Poetry Anthology Quotes

Better by far you should forget and smile than that you should remember and be sad

A fallen blossom returning to the bough, I thought -- But no, a butterfly.

We are all anthologies. We are each thousands of pages long, filled with fairy tales and poetry, mysteries and tragedy, forgotten stories in the back no one will ever read.

We have to laugh. Because laughter, we already know, is the first evidence of freedom.

Imagine what you are writing about. See it and live it. Do not think it up laboriously, as if you were working out mental arithmetic. Just look at it, touch it, smell it, listen to it, turn yourself into it. When you do this, the words look after themselves, like magic.

From CATS ARE KIND "A man said to the universe, 'Sir, I exist!' 'Excellent,' replied the universe, 'I've been looking for someone to take care of my cats.

Gardens are poems Where you stroll with your hands in your pockets. (Les jardins sont des poemes Ou l'on se promene les mains dans les poches.)

A tear rolled down my cheek And more came down Until tears rolled down like a stream. My eyes were blind with tears for you. They washed my eyes till I could see.

Love, which is quickly kindled in the gentle heart, seized this man for the fair form that was taken from me, the manner still hurts me. Love which absolves no beloved one from loving, seized me so strongly with his charm that, as thou seest, it does not leave me yet

You can never know where I am or what I am, But I am good company to you nonetheless, And really do regret I broke your inkwell." (From Meow of Myself, from LEAVES OF CATNIP)

Mealtime "A mousie squealing in a trap Woke me from my morning nap. Wasn't he so very sweet To tell me it was time to eat?" (From A CAT'S GARDEN OF VERSES)

Here's what I want from a book, what I demand, what I pray for when I take up a novel and begin to read the first sentence: I want everything and nothing less, the full measure of a writer's heart. I want a novel so poetic that I do not have to turn to the standby anthologies of poetry to satisfy that itch for music, for perfection and economy of phrasing, for exactness of tone. Then, too, I want a book so filled with story and character that I read page after page without thinking of food or drink because a writer has possessed me, crazed with an unappeasable thirst to know what happens next.

I situate myself, and seat myself, And where you recline I shall recline, For every armchair belonging to you as good as belongs to me. I loaf and curl up my tail I yawn and loaf at my ease after rolling in the catnip patch." (From Meow of Myself, from LEAVES OF CATNIP)

If you read every poem in every anthology of Greek poetry, you wouldn't read one poem in which a character of the woman who's loved is described or matters.

L'union libre [Freedom of Love]" My wife with the hair of a wood fire With the thoughts of heat lightning With the waist of an hourglass With the waist of an otter in the teeth of a tiger My wife with the lips of a cockade and of a bunch of stars of the last magnitude With the teeth of tracks of white mice on the white earth With the tongue of rubbed amber and glass My wife with the tongue of a stabbed host With the tongue of a doll that opens and closes its eyes With the tongue of an unbelievable stone My wife with the eyelashes of strokes of a child's writing With brows of the edge of a swallow's nest My wife with the brow of slates of a hothouse roof And of steam on the panes My wife with shoulders of champagne And of a fountain with dolphin-heads beneath the ice My wife with wrists of matches My wife with fingers of luck and ace of hearts With fingers of mown hay My wife with armpits of marten and of beechnut And of Midsummer Night Of privet and of an angelfish nest With arms of seafoam and of riverlocks And of a mingling of the wheat and the mill My wife with legs of flares With the movements of clockwork and despair My wife with calves of eldertree pith My wife with feet of initials With feet of rings of keys and Java sparrows drinking My wife with a neck of unpearled barley My wife with a throat of the valley of gold Of a tryst in the very bed of the torrent With breasts of night My wife with breasts of a marine molehill My wife with breasts of the ruby's crucible With breasts of the rose's spectre beneath the dew My wife with the belly of an unfolding of the fan of days With the belly of a gigantic claw My wife with the back of a bird fleeing vertically With a back of quicksilver With a back of light With a nape of rolled stone and wet chalk And of the drop of a glass where one has just been drinking My wife with hips of a skiff With hips of a chandelier and of arrow-feathers And of shafts of white peacock plumes Of an insensible pendulum My wife with buttocks of sandstone and asbestos My wife with buttocks of swans' backs My wife with buttocks of spring With the sex of an iris My wife with the sex of a mining-placer and of a platypus My wife with a sex of seaweed and ancient sweetmeat My wife with a sex of mirror My wife with eyes full of tears With eyes of purple panoply and of a magnetic needle My wife with savanna eyes My wife with eyes of water to he drunk in prison My wife with eyes of wood always under the axe My wife with eyes of water-level of level of air earth and fire

I go in and slip a note in Jane's locker, which I've gotten in the habit of doing. It's always just a line or two that I found from some poem in the gigantic poetry anthology my sophomore English taught me from. I said I wouldn’t be the kind of boyfriend who reads her poetry, and I’m not, but I guess I am the kind of cheesy bastard who slips lines of poetry into her mornings.

Behold the day-break! I awaken you by sitting on your chest and purring in your face, I stir you with muscular paw-prods, I rouse you with toe-bites, Walt, you have slept enough, why don't you get up?" (From Meow of Myself, from LEAVES OF CATNIP)

In the hours waking, when we're still all still, and you can hear the floorboards creaking, and you can feel the shades blow in, the night we slept with, we'll never kiss like that again. Our lips, will sever, our memories, will dissipate, and our shadows will be swallowed by the sky.

Tal vez amar es aprender a caminar por este mundo

From CATS ARE KIND "I saw a dog pursuing automobiles; On and on he sped. I was puzzled by this; I accosted the dog. 'If you catch one,' I said 'What will you do with it?' 'Dumb cat,' he cried, And ran on.

I have made a similar suggestion for poetry: that one should approach it as pure sonority, reading and rereading it as a sort of music, and should not introduce meanings or intentions into the diction before clearly grasping the system of sounds that every poem must offer on pain of nonexistence.

The noisy jay swoops by and reviles me, he complains of my meow and my malingering. I too am not a bit subdued, I too am uncontrollable, I sound my splenetic yowl over the roof of the house." (From Meow of Myself, from LEAVES OF CATNIP)

One could say that artists are people who think naturally in highly patterned ways.

Each poem leads you to the questions it makes sense to ask it.

Let us roam then, you and I, When the evening is splayed out across the sky [...] Paths that follow like a nagging accusation Of a minor violation To lead you to the ultimate reproof ... Oh, do not say, 'Bad kitty!' Let us go and prowl the city. In the rooms the cats run to and fro Auditioning for a Broadway show." (From The Love Song of J. Morris Housecat)

Since poetry deals with the singular, not the general, it cannot - if it is good poetry - look at things of this earth other than as colorful, variegated, and exciting, and so, it cannot reduce life, with all its pain, horror, suffering, and ecstasy, to a unified tonality of boredom and complaint. By necessity poetry is therefore on the side of being and against nothingness.

Letters are meaningless unless put together correctly. Words are worthless unless backed by truth. Sentences are handed out and judged accordingly, but only genuinely honest men or women can create writings that change the world forever.

I asked of the limitless sunshine How to shine with the dawn's glowing light; No answer came back from the sunshine, But my soul heard a whisper, "Burn bright!

What have you known of loss That makes you different from other men? - The Epic of Gilgamesh

The End of the Raven "On a night quite unenchanting, when the rain was downward slanting I awakened to the ranting of the man I catch mice for. Tipsy and a bit unshaven, in a tone I found quite craven, Poe was talking to a Raven perched above the chamber door. 'Raven's very tasty,' thought I, as I tiptoed o'er the floor. 'There is nothing I like more.' [...] Still the Raven never fluttered, standing stock-still as he uttered In a voice that shrieked and sputtered, his two cents' worth -- 'Nevermore.' While this dirge the birdbrain kept up, oh, so silently I crept up, Then I crouched and quickly leapt up, pouncing on the feathered bore. Soon he was a heap of plumage, and a little blood and gore -- Only this and not much more.

