Just Poetry

Le tendre et dangereux visage de l'amour

2009-02-02T15:05:00.001-08:00

Originally uploaded by Valerio Basili (not quite here).

Le tendre et dangereux
visage de l'amour
m'est apparu un soir
après un trop long jour
C'était peut-être un archer
avec son arc
ou bien un musicien
avec sa harpe
Je ne sais plus
Je ne sais rien
Tout ce que je sais
c'est qu'il m'a blessée
peut-être avec une flèche
peut-être avec une chanson
Tout ce que je sais
c'est qu'il m'a blessée
blessée au coeur
et pour toujours
Brûlante trop brûlante
blessure de l'amour.

Jacques Prévert

Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux

2009-02-02T14:58:00.001-08:00

Originally uploaded by i wish i had a psychedelic imagination.

Rien n'est jamais acquis à l'homme Ni sa force
Ni sa faiblesse ni son coeur Et quand il croit
Ouvrir ses bras son ombre est celle d'une croix
Et quand il croit serrer son bonheur il le broie
Sa vie est un étrange et douloureux divorce
Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux

Sa vie Elle ressemble à ces soldats sans armes
Qu'on avait habillés pour un autre destin
A quoi peut leur servir de se lever matin
Eux qu'on retrouve au soir désoeuvrés incertains
Dites ces mots Ma vie Et retenez vos larmes
Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux

Mon bel amour mon cher amour ma déchirure
Je te porte dans moi comme un oiseau blessé
Et ceux-là sans savoir nous regardent passer
Répétant après moi les mots que j'ai tressés
Et qui pour tes grands yeux tout aussitôt moururent
Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux

Le temps d'apprendre à vivre il est déjà trop tard
Que pleurent dans la nuit nos coeurs à l'unisson
Ce qu'il faut de malheur pour la moindre chanson
Ce qu'il faut de regrets pour payer un frisson
Ce qu'il faut de sanglots pour un air de guitare
Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux

Il n'y a pas d'amour qui ne soit à douleur
Il n'y a pas d'amour dont on ne soit meurtri
Il n'y a pas d'amour dont on ne soit flétri
Et pas plus que de toi l'amour de la patrie
Il n'y a pas d'amour qui ne vive de pleurs
Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux
Mais c'est notre amour à tous les deux

Louis Aragon (La Diane Francaise, Seghers 1946)

Je me suis fait tout petit

2009-01-07T19:44:00.001-08:00

Originally uploaded by i wish i had a psychedelic imagination.

Je n'avais jamais ôté mon chapeau
Devant personne
Maintenant je rampe et je fait le beau
Quand ell' me sonne
J'étais chien méchant, ell' me fait manger
Dans sa menotte
J'avais des dents d'loup, je les ai changées
Pour des quenottes

Je m'suis fait tout p'tit devant un' poupée
Qui ferm' les yeux quand on la couche
Je m'suis fait tout p'tit devant un' poupée
Qui fait Maman quand on la touche

J'était dur à cuire, ell' m'a converti
La fine bouche
Et je suis tombé tout chaud, tout rôti
Contre sa bouche
Qui a des dents de lait quand elle sourit
Quand elle chante
Et des dents de loup quand elle est furie
Qu'elle est méchante

Je m'suis fait tout p'tit devant un' poupée
Qui ferm' les yeux quand on la couche
Je m'suis fait tout p'tit devant un' poupée
Qui fait Maman quand on la touche

Je subis sa loi, je file tout doux
Sous son empire
Bien qu'ell' soit jalouse au-delà de tout
Et même pire
Un' jolie pervenche qui m'avait paru
Plus jolie qu'elle
Un' jolie pervenche un jour en mourut
A coup d'ombrelle

Je m'suis fait tout p'tit devant un' poupée
Qui ferm' les yeux quand on la couche
Je m'suis fait tout p'tit devant un' poupée
Qui fait Maman quand on la touche

Tous les somnambules, tous les mages m'ont
Dit sans malice
Qu'en ses bras en croix, je subirais mon
Dernier supplice
Il en est de pir's il en est d'meilleures
Mais à tout prendre
Qu'on se pende ici, qu'on se pende ailleurs
S'il faut se pendre

Je m'suis fait tout p'tit devant un' poupée
Qui ferm' les yeux quand on la couche
Je m'suis fait tout p'tit devant un' poupée
Qui fait Maman quand on la touche

Georges Brassens

Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux

2009-01-07T19:22:00.001-08:00

Originally uploaded by Emelobi.

Le Ciel Dans Une Chambre

2007-12-26T12:33:00.001-08:00

Fête des Vendanges de Montmartre (Hommage à Georges Brassens) @ Cigale SFR, Paris | 14.10.2007
Originally uploaded by Rod | Le-hibOO.com.

Quand tu es près de moi,
Cette chambre n'a plus de parois,
Mais des arbres oui, des arbres infinis,
Et quand tu es tellement près de moi,
C'est comme si ce plafond-là,
Il n'existait plus, je vois le ciel penché sur nous... qui restons ainsi,
Abandonnés tout comme si,
Il n'y avait plus rien, non plus rien d'autre au monde,
J'entends l'harmonica... mais on dirait un orgue,
Qui chante pour toi et pour moi,
Là-haut dans le ciel infini,
Et pour toi, et pour moi

Quando sei qui con me
Questa stanza non ha piu pareti
Ma alberi, alberi infiniti
E quando tu sei vicino a me
Questo soffitto, viola, no
Non esiste più, e vedo il cielo sopra a noi
Che restiamo quì, abbandonati come se
Non ci fosse più niente più niente al mondo,
Suona l'armonica, mi sembra un organo
Che canta per te e per me
Su nell'immensità del cielo
E per te e per me.
mmmhhhhhhhh
Et pour toi, et pour moi.
mmmhhhhhhhh

@Carla Bruni

Tout Le Monde

2007-12-26T12:06:00.001-08:00

Sleeping lessons
Originally uploaded by Merveilleux.

Tout le monde est une drôle de personne,
Et tout le monde a l'âme emmêlée,
Tout le monde a de l'enfance qui ronronne,
Au fond d'une poche oubliée,
Tout le monde a des restes de rêves,
Et des coins de vie dévastés,
Tout le monde a cherché quelque chose un jour,
Mais tout le monde ne l'a pas trouvé,
Mais tout le monde ne l'a pas trouvé.

