Repetition

I've Dreamt of You So Often

I've dreamt of you so often that you become unreal.

Is there still time to reach this living body and to kiss on its mouth the birth of

the voice so dear to me?

I've dreamt of you so often that my arms used to embracing your shadow and

only crossing on my own chest might no longer meet your body's...

Robert Desnos
1900-1945

Verso 3.1

At first there's no lake in the city, at first there are only

elevators, at first there are only constricting office desks;

there are small apartments and hamburger joints and

unpaid telephone bills. Then a few nightclubs appear and

eventually the lake disinters. At times there's a highway

and a car and friends in a snowstorm heading nowhere but...

Dionne Brand
b. 1953

Lake Michigan, Scene 3

The bodies are on the beach

And the bodies keep breaking

And the fight is over

But the bodies aren't dead

And the mayor keeps saying I will bring back the bodies

I will bring back the bodies that were broken

The broken bodies speak slowly

They walk slowly onto a beach that hangs over a fire

Into a fire that hangs...

Daniel Borzutzky
b. 1974

Icicle Glasses

Day thirty-nine

The thing that death gave you —

your face leaks

your face overflows

Your face is the grave of your nose

your face is the grave of your ears

your face is the grave of your face

once again your face overflows uncontrollably

The subzero temperature grows on your face then...

Kim Hyesoon

On Antiphon Island

— “mu” twenty-eighth part —

On Antiphon Island they lowered

the bar and we bent back. It

wasn't limbo we were in albeit

we limbo'd. Everywhere we

went we

limbo' d, legs bent, shoulder

blades grazing the...

Nathaniel Mackey
1947

Wind, Water, Stone

for Roger Caillois

Water hollows stone,

wind scatters water,

stone stops the wind.

Water, wind, stone.

Wind carves stone,

stone's a cup of water,

water escapes and is wind.

Stone, wind, water.

Wind sings in its whirling,

water murmurs going by...

Octavio Paz
1914-1998

Day 62

Unless you believe in the eye of the needle

this kind of poverty will never be about material

it won't be about ragged clothing

or mud huts with broken walls

or river blindness

or murram roads

or bad-humoured fields that hoard curses

& promises that there won't be a harvest

this year or next year or ever...

Juliane Okot Bitek
1966

Skeena Crossing

What is this this crossing?

In the photo just in front of the train with the crane at the edge of the drop

off from track into river

stands a young man.

Truss truss. From left.

Truss truss. From right.

...

Sarah de Leeuw
1973

Tractatus

The sun gave our shoulder blades ulu-shaped burns, and the sun gives nothing to our sort

I sleep now, and furiously

Clouds excreted shadows on the shoreline, and there were no clouds

His body a train ride away, and nearby

There are organs I have never used before, and they are pale from overuse

The sand had turned to pearls in our folds, and that...

Ben Ladouceur

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

I’ve known rivers:

I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the

flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.

I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the...

Langston Hughes
1902-1967

big ghosts

big ghosts contra

band my diction war

korea's north sees red as

america flags china's chopped limb

british crowns hong kong

cut for duplicity more capitalist than capitalist

trades commie goods

slant contagion

door slam hello hunger

remember japan's occupation

desperate flee inland...

Larissa Lai

In Jerusalem

In Jerusalem, and I mean within the ancient walls,

I walk from one epoch to another without a memory

to guide me. The prophets over there are sharing

the history of the holy ... ascending to heaven

and returning less discouraged and melancholy, because love

and peace are holy and are coming to town.

I was walking down a slope and thinking...

Mahmoud Darwish
1941-2008

the ghosts of women once girls

somewhere a little girl is reading aloud

in the middle of a dirt road. she smiles

at the sound of her own voice escaping

the spine of a book. she feeds on her hunger

to know herself. she has not yet been taught

to dim, she sits with the stars beneath her feet,

a constellation of things to come.

as if a swallowed moon, she...

Aja Monet

That feeling of my soul getting yanked

I wonder where my soul hides when I’m sick

My heart feels as if it’s getting beat up

Is it because the restless ocean is clumping up?