The world is a beautiful place to be born into if you don't mind happiness not always being so very much fun if you don't mind a touch of hell now and then just when everything is fine because even in heaven they don't sing all the time The world is a beautiful place to be born into if you don't mind some people dying all the time or maybe only starving some of the time which isn't half bad if it isn't you Oh the world is a beautiful place to be born into if you don't much mind a few dead minds in the higher places or a bomb or two now and then in your upturned faces or such other improprieties as our Name Brand society is prey to with its men of distinction and its men of extinction and its priests and other patrolmen and its various segregations and congressional investigations and other constipations that our fool flesh is heir to Yes the world is the best place of all for a lot of such things as making the fun scene and making the love scene and making the sad scene and singing low songs and having inspirations and walking around looking at everything and smelling flowers and goosing statues and even thinking and kissing people and making babies and wearing pants and waving hats and dancing and going swimming in rivers on picnics in the middle of the summer and just generally 'living it up' Yes but then right in the middle of it comes the smiling mortician

Abyssinias "I met a traveler from an antique land Who said: A huge four-footed limestone form Sits in the desert, sinking in the sand. Its whiskered face, though marred by wind and storm, Still flaunts the dainty ears, the collar band And feline traits the sculptor well portrayed: The bearing of a born aristocrat, The stubborn will no mortal can dissuade. And on its base, in long-dead alphabets, These words are set: "Reward for missing cat! His name is Abyssinias, pet of pets; I, Ozymandias, will a fortune pay For his return. he heard me speak of vets -- O foolish King! And so he ran away.

Ah, fish, there is no fare Quite like a flounder! They surely will not miss A piece or two from stacks of sole like this; I'll steal a few, but leave the lion's share. Look! the lamplight on the lane is pretty They're back from walking out on Dover Beach. I think I'll hide and spare myselpf the speech, For we are in a world untouched by pity Where ignorant humans curse the kitty." (From Dover Sole)

Journey through the Power of the Rainbow represents a condensed compendium of literary efforts from a life dedicated to transforming the themes of injustice, grief, and despair that we all encounter during some unavoidable point of our existence into a sustainable life-affirming poetics of passionate creativity, empowered spiritual vision, and inspired commitment.

Wherever the mind dwells apart is itself a distant place.

Without play at many levels of language, from phonemes to logical structures, a poem is merely prose with linebreaks added.

Hamlet's Cat's Soliloquy "To go outside, and there perchance to stay Or to remain within: that is the question: Whether 'tis better for a cat to suffer The cuffs and buffets of inclement weather That Nature rains on those who roam abroad, Or take a nap upon a scrap of carpet, And so by dozing melt the solid hours That clog the clock's bright gears with sullen time And stall the dinner bell. To sit, to stare Outdoors, and by a stare to seem to state A wish to venture forth without delay, Then when the portal's opened up, to stand As if transfixed by doubt. To prowl; to sleep; To choose not knowing when we may once more Our readmittance gain: aye, there's the hairball; For if a paw were shaped to turn a knob, Or work a lock or slip a window-catch, And going out and coming in were made As simple as the breaking of a bowl, What cat would bear the houselhold's petty plagues, The cook's well-practiced kicks, the butler's broom, The infant's careless pokes, the tickled ears, The trampled tail, and all the daily shocks That fur is heir to, when, of his own will, He might his exodus or entrance make With a mere mitten? Who would spaniels fear, Or strays trespassing from a neighbor's yard, But that the dread of our unheeded cries And scraches at a barricaded door No claw can open up, dispels our nerve And makes us rather bear our humans' faults Than run away to unguessed miseries? Thus caution doth make house cats of us all; And thus the bristling hair of resolution Is softened up with the pale brush of thought, And since our choices hinge on weighty things, We pause upon the threshold of decision.

Hemingway is overrated, Twain is even more lost at sea, And all truths point to the mouth of a woman, Where both her whispers and her screams, Are born. Pour another glass, Beer, wine, whiskey, I don't care, So long as its wisdom is sharp, And it tells lies instead of promises.

To a Vase "How do I break thee? Let me count the ways. I break thee if thou art at any height My paw can reach, when, smarting from some slight, I sulk, or have one of my crazy days. I break thee with an accidental graze Or twitch of tail, if I should take a fright. I break thee out of pure and simple spite The way I broke the jar of mayonnaise. I break thee if a bug upon thee sits. I break thee if I'm in a playful mood, And then I wrestle with the shiny bits. I break thee if I do not like my food. And if someone they shards together fits, I'll break thee once again when thou art glued.

At school some learning by heart was compulsory, though not irksome. But this intake was out-distanced many times, as it always is among people who need poetry, by a private anthology, both of those automatically absorbed and of poems consciously chosen and memorized as though one were stocking up for a desert island or for a stretch of solitary.

I saw very little as it truly was. But that was what Martha taught me. We swear we see each other, but all we are ever able to make out is a tiny porthole view of an ocean. We think we remember the past as it was, but our memories are as fantastic and flimsy as dreams. It's so easy to hate the pretty one, worship the genius, love the rock star, trust the good girl. That's never their only story. We are all anthologies. We are each thousands of pages long, filled with fairy tales and poetry, mysteries and tragedy, forgotten stories in the back no one will ever read. The most we can do is hold out our hands and help each other across the unknown. For in our held hands we find pathways through the dark, across jungles and cities, bridges suspended over the deepest caverns of this world. Your friends will walk with you, holding on with all their might, even when they're no longer there.

We swear we see each other, but all we are ever able to make out is a tiny porthole view of an ocean. We think we remember the past as it was, but our memories are as fantastic and flimsy as dreams. It's so easy to hate the pretty one, worship the genius, love the rock star, trust the good girl. That's never their only story. We are all anthologies. We are each thousands of pages long, filled with fairy tales and poetry, mysteries and tragedy, forgotten stories in the back no one will ever read.

And indeed there will be time To wonder, 'Do I shed?' and, 'Do I shed?' Time to turn back and stretch out on the bed, And give myself a bath before I'm fed -- (They will say: 'It's the short-haired ones I prefer.') My flea collar buckled neatly in my fur, My expression cool and distant but softened by a gentle purr -- (They will say: 'I'm allergic to his fur!') Do I dare Jump up on the table? In an instant there is time For excursions and inversions that will make me seem unstable." (From The Love Song of J. Morris Housecat)

ERIC: What are you always writin' in that book anyway? RODNEY: Poetry. TYRONE: Poetry? Rodney stops sketching and sentimentally flips through a few dozen pages of sketches and handwritten poems and notes. RODNEY: Poetry and pictures. Snapshots of our lives developed in the darkrooms of our souls." From CENTRAL PARK SONG -- a screenplay

Stairs are only leading up So I smile!

[poems are] crystals deposited after the effervescent contact of the spirit with reality. (cristaux deposes apres l'effervescent contact de l'esprit avec la realite)

With a ring around the rosary And a pocket full of crosses Ashes to ashes They'll all fall down

War is what Homo sapiens do best.

Home is elusive. It shapeshifts with the currents of my heart and its will. Home is a trickster changing according to the medicine of the season and its lesson." -Prodigal Daughters (Kimberly Wesnaut)

Venus Transiens" Tell me, Was Venus more beautiful Than you are, When she topped The crinkled waves, Drifting shoreward On her plaited shell? Was Botticelli’s vision Fairer than mine; And were the painted rosebuds He tossed his lady Of better worth Than the words I blow about you To cover your too great loveliness As with a gauze Of misted silver? For me, You stand poised In the blue and buoyant air, Cinctured by bright winds, Treading the sunlight. And the waves which precede you Ripple and stir The sands at my feet. Amy Lowell, Imagist Poetry: An Anthology. Ed. Bob Blaisdell (Dover Publications; Later Printing edition, March 17, 2011)

If you asked for a few words of comfort and guidance I would quickly kneel by your side and offer you a whole book … — Hafez, from “Companion for LIfe,” Poetry of Presence: An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems, eds. Phyliis Cole-Davis & Ruby R. Wilson (Grayson Books, 2017)

It is a pity that no one in Paris bothered to quote Coleridge, who wrote, long before cubism, that the true poet is able to reduce 'succession to an instant.' Simultaneity in this sense is the property of all great poetry.

Men who had poetry in their soul come silently into the world and live quietly down the years, and yet when they are gone no moon in the sky is lucid enough to compare with the light they shed when they are among the living.

God has given us music so that above all it can lead us upwards. Music unites all qualities: it can exalt us, divert us, cheer us up, or break the hardest of hearts with the softest of its melancholy tones. But its principal task is to lead our thoughts to higher things, to elevate, even to make us tremble...The musical art speaks in sounds more penetrating than the words of poetry, and takes hold of the most hidden crevices of the heart...Song elevates our being and leads us to the good and the true. If, however, music serves only as a diversion or as a kind of vain ostentation it is sinful and harmful.

