PolyArchive

what Got him was Noth e.e. cummings what Got him was Noth ing & nothing’s exAct ly what any one Living(or some body Dead like even a Poet)could hardly express what i Mean is what knocked him over Wasn’t (for instance)the Knowing your whole(yes god damned)life is a Flop or even to Feel how Everything(dreamed […]

The Man-Moth Elizabeth Bishop Man-Moth: Newspaper misprint for “mammoth.” Here, above, cracks in the buildings are filled with battered moonlight. The whole shadow of Man is only as big as his hat. It lies at his feet like a circle for a doll to stand on, and he makes an inverted pin, the point magnetized […]

The Mower to the Glow-Worms Andrew Marvell Ye living lamps, by whose dear light The nightingale does sit so late, And studying all the summer night, Her matchless songs does meditate; Ye country comets, that portend No war nor prince’s funeral, Shining unto no higher end Than to presage the grass’s fall; Ye glow-worms, whose […]

Nothingsville, MN Franz Wright The sole tavern there, empty and filled with cigarette smoke; the smell of beer, urine, and the infinite sadness you dread and need so much of for some reason.

The Queen of Carthage Louise Glück Brutal to love, more brutal to die. And brutal beyond the reaches of justice to die of love. In the end, Dido summoned her ladies in waiting that they might see the harsh destiny inscribed for her by the Fates. She said, “Aeneas came to me over the shimmering […]

May-Day Ralph Waldo Emerson Daughter of Heaven and Earth, coy Spring, With sudden passion languishing, Maketh all things softly smile, Painteth pictures mile on mile, Holds a cup with cowslip-wreaths, Whence a smokeless incense breathes. Girls are peeling the sweet willow, Poplar white, and Gilead-tree, And troops of boys Shouting with whoop and hilloa, And […]

Absence Matthew Arnold In this fair stranger’s eyes of grey Thine eyes, my love, I see. I shudder: for the passing day Had borne me far from thee. This is the curse of life: that not A nobler calmer train Of wiser thoughts and feelings blot Our passions from our brain; But each day brings […]

University Karl Shapiro To hurt the Negro and avoid the Jew Is the curriculum. In mid-September The entering boys, identified by hats, Wander in a maze of mannered brick Where boxwood and magnolia brood And columns with imperious stance Like rows of ante-bellum girls Eye them, outlanders. In whited cells, on lawns equipped for peace, […]

Peel Brian Swann I read that in this famous person’s poems “she searches for signs of what lies beneath and beyond the self.” Which seemed to me pointless, as if you wouldn’t know whether to paint with egg tempera or eat it. At eighteen, I came across Tolstoy’s “What is Art?” where he said an […]

A Man Said to the Universe Stephen Crane A man said to the universe: “Sir, I exist!” “However,” replied the universe, “The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation.”  

The Peace of Wild Things Wendell Berry When despair for the world grows in meand I wake in the night at the least soundin fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,I go and lie down where the wood drakerests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.I come […]

Failing and Flying Jack Gilbert (1925–2012) Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew. It’s the same when love comes to an end, or the marriage fails and people say they knew it was a mistake, that everybody said it would never work. That she was old enough to know better. But anything worth doing is worth […]

Never Give All the Heart William Butler Yeats Never give all the heart, for love Will hardly seem worth thinking of To passionate women if it seem Certain, and they never dream That it fades out from kiss to kiss; For everything that’s lovely is But a brief, dreamy, kind delight. O never give the […]

The Second Coming W.B. Yeats Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full […]

LXIV Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer 1836 –1870 Translated from the Spanish by Mason Carnes How beautiful it is to see the day Arising, crowned with fire, the waves that play,–— Each one a gleaming sprite,–— The air enkindled by the kiss of light! Late in an autumn day, when rain-drops cloy The flowers, how sweet and […]