Il faudrait que tout le monde réclame auprès des autorités,
Une loi contre toute notre solitude,
Que personne ne soit oublié,
Et que personne ne soit oublié

Tout le monde a une seule vie qui passe,
Mais tout le monde ne s'en souvient pas,
J'en vois qui la plient et même qui la cassent,
Et j'en vois qui ne la voient même pas,
Et j'en vois qui ne la voient même pas.

Il faudrait que tout le monde réclame auprès des autorités,
Une loi contre toute notre indifférence,
Que personne ne soit oublié,
Et que personne ne soit oublié.

Tout le monde est une drôle de personne,
Et tout le monde a une âme emmêlée,
Tout le monde a de l'enfance qui résonne,
Au fond d'une heure oubliée,
Au fond d'une heure oubliée.

@Carla Bruni

2007-12-26T11:50:00.000-08:00

Philippe Leotard

Saturne

Il est morne, il est taciturne
Il préside aux choses du temps
Il porte un joli nom, Saturne
Mais c'est Dieu fort inquiétant
Il porte un joli nom, Saturne
Mais c'est Dieu fort inquiétant

En allant son chemin, morose
Pour se désennuyer un peu
Il joue à bousculer les roses
Le temps tue le temps comme il peut
Il joue à bousculer les roses
Le temps tue le temps comme il peut

Cette saison, c'est toi, ma belle
Qui a fait les frais de son jeu
Toi qui a dû payer la gabelle
Un grain de sel dans tes cheveux
Toi qui a dû payer la gabelle
Un grain de sel dans tes cheveux

C'est pas vilain, les fleurs d'automne
Et tous les poètes l'ont dit
Je regarde et je donne
Mon billet qu'ils n'ont pas menti
Je regarde et je donne
Mon billet qu'ils n'ont pas menti

Viens encore, viens ma favorite
Descendons ensemble au jardin
Viens effeuiller la marguerite
De l'été de la Saint-Martin
Viens effeuiller la marguerite
De l'été de la Saint-Martin

Je sais par c?ur toutes tes grâces
Et pour me les faire oublier
Il faudra que Saturne en fasse
Des tours d'horloge, de sablier
Et la petite pisseuse d'en face
Peut bien aller se rhabiller...

@Georges Brassens

SERGE REGGIANI - La femme qui est dans mon lit

2007-12-26T11:38:00.001-08:00

SERGE REGGIANI | Jeanloup Sieff
Originally uploaded by agent lee.

La femme qui est dans mon lit
N'a plus 20 ans depuis longtemps
Les yeux cernés
Par les années
Par les amours
Au jour le jour
La bouche usée
Par les baisers
Trop souvent, mais
Trop mal donnés
Le teint blafard
Malgré le fard
Plus pâle qu'une
Tâche de lune

La femme qui est dans mon lit
N'a plus 20 ans depuis longtemps
Les seins si lourds
De trop d'amour
Ne portent pas
Le nom d'appas
Le corps lassé
Trop caressé
Trop souvent, mais
Trop mal aimé
Le dos vouté
Semble porter
Des souvenirs
Qu'elle a dû fuir

La femme qui est dans mon lit
N'a plus 20 ans depuis longtemps
Ne riez pas
N'y touchez pas
Gardez vos larmes
Et vos sarcasmes
Lorsque la nuit
Nous réunit
Son corps, ses mains
S'offrent aux miens
Et c'est son c?ur
Couvert de pleurs
Et de blessures
Qui me rassure

@Georges Moustaki

Cara

2007-12-26T11:24:00.001-08:00

walking on the water
Originally uploaded by fabikinhas_world.

Cosa ho davanti, non riesco più a parlare
dimmi cosa ti piace, non riesco a capire, dove vorresti andare
vuoi andare a dormire.
Quanti capelli che hai, non si riesce a contare
sposta la bottiglia e lasciami guardare
se di tanti capelli, ci si può fidare.

Conosco un posto nel mio cuore
dove tira sempre il vento
per i tuoi pochi anni e per i miei che sono cento
non c'è niente da capire, basta sedersi ed ascoltare.
Perché ho scritto una canzone per ogni pentimento
e debbo stare attento a non cadere nel vino
o finir dentro ai tuoi occhi, se mi vieni più vicino.........

La notte ha il suo profumo e puoi cascarci dentro
che non ti vede nessuno
ma per uno come me, poveretto, che voleva prenderti per mano
e cascare dentro un letto.....
che pena...che nostalgia
non guardarti negli occhi e dirti un'altra bugia
A..Almeno non ti avessi incontrato
io che qui sto morendo e tu che mangi il gelato.

Tu corri dietro al vento e sembri una farfalla
e con quanto sentimento ti blocchi e guardi la mia spalla
se hai paura a andar lontano, puoi volarmi nella mano
ma so già cosa pensi, tu vorresti partire
come se andare lontano fosse uguale a morire
e non c'e' niente di strano ma non posso venire

Così come una farfalla ti sei alzata per scappare
ma ricorda che a quel muro ti avrei potuta inchiodare
se non fossi uscito fuori per provare anch'io a volare
e la notte cominciava a gelare la mia pelle
una notte madre che cercava di contare le sue stelle
io li sotto ero uno sputo e ho detto "OLE'" sono perduto.

La notte sta morendo
ed e' cretino cercare di fermare le lacrime ridendo
ma per uno come me l' ho gia detto
che voleva prenderti per mano e volare sopra un tetto.

Lontano si ferma un treno
ma che bella mattina, il cielo e' sereno
Buonanotte, anima mia
adesso spengo la luce e così sia.

@Lucio Dalla

Caro amore

2007-12-26T11:13:00.001-08:00

At Jardin de Luxenbourg
Originally uploaded by hefestus.

Caro amore
nei tramonti d'aprile
caro amore
quando il sole si uccide
oltre le onde
puoi sentire piangere e gioire
anche il vento ed il mare.

Caro amore
così un uomo piange
caro amore
al sole, al vento e ai verdi anni
che cantando se ne vanno
dopo il mattino di maggio
quando sono venuti
e quando scalzi
e con gli occhi ridenti
sulla sabbia scrivevamo contenti
le più ingenue parole.

