From "The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm":

The house was quiet and the world was calm
The reader became the book; and summer night

Was like the conscious being of the book.
The house was queit and the world was calm.

An old favorite from poetry class, the final stanza of A.E. Housman's "Lovliest of Trees, the Cherry Now ( Read more... )

It's been awhile since I did this. I am not going to check how long.
The final stanza of "Mankind and Ocean" by Robert Graves, from my anthology of sea poetry.

To love the Ocean is to taste salt,
To drink the blood of sailors,
To watch the waves assault
Mast-high a cliff that shudders
Under their heartless hammers...
Is wind alone at fault?

The final stanza of "Working Class" by Betram Warr ( Read more... )

The first stanza of this poem by Miriam Waddington, who I think I've fallen in love with. I chose it because of the vague connection with gardening, which I did some of today ( Read more... )

From Al Purdy's "In the Beginning Was the Word"

We made our speech from moving water
a sound that seems to ache
when there is no pain
whispering faintly in the heart's darkness

Here's the poem I picked yesterday. It's the final stanza of "Apologies" by Marge Piercy, from her book "The Moon is Always Female":

Moments
of sinking my teeth
into now like a hungry fox:
never otherwise
am I so cruel;
never otherwise
so happy.

The whole poem is brilliant really. Okay, I'm gonna post the whole thing, I can't help it:

Apologies

( Read more... )

From Gregory Scofield, a poet I have loved since high school. (I went to see him read last fall, it was beautiful. Some of his poems have Cree in them and it makes such a difference to hear him read them.) This is from a book of his called Love Medicine and One Song. It's the last stanza of "Autumn's Oath ( Read more... )

Today I went on a long leisurely walk to do all my errands, and since I was feeling so leisurely I ended up going into a lot of stores, which was silly since I have limited cash. The really silly thing was going into a bookstore and looking at the poetry section. How would it be possible for me to not see something I wanted? And even though the ( Read more... )

I've been meaning to post this one for a few days. It's by Fahmida Riaz, and I got it out of We Sinful Women: Contemporary Urdu feminist poetry traslated and edited by Rukhsana Ahmad ( Read more... )