To think of you surcharged with Loneliness. To hear your voice Over the recorder say, ‘Loneliness.’ The word, the voice, So full of it, and I with You away, so lost in it— — Kenneth Rexroth, from “Marthe Lonely,” section III of “Seven Poems For Marthe, My Wife,” Poetry (vol. LXXXIX, no. 1, October 1956)… Continue reading Kenneth Rexroth
In the branches of the laurel tree I saw two dark doves One was the sun and one the moon Little neighbors I said where is my grave — In my tail said the sun On my throat said the moon And I who was walking with the land around my waist saw two snow eagles… Continue reading Federico García Lorca
Reflections on Moth and Gaslight I am watching a moth fly from its perch to the gaslight on Summer Street. Suddenly the moth remembers what it means to have a home and what it means to live and to die and to be born again in the form of loneliness. Trapped. Clinging to the golden… Continue reading Jennifer Boyd
I had a vision once, Which wasn’t even mine, of a long breath bounded at its ends by silence. Like a sentence following the story of a life until its energy was spent And its parentheses closed. —John Koethe, from “The Distinguished Thing,” Kenyon Review (vol. 308, no. 14, Fall 2008
All that has tamed me I have learned to love and lost that wildness that was once beloved. All that was loved I’ve learned to tame and lost the beloved that once was wild. All that is wild is tamed by love— and the beloved (wildness) that once was loved. — Michael… Continue reading Michael Collier
What would grace feel like, finally? Like the air around a wondrous sentence spoken into the dark as you wait for another sentence to follow? — Holly Welker, from “Sentence,” Image: Art, Faith, Mystery (no. 64, Winter 2009-2010)
When God demanded light, he didn’t banish darkness. Instead he invented ebony and crows and that small mole on your left cheekbone. — Linda Pastan, from “Why Are Your Poems So Dark?,” Poetry (August 2003)