Caro amore
i fiori dell'altr'anno
caro amore
sono sfioriti e mai più
rifioriranno
e nei giardini ad ogni inverno
ben più tristi sono le foglie.

Caro amore
così un uomo vive
caro amore
e il sole e il vento e i verdi anni
si rincorrono cantando
verso il novembre a cui
ci vanno portando
e dove un giorno con un triste sorriso
ci diremo tra le labbra ormai stanche
"eri il mio caro amore".

fabrizio de andre

Via del Campo

2007-12-26T11:10:00.001-08:00

Originally uploaded by Emelobi.

Via del Campo c'è una graziosa
gli occhi grandi color di foglia
tutta notte sta sulla soglia
vende a tutti la stessa rosa.

Via del Campo c'è una bambina
con le labbra color rugiada
gli occhi grigi come la strada
nascon fiori dove cammina.

Via del Campo c'è una puttana
gli occhi grandi color di foglia
se di amarla ti vien la voglia
basta prenderla per la mano

e ti sembra di andar lontano
lei ti guarda con un sorriso
non credevi che il paradiso
fosse solo lì al primo piano.

Via del Campo ci va un illuso
a pregarla di maritare
a vederla salir le scale
fino a quando il balcone ha chiuso.

Ama e ridi se amor risponde
piangi forte se non ti sente
dai diamanti non nasce niente
dal letame nascono i fior
dai diamanti non nasce niente
dal letame nascono i fior.

Fabrizio De Andre

Lie Still, Sleep Becalmed (Dylan Thomas )

2007-04-12T05:33:00.001-07:00

The number you have dialled is not available.
Originally uploaded by Gabba Gabba Hey!.

Lie still, sleep becalmed, sufferer with the wound
In the throat, burning and turning. All night afloat
On the silent sea we have heard the sound
That came from the wound wrapped in the salt sheet.

Under the mile off moon we trembled listening
To the sea sound flowing like blood from the loud wound
And when the salt sheet broke in a storm of singing
The voices of all the drowned swam on the wind.

Open a pathway through the slow sad sail,
Throw wide to the wind the gates of the wandering boat
For my voyage to begin to the end of my wound,
We heard the sea sound sing, we saw the salt sheet tell.
Lie still, sleep becalmed, hide the mouth in the throat,
Or we shall obey, and ride with you through the drowned.

@Dylan Thomas

I Am Vertical (Sylvia Plath )

2007-04-12T05:22:00.001-07:00

red & grey var.
Originally uploaded by hefestus.

But I would rather be horizontal.
I am not a tree with my root in the soil
Sucking up minerals and motherly love
So that each March I may gleam into leaf,
Nor am I the beauty of a garden bed
Attracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted,
Unknowing I must soon unpetal.
Compared with me, a tree is immortal
And a flower-head not tall, but more startling,
And I want the one's longevity and the other's daring.

Tonight, in the infinitesimal light of the stars,
The trees and flowers have been strewing their cool odors.
I walk among them, but none of them are noticing.
Sometimes I think that when I am sleeping
I must most perfectly resemble them--
Thoughts gone dim.
It is more natural to me, lying down.
Then the sky and I are in open conversation,
And I shall be useful when I lie down finally:
The the trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me
@ Sylvia Plath

Eat Your Heart Out (Charles Bukowski)

2007-03-23T17:37:00.001-07:00

a quick smoke
Originally uploaded by bart_azare.

I've come by, she says, to tell you
that this is it. I'm not kidding, it's
over. this is it.
I sit on the couch watching her arrange
her long red hair before my bedroom
mirror.
she pulls her hair up and
piles it on top of her head-
she lets her eyes look at
my eyes-
then she drops her hair and
lets it fall down in front of her face.
we go to bed and I hold her
speechlessly from the back
my arm around her neck
I touch her wrists and hands
feel up to
her elbows
no further.
she gets up.
this is it, she says,
this will do. well,
I'm going.
I get up and walk her
to the door
just as she leaves
she says,
I want you to buy me
some high-heeled shoes
with tall thin spikes,
black high-heeled shoes.
no, I want them
red.
I watch her walk down the cement walk
under the trees
she walks all right and
as the pointsettas drip in the sun
I close the door.

@Charles Bukowski

The Laughing Heart (Charles Bukowski)

2007-03-15T16:36:00.001-07:00

Originally uploaded by Emelobi.

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

@Charles Bukowski

Nirvana (Charles Bukowski)

2007-03-14T13:27:00.001-07:00

Originally uploaded by Death by Flickr.

not much chance,
completely cut loose from
purpose,
he was a young man
riding a bus
through North Carolina
on the wat to somewhere
and it began to snow
and the bus stopped
at a little cafe
in the hills
and the passengers
entered.
he sat at the counter
with the others,
he ordered and the
food arived.
the meal was
particularly
good
and the
coffee.
the waitress was
unlike the women
he had
known.
she was unaffected,
there was a natural
humor which came
from her.
the fry cook said
crazy things.
the dishwasher.
in back,
laughed, a good
clean
pleasant
laugh.
the young man watched
the snow through the
windows.
he wanted to stay
in that cafe
forever.
the curious feeling
swam through him
that everything
was
beautiful
there,
that it would always
stay beautiful
there.
then the bus driver
told the passengers
that it was time
to board.
the young man
thought, I'll just sit
here, I'll just stay
here.
but then
he rose and followed
the others into the
bus.
he found his seat
and looked at the cafe
through the bus
window.
then the bus moved
off, down a curve,
downward, out of
the hills.
the young man
looked straight
foreward.
he heard the other
passengers
speaking
of other things,
or they were
reading
or
attempting to
sleep.
they had not
noticed
the
magic.
the young man
put his head to
one side,
closed his
eyes,
pretended to
sleep.
there was nothing
else to do-
just to listen to the
sound of the
engine,
the sound of the
tires
in the
snow.

@Charles Bukowski

Sensation (Arthur Rimbaud)

2007-03-06T07:46:00.001-08:00

kleifarvatn
Originally uploaded by joberg.

On the blue summer evenings, I shall go down the paths,
Getting pricked by the corn, crushing the short grass:
In a dream I shall feel its coolness on my feet.
I shall let the wind bathe my bare head.

