by Billy Collins from The Apple that Astonished Paris During my Poem-of-the-Day series on Riehlife we’ll have a mixture of named poets & others just like the rest of us. My friend Stephanie Farrow in Albuquerque, New Mexico chooses the Big Name Poets. She sends her picks out via email every day. I’ll be scooping…
I’ve been thinking of Pablo Neruda recently for a surprising reason. I’m going the Greece. I have this dreamy idea of Greece as a land of lovers and poets. I recalled one of my favorite movies which formed my dreamy image: Il Postino (The Postman), a 1994 Italian language film directed by Michael Radford, It…
Radiator by Connie Wanek from Bonfire Mittens are drying on the radiator, boots nearby, one on its side. Like some monstrous segmented insect the radiator elongates under the window. Or it is a beast with many shoulders domesticated in the Ice Age. How many years it takes to move from room to room! Some cage…
The Cure at Troy (excerpt) Seamus Heaney Human beings suffer. They torture one another. They get hurt and get hard. No poem or play or song Can fully right a wrong Inflicted and endured. History says, Don’t hope On this side of the grave, But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of…
Dusting by Marilyn Nelson from Magnificat Thank you for these tiny particles of ocean salt, pearl-necklace viruses, winged protozoans: for the infinite, intricate shapes of submicroscopic living things. For algae spores and fungus spores, bonded by vital mutual genetic cooperation, spreading their inseparable lives from equator to pole. My hand, my arm, make sweeping circles….
Yes by Tess Gallagher from Moon Crossing River Now we are like that flat cone of sand in the garden of the Silver Pavilion in Kyoto designed to appear only in moonlight. Do you want me to mourn? Do you want me to wear black? Or like moonlight on whitest sand to use your dark,…
Gathering Leaves in Grade School by Judith Harris from The Literary Review, Fall 2008 They were smooth ovals, and some the shade of potatoes– some had been moth-eaten or spotted, the maples were starched, and crackled like campfire. We put them under tracing paper and rubbed our crayons over them, X-raying the spread of their…
blessing the boats (at St. Mary’s) by Lucille Clifton Quilting: Poems 1987-1990 may the tide that is entering even now the lip of our understanding carry you out beyond the face of fear may you kiss the wind then turn from it certain that it will love your back may you open your eyes to…
Sparrows by Christopher Buckley from Dust Light, Leaves Like the poor, they are with us always . . . what they lack in beauty is theirs in good cheer—tails like pump handles lifting them first among songsters, chiding city light or roadside to evening’s praise. Gristmills, hardy gleaners, but for them the weeds and thorns…
When I was in college in my 20s at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville (commuting from my parents land), I was part of the editorial team for their literary magazine “Sou’wester.” My poem “Under Mama’s Yew Tree” (later published in “Sightlines: A Poet’s Diary”) was given some very encouraging words from Galway Kinnell. Because of…