Peapods and Plain Rocks

The Enkindled Spring by D. H. Lawrence This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green, Wild puffing of emerald trees, and ...

Sonnet—Silence by Edgar Allan Poe There are some qualities—some incorporate things, That have...

I f we take our vulnerable shell to be our true identity, if we think our mask is our true face, we will protect it with fabrications even...

The House by Richard Wilbur Sometimes, on waking, she would close her eyes For a last look at that white house she knew ...

Denise Levertov wrote, "One is in despair over the current manifestation of malevolent imbecility and the seemingly invincible power ...

"Eavan Boland is often called a feminist poet. She said, 'I'm a feminist. I'm not a feminist poet. I've said somew...

Theories of Time and Space You can get there from here, though there's no going home. Everywhere you go will be somewher...

For the Chipmunk in My Yard I think he knows I’m alive, having come down The three steps of the back porch And given me a good once ov...

"I was myself the recipient of one of these [Academy of American Poets] prizes, in 1971. I felt the good things that a prize makes a yo...

We cannot avoid missing the point of almost everything we do. But what of it? Life is not a matter of getting something out of everything. ...

"It is occasionally possible, just for brief moments, to find the words that will unlock the doors of all those many mansions inside th...

Fine Point (12/22/08) Why go to Sunday school, though surlily, and not believe a bit of what was taught? The desert shepherds in their scrat...

In the winter, in the dark hours, when others were asleep, I found these words and put them together by their appetites and respect for e...

Having Confessed by Patrick Kavanagh Having confessed he feels That he should go down on his knees and pray For forgivenes...

To Seattle by train: House forlorn, its people fading with its paint. The old house - bones picked clean by time, wind. Ghost towns? Even th...

The understanding and appreciation for life that is present in [Paul] Zimmer’s newer poems is in its larval stage in his older poems. Instea...

Mr. [Stanley] Kunitz was regarded as a mentor to many poets, including two future poet laureates, Louise Gluck and Robert Hass, as well as S...

The Layers, by Stanley Kunitz I have walked through many lives, some of them my own, and I am not who...

Stanley Kunitz said, "Poetry is inseparable from my life force, and that began very early. It was a great gift, and it has sustained me...

Needless to say, when I was writing "The Tollund Man" (the first draft came swiftly) I was not thinking of Wordsworth or Hesiod or...

"I believe there is a moral as well as a physical grain in things, and that our chief business is to discover what we can of that patte...

"Earthy Anecdote" by Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) Every time the bucks went clattering Over ...

"Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man." (Ben Franklin)

"When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious p...

The Education of a Poet Her pencil poised, she's ready to create, Then listens to her mind's perverse debate On whether what s...