I shall not speak, I shall think about nothing:
But endless love will mount in my soul;
And I shall travel far, very far, like a gipsy,
Through the countryside - as happy as if I were with a woman.

Arthur Rimbaud

Ithaka (Constantine P. Cavafy)

2007-02-27T18:11:00.001-08:00

Jorgos
Originally uploaded by hefestus.

As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon-don't be afraid of them:
you'll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon-you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you're seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind-
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you're destined for.
But don't hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you're old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you've gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you'll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

by Constantine P. Cavafy

LA PIOGGIA NEL PINETO (Gabriele D'Annunzio)

2007-02-27T17:28:00.001-08:00

Garda
Originally uploaded by Clod79.

Taci. Su le soglie
del bosco non odo
parole che dici
umane; ma odo
parole più nuove
che parlano gocciole e foglie
lontane.
Ascolta. Piove
dalle nuvole sparse.
Piove su le tamerici
salmastre ed arse,
piove su i pini
scagliosi ed irti,
piove su i mirti
divini,
su le ginestre fulgenti
di fiori accolti,
su i ginepri folti
di coccole aulenti,
piove su i nostri volti
silvani,
piove su le nostre mani
ignude,
su i nostri vestimenti
leggieri,
su i freschi pensieri
che l'anima schiude
novella,
su la favola bella
che ieri
t'illuse, che oggi m'illude,
o Ermione.

Odi? La pioggia cade
su la solitaria
verdura
con un crepitío che dura
e varia nell'aria
secondo le fronde
più rade, men rade.
Ascolta. Risponde
al pianto il canto
delle cicale
che il pianto australe
non impaura,
nè il ciel cinerino.
E il pino
ha un suono, e il mirto
altro suono, e il ginepro
altro ancóra, stromenti
diversi
sotto innumerevoli dita.
E immersi
noi siam nello spirto
silvestre,
d'arborea vita viventi;
e il tuo volto ebro
è molle di pioggia
come una foglia,
e le tue chiome
auliscono come
le chiare ginestre,
o creatura terrestre
che hai nome
Ermione.

Ascolta, ascolta. L'accordo
delle aeree cicale
a poco a poco
più sordo
si fa sotto il pianto
che cresce;
ma un canto vi si mesce
più roco
che di laggiù sale,
dall'umida ombra remota.
Più sordo e più fioco
s'allenta, si spegne.
Sola una nota
ancor trema, si spegne,
risorge, trema, si spegne.
Non s'ode voce del mare.
Or s'ode su tutta la fronda
crosciare
l'argentea pioggia
che monda,
il croscio che varia
secondo la fronda
più folta, men folta.
Ascolta.
La figlia dell'aria
è muta; ma la figlia
del limo lontana,
la rana,
canta nell'ombra più fonda,
chi sa dove, chi sa dove!
E piove su le tue ciglia,
Ermione.

Piove su le tue ciglia nere
sìche par tu pianga
ma di piacere; non bianca
ma quasi fatta virente,
par da scorza tu esca.
E tutta la vita è in noi fresca
aulente,
il cuor nel petto è come pesca
intatta,
tra le pàlpebre gli occhi
son come polle tra l'erbe,
i denti negli alvèoli
con come mandorle acerbe.
E andiam di fratta in fratta,
or congiunti or disciolti
(e il verde vigor rude
ci allaccia i mallèoli
c'intrica i ginocchi)
chi sa dove, chi sa dove!
E piove su i nostri vólti
silvani,
piove su le nostre mani
ignude,
su i nostri vestimenti
leggieri,
su i freschi pensieri
che l'anima schiude
novella,
su la favola bella
che ieri
m'illuse, che oggi t'illude,
o Ermione.

Gabriele D'Annunzio

Cinderella (Anne Sexton)

2007-02-22T21:12:00.001-08:00

Originally uploaded by Emelobi.

You always read about it:
the plumber with the twelve children
who wins the Irish Sweepstakes.
From toilets to riches.
That story.

Or the nursemaid,
some luscious sweet from Denmark
who captures the oldest son's heart.
from diapers to Dior.
That story.

Or a milkman who serves the wealthy,
eggs, cream, butter, yogurt, milk,
the white truck like an ambulance
who goes into real estate
and makes a pile.
From homogenized to martinis at lunch.

Or the charwoman
who is on the bus when it cracks up
and collects enough from the insurance.
From mops to Bonwit Teller.
That story.

Once
the wife of a rich man was on her deathbed
and she said to her daughter Cinderella:
Be devout. Be good. Then I will smile
down from heaven in the seam of a cloud.
The man took another wife who had
two daughters, pretty enough
but with hearts like blackjacks.
Cinderella was their maid.
She slept on the sooty hearth each night
and walked around looking like Al Jolson.
Her father brought presents home from town,
jewels and gowns for the other women
but the twig of a tree for Cinderella.
She planted that twig on her mother's grave
and it grew to a tree where a white dove sat.
Whenever she wished for anything the dove
would dropp it like an egg upon the ground.
The bird is important, my dears, so heed him.

Next came the ball, as you all know.
It was a marriage market.
The prince was looking for a wife.
All but Cinderella were preparing
and gussying up for the event.
Cinderella begged to go too.
Her stepmother threw a dish of lentils
into the cinders and said: Pick them
up in an hour and you shall go.
The white dove brought all his friends;
all the warm wings of the fatherland came,
and picked up the lentils in a jiffy.
No, Cinderella, said the stepmother,
you have no clothes and cannot dance.
That's the way with stepmothers.

Cinderella went to the tree at the grave
and cried forth like a gospel singer:
Mama! Mama! My turtledove,
send me to the prince's ball!
The bird dropped down a golden dress
and delicate little slippers.
Rather a large package for a simple bird.
So she went. Which is no surprise.
Her stepmother and sisters didn't
recognize her without her cinder face
and the prince took her hand on the spot
and danced with no other the whole day.