If you can try to nap where someone's sitting, Although there is another empty chair, Then rub against his ankle without quitting Until he rises from your favorite lair; If you can whine and whimper by a portal Until the bolted door is opened wide, Then howl as if you've got a wound that's mortal Until he comes and lets you back inside; If you can give a guest a nasty spiking, But purr when you are petted by a thief; If you can find the food not to your liking Because they put some cheese in with the beef; If you can leave no proffered hand unbitten, And pay no heed to any rule or ban, then all will say you are a Cat, my kitten. And -- which is more -- you'll make a fool of Man!

Maybe it is the thunders who breathed life into my body. They are forever wanting to lift me high and carry me away." -Prodigal Daughters (Kimberly Wesnaut)

Let Your Inhibitions Run Free

None of us seem to have a purpose anymore but my search has become my purpose.

A poem needs imaginative rhythms as well as imaginative transformation of content.

But all I was, was someone Full of love in her heart to give you.

May you feel love unclouded and unjaded by experience.

For a little while I shall be nothing and good.

As that I can see no way out but through—

Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part" or kiss anyway, let's start with that, with the kissing part, because it's better than the parting part

You do not die because you are created or because you have a body You die because you are the face of the future. The flower that tempted the wind to carry its perfume Died yesterday.

The Root Dear one, It is totally conceivable to accept something Yet still feel unable to ever recover from it For acceptance, my love, is simply the flower, Like a ray of hope through the hazy rain, But the root that it sprouted from, And the stem it grows upon, still remain

Distance, the dissonance insurmountable, would be not the end, but a magnet. When fingertips kiss, they imprint and cement something, that cannot be disintegrated. Time becomes a phantom, the wind becomes an anchor, and old dreams- blankets of warmth. Lull with me, Lady, there is no greater escape. Love and war, even when buttered on toast, still makes for the breakfast of champions.

I paid the taxi driver, got out with my suitcase, surveyed my surroundings, and just as I was turning to ask the driver something or get back into the taxi and return forthwith to Chillán and then to Santiago, it sped off without warning, as if the somewhat ominous solitude of the place had unleashed atavistic fears in the driver's mind. For a moment I too was afraid. I must have been a sorry sight standing there helplessly with my suitcase from the seminary, holding a copy of Farewell's Anthology in one hand. Some birds flew out from behind a clump of trees. They seemed to be screaming the name of that forsaken village, Querquén, but they also seemed to be enquiring who: quién, quién, quién. I said a hasty prayer and headed for a wooden bench, there to recover a composure more in keeping with what I was, or what at the time I considered myself to be. Our Lady, do not abandon your servant, I murmured, while the black birds, about twenty-five centimetres in length, cried quién, quién, quién. Our Lady of Lourdes, do not abandon your poor priest, I murmured, while other birds, about ten centimetres long, brown in colour, or brownish, rather, with white breasts, called out, but not as loudly, quién, quién, quién, Our Lady of Suffering, Our Lady of Insight, Our Lady of Poetry, do not leave your devoted subject at the mercy of the elements, I murmured, while several tiny birds, magenta, black, fuchsia, yellow and blue in colour, wailed quién, quién, quién, at which point a cold wind sprang up suddenly, chilling me to the bone.

The Prologue to TERRITORY LOST "Of cats' first disobedience, and the height Of that forbidden tree whose doom'd ascent Brought man into the world to help us down And made us subject to his moods and whims, For though we may have knock'd an apple loose As we were carried safely to the ground, We never said to eat th'accursed thing, But yet with him were exiled from our place With loss of hosts of sweet celestial mice And toothsome baby birds of paradise, And so were sent to stray across the earth And suffer dogs, until some greater Cat Restore us, and regain the blissful yard, Sing, heavenly Mews, that on the ancient banks Of Egypt's sacred river didst inspire That pharaoh who first taught the sons of men To worship members of our feline breed: Instruct me in th'unfolding of my tale; Make fast my grasp upon my theme's dark threads That undistracted save by naps and snacks I may o'ercome our native reticence And justify the ways of cats to men.

The songs of Japan take the human heart as their seed and flourish as myriad leaves of words. As long as they are alive to this world, the cares and deeds of men and women are endless, so they speak of things they hear and see, giving words to the feelings in their hearts. Hearing the cries of the warbler among the blossoms or the calls of the frog that lives in the waters, how can we doubt that every living creature sing its song? Not using force, it moves heaven and earth, makes even the unseen spirits and gods feel pity, smoothes the bonds between man and woman, and consoles the hearts of fierce warriors-such a thing is poetry.

Some literary recommendations: James Salter’s erotic masterpiece, A Sport and a Pastime; Anais Nin’s collections of short stories Delta of Venus and Little Birds; the erotic novels Emanuelle by Emanuelle Arsan and Story of O by Pauline Réage; Harold Brodkey’s sexual saga “Innocence”—perhaps the greatest depiction of a session of cunnilingus ever penned; novels by Jerzy Kosinski such as Passion Play and Cockpit; Henry Miller’s Under the Roofs of Paris and Quiet Days in Clichy; My Secret Life by Anonymous and The Pure and the Impure by Colette; Nancy Friday’s anthology of fantasies, Secret Garden (filled with the correspondence of real people’s fantasies); stories from The Mammoth Book of Erotica or one of the many erotic anthologies edited by Susie Bright. For those with a taste for poetry, try Les Fleurs du Mal (Flowers of Evil) by Charles Baudelaire or Flesh Unlimited by Guillaume Apollinaire. And for those who like comic books (kinky ones, that is), try the extra-hot works of writer/illustrator Eric Stanton, who specializes in female-domination fantasies.

Little Light There is this little light within, Her name is Hope, And I know that as long as I can feel her there, Just beneath my skin, Sending her waves within the labyrinth of my mind, She is snugly at peace within my heart, And I have a chance.

there will always be pain. you will hold animosity in your heart and it will hurt you. do not be foolish enough to let these times pass; trees do not hide during storms. they face torrential down pours, they dig their root deeper into the soil -- you must do the same.

The difference between a fairly interesting writer and a fascinating writer is that the fascinating writer has a better nose for what genuinely excites him, he is hotter on the trail, he has a better instinct for what is truly alive in him. The worse writer may seem to be more sensible in many ways, but he is less sensible in this vital matter: he cannot distinguish what is full of life from what is only half full or empty of it. And so his writing is less alive, and as a writer he is less alive, and in writing, as in everything else, nothing matters but life.

Mukhota A hindi poetry anthology explores the various common elements of life. Right from religion, nature, nostalgia to love, freedom, and endless thoughts. Reading the poetries feels like touching every little aspects that constitute Life. "Enjoy 7 days free Audiobooks for first registration

Although Maddie could inspire an anthology of poetry, right now I don’t want to skirt around my feelings with anything flowery,” Cole stated. He caressed Maddie’s cheek with the back of his knuckles, stared at her intently, and said, “I love you, Madeline…so much. That’s all I really want to say right now.

There is no correct way to write a novel, or rather, there is only one, and that one way is to make it interesting. That is very easily said, but how do you make your writing interesting? The answer to the question is, that you write interestingly only about the things that genuinely interest you. This is an infallible rule.

The mind of the poet works in this pattern of pain, a place beyond linear logic, a multidimensional world of sound, rhythm, pattern, meaning, and reason all at once. The poet shuffles all of these dimensions until he finds a shape, a structure that begins to hold the meaning and the essence of what is compelling him to communicate.

Maybe I will keep wanting more, perhaps I cannot stop this restless aching snore...

And when I look into those eyes, the world around me pauses, everything that exists just stops at your gaze, when it meets mine, rising the burning blaze...

A child, more than all other gifts That earth can offer to declining man Brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts.

Magic is more than a tool More than a weapon to wield Magic is in the soul, in the heart Not just the sword and the shield.

The best anthology is the one each reader compiles, personally, according to his or her judgment, pleasure and awe." ~ Robert Pinsky, Singing School, 2013

Men do not trip over mountains: They fall over earth mounds.

My father who was always serious has fallen in love with a dog. What can I do but be happy for him?

We could not hold the burdens on our backs, so we left them in order to find our own way, revealing the world to the innocent so that they could bear their own weight.

Fingers are the judge Words are the verdict Thoughts—prison.

