Many poets and short stories

2009-01-08T14:48:00.000-08:00

If—
by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies, Or, being hated, don't give way to hating, And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise; If you can dream--and not make dreams your master; If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with triumph and disaster And treat those two impostors just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to broken, And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools; If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on"; If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch; If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you; If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds' worth of distance run-- Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

2009-01-08T14:42:00.000-08:00

Be Drunk
by Charles Baudelaire Translated by Louis Simpson

You have to be always drunk. That's all there is to it—it's the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk. But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk. And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing, everything that is speaking. . .ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: "It is time to be drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish."

2008-04-13T12:21:00.000-07:00

I Am Not Yours
by Sara Teasdale

I am not yours, not lost in you, Not lost, although I long to be Lost as a candle lit at noon, Lost as a snowflake in the sea. You love me, and I find you still A spirit beautiful and bright, Yet I am I, who long to be Lost as a light is lost in light. Oh plunge me deep in love—put out My senses, leave me deaf and blind, Swept by the tempest of your love, A taper in a rushing wind.

2008-04-13T12:19:00.001-07:00

Daughters, 1900
by Marilyn Nelson

Five daughters, in the slant light on the porch, are bickering. The eldest has come home with new truths she can hardly wait to teach. She lectures them: the younger daughters search the sky, elbow each others' ribs, and groan. Five daughters, in the slant light on the porch and blue-sprigged dresses, like a stand of birch saplings whose leaves are going yellow-brown with new truths. They can hardly wait to teach, themselves, to be called "Ma'am," to march high-heeled across the hanging bridge to town. Five daughters. In the slant light on the porch Pomp lowers his paper for a while, to watch the beauties he's begotten with his Ann: these new truths they can hardly wait to teach. The eldest sniffs, "A lady doesn't scratch." The third snorts back, "Knock, knock: nobody home." The fourth concedes, "Well, maybe not in church. . ." Five daughters in the slant light on the porch.

2008-04-13T12:17:00.001-07:00

A Little Tooth
by Thomas Lux

Your baby grows a tooth, then two, and four, and five, then she wants some meat directly from the bone. It's all over: she'll learn some words, she'll fall in love with cretins, dolts, a sweet talker on his way to jail. And you, your wife, get old, flyblown, and rue nothing. You did, you loved, your feet are sore. It's dusk. Your daughter's tall.

2008-04-13T12:14:00.000-07:00

Infant Joy

by William Blake

"I have no name:

I am but two days old."

What shall I call thee?

"I happy am,

Joy is my name."

Sweet joy befall thee!



Pretty joy!

Sweet joy, but two days old.

Sweet Joy I call thee:

Thou dost smile,

I sing the while;

Sweet joy befall thee!

William Blake

A radical thinker for his day, William Blake privileged imagination over reason in the creation of his poetry and images....
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2008-04-13T12:06:00.000-07:00

Answer to a Child's Question
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Do you ask what the birds say? The Sparrow, the Dove, The Linnet and Thrush say, "I love and I love!" In the winter they're silent—the wind is so strong; What it says, I don't know, but it sings a loud song. But green leaves, and blossoms, and sunny warm weather, And singing, and loving—all come back together. But the Lark is so brimful of gladness and love, The green fields below him, the blue sky above, That he sings, and he sings; and for ever sings he— "I love my Love, and my Love loves me!"

2008-04-13T12:05:00.000-07:00

My Lost Youth

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Often I think of the beautiful town 
 That is seated by the sea; 
Often in thought go up and down 
The pleasant streets of that dear old town, 
 And my youth comes back to me.          
   And a verse of a Lapland song 
   Is haunting my memory still 
   'A boy's will is the wind's will, 
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.' 

I can see the shadowy lines of its trees,           
 And catch, in sudden gleams, 
The sheen of the far-surrounding seas, 
And islands that were the Hesperides 
 Of all my boyish dreams. 
   And the burden of that old song,           
   It murmurs and whispers still: 
   'A boy's will is the wind's will, 
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.' 

I remember the black wharves and the slips, 
 And the sea-tides tossing free;           
And the Spanish sailors with bearded lips, 
And the beauty and mystery of the ships, 
 And the magic of the sea. 
   And the voice of that wayward song 
   Is singing and saying still:           
   'A boy's will is the wind's will, 
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.' 

I remember the bulwarks by the shore, 
 And the fort upon the hill; 
The sunrise gun, with its hollow roar,           
The drum-beat repeated o'er and o'er, 
 And the bugle wild and shrill. 
   And the music of that old song 
   Throbs in my memory still: 
   'A boy's will is the wind's will,           
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.' 

