Old

© Robert Laurence Binyon

Is it we that are wise, is it we,
Who have bought with a price of grief
A wisdom seldom free
From scorn or disbelief,

Toys in a Field

© Yusef Komunyakaa

Using the gun mounts

for monkey bars,

Valeries Confession. To A Friend.

© Paul Hamilton Hayne

THEY declare that I'm gracefully pretty,
The very best waltzer that whirls;
They say I am sparkling and witty,
The pearl, the queen rose-bud of girls.

The Market-Place

© Walter de la Mare

The clamour quietens when the dark draws near;
Strange looms the earth in twilight of the West,
Lonely with one sweet star serene and clear,
Dwelling, when all this place is hushed to rest,
On vacant stall, gold, refuse, worst and best,
Abandoned utterly in haste and fear.

A Lame Begger

© John Donne

I am unable, yonder beggar cries,

To stand, or move; if he say true, he lies.

The Aungeles Song.

Honured be thu, blisful heuene queene, And worschepid mot þou be in eueri place,That modier art, and veari maidë clene!Of god, oure lord, thu geten hast þat grace.Thu, cause of Ioyës art, and alle soláce, Be merite of thi gret humilite,And by the floure of thi virginite.

Honured be thu blissed ladi bright! Be thi persone, embasshëd is natúre;Of heuene blisse, augmented is the light,Be presence of so fare a crëature;Thi worthinessë pasith all mesúre; ffor vnto thin astate imperiall,No praisyng is, þat may be peregall.