I too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers that there is in
it after all, a place for the genuine.
Hands that can grasp, eyes
that can dilate, hair that can rise
if it must, these things are important not because a
high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because they are
useful; when they become so derivative as to become unintelligible, the
same thing may be said for all of us—that we
do not admire what
we cannot understand. The bat,
holding on upside down or in quest of something to
eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless wolf under
a tree, the immovable critic twinkling his skin like a horse that feels a flea, the base—
ball fan, the statistician—case after case
could be cited did
one wish it; nor is it valid
to discriminate against “business documents and
school-books”; all these phenomena are important. One must make a distinction
however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the result is not poetry,
nor till the autocrats among us can be
“literalists of
the imagination”—above
insolence and triviality and can present
for inspection, imaginary gardens with real toads in them, shall we have
it. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand, in defiance of their opinion—
the raw material of poetry in
all its rawness, and
that which is on the other hand,
genuine, then you are interested in poetry.
From Others for 1919: An Anthology of the New Verse (Nicholas L. Brown, 1920), edited by Alfred Kreymborg. This poem is in the public domain.
A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,
Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,
Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown—
A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds.
*
A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs,
Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,
Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,
Memory by memory the mind—
A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs.
*
A poem should be equal to:
Not true.
For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf.
For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea—
A poem should not mean
But be.
Copyright © by the Estate of Archibald MacLeish and reprinted by permission of the Estate.
is a field
as long as the butterflies say
it is a field
with their flight
it takes a long time
to see
like light or sound or language
to arrive
and keep
arriving
we have more
than six sense dialect
and i
am still
adjusting to time
the distance and its permanence
i have found my shortcuts
and landmarks
to place
where i first took form
in the field
Copyright © 2022 by Marwa Helal. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 3, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.
Fog—
The needle this morning wavers indifferently
Beauty—not-beauty—
The median and mode of your days—
Impassive sky against your forehead blocking any chance of feeling eager,
But also dulling greed
Something approaches in the lull—
Not exactly beauty but the chance of an answer to your yes-or-no question,
The eightball’s icosahedron . . .
Am I even suited to this—
Writing to save your life—pushing on past every clumsy letter—
Hoping for a flower?
“The Magic 8 Ball contains a 20-sided die with 10 positive answers, 5 negative answers, and 5 vague responses”
Shake it, shake it!
That’s your sense of form
Copyright © 2023 by Chris Nealon. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 19, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets.
Copyright © 2023 by Nabila Lovelace. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on January 16, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets.
Because I know
Now: how it feels
To sip that small space
Between becoming
And being found.
Guggenheim Poet-in-Residence presented in association with the Academy of American Poets. Made possible by Van Cleef & Arpels. Reprinted with permission of the poet.
Sustained by poetry, fed anew
by its fires to return from madness,
the void does not beckon as it used to.
Littered with syllables, the road does not loom
as a chasm. The hand of strangers on other
doors does not hurt, the breath of gods
does not desert, but looms large
as a dream, a prairie within our dream,
to which we return, when we need to.
Oh blessed plain, oh pointed chasm.
From Supplication: Selected Poems of John Wieners, edited by Joshua Beckman, CAConrad, and Robert Dewhurst © 2015 John Wieners Literary Trust, Raymond Foye, Administrator. Reprinted with the permission of The John Wieners Literary Trust.
For the sentiment. — Then you don’t love the poem you love the sentiment.
For the message. — Then you don’t love the poem you love the message.
For the music. — Then you don’t love the poem you love the music.
For the spirit. — Then you don’t love the poem you love the spirit.
For the intelligence. — Then you don’t love the poem you love the intelligence.
For the courage. — Then you don’t love the poem you love the courage.
For the inspiration. — Then you don’t love the poem you love the inspiration.
For the emotion. — Then you don’t love the poem you love the emotion.
For the vocabulary. — Then you don’t love the poem you love the vocabulary.
For the poet. — Then you don’t love the poem you love the poet.
For the meaning. — Then you don’t love the poem you love the meaning.
For what it stands for. — Then you don’t love the poem you love what it stands for.
For the words. — Then you don’t love the poem you love the words.
For the syntax. — Then you don’t love the poem you love the syntax.
For the politics. — Then you don’t love the poem you love the politics.
For the beauty. — Then you don’t love the poem you love the beauty.
For the outrage. — Then you don’t love the poem you love the outrage.
For the tenderness. — Then you don’t love the poem you love the tenderness.
For the hope. — Then you don’t love the poem you love the hope.
For itself. — Then you love the poem.
Copyright © 2022 by Charles Bernstein. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 27, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.
is my heart. A stranger
berry there never was,
tartless.
Gone sour in the sun,
in the sunroom or moonroof,
ruthless.
No poetry. Plain. No
fresh, special recipe
to bless.
All I've ever made
with these hands
and life, less
substance, more rind.
Mostly rim and trim,
meatless
but making much smoke
in the old smokehouse,
no less.
Fatted from the day,
overripe and even
toxic at eve. Nonetheless,
in the end, if you must
know, if I must bend,
waistless,
to that excruciation.
