The Hour of Poetry

Pruning in Frost Last night, without a sound, a ghost of a world lay down on a world, trees like dream-wrecks coralled with increments of fr...

Monday, January 28, 2008

ARSENIJ TARKOVSKY

IGNATYEVO FOREST The last leaves' embers in total immolation Rise into the sky; this whole forest Seethes with irritation, just as we di...

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Anne Carson

From The Beauty of the Husband. A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos XII. You want to see how things were going from the husband’s point of view⎯ ...

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Carol Ann Duffy

Correspondents When you come on Thursday, bring me a letter. We have the language of stuffed birds, teacups. We don’t have the language of b...

Friday, January 11, 2008

Carol Ann Duffy

TEA I like pouring your tea, lifting the heavy pot, and tipping it up, so the fragrant liquid streams in your china cup. Or when you’re away...

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Thursday, January 10, 2008

YOSANO AKIKO (1878-1942)

Black hair Tangled in a thousand strands. Tangled my hair and Tangled my tangled memories Of our long nights of lovemaking. *** Press my bre...

Sappho

*Fragment 31 He seems to me equal to gods that man who opposite you sits and listens close to your sweet speaking and lovely laughing ⎯oh it...

Anne Carson

Lines While talking to my mother I neaten things. Spines of books by the phone. Paperclips in a china dish. Fragments of eraser that dot the...

Kraków

[ Place Nowy ] by John Berger I have never been in this square before and I know it by heart, or rather I know by heart the people who are ...

Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Andrew Motion

The Message In Memory of Sarah Raphael I. A crystal mid-winter Saturday dawn and the names of things the same as things themselves: flash-ov...

Monday, January 07, 2008

Jorie Graham

Mind The slow overture of rain, each drop breaking without breaking into the next, describes the unrelenting, syncopated mind. Not unlike th...

Mary Oliver

Singapore In Singapore, in the airport, a darkness was ripped from my eyes. In the women's restroom, one compartment stood open. A woman...

Sunday, January 06, 2008

James Merill

The Broken Home Crossing the street, I saw the parents and the child At their window, gleaming like fruit With evening's mild gold leaf....

Sunday, December 30, 2007

Some Fruit as Remembered by the Dead

by John Berger [Nearly everything Berger writes reads like a prose poem. These delicate prose pieces are extracted from his “fictional memoi...

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Yusef Komunyakaa

We Never Know He danced with tall grass for a moment, like he was swaying with a woman. Our gun barrels glowed white-hot. When I got to him,...

A Personal Helicon

by Seamus Heaney for Michael Longley As a child, they could not keep me from wells And old pumps with buckets and windlasses. I loved the da...

Saturday, December 29, 2007

Autobiography of Red

by Anne Carson The extract below is from Carson’s novel in verse, a modern and often steamy, re-creation of an ancient Greek myth. XVI . Gro...

Friday, December 28, 2007

Ishigaki Rin: 2 poems

AT THE BATHHOUSE In Tokyo At the public bathhouse the price went up to 19 yen and so When you pay 20 yen at the counter You get one yen chan...

Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Good King Wenceslas

Good King Wenceslas looked out On the feast of Stephen, When the snow lay round about, Deep and crisp and even. Brightly shown the moon that...

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Galway Kinnell

When One has Lived a Long Time Alone When one has lived a long time alone, one refrains from swatting the fly and lets him go, and one hesit...

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Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Li-Young Lee

Eating Together In the steamer is the trout seasoned with slivers of ginger, two sprigs of green onion, and sesame oil. We shall eat it with...

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Penelope Shuttle

IN THE KITCHEN A jug of water has its own lustrous turmoil The ironing board thanks god for its two good strong legs and sturdy back The new...

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Edna St. Vincent Millay

[Written in 1931 while living on a farm in rural New York, isolated and often ill and despondent. ⎯Hayden Carruth] Fatal Interview II. This ...

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Masayo Koike: 2 poems

Bathhouse Late at night the Daikokuya bathhouse is quiet An old woman bone-tired Even naked unable to be free of dirt Rattling the door Come...

Monday, December 10, 2007

Kiji Kutani

Kiji Kutani is a 23 year old Japanese poet. The following poem was written when he was a high school student. To listen to him read click he...

Friday, December 07, 2007

Tamara Fulcher

Choirsinger My father said, So what do you do? I stopped, and replied, I sing in the choir. Choir? said Mother, That must take some work. I...

Thursday, December 06, 2007

Wallace Stevens

Debris of Life and Mind There is so little that is close and warm. It is as if we were never children. Sit in the room. It is true in the mo...

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Rainer Maria Rilke

Faces Have I said it before? I am learning to see. Yes, I am beginning. It’s still going badly. But I intend to make the most of my time. Fo...

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

Anne Carson

Hero* [extract] I can tell by the way my mother chews her toast whether she had a good night and is about to say a happy thing or not. Not....

Sunday, December 02, 2007

Robin Robertson

What the Horses See at Night When the day-birds have settled in their creaking trees, the doors of the forest open for the flitting drift of...