PolyArchive

Wisława Szymborska died yesterday. She was 88. I love Poland for celebrating its poets, finding cultural heroes not only in the past but also the present day cities and villages (and shipyards). Though in Szymborska’s case, perhaps it was the worst thing to happen to her, worsening her agoraphobia. The Nobel she won silenced her […]

Luminism Mark Strand And though it was brief, and slight, and nothing To have been held onto so long, I remember it, As if it had come from within, one of the scenes The mind sets for itself, night after night, only To part from, quickly and without warning. Sunlight Flooded the valley floor and […]

Berryman W.S. Merwin I will tell you what he told me in the years just after the war as we then called the second world war don’t lose your arrogance yet he said you can do that when you’re older lose it too soon and you may merely replace it with vanity just one time […]

Sure on This Shining Night James Agee Description of Elysium There: far, friends: ours: dear dominion: Whole health resides with peace, Gladness and never harm, There not time turning, Nor fear of flower of snow Where marbling water slides No charm may halt of chill, Air aisling the open acres, And all the gracious trees […]

Introduction to Collected Poems (1938) E.E. Cummings (wrenched from a geocities site in the depths of the Wayback Machine) I N T R O D U C T I O N The poems to come are for you and for me and are not for mostpeople– it’s no use trying to pretend that mostpeople and […]

The Woman That Had More Babies Than That Wallace Stevens I An acrobat on the border of the sea Observed the waves, the rising and the swell And the first line spreading up the beach; again, The rising and the swell, the preparation And the first line foaming over the sand; again, The rising and […]

Plaint Theodore Roethke Day after somber day I think my neighbors strange; In Hell there is no change. Where’s my eternity Of inward blessedness? I lack plain tenderness. Where is the knowledge that Could lead me to my God? Not on this dusty road Or afternoon of light Diminished by the haze Of late November […]

For all the Russian literature I’ve studied, and the amount of time I devote to Blok, my strongest emotional attachments are to American poets (and the occasional Briton). I know I’ve posted plenty of Roethke here in the past, and truth be told, I should have done an English master’s and written about him. Would […]

Written from a hospital bed in 1875, after the 26-year-old Henley had had his leg amputated as a result of tuberculosis of the bone. Originally untitled, Arthur Quiller-Couch bestowed the name “Invictus” (“Unvanquished”) when he included it in The Oxford Book of English Verse. This was the poem Nelson Mandela kept on a scrap of […]

Say Not the Struggle Nought Availeth Arthur Hugh Clough  (1819-1861) Say not the struggle nought availeth,      The labour and the wounds are vain, The enemy faints not, nor faileth,      And as things have been they remain. If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;      It may be, in yon smoke concealed, Your […]

The Chilterns Rupert Brooke Your hands, my dear, adorable, Your lips of tenderness – Oh, I’ve loved you faithfully and well, Three years, or a bit less. It wasn’t a success. Thank God, that’s done! and I’ll take the road, Quit of my youth and you, The Roman road to Wendover By Tring and Lilley […]

Ich habe dich nie je so geliebt Bertolt Brecht Ich habe dich nie je so geliebt, ma soeur Als wie ich fortging von dir in jenem Abendrot. Der Wald schluckte mich, der blaue Wald, ma soeur Über dem immer schon die bleichen Gestirne im Westen standen. Ich lachte kein klein wenig, gar nicht, ma soeur […]

Locksley Hall Alfred, Lord Tennyson Comrades, leave me here a little, while as yet ‘t is early morn: Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle-horn. ‘T is the place, and all around it, as of old, the curlews call, Dreary gleams about the moorland flying over Locksley Hall; Locksley Hall, […]

Gerard Manley Hopkins The Half-way House Love I was shewn upon the mountain-side And bid to catch Him ere the drop of day. See, Love, I creep and Thou on wings dost ride: Love it is evening now and Thou away; Love, it grows darker here and Thou art above; Love, come down to me […]