No marvel, no harvest
left me speechless,
yet I find myself
somehow with heart,
aloneless.
With heart,
fighting fire with fire,
flightless.
That loud hub of us,
meat stub of us, beating us
senseless.
Spectacular in its way,
its way of not seeing,
congealing dayless
but in everydayness.
In that hopeful haunting,
(a lesser
way of saying
in darkness) there is
silencelessness
for the pressing question.
Heart, what art you?
War, star, part? Or less:
playing a part, staying apart
from the one who loves,
loveless.
From Our Andromeda (Copper Canyon Press, 2012) by Brenda Shaugnessy. Copyright © 2012 by Brenda Shaugnessy. Used with the permission of the poet.
it used to be that i would write to enact a
desire for isolation. it was a way to say. i
want to be left alone. to my thoughts. with
my words. i want you to leave me alone. cant
you see that im trying. im trying to write. im
thirsty. im writing these words to quench my
thirst. i write alone in the hopes that i would
write myself into exhaustion. into sleep. i did
just that. and that was when you came to me.
carrying water in your mouth. you leaned
into. you passed it along from mouth to
mouth. our lips did not touch. this was not a
kiss. a kiss would not have led me here. you
woke me from sleep by quenching my thirst.
this lasted but a minute. i am thirsty again.
today im writing. its usually to someone. im
writing something. i want to hear it read out
loud. i want to see it on a page, in a book. i
want to see you inside these words. where are
you. i am thirsty. how are you.
Copyright © 2022 by Truong Tran. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on January 4, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.
the poem begins not where the knife enters
but where the blade twists.
Some wounds cannot be hushed
no matter the way one writes of blood
& what reflection arrives in its pooling.
The poem begins with pain as a mirror
inside of which I adjust a tie the way my father taught me
before my first funeral & so the poem begins
with old grief again at my neck. On the radio,
a singer born in a place where children watch the sky
for bombs is trying to sell me on love
as something akin to war.
I have no lie to offer as treacherous as this one.
I was most like the bullet when I viewed the body as a door.
I’m past that now. No one will bury their kin
when desire becomes a fugitive
between us. There will be no folded flag
at the doorstep. A person only gets to be called a widow once,
and then they are simply lonely. The bluest period.
Gratitude, not for love itself, but for the way it can end
without a house on fire.
This is how I plan to leave next.
Unceremonious as birth in a country overrun
by the ungrateful living. The poem begins with a chain
of well-meaning liars walking one by one
off the earth’s edge. That’s who died
and made me king. Who died and made you.
Copyright © 2019 by Hanif Abdurraqib. From A Fortune For Your Disaster (Tin House Books, 2019). Used with permission of the author and Tin House Books.
Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle
That while you watched turned to pieces of snow
Riding a gradient invisible
From silver aslant to random, white, and slow.
There came a moment that you couldn’t tell.
And then they clearly flew instead of fell.
From Sentences by Howard Nemerov, published by the University of Chicago Press. Copyright © 1980 by Howard Nemerov. Reprinted with the permission of Margaret Nemerov. All rights reserved.
To be or not to be, that is the question To justify the ways of God to men There was a time when meadow grove and stream The dropping of the daylight in the west Otters below and moorhens on the top Had fallen in Lyonesse about their Lord. There was a time when moorhens on the top To justify the daylight in the west, To be or not to be about their Lord Had fallen in Lyonesse from God to men; Otters below and meadow grove and stream, The dropping of the day, that is the question. A time when Lyonesse and grove and stream To be the daylight in the west on top When meadow otters fallen about their Lord To justify the moorhens is the question Or not to be the dropping God to men There was below the ways that is a time. To be in Lyonesse, that is the question To justify the otters, is the question The dropping of the meadows, is the question I do not know the answer to the question There was a time when moorhens in the west There was a time when daylight on the top There was a time when God was not a question There was a time when poets Then I came
From A.R.T.H.U.R. by Laurence Lerner. Copyright © 1974 by Laurence Levine. Reprinted by permission of the University of Massachusetts Press. All rights reserved.
Painting is a person placed
between the light and a
canvas so that their shadow
is cast on the canvas and
then the person signs their
name on it whereas poetry
is the shadow writing its
name upon the person.
From I Am Flying into Myself: Selected Poems 1960-2014 by Bill Knott, edited by Thomas Lux. Copyright © 2017 by The Estate of Bill Knott. Reprinted/Used by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
When you quietly close
the door to a room
the room is not finished.
It is resting. Temporarily.
Glad to be without you
for a while.
Now it has time to gather
its balls of gray dust,
to pitch them from corner to corner.
Now it seeps back into itself,
unruffled and proud.
Outlines grow firmer.
When you return,
you might move the stack of books,
freshen the water for the roses.
I think you could keep doing this
forever. But the blue chair looks best
with the red pillow. So you might as well
leave it that way.
From Honeybee (Greenwillow Books, 2008) by Naomi Shihab Nye. Copyright @2008 by Naomi Shihab Nye. Used with permission of the author.