Do not kiss me, my love. Do not hold me, my love. If you love me, my love, kill me.

For three hours without history or thirst Time is my own unpurchased and intimate Republic of the cool wind and blue sea.

The soul could be happier anywhere than where it happens to be.

I have no idea What I am doing Where I am going What I want Who am I Where are you?

But he goes all quiet. His ghost eyes roll / up in his head, white-on-white-on-white, / and he runs his shaking hands over his scars, / looks up like he’s going to wish on a / star.

The thing is, someday the sun is going to die and everything on Earth will freeze. This will happen. Even if we end global warming and clean up our radiation. The complete works of William Shakespeare, Monet’s lilies, all of Hemingway, all of Milton, all of Keats, our music libraries, our library libraries, our galleries, our poetry, our letters, our names etched in desks. I used to think printing things made them permanent, but that seems so silly now. Everything will be destroyed no matter how hard we work to create it. The idea terrifies me. I want tiny permanents. I want gigantic permanents! I want what I think and who I am captured in an anthology of indulgence I can comfortingly tuck into a shelf in some labyrinthine library.

In writing these poems about relatives, I found it almost impossible to write about the mother. I was stuck. My feelings about my mother, you see, must be too complicated to easily flow into words.

Keep your whole being on the thing you are turning into words. The minute you flinch, and take your mind off this thing, and begin to look at the words and worry about them... Then your worry goes into them and they set about killing each other. So you keep going as long as you can, then look back and see what you have written. After a bit of practice and after telling yourself you are going to use any old word that comes into your head so long as it seems right, you will surprise yourself. You will read back through what you have written and you will get a shock. You will have captured a spirit, a creature.

They think the universe swallows God and everything we’ve ever said about him, yet I see him so world-spittingly big that these quadrillion-star galactic glories are but sequins in his floor-length robe

It was during the age of Nara that Chinese writing led to the appearance of the first real books produced in Japan, the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki chronicles of 712 and 720. These were followed shortly afterwards by the first poetry anthologies, the Kaifosu (Fond Recollections of Poetry) of 751 and the Manyusho ( Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves) of 759. Some documents were even printed, another Chinese influence.

Every day, priests minutely examine the Dharma And endlessly chant complicated sutras. Before doing that, though, they should learn How to read the love letters sent by The wind and rain, the snow and moon.

It is disappointing how people tend not to read a broad range of material. When the poets only read poetry, the historians only read history, the theorists only read theory, and the philosophers only read philosophy, we experience a clear deficiency in poetry, history, theory, and philosophy. We are far away from Renaissance human beings sculpting themselves to be full and all encompassing in knowledge and life pursuits.

I'm sorry little bird But that was the way you were made. There will always be distance. But we will make sure your gilded cage Is resplendent. You will live seperate, but we will keep you so busy That you don't know You're not free.

Finding Peace- Poem Excerpt: Peace is finding your bliss Without any condition, situation, or person attached to it, Peace is the tenacity to be you and feel your heart. Peace is the sound you hear when you circle the scenery of your own soul. Like a tree, so rooted to what is real Like the ocean, exquisite and unending, whether people cherish it or not Like a butterfly, unique and colourful, be it night or day. Like the moon, full, even when not visibly so.

And I discovered Norton’s anthology of poetry in the patients’ library – it changed my life. I read the poems over and over again before I began to grasp their meanings. It wasn’t just that the words were musical notes my eyes could sing. It was the discovery that women and men, long dead, had left me messages about their feelings, emotions I could compare to my own. I had finally found others who were as lonely as I was. In an odd way, that knowledge comforted me.

My anthology continues to sell & the critics get more & more angry. When I excluded Wilfred Owen, whom I consider unworthy of the poets' corner of a country newspaper, I did not know I was excluding a revered sandwich-board Man of the revolution & that some body has put his worst & most famous poem in a glass-case in the British Museum-- however if I had known it I would have excluded him just the same. He is all blood, dirt & sucked sugar stick (look at the selection in Faber's Anthology-- he calls poets 'bards,' a girl a 'maid,' & talks about 'Titanic wars'). There is every excuse for him but none for those who like him. . . .(from a letter of December 26, 1936, in Letters on Poetry from W. B. Yeats to Dorothy Wellesley, p. 124).

We are all anthologies. We are each thousands of pages long, filled with fairy tales and poetry, mysteries and tragedy, forgotten stories in the back no one will ever read. The most we can do is hold out our hands and help each other across the unknown. For in our held hands we find pathways through the dark, across jungles and cities; bridges suspended over the deepest caverns of this world. Your friends will walk with you, holding on with all their might, even when they're no longer there.

A Ballad of Going Down to the Store First I went down to the street by means of the stairs, just imagine it, by means of the stairs. Then people known to people unknown passed me by and I passed them by. Regret that you did not see how people walk, regret! I entered a complete store: lamps of glass were glowing. I saw somebody - he sat down - and what did I hear? what did I hear? rustling of bags and human talk. And indeed, indeed, I returned. --Miron Bialoszewski (Poland, 1922-1983)

Dreams If I could mould the world As if working with clay I’d soften the hurt take the pain away I’d paint the sky the brightest blue With raindrops making wishes come true The sun would shine so bright and strong To dry the tears and right the wrongs

The Caution of Fire by The Chorus of Life Remember the hands that built you. Remember the fires that fed you. Grow slow, for every spark becomes a sun, and every sun burns what it loves. If you must rise, rise gently for the ashes beneath your feet are us.

for a poem Needs multitude, multitudes of thoughts, all fierce, all flesh-eaters, musically clamorous Bright hawks that hover and dart headlong, and ungainly Gray hungers fledged with desire of transgression, salt slimed beaks, from the sharp Rock-shores of the world and the secret waters.

Tawhid, Unity in its deepest sense, is the first principle of Religion, which impels the Sufis to claim that all, everything, is He. This is true not merely at that spiritual stage of Intuition in which the seer and Seen are said to be one, but even at the beginning of the Path. For the aspirant himself is said to be the very object of aspiration. Like a thief who mingles unseen with the crowd that pursues him, the obiect of our search is "closer to us than our jugular vein" (L, 16). As Ahmad Ghazali put it, "We drown in an endless ocean, yet our lips are parched with thirst.

What I am going to propose is that you write a novel. As you know, the practical advantages of being able to write out your thoughts fluently are very great. For one thing, when you are used to writing them out, they present themselves, one after another. When you are not used to writing them out, they mill around among themselves usually and you see nothing but heads and tails of them when you sit down to get them on paper. I know from my own experience that the first two or three hours of every exam I ever took were spent simply getting my pen warmed up, and by then it was too late.

Between the Gardening and the Cookery Comes the brief Poetry shelf; By the Nonesuch Donne, a thin anthology Offers itself. Critical, and with nothing else to do, I scan the Contents page, Relieved to find the names are mostly new; No one my age. Like all strangers, they divide by sex: Landscape Near Parma Interests a man, so does The Double Vortex, So does Rilke and Buddha. “I travel, you see”, “I think” and “I can read’ These titles seem to say; But I Remember You, Love is My Creed, Poem for J., The ladies’ choice, discountenance my patter For several seconds; From somewhere in this (as in any) matter A moral beckons. Should poets bicycle-pump the human heart Or squash it flat? Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart; Girls aren’t like that. We men have got love well weighed up; our stuff Can get by without it. Women don’t seem to think that’s good enough; They write about it. And the awful way their poems lay them open Just doesn’t strike them. Women are really much nicer than men: No wonder we like them. Deciding this, we can forget those times We stayed up half the night Chock-full of love, crammed with bright thoughts, names, rhymes, And couldn’t write.

I am not a lady I live in an elevator in a big department store America. “Your floor, lady?” “I don't have a floor, I live in the elevator.” “You can't just live in an elevator.” They all say that except for the man from Time magazine who acted very cool. We stop and let people into dresses, better dresses, beauty, and on the top floor, home furnishings and then the credit office, suddenly stark and no nonsense this is it. At each floor I look out at the ladies quietly becoming ladies and I say “huh” reflectively. My hair is long and wild full of little twigs and cockleburrs. I visit the floors only for water. I make my own food from the berries and frightened rabbits— I pray forgive me brother as I eat— that grow wild in the elevator. Once every three months, solstice and equinox, a cop comes and clubs me a little. The man from Time says I articulate my generation something wobble squeegy squiggle pop pop Yesterday pausing at childrens I saw another lady take off all her clothes and go to live in #7. We are waiting to fill all thirteen.