I remember the sea-fight far away, 
 How it thundered o'er the tide! 
And the dead captains, as they lay 
In their graves, o'erlooking the tranquil bay           
 Where they in battle died. 
   And the sound of that mournful song 
   Goes through me with a thrill: 
   'A boy's will is the wind's will, 
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.'           

I can see the breezy dome of groves, 
 The shadows of Deering's Woods; 
And the friendship old and the early loves 
Come back with a Sabbath sound, as of doves 
 In quiet neighborhoods.           
   And the verse of that sweet old song, 
   It flutters and murmurs still: 
   'A boy's will is the wind's will, 
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.' 

I remember the gleams and glooms that dart           
 Across the school-boy's brain; 
The song and the silence in the heart, 
That in part are prophecies, and in part 
 Are longings wild and vain. 
   And the voice of that fitful song           
   Sings on, and is never still: 
   'A boy's will is the wind's will, 
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.' 

There are things of which I may not speak; 
 There are dreams that cannot die;           
There are thoughts that make the strong heart weak, 
And bring a pallor into the cheek, 
 And a mist before the eye. 
   And the words of that fatal song 
   Come over me like a chill:           
   'A boy's will is the wind's will, 
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.' 

Strange to me now are the forms I meet 
 When I visit the dear old town; 
But the native air is pure and sweet,           
And the trees that o'ershadow each well-known street, 
 As they balance up and down, 
   Are singing the beautiful song, 
   Are sighing and whispering still: 
   'A boy's will is the wind's will,           
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.' 

And Deering's Woods are fresh and fair, 
 And with joy that is almost pain 
My heart goes back to wander there, 
And among the dreams of the days that were,           
 I find my lost youth again. 
   And the strange and beautiful song, 
   The groves are repeating it still: 
   'A boy's will is the wind's will, 
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.'

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine--then still part of Massachusetts--on February 27, 1807, the second son in a family of eight children. His mother, Zilpah Wadsworth, was the...

2008-04-13T11:58:00.001-07:00

Elegy for Jane by Theodore Roethke

I remember the neckcurls, limp and damp as tendrils;
And her quick look, a sidelong pickerel smile;
And how, once startled into talk, the light syllables leaped for her,
And she balanced in the delight of her thought,

A wren, happy, tail into the wind,
Her song trembling the twigs and small branches.
The shade sang with her;
The leaves, their whispers turned to kissing,
And the mould sang in the bleached valleys under the rose.

Oh, when she was sad, she cast herself down into such a pure depth,
Even a father could not find her:
Scraping her cheek against straw,
Stirring the clearest water.

My sparrow, you are not here,
Waiting like a fern, making a spiney shadow.
The sides of wet stones cannot console me,
Nor the moss, wound with the last light.

If only I could nudge you from this sleep,
My maimed darling, my skittery pigeon.
Over this damp grave I speak the words of my love:
I, with no rights in this matter,
Neither father nor lover.

Theodore Roethke (1908-1963) was born in Saginaw, Michigan. As a child, he spent much time in the greenhouse owned by his father and uncle. His impressions of the natural world contained there would later profoundly influence the subjects and imagery of his verse. Stylistically his work ranged from witty poems in strict meter and regular stanzas to free verse poems full of mystical and surrealistic imagery. At all times, however, the natural world in all its mystery, beauty, fierceness, and sensuality, is close by, and the poems are possessed of an intense lyricism.

EE Cummings

2008-04-13T11:55:00.001-07:00

since feeling is first
By E.E. Cummings

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a far better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
—the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

Cummings (1894-1962) discovered an original way of describing the chaotic immediacy of sensuous experience. He played games with language and form and put forth a deliberately simplistic view of the world, giving his poems have a gleeful and precocious tone. He was born in Cambridge, Mass., attended Harvard and studied Art in Paris.

2008-04-13T11:54:00.001-07:00

First Memory

Long ago, I was wounded. I lived
to revenge myself
against my father, not
for what he was—
for what I was: from the beginning of time,
in childhood, I thought
that pain meant
I was not loved.
It meant I loved.

Louise Glück was born in New York City in 1943 and grew up on Long Island. She is the author of numerous books of poetry, most recently, Averno, a finalist for the 2006 National Book Award in Poetry. In 1999, she was elected a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets. In the fall of 2003, she was named Poet Laureate of the United States.

2008-04-13T11:53:00.001-07:00

Today I will begin with some Shel Silverstein

Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein

There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.

Silverstein's work, which he illustrated himself, is characterized by a deft mixing of the sly and the serious, the macabre and the just plain silly. His wicked, giddy humor is beloved by countless adults as well as by children. He died in May 1999.