My heart beats regardless of the pain

It beats spewing out red thread like a red spider

A sinkful of red thread gets submerged in water

My heart beats like a...

Kim Hyesoon

We Lived Happily during the War

And when they bombed other people’s houses, we

protested

but not enough, we opposed them but not

enough. I was

in my bed, around my bed America

was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house —

I took a chair outside and watched the sun.

In the sixth month...

Ilya Kaminsky

Theme for English B

The instructor said,

Go home and write

a page tonight.

And let that page come out of you —

Then, it will be true.

I wonder if it’s that simple?

I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-...

Langston Hughes
1902-1967

I was nine and I stood at the top of the street for no reason except to make the descent of the gentle incline toward my house where I lived with everyone and everything in the world, my sisters and my cousins were with me, we had our bookbags and our four o'clock hunger with us and our grandmother and everything we loved in the world were waiting in the yellow washed house, there was a...

Dionne Brand
b. 1953

Happy Birthday Moon

Dad reads aloud. I follow his finger across the page.

Sometimes his finger moves past words, tracing white space.

He makes the Moon say something new every night

to his deaf son who slurs his speech.

Sometimes his finger moves past words, tracing white space.

Tonight he gives the Moon my name, but I can’t say it,

his deaf son...

Raymond Antrobus

Wow! You've Changed

You’ve changed.

You used to be so

and now you’re all

like, you’ve transformed

I don’t know how to describe

it’s like

you don’t like canasta anymore

you text IN ALL CAPS

your selfies are so

animalistic

like, are you out to prove something

you’re a lion

you’re a bear

you’re a...

Dina Del Bucchia

The Little Car

The 31st day of August 1914

I left Deauville a little before midnight

In Rouveyre’s little car

Counting his driver there were three of us

We said good-bye to an entire epoch

Furious giants...

Guillaume Apollinaire
1880-1918

Ex Libris

I come from the land of

Where You From?

My people dispossessed of their stories

and who have died again and again

in a minstrelsy of afterlives, wakes,

the dead who walk, waiting and

furrowed, like ivy crawling up

All those museums and mausoleums,

lifting languages from rivers.

But I cannot leave them...

Adebe D. A.

the second time

i ask mama

about residential school

she says no

i ask her again

she says no

the third time

i stop listen

to her silence

ask about her diabetes

her hip achy back

her sore knees

did she get her hearing aid fixed

whether...

Rosanna Deerchild

Fern Hill

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs

About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,

The night above the dingle starry,

Time let me hail and climb

Golden in the heydays of his eyes,

And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns

And once below a...

Dylan Thomas
1914–1953

One Perfect Rose

A single flow’r he sent me, since we met.

All tenderly his messenger he chose;

Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet —

One perfect rose.

I knew the language...

Dorothy Parker
1893-1967

From Titian Air Vent

A work of art is a world of signs, at least to the poet’s

nursery bookshelf sheltered behind the artist’s ear.

I recall each little motto howling its ins and outs

to those of us who might as well be on the moon

illu illu illu

Beacon

A tiny artificial theater of the world. I am here to slay the

dragon in the ready-made...

Susan Howe
b. 1937

For My Best Friend

We are losing the intensive care unit waiting room war

We were doing so well

So well we got sleepy

So sleepy the institution returned

In the 8th adjoined room sleeping on the 8th adjoined chair

The last five minutes just like the first

Hands...

Tongo Eisen-Martin

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

Among twenty snowy mountains,

The only moving thing

Was the eye of the blackbird.

I was of three minds,

Like a tree

In which there are three blackbirds.

III

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.

It was a small part of...

Wallace Stevens
1879-1955

If Our Bodies Could Rust, We Would Be Falling Apart

the law mandates that a hate crime only be classified as such if there

is ample evidence to show that one’s actions were motivated by

prejudice toward an individual’s nationality, ethnicity, sexuality,

gender, etc.

oh, i got one!

some more than others know that all objects can be put to violent

use. if our...