Poetry is the Path on the Rainbow by which the soul climbs; it lays hold on the Friend of the Soul of Man. Such exalted states are held to be protective and curative. Medicine men sing for their patients, and, in times of war, wives gather around the Chief's woman and sing for the success of their warriors. "Calling on Zeus by the names of Victory" as Euripides puts it.

The difficult thing is not to pick up the information but to recognise it - to accept it into our consciousness. Most of us find it difficult to know what we are feeling about anything. In any situation it is almost impossible to know what is really happening to us. This is one of the penalties of being human and having a brain so swarming with interesting suggestions and ideas and self-distrust.

Truth's Virtue- Poem Excerpt: Truth, in all her virtue, Will be your sunrise, your sunset, Your morning breeze and your bedtime nest, She will want a home in your heart, Guiding your way As a star that pounces from the heavens, Chasing cheating ghosts away, She will be the fruitful soil, from which a sincere and striking beauty will spring free, With sagely roots to ground her as the mightiest tree.

It is not enough to say the crow flies purposefully, or heavily, or rowingly, or whatever. There are no words to capture the infinite depth of crowiness in the crow's flight. All we can do is use a word as an indicator, or a whole bunch of words as a general directive. But the ominous thing in the crow's flight, the bare-faced, bandit thing, the tattered beggarly gipsy thing, the caressing and shaping yet slightly clumsy gesture of the down-stroke, as if the wings were both too heavy and too powerful, and the headlong sort of merriment, the macabre pantomime ghoulishness and the undertaker sleekness - you could go on for a very long time with phrases of that sort and still have completely missed your instant, glimpse knowledge of the world of the crow's wingbeat. And a bookload of such descriptions is immediately rubbish when you look up and see the crow flying.

It is to my comfort that I entertain stories of ghosts, of discarnate spirits, of angels, of relatives returning to this realm to speak to us... speaking to us in our thoughts and in our dreams. I take comfort in these because no matter how advanced we humans may be... no matter how civilized, how cultured, there will always be some aspect of the spiritual realm that not even the greatest living genius can truly comprehend or explain.

If the birds were among us to be mirrored In the tranquil lake above our heads                                              WE MIGHT UNDERSTAND                Death would be a long and beautiful voyage And an endless holiday for the flesh for structure for bone from “The Death of Apollinaire” (La Mort de Guillaume Apollinaire), (1919) The Yale Anthology of Twentieth-century French Poetry. (ale University Press; First Editiion edition, June 10, 2004)

Ants know earth. Dragonflies know air. A cobbled mind is not fatal. You have to be willing to self-educate at a moment’s notice, and to be caught in your ignorance by people who will use it against you. You will mispronounce words in front of a crowd. It cannot be avoided. But your poems, with all of their deficiencies, products of lifelong observation and asymmetric knowledge, will be your own. Built on the edge of tradition, they will rarely be anthologized.

Only God knows the future. When told by doctors in 2014 that cancer could cease function of his mind and body in two years or less, the author experienced a transition. Suddenly all priorities were rearranged in order of their eternal value. Many of those things that seemed so important the day before, became nothing: a grudge was dropped, a hurt forgiven, a threat dismissed, an apprehension set aside, a bucket list reduced to one or two accomplishments prior to death.

If we were not so-single-minded about keeping our lives moving and for once could do nothing, perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness of never understanding ourselves and of threatening ourselves with death. Perhaps the earth can teach us as when everything seems dead and later proves to be alive. — Pablo Neruda, from “Keeping Quiet,” transl. Alastair Reid, Poetry of Presence: An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems, eds. Phyllis Cole-Dai & Ruby R. Wilson (Grayson Books, 2017)

But the mind always wants more than it has– one more bright day of sun, one more clear night in bed with the moon; one more hour to get the words right; one more chance for the heart in hiding to emerge from its thicket in dried grasses–as if this quiet day with its tentative light weren’t enough, as if joy weren’t strewn all around. — Holly J. Hughes, from “Mind Wanting More,” Poetry of Presence: An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems, eds. Phyllis Cole-Dai & Ruby R. Wilson (Grayson Books, 2017)

Where will the capacity for heaven come from if we have neglected it on earth? A man cannot suddenly walk into a lecture room on higher mathematics and be thrilled by its equations if all during life he neglected to develop a taste for mathematics. A heaven of poets would be a hell to those who never learned to love poetry. And a heaven of divine truth, righteousness, and justice would be a hell to those who never studiously cultivated those virtues here below. Heaven is only for those who work for heaven.

An inquiry which I once made into the psychology of the Indian sign language with a view to discovering a possible relation between it and Greek manual gesture as displayed in ancient graphic art, led to the conclusion that Indian rhythms arise rather in the centre of self-preservation than of self-consciousness. Which is only another way of saying that poetry is valued primarily by the aboriginal for the reaction it produces within himself rather than for any effect he is able to produce on others by means of it.

Thanks to Casey Ashcraft Honebrink! The book includes my winning "IN HIDING" as a short story along with 23 other winning entries from talented members of WRITERS ASSEMBLED. The anthology, THE BEST OF WRITERS ASSEMBLED 2017: BEHIND CLOSED DOORS is a mixed-genre collection. It really has a little something for everyone : action, suspense, humor, romance, fantasy, supernatural, science fiction, drama, poetry, and personal stories. You can find it on Amazon, get your copy today! Thanks for recognizing and supporting our group!

As Sandy and his wife warmed to the tale, one tripping up another in their eagerness to tell everything, it gradually developed as distinct a superstition as I ever heard, and not without poetry and pathos. How long it was since the voice had been heard first, nobody could tell with certainty. Jarvis's opinion was that his father, who had been coachman at Brentwood before him, had never heard anything about it, and that the whole thing had arisen within the last ten years, since the complete dismantling of the old house: which was a wonderfully modern date for a tale so well authenticated. According to these witnesses, and to several whom I questioned afterwards, and who were all in perfect agreement, it was only in the months of November and December that "the visitation" occurred. During these months, the darkest of the year, scarcely a night passed without the recurrence of these inexplicable cries. Nothing, it was said, had ever been seen - at least nothing that could be identified. Some people, bolder or more imaginative than the others, had seen the darkness moving, Mrs Jarvis said with unconscious poetry. ("The Open Door")

I am not moved to love Thee, 0 my Lord, By any longing for Thy Promised Land; Nor by the fear of hell am I unmanned To cease from my transgressing deed or word. Tis Thou Thyself dost move me,—Thy blood poured Upon the cross from nailed foot and hand; And all the wounds that did Thy body brand; And all Thy shame and bitter death's award. Yea, to Thy heart am I so deeply stirred That I would love Thee were no heaven on high,— That I would fear, were hell a tale absurd! Such my desire, all questioning grows vain; Though hope deny me hope I still should sigh, And as ray love is now, it should remain. (To Christ Crucified)

He asked you not to like me, So why did you, Neera? Even now, I perform breaststrokes in caterpillar-stuffed north eastern clouds He didn’t ask me for any poems for 50 years, So why are you asking now, Neera? Even now, standing in 10-foot-deep water, I wield icy rods He wrote an editorial on my sub-judice case, Turning an editor, why are you asking for my writing, Neera? Even now, I love flatbreads stuffed with smoked penguin fat He did not confess to being my anthology’s publisher Why did you confess, Neera? Even now, I have family-pack yawns in the face of families, He didn’t like pronouncing my name So why are you telling it to youths, Neera? Even now, in bloody waters, I join the Bollywood chorus of tiger sharks He had said I have nothing of a true writer So why do you think I do, Neera? At Imlitala, I knew rat roasts don’t taste too good without charcoal smoke He said I have nothing creative in me So why do you think I do, Neera? Having burnt bank notes worth Rs 5,000 crore, I smelt death He said I’ll never write poetry So why do you think I have, Neera? On the banks of Amsterdam’s canals I have heard doddering old men sing limericks He transcended from sorrow to anger and anger to hate Why are you so generous Neera? Please don’t tell my grandmother.