As nightfall came she thought she'd better
get home. The prince walked her home
and she disappeared into the pigeon house
and although the prince took an axe and broke
it open she was gone. Back to her cinders.
These events repeated themselves for three days.
However on the third day the prince
covered the palace steps with cobbler's wax
and Cinderella's gold shoe stuck upon it.
Now he would find whom the shoe fit
and find his strange dancing girl for keeps.
He went to their house and the two sisters
were delighted because they had lovely feet.
The eldest went into a room to try the slipper on
but her big toe got in the way so she simply
sliced it off and put on the slipper.
The prince rode away with her until the white dove
told him to look at the blood pouring forth.
That is the way with amputations.
They just don't heal up like a wish.
The other sister cut off her heel
but the blood told as blood will.
The prince was getting tired.
He began to feel like a shoe salesman.
But he gave it one last try.
This time Cinderella fit into the shoe
like a love letter into its envelope.

At the wedding ceremony
the two sisters came to curry favor
and the white dove pecked their eyes out.
Two hollow spots were left
like soup spoons.

Cinderella and the prince
lived, they say, happily ever after,
like two dolls in a museum case
never bothered by diapers or dust,
never arguing over the timing of an egg,
never telling the same story twice,
never getting a middle-aged spread,
their darling smiles pasted on for eternity.
Regular Bobbsey Twins.
That story.

Anne Sexton

Confession (Charles Bukowski)

2007-02-22T20:44:00.001-08:00

kaleidoscope
Originally uploaded by seventytw0dpi.

waiting for death
like a cat
that will jump on the
bed

I am so very sorry for
my wife

she will see this
stiff
white
body
shake it once, then
maybe
again

"Hank!"

Hank won't
answer.

it's not my death that
worries me, it's my wife
left with this
pile of
nothing.

I want to
let her know
though
that all the nights
sleeping
beside her

even the useless
arguments
were things
ever splendid

and the hard
words
I ever feared to
say
can now be
said:

I love
you.

Charles Bukowski

For Jane (Charles Bukowski)

2007-02-22T20:20:00.001-08:00

Bus, Shadow, Figure.
Originally uploaded by Gabba Gabba Hey!.

225 days under grass
and you know more than I.
they have long taken your blood,
you are a dry stick in a basket.
is this how it works?
in this room
the hours of love
still make shadows.

when you left
you took almost
everything.
I kneel in the nights
before tigers
that will not let me be.

what you were
will not happen again.
the tigers have found me
and I do not care.

Charles Bukowski

Finish (Charles Bukowski)

2007-02-22T20:13:00.001-08:00

Hooker
Originally uploaded by lichtundschatten.

We are like roses that have never bothered to
bloom when we should have bloomed and
it is as if
the sun has become disgusted with
waiting

Charles Bukowski

A Case Of You (Joni Mitchell)

2007-02-16T16:50:00.001-08:00

motorcycle emptiness?
Originally uploaded by maxivida.

Just before our love got lost you said
"I am as constant as a northern star"
And I said, "Constant in the darkness
Where's that at?
If you want me I'll be in the bar"

On the back of a cartoon coaster
In the blue TV screen light
I drew a map of Canada
Oh Canada
And I sketched your face on it twice

Oh you are in my blood like holy wine
Oh and you taste so bitter but you taste so sweet
Oh I could drink a case of you
I could drink a case of you darling
Still I'd be on my feet
I'd still be on my feet

Oh I am a lonely painter
I live in a box of paints
I'm frightened by the devil
And I'm drawn to those ones that ain't afraid
I remember that time that you told me, you said
"Love is touching souls"
Surely you touched mine
"Cause part of you pours out of me
In these lines from time to time

Oh you are in my blood like holy wine
And you taste so bitter but you taste so sweet
Oh I could drink a case of you
I could drink a case of you darling
Still I'd be on my feet
I'd still be on my feet

I met a woman
She had a mouth like yours
She knew your life
She knew your devils and your deeds
And she said
"Go to him, stay with him if you can
Oh but be prepared to bleed"

Oh but you are in my blood you're my holy wine
Oh and you taste so bitter but you taste so sweet
I could drink a case of you darling
Still I'd be on my feet
Still I'd be on my feet
I'd still be on my feet

Joni Mitchell

Amico fragile (Fabrizio D' Andre)

2007-02-16T16:28:00.001-08:00

barbershop, Dublin
Originally uploaded by Emelobi.

Evaporato in una nuvola rossa
in una delle molte feritoie della notte
con un bisogno d'attenzione e d'amore
troppo, "Se mi vuoi bene piangi "
per essere corrisposti,
valeva la pena divertirvi le serate estive
con un semplicissimo "Mi ricordo":

per osservarvi affittare un chilo d'erba
ai contadini in pensione e alle loro donne
e regalare a piene mani oceani
ed altre ed altre onde ai marinai in servizio,
fino a scoprire ad uno ad uno i vostri nascondigli
senza rimpiangere la mia credulità:

perché già dalla prima trincea
ero più curioso di voi,
ero molto più curioso di voi.

E poi sospeso dai vostri "Come sta"
meravigliato da luoghi meno comuni e più feroci,
tipo "Come ti senti amico, amico fragile,
se vuoi potrò occuparmi un'ora al mese di te"
"Lo sa che io ho perduto due figli"
"Signora lei è una donna piuttosto distratta."

E ancora ucciso dalla vostra cortesia
nell'ora in cui un mio sogno
ballerina di seconda fila,
agitava per chissà quale avvenire
il suo presente di seni enormi
e il suo cesareo fresco,
pensavo è bello che dove finiscono le mie dita
debba in qualche modo incominciare una chitarra.

E poi seduto in mezzo ai vostri arrivederci,
mi sentivo meno stanco di voi
ero molto meno stanco di voi.

Potevo stuzzicare i pantaloni della sconosciuta
fino a vederle spalancarsi la bocca.
Potevo chiedere ad uno qualunque dei miei figli
di parlare ancora male e ad alta voce di me.
Potevo barattare la mia chitarra e il suo elmo
con una scatola di legno che dicesse perderemo.

Potevo chiedervi come si chiama il vostro cane
Il mio è un po' di tempo che si chiama Libero.
Potevo assumere un cannibale al giorno
per farmi insegnare la mia distanza dalle stelle.
Potevo attraversare litri e litri di corallo
per raggiungere un posto che si chiamasse arrivederci.

E mai che mi sia venuto in mente,
di essere più ubriaco di voi
di essere molto più ubriaco di voi.