Billy-Ray Belcourt

Regardless

If I am judged

If I am punished

If I am dismissed

If I am misunderstood

If I am celebrated

If I am envied

If I am competed with

If I am slandered against

If I am seen

If I am soft

If I am stupid

If I get it

If I surpass

If I intimidate

If I confound

If I...

Aisha Sasha John
b. 1980

The Emperor of Ice-Cream

Call the roller of big cigars,

The muscular one, and bid him whip

In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.

Let the wenches dawdle in such dress

As they are used to wear, and let the boys

Bring flowers in last month’s newspapers.

Let be be finale of seem.

The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the...

Wallace Stevens
1879-1955

From Whereas

Whereas my eyes land on the shoreline of “the arrival of Europeans in North America

opened a new chapter in the history of Native Peoples.” Because in others, I hate the act

of laughing when hurt injured or in cases of danger. That bitter hiding. My daughter picks up

new habits from friends. She’d been running, tripped, slid on knees and palms onto...

Layli Long Soldier

anyone lived in a pretty how town

(with up so floating many bells down)

spring summer autumn winter

he sang his didn’t he danced his did.

Women and men(both little and small)

cared for anyone not at all

they sowed their isn’t they reaped their same

sun moon stars rain

children guessed(but only a few...

e.e. cummings
1894-1962

Love is a Moontime Teaching

love is a moontime teaching

is your kookum’s crooked smile when you pick up the phone

is another word for body

body is another word for campfire smoke

campfire smoke is the smell he leaves behind in your bed sheets

after the breakup

the word for hate sex is forest

forest sometimes means hope or lonely (depends...

Billy-Ray Belcourt

Invitation to Love

Come when the nights are bright with stars

Or when the moon is mellow;

Come when the sun his golden bars

Drops on the hay-field yellow.

Come in the twilight soft and gray,

Come in the night or come in the day,

Come, O love, whene’er you may,

And you are welcome, welcome.

You are sweet, O Love, dear Love,

...

Paul Laurence Dunbar
1872-1906

Ulysses

It little profits that an idle king,

By this still hearth, among these barren crags,

Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole

Unequal laws unto a savage race,

That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink

Life to the lees: all times I have enjoy’d

Greatly, have suffer’d...

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
1809-1892

Black Sheroes

My Black heroes don’t drop names like Fendi Gucchi Prada

My Black sheroes rock afros like Angela Davis and Assata

But my sheroes are more than a trend and they’re bigger than a hairstyle

For their people they risk death, imprisonment, and exile

They’ll give you an education in gender, race, and class

So for real knowledge you need to honour...

El Jones

Sons of Orion

for Alton Sterling, Andrew Loku, Philando Castile, et al.

I wanna live, son. But which son are you?

There where the rivers are made

of moonshine and the lights still wait,

move by the music of the dealer’s bootleg CDs.

Have you left the street-side, the Rigel stage

for another watery home?

What still...

Canisia Lubrin
b. 1984

From World of Made and Unmade

In my dream my mother comes with me.

We are in the meadows we call

The Flats, walking the dogs.

Walk straight past the water trough,

she says, do not engage the moss.

Go back to the top of the page,

the dream says, and leave out the suicides.

In my dream I walk and...

Jane Mead
b. 1958

Application Form

Please read all the instructions carefully before proceeding.

Use only permanent blue or black ink.

If you have special needs that require accommodation,

please explain.

The information you provide should not be limited

by the space allowed.

If you require more space, append another sheet of paper.

In the blanks below please...

Phoebe Wang

I Have Something to Tell You

I’ve come to talk to you about shaving cuts

I was waiting across the road

right over there

for the light to turn

and you were on the other side

fumbling with change at the newspaper box

don’t buy this one buy this one

I said

pointing to identical newspapers

look here

I cut myself shaving

and...

Stuart Ross
b. 1959

A Short Story of Falling

It is the story of the falling rain

to turn into a leaf and fall again

it is the secret of a summer shower

to steal the light and hide it in a flower

and every flower a tiny tributary

that from the ground flows green and momentary

is one of water’s wishes and this tale

hangs in a seed-head smaller...

Alice Oswald
b. 1966

Poor Speaker

I understand you.

I get what you’re trying to say.

