poems
Apr. 23, 2012
“There is only the trying”
A clip from Eliot’s “Four Quartets.”
Tags: poems · T.S. Eliot
Mar. 5, 2012
“MCMXIV” by Philip Larkin
“Never such innocence, / Never before or since… / Never such innocence again.”
Tags: Philip Larkin · poems
Apr. 25, 2011
Rilke: “The Man Watching”
“When we win it’s with small things, / and the triumph itself makes us small.”
Tags: inspiration · poems · Rilke
Mar. 27, 2011
Sunday poem: “Tonight I Can Write” by Pablo Neruda
“I no longer love her, that’s certain, but maybe I love her. / Love is so short, forgetting is so long.”
Tags: Pablo Neruda · poems · W.S. Merwin
Mar. 6, 2011
“The Writer” by Richard Wilbur
“It is always a matter, my darling, / Of life or death, as I had forgotten.”
Tags: poems · Richard Wilbur
Feb. 18, 2011
Auden: September 1939
Auden’s “September 1939” as it first appeared in the October 18, 1939 issue of The New Republic.
Tags: Auden · poems · The New Republic
Nov. 10, 2010
“Best Society” by Philip Larkin
“Uncontradicting solitude / Supports me on its giant palm; / And like a sea-anemone / Or simple snail, there cautiously / Unfolds, emerges, what I am.”
Tags: Philip Larkin · poems
Sep. 17, 2010
“Strawberries” by Edwin Morgan
“There were never strawberries / like the ones we had / that sultry afternoon”
Tags: Edwin Morgan · poems
Aug. 23, 2010
“Perfection Wasted” by John Updike
“And another regrettable thing about death / is the ceasing of your own brand of magic, / which took a whole life to develop and market”
Tags: John Updike · poems
Jan. 23, 2010
Adrienne Rich: “Prospective Immigrants Please Note”
Either you will / go through this door / or you will not go through….
Tags: Adrienne Rich · poems
Nov. 9, 2009
Ted Kooser: “Daddy Longlegs”
Here, on fine long legs springy as steel, / a life rides, sealed in a small brown pill / that skims along over the basement floor / wrapped up in a simple obsession….
Tags: poems · Ted Kooser
Sep. 27, 2009
Eavan Boland: “Quarantine”
In the worst hour of the worst season / of the worst year of a whole people / a man set out from the workhouse with his wife….
Tags: Eavan Boland · poems
Sep. 1, 2009
George Herbert: “Church Monuments”
…flesh is but the glass which holds the dust / That measures all our time; which also shall / Be crumbled into dust….
Tags: audio · George Herbert · poems
Aug. 26, 2009
Wallace Stevens: “The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm”
A poem for summer reading, “The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm” by Wallace Stevens.
Tags: poems · Wallace Stevens
Aug. 20, 2009
Philip Larkin: “This Is the First Thing”
This is the first thing / I have understood: / Time is the echo of an axe / Within a wood.
Tags: Philip Larkin · poems