Fabrizio De Andrè

Canzone di Marinella (Fabrizio D' Andre)

2007-02-16T16:05:00.001-08:00

Beyond "Chic".
Originally uploaded by Gabba Gabba Hey!.

Questa di Marinella è la storia vera
che scivolò nel fiume a primavera
ma il vento che la vide così bella
dal fiume la portò sopra una stella

Sola senza il ricordo di un dolore
vivevi senza il sogno di un amore
ma un re senza corona e senza scorta
bussò tre volte un giorno alla tua porta

Bianco come la luna il suo cappello
come l'amore rosso il suo mantello
tu lo seguisti senza una ragione
come un ragazzo segue un aquilone

E c'era il sole e avevi gli occhi belli
lui ti baciò le labbra ed i capelli
c'era la luna e avevi gli occhi stanchi
lui pose le sue mani suoi tuoi fianchi

Furono baci e furono sorrisi
poi furono soltanto i fiordalisi
che videro con gli occhi delle stelle
fremere al vento e ai baci la tua pelle

Dicono poi che mentre ritornavi
nel fiume chissà come scivolavi
e lui che non ti volle creder morta
bussò cent'anni ancora alla tua porta

Questa è la tua canzone Marinella
che sei volata in cielo su una stella
e come tutte le più belle cose
vivesti solo un giorno, come le rose
E come tutte le più belle cose
vivesti solo un giorno, come le rose.

Fabrizio D' Andre

Late February (Ted Kooser)

2007-02-15T15:29:00.001-08:00

Leiden
Originally uploaded by hefestus.

The first warm day,
and by mid-afternoon
the snow is no more
than a washing
strewn over the yards,
the bedding rolled in knots
and leaking water,
the white shirts lying
under the evergreens.
Through the heaviest drifts
rise autumn’s fallen
bicycles, small carnivals
of paint and chrome,
the Octopus
and Tilt-A-Whirl
beginning to turn
in the sun. Now children,
stiffened by winter
and dressed, somehow,
like old men, mutter
and bend to the work
of building dams.
But such a spring is brief;
by five o’clock
the chill of sundown,
darkness, the blue TVs
flashing like storms
in the picture windows,
the yards gone gray,
the wet dogs barking
at nothing. Far off
across the cornfields
staked for streets and sewers,
the body of a farmer
missing since fall
will show up
in his garden tomorrow,
as unexpected
as a tulip.

by Ted Kooser

Walking on Tiptoe (Ted Kooser)

2007-02-15T15:26:00.001-08:00

Originally uploaded by Death by Flickr.

Long ago we quit lifting our heels
like the others—horse, dog, and tiger—
though we thrill to their speed
as they flee. Even the mouse
bearing the great weight of a nugget
of dog food is enviably graceful.
There is little spring to our walk,
we are so burdened with responsibility,
all of the disciplinary actions
that have fallen to us, the punishments,
the killings, and all with our feet
bound stiff in the skins of the conquered.
But sometimes, in the early hours,
we can feel what it must have been like
to be one of them, up on our toes,
stealing past doors where others are sleeping,
and suddenly able to see in the dark.

by Ted Kooser

Barefoot (Anne Sexton)

2007-02-11T21:01:00.001-08:00

sound of wave
Originally uploaded by maybemaq.

Loving me with my shows off
means loving my long brown legs,
sweet dears, as good as spoons;
and my feet, those two children
let out to play naked. Intricate nubs,
my toes. No longer bound.
And what's more, see toenails and
all ten stages, root by root.
All spirited and wild, this little
piggy went to market and this little piggy
stayed. Long brown legs and long brown toes.
Further up, my darling, the woman
is calling her secrets, little houses,
little tongues that tell you.

There is no one else but us
in this house on the land spit.
The sea wears a bell in its navel.
And I'm your barefoot wench for a
whole week. Do you care for salami?
No. You'd rather not have a scotch?
No. You don't really drink. You do
drink me. The gulls kill fish,
crying out like three-year-olds.
The surf's a narcotic, calling out,
I am, I am, I am
all night long. Barefoot,
I drum up and down your back.
In the morning I run from door to door
of the cabin playing chase me.
Now you grab me by the ankles.
Now you work your way up the legs
and come to pierce me at my hunger mark

Anne Sexton

Baby Picture (Anne Sexton)

2007-02-11T20:57:00.001-08:00

Sleeping lessons
Originally uploaded by Merveilleux.

It's in the heart of the grape
where that smile lies.
It's in the good-bye-bow in the hair
where that smile lies.
It's in the clerical collar of the dress
where that smile lies.
What smile?
The smile of my seventh year,
caught here in the painted photograph.

It's peeling now, age has got it,
a kind of cancer of the background
and also in the assorted features.
It's like a rotten flag
or a vegetable from the refrigerator,
pocked with mold.
I am aging without sound,
into darkness, darkness.

Anne,
who are you?

I open the vein
and my blood rings like roller skates.
I open the mouth
and my teeth are an angry army.
I open the eyes
and they go sick like dogs
with what they have seen.
I open the hair
and it falls apart like dust balls.
I open the dress
and I see a child bent on a toilet seat.
I crouch there, sitting dumbly
pushing the enemas out like ice cream,
letting the whole brown world
turn into sweets.

Anne,
who are you?

Merely a kid keeping alive.

Anne Sexton

In January (Ted Kooser)

2007-02-11T20:53:00.001-08:00

a-chin
Originally uploaded by one-fat shot!.

Only one cell in the frozen hive of night
is lit, or so it seems to us:
this Vietnamese café, with its oily light,
its odors whose colorful shapes are like flowers.
Laughter and talking, the tick of chopsticks.
Beyond the glass, the wintry city
creaks like an ancient wooden bridge.
A great wind rushes under all of us.
The bigger the window, the more it trembles.

Ted Kooser

I Ask You (Billy Collins)

2007-02-11T20:50:00.001-08:00

Originally uploaded by Death by Flickr.

What scene would I want to be enveloped in
more than this one,
an ordinary night at the kitchen table,
floral wallpaper pressing in,
white cabinets full of glass,
the telephone silent,
a pen tilted back in my hand?

It gives me time to think
about all that is going on outside--
leaves gathering in corners,
lichen greening the high grey rocks,
while over the dunes the world sails on,
huge, ocean-going, history bubbling in its wake.

