I read them,
and then I threw them in the trash,
but make no mistake, I read them.

I swallowed them whole.
I filled my eyes with every word,
I sewed them in patterns
into my flesh of my body,
at night I wake to entertain the ghosts
lounging in my bedroom
with impromptu recitations
of your letters, of your thoughts,
of the shape of you in words

but ( Read more... )

By Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

("I hold with those who favor fire."  This line just kills ( Read more... )

This TED talk by Sarah Kay emphasizes everything I never knew about spoken-word poetry.  She takes something terrible, and makes it beautiful, and something beautiful, and makes you laugh.  Link here for those who cannot see the embed.



This entry was originally posted at http://foursweatervests.dreamwidth.org/76350.html. Please comment there using ( Read more... )

All the new thinking is about loss.
In this it resembles all the old thinking.
The idea, for example, that each particular erases
the luminous clarity of a general idea. That the clown-
faced woodpecker probing the dead sculpted trunk
of that black birch is, by his presence,
some tragic falling off from a first world
of undivided light. Or the ( Read more... )

It was like a moment when a bird decides not to eat from your hand ( Read more... )

Special Orders | Edward Hirsch

Give me back my father walking the halls
  of Wertheimer Box and Paper Company
    with sawdust clinging to his shoes.

Give me back his tape measure and his keys,
  his drafting pencil and his order forms;
    give me his daydreams on lined paper.

I don't understand this uncontainable grief.
  Whatever you had that never fit ( Read more... )

Without getting too much into it, February is a tough month to get through for me right now.  It's not just the cold and my weekend classes going straight from now until May, but it's missing my students and having to start aaaaall over again and waiting on tenterhooks for grad schools and other job applications and just kind of losing my mind ( Read more... )

Some RL things:

( listy! )

Whenever I get melodramatic, I find things like this.  And I remember that, actually, I love people with all their quirks and cruelties and heart.

There are days I miss New York...

And I figured I'd leave you with this stanza of Gabriela Mistral's, from La abandonada.  Will translate if needed.

Me he sentado a mitad de la Tierra,
amor ( Read more... )