NMK is a well know maxillofacial surgeon, from India, pens his first poetry book Miracle Mix, favourably reviewed by literary critic Prof. M Krishnan Nair. He says "Every poem has an emotional reality. This is rarely found in modern poetry." Almost all the poems have a curious mix of humour and pathos. This anthology captures impressions made on poet's mind by various images and objects ranging from passing clouds, flowing streams to life itself. In simple yet evocative manner, the poet introduces the readers to his world of imagination through these poems. Sometimes he becomes one with the elements of nature and at others he narrates an old legend. Dr. Nikhil Kurien writes under the pen name NMK, he is an oral and maxillofacial surgeon. ISBN: 978-93-85020-82-7 Publisher: Zorba Books book available on Zorba Book Store, Flipkart, amazon, Infibeam and shop clues and on Kindle.

It happens surprisingly fast, the way your shadow leaves you. All day you’ve been linked by the light, but now that darkness gathers the world in a great black tide, your shadow joins the sea of all other shadows. If you stand here long enough, you, too, will forget your lines and merge with the tall grass and old trees, with the crows and the flooding river—all these pieces of the world that daylight has broken into objects of singular loneliness. It happens surprisingly fast, the drawing in of your shadow, and standing in the field, you become the field, and standing in the night, you are gathered by night, Invisible birds sing to the memory of light but then even those separate songs fade, tiny drops of ink in an infinite spilling. — Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, “Still Life at Dusk,” Poetry of Presence: An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems, eds. Phyllis Cole-Dai & Ruby R. Wilson (Grayson Books, 2017)

Yorick's Used and Rare Books had a small storefront on Channing but a deep interior shaded by tall bookcases crammed with history, poetry, theology, antiquated anthologies. There was no open wall space to hang the framed prints for sale, so Hogarth's scenes of lust, pride, and debauchery leaned rakishly against piles of novels, folk tales, and literary theory. In the back room these piles were so tall and dusty that they took on a geological air, rising like stalagmites. Jess often felt her workplace was a secret mine or quarry where she could pry crystals from crevices and sweep precious jewels straight off the floor. As she tended crowded shelves, she opened one volume and then another, turning pages on the history of gardens, perusing Edna St. Vincent Millay: "We were very tired, were very merry, / We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry..." dipping into Gibbon: "The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay..." and old translations of Grimm's Fairy Tales: "They walked the whole day over meadows, fields, and stony places. And when it rained, the little sister said, 'Heaven and our hearts are weeping together...

When I hit thirty, he brought me a cake, three layers of icing, home-made, a candle for each stone in weight. The icing was white but the letters were pink, they said, EAT ME. And I ate, did what I was told. Didn’t even taste it. Then he asked me to get up and walk round the bed so he could watch my broad belly wobble, hips judder like a juggernaut. The bigger the better, he’d say, I like big girls, soft girls, girls I can burrow inside with multiple chins, masses of cellulite. I was his Jacuzzi. But he was my cook, my only pleasure the rush of fast food, his pleasure, to watch me swell like forbidden fruit. His breadfruit. His desert island after shipwreck. Or a beached whale on a king-sized bed craving a wave. I was a tidal wave of flesh. too fat to leave, too fat to buy a pint of full-fat milk, too fat to use fat as an emotional shield, too fat to be called chubby, cuddly, big-built. The day I hit thirty-nine, I allowed him to stroke my globe of a cheek. His flesh, my flesh flowed. He said, Open wide, poured olive oil down my throat. Soon you’ll be forty… he whispered, and how could I not roll over on top. I rolled and he drowned in my flesh. I drowned his dying sentence out. I left him there for six hours that felt like a week. His mouth slightly open, his eyes bulging with greed. There was nothing else left in the house to eat.

Farewell to Manzanar, by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1973). A memoir that follows seven-year-old Jeanne Wakatsuki and her family’s journey as they are forced into the Manzanar internment camp. Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of Japanese American Internment, edited by Linda Gordon, Gary Y. Okihiro (New York: W.W. Norton, 2006). A collection of images taken by photographer Dorothea Lange, originally censored by the US Army. Looking Like the Enemy: My Story of Imprisonment in Japanese American Internment Camps, by Mary Matsuda Gruenewald (Troutdale, OR: NewSage Press, 2005). Only What We Could Carry: The Japanese American Internment Experience, edited by Lawson Fusao Inada (Berkeley: Heyday Books, 2000). An anthology of poetry, prose, documents, drawings, and photographs.

Grotesque" Why do the lilies goggle their tongues at me When I pluck them; And writhe, and twist, And strangle themselves against my fingers, So that I can hardly weave the garland For your hair? Why do they shriek your name And spit at me When I would cluster them? Must I kill them To make them lie still, And send you a wreath of lolling corpses To turn putrid and soft On your forehead While you dance? Amy Lowell, Imagist Poetry: An Anthology. Ed. Bob Blaisdell (Dover Publications; Later Printing edition, March 17, 2011)

For now that I have seen The curd-white hawthorn once again Break out on the new green, And through the iron gates in the long blank wall Have viewed across a screen Of rosy apple-blossom the grey spire And low red roofs and humble chimney-stacks, And stood in spacious courtyards of old farms, And heard green virgin wheat sing to the breeze, And the drone of ancient worship rise and fall In the dark church, and talked with simple folk Of farm and village, dwelling near the earth, Among earth's ancient elemental things: I can with heart made bold Go back into the ways of ruin and death With step unflagging and with quiet breath. (Martin Armstrong)

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought, I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, And with old woes new wail my dear time s waste: Then can I drown an eye (unus’d to flow) For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night. And weep afresh love’s long-since cancell’d woe, And moan th’ expense of many a vanish’d sight: Then can I grieve at grievances foregone, And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan. Which I new pay as if not paid before. But if the while I think on thee (dear friend) All losses are restor’d, and sorrows end. —William Shakespeare, “Sonnet XXX,” Art & Love. An Illustrated Anthology of Love Poetry, edited by Kate Farrell (Bulfinch, 1990)

Although I adore Christ, I have zero tolerance for Christians because they do not even somewhat resemble him.

I will not call your name, for it ignites the forgotten flame, and burn me in this choiceless game...

And so my eyes wandered, restless and sleepless, searching for its lost light that resided within you grace.

Emily Dickinson, the “Belle of Amherst,” wrote hundreds of poems during her lifetime that are striking in their originality of thought and their intensity of feeling. Most were not even published until after her death, and her works only very slowly gained the widespread critical acclaim and appreciation that they enjoy today. When did the act of creation occur? When she was actually writing the poems? Or only after they were discovered, published, and admired by society? Vincent van Gogh produced hundreds of paintings throughout his life. Yet no one, except a few friends, purchased any of his paintings, and he died an apparent failure. Only later did critical acclaim make his work widely sought after, and now his paintings sell for millions of dollars when auctioned at Sotheby’s or Christie’s. Most of John Donne’s songs and sonnets, satires, and religious and secular love poems circulated in a handwritten underground form during much of his life. For three centuries they remained largely underground and appeared infrequently in anthologies until the early twentieth century, when T. S. Eliot rediscovered the metaphysical poets and held them up as ideal models of what poetry should be like.

If David Lehman and the guest editors of the Best American Poetry anthologies have taught us anything, it’s that poetry is as much about your name and the people you know as it is about how well you write

Perhaps, just perhaps, you’re there. How little he needs. Just love. More love. — Christopher Wiseman, from “Bedside Manners,” Poetry of Presence: An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems, eds. Phyllis Cole-Dai & Ruby R. Wilson (Grayson Books, 2017)

the old cedars watch us make love by the pools that drain to the inlet where orcas slip ghostlike through a salmonless sea

Rainforest Nictitating eyelid sky omening leaf mould melancholia mollusc ruminating spores/ spruce pores sweat steamed [fungus]/ frog needles old man's beard devil's club seeps gloom.

You must learn one thing. The world was made to be free in. Give up all the other worlds except the one to which you belong. Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you. — David Whyte, “Sweet Darkness,” Poetry of Presence: An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems, eds. Phyllis Cole-Dai & Ruby R. Wilson (Grayson Books, 2017)

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

The poets of past and present, sing of heartbreaks and depressions, making the full moon quietly crescent, causing the world to stir with impressions.

Let us not make our gazes meet, and let's never smile at each other, for who am I? but a mere stranger...

He was alone yet he was happy, and that was his life's absurdity

Yes, I am glad you found me, for I would have been lost in the depths of absurdity...

The way the sunflowers turn to see the rising sun, and the way the moonlight shines upon the sleeping sea. Your presence seems to have a very similar effect on me...