What you’re trying to say is you want me to get it.

I get it. You want me

to understand. You want me to know

not the words, but what’s behind them. Got it.

You’re trying to tell me

what you want me to hear. What I

hear is all words, but that’s not...

Sonnet L'Abbé

I Lost My Talk

I lost my talk

The talk you took away.

When I was a little girl

At Shubenacadie school.

You snatched it away:

I speak like you

I think like you

I create like you

The scrambled ballad, about my word.

Two ways I talk

Both ways I say,

Your way is more powerful.

...

Rita Joe
1932–2007

howlin at the moon

take the moon

nd take a star

when you don’t

know who you are

paint the picture in your hand

nd roll on home

take my fear

nd take the hunger

take my body

when i’m younger

paint the picture in your hand

nd roll on home

take my ghost

nd make the...

Wayne Keon
b. 1946

Hail

Hello from inside

the albatross

with a windproof lighter

and Japanese police tape.

Hello from staghorn

coral beds

waving at the beaked whale’s

mistake,

all six square metres

of fertilizer bags.

...

Adam Dickinson
b. 1974

Illegalese: Floodgate Dub

(for the Chinese maroons, British Columbia, 1999–2001)

if you arrive in the belly of a rusting imagination, there are grounds to

outlaw you. but Canada is a remix B-side chorus in the globalization

loop: a sampled track of “back home”-desiring, “old days”-admiring,

democracy-dreaming, racism-reaping homesickness that even

...

Wayde Compton
b. 1972

The limpness of a bird's legs in flight.

The place, the question, the question.

The place, the interest, the question.

There is the place.

There is what you do in the place.

There is your belief.

There is the faith in a knowing.

There is your instruction

by the gods.

There is your instruction as you are told.

There is your relief...

Aisha Sasha John
b. 1980

Deto(nation)

There’s a joke that ends with — huh?

It’s the bomb saying here is your father.

Now here is your father inside

your lungs. Look how lighter

the earth is — afterward.

To even write father

is to carve a portion of the day

out of a bomb-bright page.

There’s enough...

Ocean Vuong
b. 1988

Say the Names

— say the names say the names

and listen to yourself

an echo in the mountains

Tulameen Tulameen

say them like your soul

was listening and overhearing

and you dreamed you dreamed

you were a river

and you were a river

Tulameen Tulameen

— not the flat borrowed imitations

of foreign names...

Al Purdy
1918-2000

Opus 75, Sestina in B-flat for the Glockenspiel

In the empty classroom, at sunrise, a girl

sits on the floor, staring at a glockenspiel.

She’s shredding the cuticles on her left hand

instead of starting to practise.

She doesn’t want to play —

not yet, if ever. The irritating sound

of her teeth clicking is the only sound

in the band room. The cranky girl

has...

Adam Sol
1969

The Rights of Woman

Yes, injured Woman! rise, assert thy right!

Woman! too long degraded, scorned, oppressed;

O born to rule in partial Law’s despite,

Resume thy native empire o’er the breast!

Go forth arrayed in panoply divine;

That angel pureness which admits no stain;

Go, bid proud Man his boasted rule resign,

And...

Anna Laetitia Barbauld
1743–1825

Praise the Rain

Praise the rain, the seagull dive

The curl of plant, the raven talk—

Praise the hurt, the house slack

The stand of trees, the dignity—

Praise the dark, the moon cradle

The sky fall, the bear sleep—

Praise the mist, the warrior name

The earth eclipse, the fired leap—

Praise the backwards, upward sky

The baby...

Joy Harjo
b. 1951

I’ll Teach You Cree

with the tip of my spring tongue, ayîki frog

your mouth will be the web

catching apihkêsis words, spider

a crawling-out ceremony

that cannot be translated.

hâw, pîkiskwê! Now, speak!

I’ll teach you Cree, nêhiyawêwin...

Gregory Scofield
b. 1966

Hip-Hop Ghazal

Gotta love us brown girls, munching on fat, swinging blue hips,

decked out in shells and splashes, Lawdie, bringing them woo hips.

