2011 02 27

89Almanac — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow b.1807; Agnes Mary Frances Duclaux b.1857; F. M. Cornford b.1874; Edward Rowland Sill d.1887; Lawrence Durrell b.1912; André Frédérique b.1915; Kenneth Koch b.1925; Edward Lucie-Smith b.1933; N. Scott Momaday b.1934; Kostis Palamas d.1943; Yvan Goll d.1950; Brad Leithauser b.1953; Jean-Philippe Salabreuil d.1970; Jack Micheline d.1998

“The poet, the truly determinative poet, is always a revealer; he is, essentially, a seer, a prophet. But his “prophecy” is of course not a prophecy about the future; for it may have to do with the past: it is a prophecy without time. Illuminator, aimer of light, chastiser of mankind, the poet is the possessor of a Sesame which in a mysterious way is, so to speak, the word of his destiny.” – Vicente Aleixandre

Leaps and Landscapes Entered by Reading, each visited both silently and aloud —

1. After the Winter — Claude McKay [Poetry Foundation^♠] Added to my spring set.
2. Meaning ♫ — Sally Bliumis-Dunn [Rattle^♥] “wonder how / it can be the same word” – They all are. The same word. It’s what makes the words fall out as they do.
3. Garden — Rae Armantrout [E-Verse Radio] “‘That’s nice,’ / but it’s the liminal”
4. Perfection, Perfection ♫ — Kilian McDonnell [The Writer’s Almanac^♠] “I’ve handed in my notice, / given back my keys, / signed my severance check, I / quit.”
5. Taper, or Mary Tells All She Knows — Jeanne Marie Beaumont [Poetry Daily^♠]
6. A Sunday to Her Liking — J. Patrick Lewis [Verse Daily^♠]
7. From the vault: Left Behind ♫ — Kristin Berkey-Abbott [qarrtsiluni^♥] “We celebrated / sweetness, the important life lesson.”
8. From the vault: Gorilla in a Darkening Room — Jennifer Michael Hecht [No Tell Motel^♠]
9. Two Loves — Lord Alfred Douglas [Poets.org^♠] “‘Have thy will, / I am the love that dare not speak its name.'”
10. Everybody Who is Dead — Frank Stanford [Poetry Foundation^♠] “When a man knows another man / Is looking for him / He doesn’t hide.”
11. From the vault: The Icehouse in Summer ♫ — Howard Nemerov [Poetry Foundation^♠]
12. The Light the Dead See — Frank Stanford [Poetry Out Loud^♠]
13. From the vault: Flying East for my Grandson’s Birth — Penelope Schott [3quarksdaily] “Sometimes we call this / landing.”
14. Branch Library — Edward Hirsch [Poem of the Day] And let me know when you do.
15. Dream Land — Christina Rossetti [Everyday Poems] “Sleep that no pain shall wake”
16. The Clod and the Pebble — William Blake [Representative Poetry Online] “‘Joys in another’s loss of ease, / And builds a Hell in Heaven’s despite.'”
17. Pipistrelles — Kathleen Jamie [Poetry Archive] Added to my critters subset.
18. At Melville’s Tomb — Hart Crane [Poetry In Voice] “This fabulous shadow only the sea keeps.” Yes.
19. clearing 3 — Patrick Friesen [Canadian Poetry Online] “when you watch as you always have from the edge suddenly aware / something breathes behind you”
20. The Fountain of Pity — Henry Bataille (translated by Jethro Bithell) [Black Cat Poems] “And inward weep when eyes no more will fill.”
21. The Dock Urchin’s Chant — Kevin Andrew Murphy [Lilt] “Loose them all, the tempest blows you / off to Hell or Araby, / off to lands where no one knows you.”
22. Darkness was a foil for the problem ♫ — Jennifer Tseng [From the Fishouse] “Without light, without fuel / you can get there. Float.”
23. Infant Sorrow — William Blake; with reading by Adrian Blevins ♫ [Poets on Poets] “Like a fiend hid in a cloud.”
24. Modern Love: ◄ XVI [“In our old shipwrecked days there was an hour”] ► — George Meredith [Wikisource] “She yearned to me that sentence to unsay.”
25. Sonnets from the Portuguese: ◄ XXII [“When our two souls stand up erect and strong”] ► — Elizabeth Barrett Browning [Wikisource] ” –what bitter wrong / Can the earth do to us, that we should not long / Be here contented?”
26. In Memoriam A. H. H.: ◄ XXVI [“Still onward winds the dreary way”] ► — Alfred, Lord Tennyson [Wikisource] “No lapse of moons can canker Love, / Whatever fickle tongues may say.”
27. ◄ Sonnet LVIII [“That god forbid, that made me first your slave”] ► — William Shakespeare [EServer Poetry Collection] “I am to wait, though waiting so be hell, / Not blame your pleasure be it ill or well.”
28. The Joy of the Drop: ◄ Ghazal 13 [“No meetings no leavings”] ► — Mirza Ghalib – “no balance of elements in this world”
29. ◄ Jolly Good Ale and Old ► — William Stevenson [The Oxford Book of English Verse] “Back and side go bare, go bare; / Both foot and hand go cold”
30. ◄ Home, Sweet Home ► — John Howard Payne [Yale Book of American Verse] “Be it ever so humble there ‘s no place like home!”