But beyond this table
there is nothing that I need,
not even a job that would allow me to row to work,
or a coffee-colored Aston Martin DB4
with cracked green leather seats.

No, it's all here,
the clear ovals of a glass of water,
a small crate of oranges, a book on Stalin,
not to mention the odd snarling fish
in a frame on the wall,
and the way these three candles--
each a different height--
are singing in perfect harmony.

So forgive me
if I lower my head now and listen
to the short bass candle as he takes a solo
while my heart
thrums under my shirt--
frog at the edge of a pond--
and my thoughts fly off to a province
made of one enormous sky
and about a million empty branches.

Billy Collins

Neither Snow (Billy Collins)

2007-02-11T20:46:00.001-08:00

he left the shadow behind...
Originally uploaded by TommyOshima.

When all of a sudden the city air filled with snow,
the distinguishable flakes
blowing sideways,
looked like krill
fleeing the maw of an advancing whale.

At least they looked that way to me
from the taxi window,
and since I happened to be sitting
that fading Sunday afternoon
in the very center of the universe,
who was in a better position
to say what looked like what,
which thing resembled some other?

Yes, it was a run of white plankton
borne down the Avenue of the Americas
in the stream of the wind,
phosphorescent against the weighty buildings.

Which made the taxi itself,
yellow and slow-moving,
a kind of undersea creature,
I thought as I wiped the fog from the glass,

and me one of its protruding eyes,
an eye on a stem
swiveling this way and that
monitoring one side of its world,
observing tons of water
tons of people
colored signs and lights
and now a wildly blowing race of snow.

Billy Collins

Memory (William Butler Yeats )

2007-02-06T16:35:00.001-08:00

Church
Originally uploaded by Merveilleux.

ONE had a lovely face,
And two or three had charm,
But charm and face were in vain
Because the mountain grass
Cannot but keep the form
Where the mountain hare has lain.

William Butler Yeats

In the Beginning (Dylan Thomas )

2007-02-06T16:27:00.001-08:00

Louvre 5
Originally uploaded by efra28.

In the beginning was the three-pointed star,
One smile of light across the empty face,
One bough of bone across the rooting air,
The substance forked that marrowed the first sun,
And, burning ciphers on the round of space,
Heaven and hell mixed as they spun.

In the beginning was the pale signature,
Three-syllabled and starry as the smile,
And after came the imprints on the water,
Stamp of the minted face upon the moon;
The blood that touched the crosstree and the grail
Touched the first cloud and left a sign.

In the beginning was the mounting fire
That set alight the weathers from a spark,
A three-eyed, red-eyed spark, blunt as a flower,
Life rose and spouted from the rolling seas,
Burst in the roots, pumped from the earth and rock
The secret oils that drive the grass.

In the beginning was the word, the word
That from the solid bases of the light
Abstracted all the letters of the void;
And from the cloudy bases of the breath
The word flowed up, translating to the heart
First characters of birth and death.

In the beginning was the secret brain.
The brain was celled and soldered in the thought
Before the pitch was forking to a sun;
Before the veins were shaking in their sieve,
Blood shot and scattered to the winds of light
The ribbed original of love.

Dylan Thomas

a total stranger (E.E. Cummings)

2007-02-06T16:16:00.001-08:00

side alley at dusk
Originally uploaded by allysonk.

A total stranger one black day
knocked living the hell out of me

E.E. Cummings

Immense et Rouge (Jacques Prévert)

2007-02-03T11:51:00.001-08:00

vue depuis la rue lepic
Originally uploaded by jam-L.

Immense et rouge
Au-dessus du Grand Palais
Le soleil d'hiver apparaît
Et disparaît
Comme lui mon coeur va disparaître
Et tout mon sang va s'en aller
S'en aller à ta recherche
Mon amour
Ma beauté
Et te trouver
Là où tu es.

Jacques Prévert

Le jardin (Jacques Prévert)

2007-02-03T11:45:00.001-08:00

Silence
Originally uploaded by jam-L.

Des milliers et des milliers d'années
Ne sauraient suffire
Pour dire
La petite seconde d'éternité
Où tu m'as embrassé
Où je t'ai embrassèe
Un matin dans la lumière de l'hiver
Au parc Montsouris à Paris
A Paris
Sur la terre
La terre qui est un astre.

Jacques Prévert

Candles (Sylvia Plath)

2007-02-03T11:07:00.001-08:00

Originally uploaded by maxivida.

They are the last romantics, these candles:
Upside-down hearts of light tipping wax fingers,
And the fingers, taken in by their own haloes,
Grown milky, almost clear, like the bodies of saints.
It is touching, the way they'll ignore

A whole family of prominent objects
Simply to plumb the deeps of an eye
In its hollow of shadows, its fringe of reeds,
And the owner past thirty, no beauty at all.
Daylight would be more judicious,

Giving everybody a fair hearing.
They should have gone out with the balloon flights and the stereopticon.
This is no time for the private point of view.
When I light them, my nostrils prickle.
Their pale, tentative yellows

Drag up false, Edwardian sentiments,
And I remember my maternal grandmother from Vienna.
As a schoolgirl she gave roses to Franz Josef.
The burghers sweated and wept. The children wore white.
And my grandfather moped in the Tyrol,

Imagining himself a headwaiter in America,
Floating in a high-church hush
Among ice buckets, frosty napkins.
These little globes of light are sweet as pears.
Kindly with invalids and mawkish women,

They mollify the bald moon.
Nun-souled, they burn heavenward and never marry.
The eyes of the child I nurse are scarcely open.
In twenty years I shall be retrograde
As these drafty ephemerids.

I watch their spilt tears cloud and dull to pearls.
How shall I tell anything at all
To this infant still in a birth-drowse?
Tonight, like a shawl, the mild light enfolds her,
The shadows stoop over the guests at a christening.

by Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath Biography

2007-02-03T10:58:00.000-08:00

Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)

Born to middle class parents in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, Sylvia Plath published her first poem when she was eight. Sensitive, intelligent, compelled toward perfection in everything she attempted, she was, on the surface, a model daughter, popular in school, earning straight A's, winning the best prizes. By the time she entered Smith College on a scholarship in 1950 she already had an impressive list of publications, and while at Smith she wrote over four hundred poems.