As the jukebox teases, watch my sistas throat the heartbreak,

inhaling bassline, cracking backbone and singing thru hips.

Like something boneless, we glide silent, seeping ‘tween floorboards,

...

Patricia Smith
b. 1955

Good Day Villanelle

You ran naked out the door.

The neighbours laughed; I chased you down.

I hardly see you anymore.

I know you’re busy.

Did I tell you when you were little how

you ran naked out the door?

You got halfway down the street

before I caught you in my arms.

I hardly see you anymore.

I...

Damian Rogers
b. 1972

4 Marked by Claws and Cloudburst...

The calendar marred with birds and you are kik-kik-kik-kicking all the way into June.

180 days scratched with black X’s and crow’s feet: bird-of-two minds (goodandevil

goodandevil);

single-minded bird (plotting the sky).

...

Sylvia Legris
b. 1966

Walking Both Sides of an Invisible Border

It is never easy

Walking with an invisible border

Separating my left and right foot

I feel like an illegitimate child

Forsaken by my parents

At least I can claim innocence

Since I did not ask to come

Into this world

...

Alootook Ipellie
1951–2007

i am graffiti

i am writing to tell you

that yes, indeed,

we have noticed

you have a new big pink eraser

we are well aware

you are trying to use it.

erasing indians is a good idea

of course

the bleeding-heart liberals

and communists

can stop feeling bad

for the stealing

and raping

and...

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
b. 1971

Badlands

Your father worked Drumheller while you ate and slept at home.

He travelled the badlands, squatted below rocks, read books

you never knew he read. He sat until his eyes strained to know

what the prairie insisted he must see. Once he found a hoodoo,

toppled after centuries of reaching beyond the flattened earth

we all become and remembering that,...

Mathew Henderson
b. 1985

My Meadow, My Twilight

Sure, there’s a spell the leaves can make, shuddering,

and in their lying suddenly still again — flat, and still,

like time itself when it seems unexpectedly more

available, more to lose therefore, more to love, or

try to...

But to look up from the leaves, remember,

is a choice also, as if up from the shame of it...

Carl Phillips
b. 1959

Let the Ponies Out

oh papa, to have you drift up, some part of you drift up through

water through

fresh water into the teal plate of sky soaking foothills, papa,

to have your breath leave, escape you, escape the

weight of bone, muscle and organ, escape you, to rise up, to loft,

till you are all breath filling the room, rising, escaping the white...

Marilyn Dumont
b. 1955

the knowing

the re-invention of oneself

through the tongues of whispering mountains

the re-arrangement of the universe

because a spider wrapped her legs around a star

the knowing

the remembering of stone’s story

while walking down a dried riverbed

being serenaded by crickets singing the blues

because everyone except them has...

Connie Fife
1961-2017

Echolalia

Once one gets what one wants

one no longer wants it.

One no longer wants what?

One no longer wants what

one wanted.

A man and a woman want a woman and a man

or a man and a woman depending

on the man and the woman.

...

Ian Williams
b. 1979

If —

(“Brother Square-Toes” — Rewards and Fairies)

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,

...

Rudyard Kipling
1865-1936

It Couldn’t Be Done

Somebody said that it couldn’t be done

But he with a chuckle replied

That “maybe it couldn’t,” but he would be one

Who wouldn’t say so till he’d tried.

So he buckled right in with the trace of a grin

On his face. If he worried he hid it.

He started to sing as he tackled the thing...

Edgar Albert Guest
1881-1959

I Have Not Lingered in European Monasteries

I have not lingered in European monasteries

and discovered among the tall grasses tombs of knights

who fell as beautifully as their ballads tell;

I have not parted the grasses

or purposefully left them thatched....

Leonard Cohen
1934-2016

When Winter Comes

Rain at Muchalat, rain at Sooke,

And rain, they say, from Yale to Skeena,

And the skid-roads blind, and never a look

Of the Coast Range blue over Malaspina,

And west winds keener

Than jack-knife blades,

And rocks grown greener

With the long drip-drip from the cedar shades

On the drenched deep soil where the footsteps...