31. The Raven and Other Poems: ◄ To Helen — Edgar Allan Poe [Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore]
32. A Boy’s Will: ◄ October ► — Robert Frost [Wikisource]
33. Requiem for a Friend (excerpt) — Rainer Maria Rilke (translated by A.S. Kline) [Poem of the Week (Sarah E. Smith)] “See this rose, close by on my desk: / isn’t the light around it precisely as hesitant / as that over you: it too shouldn’t be here.”
34. Struggle — Richard Moore [Poetry 365] “And so it’s over. Nothing…then the night. / We sit.”
35. Sonnet: Next to of course god America — E. E. Cummings [The Poetry Archive]
36. earth doing — Sally Delehant [Ink Node] “a decision does nothing / that the grass cannot do.”
37. There Was a Little Girl ♫ — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (b.1807) [Poetry Moment] “And when she was bad she was horrid.”
38. Love and Vision — Agnes Mary Frances Duclaux (b.1857) [Wikisource] “I saw it and called it fairyland; / You never saw it, the chance is.”
39. The Crickets in the Fields — Edward Rowland Sill (d.1887) [Poet’s Corner] Added to my insects subset.
40. In Love with You ♫ — Kenneth Koch (b.1925) [Poetry Foundation^♠] “We walk through the park in the sun, and you say, ‘There’s a spider / Of shadow touching the bench, when morning’s begun.’ I love you.”
41. The Lesson — Edward Lucie-Smith (b.1933) [Guardian]
42. The Delight Song of Tsoai-talee — N. Scott Momaday (b.1934) [Poetry Foundation^♠] “I am the whole dream of these things”
43. Olympic Hymn — Kostis Palamas (d.1943) [Wikipedia] “Shine in the momentum of noble contests….”
44. Nightfall — Brad Leithauser (b.1953) [The Atlantic] “Nights are immense, and my coal is black / as night.”
45. Blues Poem — Jack Micheline (d.1998) [The Jack Micheline Foundation]
46. Consolation and the Order of the World — Charles Wright [The New Yorker]
47. Morning — Henry Reed [The Poetry of Henry Reed] Sending this one on over to my set of aubades.
48. Was It When — Wendy Barker [Pecan Grove Press] “I occupy more space / than you can imagine, / and as for you, you stay put.”
49. The Nervous Entertainment — Eileen Myles [jubilat^♥] “I don’t have / a working voice”
50. Skull House — Natasha Kessler [RealPoetik^♥] “Blue feathers aren’t really / blue, they are brown or black.”
51. When Can We Leave? — Dorianne Laux [Caffeine Destiny^♥] “If they could just stop arguing, take back / the thing she said that made him mad.”
52. How To Listen — Traci Brimhall [Umbrella^♥] “Each tiny hammer gently beat the tight strings.”
53. The Very Rich Hours (excerpt) — Adam Tessier [Inertia Magazine^♥]
54. Back-Lit — Arthur Sze [Orion Magazine] “You yearn to watch sunlight stream // through the backs of Japanese maples”
55. Geese [pdf pg] — David Burns [Agenda^♥] Added to my birds subset.
56. Witness Tree — Ralph Burns [Hamilton Stone Review^♥] “Come on in. / No, not this time.”
57. From the vault: Three poems: (1) Liam Sits Folded; (2) Stubborn Guests; and (3) This is Just to Say Redux — Ann Bracken [Praxilla]
58. From deep vault: Night Clerk in a Roach Motel — Charles Simic [Verse]
59. Big top — Howard Wright [Magma Poetry^♥]
60. look away — Angela Gardner [Great Works] “No walls no roof no floor – / once open could it ever close?”
61. Four poems: (1) Serial, 9; (2) Sorbitol for Sugar; (3) Speechless, Unable to Stand, an Infant Gazes into a Huge, Icy Mirror; and (4) Ashes, 2 — Barbara Claire Freeman [Jacket^♥] “I can see how someone else might like it.” Yes, I do.
62. Welsh Landscape — R. S. Thomas [Asheville Poetry Review^♥]
63. More reading and re-archiving from the Internet Archive: Haiku — Ryan Stubbs [Electric Acorn^♥]
64. Dar He — R. T. Smith [How a Poem Happens]
65. Don’t you think it would be smart if you got something to eat? — Matt Mauch [Leveler]
66. Skipping back through the vault: Hummingbird — Mark Roper [Guardian] Read several times with pleasure, then sent over to my birds subset.
67. From earlier this year: Three Street Musicians — Dannie Abse [The Times Literary Supplement] “Stones too light! Airs unresistible!”
68. From the March 2010 issue: Shepherd Road — Ashley Anna McHugh [The New Criterion^♥] “I shouldn’t want it just because it’s hers.”
69. From the vault: Sonnet — Tim Dlugos [The Best American Poetry] “The night he leaves, you find a shiny dime / from Canada.”
70. And among those re-read today from the stack I read and listed a month ago here: Valentine with broken birds — Joni Wallace [Verse Daily] “Enter here the courtyard of hollow-boned wings.”
71. World Gone Wrong — Bob Dylan [Bob Dylan] “I can’t be good no more, once like I did before.”