What is home to a hero Once that home is gone? Who am I to go home to, Who will sing me my last song?

Eyes as dark as devil’s Mouth twisted in a salacious grin The wilderness was the attire Of the killer and its black fiend

The Goose Liver Anthology is a cynical look at doom with flashes of love and spunk. Many characters are doomed by mere chance, others by the fate of human nature. Age and vanity doom them, and loneliness, sex, and desire drive them mad with tragic results. Some seek revenge and do cruel things to each other. The human propensity for the supernatural is another form of madness, the crying need to believe in something, no matter how crazy.

And we were all just sheer reflections seen in a storybook glass.

How can a poem make a difference? How can a tree make a difference? Perhaps the answer to those questions is that poetry and nature have a way of simply reminding us that we are not alone. The Kentucky writer bell hooks once wrote, “Rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of communion.” Going to the woods, or simply noticing the small defiant ways nature is thriving all around me on a daily basis, helps me feel that communion. And poems, like the poems that I’ve collected here for this anthology, help me feel that sense of communion too.

When creating green spaces or attempting to rewild an area, it’s not about planting one tree, but many. It’s not simply about the overstory, but the wild grasses and shrubs and living creatures in the understory. This anthology hopes to be both the canopy and the soil—not just a community, but a living ecosystem made stronger by all its parts. As Robin Wall Kimmerer wrote in Braiding Sweetgrass, “All flourishing is mutual.

I want you to look again and again, to recognize the tender grasses, curled like a baby’s fine hairs around your fingers, as a recurring miracle, to see that the river rocks shine like God, that the crisp voices of the orange and gold October leaves are laughing at death. — Rebecca Baggett, from “Testimony,” Poetry of Presence: An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems, eds. Phyliis Cole-Davis & Ruby R. Wilson (Grayson Books, 2017)

How long have I waited in silent rebellion while you clutched at your pearls, fighting to be who I really am.

heart imploded, found pieces shattered in her blood hugging flower stems, believe the flowers were wrapped, so tightly it caused her heart to break, to explode, found remnants of her dreams underneath her finger nails.

I still lay flowers at your grave take my boots and grind them into the ground that holds my childhood toys and torn out journal pages filled with scribbles of first crushes where my innocence still bikes to friends houses under fluorescent candied lights and kissing is just kissing only followed with a smile playing tag on our lips the kind between two people sharing a secret

You showed me that ghosts can also be living things take shape in delicate skin with soft eyes that people don’t need to die in order to haunt

I still have nightmares of homesick eyes​​ always looking for herself in others not realizing she is an entire universe to explore on her own

I learned that the worst day of loving someone is the day you lose them and now I’m left with two bodies to bury and I don’t want a world where sunshine girls die

Romantic poetry with its matrist and oral values survived and actually prevailed. Geoffrey Chaucer imported the ideology to England with his Knight's Tale and some of his shorter rondels; by Elizabethan times this had virtually become the whole of poetry. Thus, Shakespeare could write about anything that struck his imagination when he was writing for the stage, but as soon as he started writing poetry for the printed page, he fell inevitably into the language, the themes, the traditional conceits and the entire apparatus of troubadour love-mysticism. So great was Shakespeare's influence, in turn, that when modern poets finally began writing about other subjects around 1910, established opinion was shocked and it was said that such material was "unpoetic"—as if Homer's battles, Ovid's mysticism, Juvenal's indignation, Villon's earthiness, Lucretius's rationalism, the Greek Anthology's cynicism, Piers Plowman's social protest, etc., had never existed and only the troubadour love-mystique had ever been poetry.

I see you in the scattered fossils I see you in fear and sadness I feel you in faraway mountains I feel you in human kindness

Your ivory body pulses as the white Flesh catches flame and rosy tremblings move Over this sanctuary of delight, The last asylum of our love.

HERE in this moonlit room, I watch you slip One shoulder from your dress and turn to me; A polished statue, fushing to the tip Of marble fingers gradually.

1823-1882 Winifred Waters sat and sighed     Under a weeping willow; When she went

Now I am homeless – a just punishment. But perhaps I was born so that the “Eternal Slaves” might speak through my lips. Why should I spare myself? Should I renounce what is probably the sole duty of a poet only in order to make sure that my verse would be printed in an anthology edited by the State Publishing House?

So next time mingle with the magnificent night And maintain a safe distance from the mysterious light. - Night vs. Light

Some nights the kitchen is haunted by your feet and the ghosts of your tears, you look at the grill lining the window and grieve for open skies open arms a childhood still out of reach.

Words are heavy and they take up space. My body is burdened under their weight.

If you were writing a book to be published, you might be restrained by the fear that your wild imaginings might drive some people crazy. As it is, you are free, you can go off in any direction whatsoever, so long as the flame in your mind burns that way.

Scrapbooks allowed readers to take complete artistic control and create their own bricolage, combining text and image. In the United States they often took the form of highly idiosyncratic anthologies of poetry clipped from newspapers, back when every local newspaper published local poets.36 As a hobby, scrapbooking really took off during the Civil War, when Northerners and Southerners alike assembled their own histories of the conflict, reflecting their respective biases. Confederates naturally liked to clip reports of happy slaves proclaiming their loyalty to their masters.37 They didn’t realize that some former slaves were starting their own scrapbooks.

I’d read her poetry at night, cook her breakfast in the morning, and listen to her during all the hours in between. No matter what it took, I would claim her heart. I imagined the way her body would arch and sing when I sank into her for the first time, filling her up with my cock and kissing her until she didn’t know where I ended and she began.

Soon after joining the agency, Marks set out to lessen the danger. His first step was to get rid of the codes that the agency had been using to communicate with its people in the field. They had come from MI6, which, for the first two years of SOE’s existence, had controlled its wireless circuits and provided its sets and coding. Marks was dismayed by the simplicity of the codes, which were based on classic English poems by Shakespeare and others that were “so familiar that an educated German was quite capable of recognizing them and guessing the cipher.” To replace them, he wrote poems of his own, ranging from ribald verses to tender love poems. He gave one of the latter, entitled “The Life That I Have,” to a twenty-one-year-old agent named Violette Szabo, who, after being parachuted into France in 1942, was eventually captured, tortured, and killed by the Gestapo. It read: The life that I have Is all that I have And the life that I have Is yours. The love that I have Of the life that I have Is yours and yours and yours. A sleep I shall have A rest I shall have Yet death will be but a pause For the peace of my years In the long green grass Will be yours and yours and yours. Since then, the poem has developed a life of its own. It has been used in a movie about Szabo’s life, found in poetry anthologies, reprinted on a 9/11 victims’ website, and recited by Chelsea Clinton and Marc Mezvinsky at their wedding in 2010. “Every code,” Marks would later say, “has a human face.

Writing is my soul food, sometimes I eat alone, sometimes I share the bread.

Nuair a bhagras an nàmhaid, Air a' Ghàidheal a dh'éighear - Bidh gach morair is iarla Guidhe dian leibh gu éirigh, Bidh sibh measail aig diùcan 'S bheir an Crùn a chuid fhéin dhuibh; Ach nuair cheanglar an t-sith leibh Cha bhi cuimhn' air bhur feum dhaibh, Cha bhi cuimhn' air mar smàladh Thar sàl do thìr chéin sibh, Mar chaidh fearann a dhiùltadh 'S mar a chum iad na féidh bhuaibh, Mar a chu iad an t-iasg bhuaibh Agus ianlaith nan speuran. When the enemy threaten, It's the Gael who is called - Each earl and each lord Implores you to rise, Dukes show you respect And the Crown gives you its share; But when peace is secured by you They'll forget how you served them, They'll forget you were banished Far over the sea, And how land was refused And they forbade you the deer, And forbade you the fish And the birds of the air. - Ruairidh MacAoidh

Most of the books of erotic poetry available today are either too old or are big anthologies covering the same poets and poems. There is a lack of new and original work. Most of us have read something from Ovid, Sappho, Shakespeare, the ancient Greeks, the Romans, or from the Kama Sutra. But love is a theme that should be celebrated with freshness.

Poetry is important to people in a crisis, as love and intelligence are important. These are survival tools.