Marjorie Pickthall
1883-1922

The Loaf

When I put my finger to the hole they’ve cut for a dimmer switch

in a wall of plaster stiffened with horsehair

it seems I’ve scratched a two-hundred-year-old itch

with a pink and a pink and a pinkie-pick....

Paul Muldoon
b. 1951

One Art

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of...

Elizabeth Bishop
1911-1979

These Poems, She Said

These poems, these poems,

these poems, she said, are poems

with no love in them. These are the poems of a man

who would leave his wife and child because

they made noise in his study. These are the poems   ...

Robert Bringhurst
b. 1946

Susie Asado

Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea.

Susie Asado.

Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea.

Susie Asado.

Susie Asado which is a told tray sure.

A lean on the shoe this means...

Gertrude Stein
1874-1946

Tractor

More than a storey high and twice that long,

it looks igneous, the Buhler Versatile 2360,

possessed of the ecology of some hellacious

minor island on which options

are now standard. Cresting the sections
...

Karen Solie
b. 1966

Two Words: A Wedding

There are things you have words for, things you do not have words for. There are words that encompass all your feelings & words that encompass none. There are feelings you have that are like things to you, picked up & placed in the pocket, worn like the cloth the pocket is attached to, like a skin you live...

bp Nichol
1944-1988

Insomnia

If I were to sleep, it would be on an iron bed,

bolted to the floor in a bomb-proof concrete room

with twelve locks on the door.

I wouldn’t ask for a mattress

or decorate. I wouldn’t ask for beautiful.
...

Kate Hall
b. 1977

Plenty

The sky, lit up like a question or

an applause meter, is beautiful

like everything else today: the leaves

in the gutters, salt stains on shoes,

the girl at the IGA who looks just like
...

Kevin Connolly
b. 1962

The Powwow at the End of the World

I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall

after an Indian woman puts her shoulder to the Grand Coulee Dam

and topples it. I am told by many of you that I must forgive

and so I shall after the floodwaters burst each...

Sherman Alexie
b. 1966

Dog Boy

ONE

Late at night in Oklahoma, a very small, an extremely small man ran across the road in front of my friend’s car. He does not doubt this is real, though the rest of us do, and it doesn’t bother him. He continues to paint portraits of astonishing trees each day and take long...

Matthew Rohrer
b. 1970

Jack Would Speak Through the Imperfect Medium of Alice

So I’m an alcoholic Catholic mother-lover

yet there is no sweetish nectar no fuzzed-peach

thing no song sing but in the word

to which I’m starlessly unreachably faithful

you, pedant & you, politically righteous & you, alive

you think you can peel my sober word apart from my drunken word

my Buddhist word apart from my white sugar...

Alice Notley
b. 1945

A Noiseless Patient Spider

A noiseless patient spider,

I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,

Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,

It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,

Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,

Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans...

Walt Whitman
1819-1892

The Wife

Living, I had no might

To make you hear,

Now, in the inmost night,

I am so near

No whisper, falling light,

Divides us, dear.

Living, I had no claim

On your great hours.

Now the thin candle-flame,

The closing flowers,

Wed summer with my name, —

And these are...

Marjorie Pickthall
1883-1922

The Men That Don’t Fit In

There’s a race of men that don’t fit in,

A race that can’t stay still;

So they break the hearts of kith and kin,

And they roam the world at will.

They range the field and they rove the flood,

And they climb the mountain’s crest;

Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,
...

Robert W. Service
1874-1958

The House on the Hill

They are all gone away,

The House is shut and still,

There is nothing more to say.

Through broken walls and gray

The winds blow bleak and shrill;

They are all gone away.

Nor is there one today

To speak them good or ill:
...

Edwin Arlington Robinson
1869-1935

I Am the People, the Mob

I am the people — the mob — the crowd — the mass.

Do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me?

I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the world’s food and clothes.

I am the audience that witnesses history. The Napoleons come from me and the Lincolns. They die. And then I send forth more Napoleons and Lincolns.

I am the seed...

Carl Sandburg
1878-1967

O Captain! My Captain!

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,

The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,

The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,

While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;

But O heart! heart! heart!

O the bleeding drops of red,
...

