Poetry

Indelicate is he who loathes The aspect of his fleshy clothes,— The flying fabric stitched on bone, The vesture of his skeleton,

— Theodore Roethke · Epidermal Macabre

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth.

— Naomi Shihab Nye · Kindness

Bring the Symphony Orchestra there is a thunderstorm you're playing a Wagner overture and the people leave their seats under the trees and run inside to

— Charles Bukowski · Rain

(I Ask For Silence) Translated by Heidi Fischbach Now if you’d leave me in peace. Now if you’d get on without me. I am going to close my eyes And I only want five things, five favorite roots. The first is love without end. The second is to see autumn. I cannot be without leaves f…

— Pablo Neruda · Pido Silencio (I Ask For Silence)

Here is a story to break your heart. Are you willing?

— Mary Oliver · Lead

I might as well begin by saying how much I like the title. It gets me right away because I’m in a workshop now so immediately the poem has my attention, like the Ancient Mariner grabbing me by the sleeve.

— Billy Collins · Workshop

few good books and other works and from the best of the strange ones perhaps nothing they are their own paintings their own books their own music their own work sometimes I think I see them say a certain old man sitting on a certain bench in a certain way for a quick face going t…

— Charles Bukowski · The Strange

We cannot fathom his mysterious head, Through the veiled eyes no flickering ray is sent: But from his torso gleaming light is shed As from a candelabrum; inward bent

— Rainer Maria Rilke · Archaic Torso of Apollo

You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

— Maya Angelou · Still I Rise

The time will come when, with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror

— Derek Walcott · Love After Love

Foreign Cass was the youngest and most beautiful of Five Sisters Cass was The Most Beautiful Girl In Town

— Charles Bukowski · The Most Beautiful Woman in Town

equally the beech, the oaks and the pines, they give off such hints of gladness. I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

— Mary Oliver · When I Am Among The Trees

Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow.

— Robert Frost · Stopping by Woods on a Snowy…

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;

— William Butler Yeats · The Lake Isle of Innisfree

When I do count the clock that tells the time, And see the brave day sunk in hideous night; When I behold the violet past prime, And sable curls all silver’d o’er with white;

— William Shakespeare · Sonnet 12: When I Do Count

Do not love half lovers Do not entertain half friends Do not indulge in works of the half talented Do not live half a life and do not die a half death

— Kahlil Gibran · Do Not Love Half Lovers

There is enough treachery hatred violence absurdity in the average human being to supply any given army on any given day and the best of murder of

— Charles Bukowski · The Genius of the Crowd

I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide or press an ear against its hive.

— Billy Collins · Introduction To Poetry

(Keeping Quiet) Translated by Stephen Mitchell Now we will all count to twelve and we will all keep still. This one time upon the earth, let’s not speak any language, let’s stop for one second, and not move our arms so much. It would be a delicious moment, without hurry, without…

— Pablo Neruda · A Callarse (Keeping Quiet)