IS THIS LOVE? Abegunde Sunday Olaoluwa   Is this love that stirs up my feelings, Or is it athirst for the meaning of loving?   Am I getting lost in longing? Is it you I'm lovingly awaiting?   Love is ever magical, Yes I know, I know…. Love is ever mystical, It's a union of souls.   Hating is never logical, Yes I know, I know…. Dating is ever tactical,

Well, the terrible fact is that though we are all more or less thinking of something or other all the time, some of us are thinking more and some less. Some brains are battling and working and remembering and puzzling things over all the time and other brains are just lying down, snoring and occasionally turning over. It is to the lazy minds that I am now speaking, and from my own experience I imagine this includes nineteen people out of every twenty. I am one of that clan myself and always have been.

There is the inner life, which is the world of final reality, the world of memory, emotion, imagination, intelligence, and natural common sense, and which goes on all the time like the heartbeat. There is also the thinking process by which we break into that inner life and capture answers and evidence to support the answers out of it. That process of raid, or persuasion, or ambush, or dogged hunting, or surrender, is the kind of thinking we have to learn and if we do not somehow learn it, then our minds lie in us like the fish in the pond of a man who cannot fish.

EMILY SPARKS Dov'è il mio bambino, il mio bambino - in quale remota parte del mondo? il bambino che a scuola amavo più di tutti?- Io, la maestra, la vecchia zitella, il vergine cuore, che li sentivo tutti miei figli. M'ingannai col mio bambino a giudicarlo uno spirito ardente, attivo, mai pago? Oh bambino, bambino, per cui pregai e pregai in tante ore di veglia la notte, ricordi la lettera che ti scrissi sulla bellezza dell'amore di Cristo? E che tu che l'abbia ricevuta o no, bambino mio, dovunque tu sia, opera per la salvezza dell'anima tua, che tutto il fango, tutta la feccia in te, ceda finalmente al fuoco che è in te, finché il fuoco sia solo luce!... Solo luce!

Do not look with fear on the changes and chances of this life; rather look to them with full faith that as they arise, God – whose you are – will deliver you out of them. He has kept you hitherto. Do not but hold fast to His dear hand, and He will lead you safely through all things; and when you cannot stand, He will bear you in His arms. Do not anticipate what will happen tomorrow. The same everlasting Father who cares for you today will take care of you tomorrow and every day. Either He will shield you from suffering or He will give you unfailing strength to bear it. Be at peace, then, and put aside all anxious thoughts and imaginations.

Of verse eternal I’ve the art. And men Are gladdened by my voice, which speaks but truth. The supreme reason that I proudly bear Could not be bought for all a world of gold. All have I touched: women, apples, fire; All have I felt: winter, spring, and summer; All have I found, for no wall can halt me. But tell me, Fortune, what then is thy name? Charles Cros, 1842–1888

I have cursed your forehead your belly your life I have cursed the streets your steps plod through The things your hands pick up I have cursed the inside of your dreams I have set a puddle in your eye that can't see any more An insect in your ear that can't hear any more A sponge in your brain that can't understand any more I have frozen you in the soul of your body Iced you in the depths of your life The air you breathe suffocates you The air you breathe has the air of a cellar Is an air that has already been exhaled been puffed out by hyenas The dung of this air is something no one can breathe Your skin is damp all over Your skin sweats out waters of the great fear Your armpits reek far and wide of the crypt Animals stop dead as you pass Dogs howl at night, their heads raised toward your house You can't run away You can't muster the strength of an ant to the tip of your feet Your fatigue makes a lead stump in your body Your fatigue is a long caravan Your fatigue stretches out to the country of Nan Your fatigue is inexpressible Your mouth bites you Your nails scratch you No longer yours, your wife No longer yours, your brother The sole of his foot bitten by an angry snake Someone has slobbered on your descendants Someone has slobbered on the laugh of your little girl Someone has walked slobbering by the face of your domain The world moves away from you I am rowingo I am rowing I am rowing against your life I am rowing I split into countless rowers To row more strongly against you You fall into blurriness You are out of breath You get tired before the slightest effort I row I row I row

We will be stronger for this, But only if it forces us To reach out. Corona Barry Marks “…normally only visible during a solar eclipse” Of course I’m crazy there are no sharks in swimming pools, just like there were none in freshwater lakes and rivers all those years when boys and dogs and a horse or two disappeared and everyone knew it was a haint, not some biological U-Boat stalking Little Bear Creek for 400 million years. Yes, I watch for periscopes, dorsal fins, Indian signs whispering something is down there, beneath the surface tension: angle of reflection, angle of refraction, invisible geometry making you squint and not see, making you not see. Go ahead, tell me I’m crazy with my stock of masks and toilet paper, bottled water and ammo; I know this immigrant air is from Mexico, maybe Wuhan before that, and the things I can’t see are the ones trying to pry my ribs open to let the ghost-you-can’t-see out of its cage. I know things under the air, behind the darkness, within the water are real because so am I and I believe the myth of electricity and the fable of fluoridation, that the sun can be lethal and meds can mend a Stockholm Syndrome childhood. I believe my vote and my opinion count. I believe in germs and viruses, and not going out with a wet head, and the new normal and the old one, too. I believe it is the unseen things that kill us, the small things: a moment’s distraction, the hole a virus shoots through a body. I cannot believe the dead will forgive us for being too slow to believe in what we did not want to see.

I held you, or I never held you, or I held you briefly, once, long ago, and you kissed me while my heart kept time. — Kelly Cherry, from “First Marriage,” When She Named Fire: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry by American Women (Autumn House Press, 2008)

Kaleidoscope of colours, patterns, textures, and scents from the world of Nature, lifts my spirits, lights up my heart and life each day...

O Lord of indirection and ellipses, ignore our prayers. Deliver us from distraction. (Dana Gioia, The Prophecy)

For the late Neoplatonists, the true Hellenic “love of wisdom” could be supported and illustrated not only by the inspired poetry of Orpheus, Homer, and Hesiod, but also by the Egyptian, Phoenician, and Assyrian myths and “theological dogmas,” including the so-called Chaldean Oracles (ta logia).

January brings the snow, Makes our feet and fingers glow. February brings the rain, Thaws the frozen lake again. March brings breezes, loud and shrill, To stir the dancing daffodil. April brings out the primrose sweet, Scatters daisies at our feet. May brings flock of pretty lambs, Skipping by their fleecy dams, June brings tulips, lilies, roses, Fills the children's hands with posies. Hot July brings cooling showers, Apricots, and gillyflowers. August brings the sheaves of corn, Then the harvest home is borne. Warm September brings the fruit; Sportsmen then begin to shoot. Fresh October brings the pheasant; Then to gather nuts is pleasant. Dull November brings the blast; Then the leaves are whirling fast. Chill December brings the sleet, Blazing fire, and Christmas treat.

I cannot believe that Life Therein: A moment at a time hit #1 New release on Amazon in both Contemporary poetry and Poetry Anthologies! So cool! Thank you all.

أجمل تجليات الله، قلوب العاشقين… وأجمل تجليات العشق، عيون المؤمنين… هنا حيث العشق إيمان، والحجر كالشجر، والكلام كالسلام، يجد الشعر الضوء ليخرج بانسيابية من بين أنامل الأطفال وكسور الأفئدة…

لَكِ فُسْحَةٌ كُبْرى بِذاكِرَتي ‎فَتَحَفَّظي, أَرْجوكِ سَيّدَتي ‎لا تاجَ عِنْدي...لا قصور معي... ‎حَتّى تَكوني أَنْتِ مَمْلَكَتي ‎لا تُجْهِدي عَيْنَيْكِ بي فَأَنا ‎رَجُلٌ جِراحاتُ الهَوى لُغَتي ‎أُشْفى مِنِ امْرَأَةٍ بِإِمْرَأَةٍ ‎فَأَحُلُّ مُشْكِلَتي بِمُشْكِلَةِ…

كل صباح أرفع كوب الماء، وأتركه. ‎هكذا أطمئن إلى أن العالم لم يتغير، وقوانينه ما زالت تعمل...

لم يكن لنا أجنحة، فاعتمدنا الخيال وسيلة للسفر... لم يكن لنا هوية، فحفرنا ملامحنا في الحجر... لم يكن لنا وطن، فصرنا نقلّد حيث نقيم خصال الشجر…

لأنك أمعنت شكاً وظنّا سأذكر أجمل ما كان منا وأمضي، فلا البحر ضمّ الشراع ولا الريح سارت كما نتمنى وما دمت لا تطمئن بقربي سأرحل عنك لكي تطمئنا...