Walt Whitman
1819-1892

“Alone”

From childhood’s hour I have not been

As others were — I have not seen

As others saw — I could not bring

My passions from a common spring —

From the same source I have not taken

My sorrow — I could not awaken

My heart to joy at the same tone —

And all I lov’d — I lov’d alone —

Then — in my childhood —...

Edgar Allan Poe
1809-1849

Beat! Beat! Drums!

Beat! beat! drums! — blow! bugles! blow!

Through the windows — through doors — burst like a ruthless force,

Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation,

Into the school where the scholar is studying;

Leave not the bridegroom quiet — no happiness must he have now with his bride,

Nor the peaceful farmer any peace, ploughing his field or...

Walt Whitman
1819-1892

Annabel Lee

It was many and many a year ago,

In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived whom you may know

By the name of Annabel Lee;

And this maiden she lived with no other thought

Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
...

Edgar Allan Poe
1809-1849

When I was Fair and Young

When I was fair and young, then favor graced me.

Of many was I sought their mistress for to be.

But I did scorn them all and answered them therefore:

Go, go, go, seek some other where; importune me no more.

How many weeping eyes I made to pine in woe,

How many sighing hearts I have not skill to show,

But I the prouder...

Queen Elizabeth I
1533-1603

We Wear the Mask

We wear the mask that grins and lies,

It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes, —

This debt we pay to human guile;

With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,

And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,

In counting all our tears and sighs?

Nay, let them only see us, while
...

Paul Laurence Dunbar
1872-1906

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and...

John McCrae
1872-1918

The Tyger

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, and what art,

...

William Blake
1757-1827

Follow thy fair sun, unhappy shadow

Follow thy fair sun, unhappy shadow,

Though thou be black as night

And she made all of light,

Yet follow thy fair sun unhappy shadow.

Follow her whose light thy light depriveth,

Though here thou liv’st disgraced,

And she in heaven is placed,

Yet follow her whose light the world reviveth.
...

Thomas Campion
1567-1620

Sonnets from the Portuguese 43: How do I love thee? Let me count the ways

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of being and ideal grace.

I love thee to the level of every day’s

Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.

I love thee freely, as men strive for right;

I love thee purely, as they...

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
1806-1861

Search form

I've Dreamt of You So Often

Verso 3.1

Lake Michigan, Scene 3

Icicle Glasses

On Antiphon Island

Wind, Water, Stone

Day 62

Skeena Crossing

Tractatus

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

big ghosts

In Jerusalem

the ghosts of women once girls

That feeling of my soul getting yanked

We Lived Happily during the War

Theme for English B

From Verso 4

Happy Birthday Moon

Wow! You've Changed

The Little Car

Ex Libris

the second time

Fern Hill

One Perfect Rose

From Titian Air Vent

For My Best Friend

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

If Our Bodies Could Rust, We Would Be Falling Apart

Regardless

The Emperor of Ice-Cream

From Whereas

anyone lived in a pretty how town

Love is a Moontime Teaching

Invitation to Love

Ulysses

Black Sheroes

Sons of Orion

From World of Made and Unmade

Application Form

I Have Something to Tell You

A Short Story of Falling

Poor Speaker

I Lost My Talk

howlin at the moon

Hail

Illegalese: Floodgate Dub

The limpness of a bird's legs in flight.

Deto(nation)

Say the Names

Opus 75, Sestina in B-flat for the Glockenspiel

The Rights of Woman

Praise the Rain

I’ll Teach You Cree

Hip-Hop Ghazal

Good Day Villanelle

4 Marked by Claws and Cloudburst...

Walking Both Sides of an Invisible Border

i am graffiti

Badlands

My Meadow, My Twilight

Let the Ponies Out

the knowing

Echolalia

If —

It Couldn’t Be Done

I Have Not Lingered in European Monasteries

When Winter Comes

The Loaf

One Art

These Poems, She Said

Susie Asado

Tractor

Two Words: A Wedding

Insomnia

Plenty

The Powwow at the End of the World

Dog Boy

Jack Would Speak Through the Imperfect Medium of Alice