Sylvia's surface perfection was however underlain by grave personal discontinuities, some of which doubtless had their origin in the death of her father (he was a college professor and an expert on bees) when she was eight. During the summer following her junior year at Smith, having returned from a stay in New York City where she had been a student ``guest editor'' at Mademoiselle Magazine, Sylvia nearly succeeded in killing herself by swallowing sleeping pills. She later described this experience in an autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar, published in 1963. After a period of recovery involving electroshock and psychotherapy Sylvia resumed her pursuit of academic and literary success, graduating from Smith summa cum laude in 1955 and winning a Fulbright scholarship to study at Cambridge, England.

In 1956 she married the English poet Ted Hughes , and in 1960, when she was 28, her first book, The Colossus, was published in England. The poems in this book---formally precise, well wrought---show clearly the dedication with which Sylvia had served her apprenticeship; yet they give only glimpses of what was to come in the poems she would begin writing early in 1961. She and Ted Hughes settled for a while in an English country village in Devon, but less than two years after the birth of their first child the marriage broke apart.

The winter of 1962-63, one of the coldest in centuries, found Sylvia living in a small London flat, now with two children, ill with flu and low on money. The hardness of her life seemed to increase her need to write, and she often worked between four and eight in the morning, before the children woke, sometimes finishing a poem a day. In these last poems it is as if some deeper, powerful self has grabbed control; death is given a cruel physical allure and psychic pain becomes almost tactile.

On February 11, 1963, Sylvia Plath killed herself with cooking gas at the age of 30. Two years later Ariel, a collection of some of her last poems, was published; this was followed by Crossing the Water and Winter Trees in 1971, and, in 1981, The Collected Poems appeared, edited by Ted Hughes.

(after a bio by Bill Gilson)

A pretty a day (E. E. Cummings)

2007-02-02T19:51:00.001-08:00

four from today: self portrait: daddy doing daddy's work
Originally uploaded by superNova K.

a pretty a day
(and every fades)
is here and away
(but born are maids
to flower an hour
in all,all)

o yes to flower
until so blithe
a doer a wooer
some limber and lithe
some very fine mower
a tall;tall

some jerry so very
(and nellie and fan)
some handsomest harry
(and sally and nan
they tremble and cower
so pale:pale)

for betty was born
to never say nay
but lucy could learn
and lily could pray
and fewer were shyer
than doll. doll

by E. E. Cummings

I carry your heart with me (E. E. Cummings)

2007-02-02T19:48:00.001-08:00

Reflection
Originally uploaded by hefestus.

i carry your heart with me
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

by E. E. Cummings

Always For The First Time (Andre Breton)

2007-02-02T19:44:00.001-08:00

rendez-vous
Originally uploaded by nikoskrikelis.

Always for the first time
Hardly do I know you by sight
You return at some hour of the night to a house at an angle to my window
A wholly imaginary house
It is there that from one second to the next
In the inviolate darkness
I anticipate once more the fascinating rift occurring
The one and only rift
In the facade and in my heart
The closer I come to you
In reality
The more the key sings at the door of the unknown room
Where you appear alone before me
At first you coalesce entirely with the brightness
The elusive angle of a curtain
It's a field of jasmine I gazed upon at dawn on a road in the vicinity of Grasse
With the diagonal slant of its girls picking
Behind them the dark falling wing of the plants stripped bare
Before them a T-square of dazzling light
The curtain invisibly raised
In a frenzy all the flowers swarm back in
It is you at grips with that too long hour never dim enough until sleep
You as though you could be
The same except that I shall perhaps never meet you
You pretend not to know I am watching you
Marvelously I am no longer sure you know
You idleness brings tears to my eyes
A swarm of interpretations surrounds each of your gestures
It's a honeydew hunt
There are rocking chairs on a deck there are branches that may well scratch you in the
forest
There are in a shop window in the rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette
Two lovely crossed legs caught in long stockings
Flaring out in the center of a great white clover
There is a silken ladder rolled out over the ivy
There is
By my leaning over the precipice
Of your presence and your absence in hopeless fusion
My finding the secret
Of loving you
Always for the first time

by Andre Breton

Love Calls You By Your Name (Leonard Cohen)

2007-01-31T17:38:00.001-08:00

Human B e h a v i o u r - II
Originally uploaded by fabikinhas_world.

You thought that it could never happen
to all the people that you became,
your body lost in legend, the beast so very tame.
But here, right here,
between the birthmark and the stain,
between the ocean and your open vein,
between the snowman and the rain,
once again, once again,
love calls you by your name.
The women in your scrapbook
whom you still praise and blame,
you say they chained you to your fingernails
and you climb the halls of fame.
Oh but here, right here,
between the peanuts and the cage,
between the darkness and the stage,
between the hour and the age,
once again, once again,
love calls you by your name.

Shouldering your loneliness
like a gun that you will not learn to aim,
you stumble into this movie house,
then you climb, you climb into the frame.
Yes, and here, right here
between the moonlight and the lane,
between the tunnel and the train,
between the victim and his stain,
once again, once again,
love calls you by your name.

I leave the lady meditating
on the very love which I, I do not wish to claim,
I journey down the hundred steps,
but the street is still the very same.
And here, right here,
between the dancer and his cane,
between the sailboat and the drain,
between the newsreel and your tiny pain,
once again, once again,
love calls you by your name.

Where are you, Judy, where are you, Anne?
Where are the paths your heroes came?
Wondering out loud as the bandage pulls away,
was I, was I only limping, was I really lame?
Oh here, come over here,
between the windmill and the grain,
between the sundial and the chain,
between the traitor and her pain,
once again, once again,
love calls you by your name.

Leonard Cohen

Last Year's Man (Leonard Cohen)

2007-01-31T17:32:00.000-08:00

The rain falls down on last year's man,
that's a jew's harp on the table,
that's a crayon in his hand.
And the corners of the blueprint are ruined since they rolled
far past the stems of thumbtacks
that still throw shadows on the wood.
And the skylight is like skin for a drum I'll never mend
and all the rain falls down amen
on the works of last year's man.
I met a lady, she was playing with her soldiers in the dark
oh one by one she had to tell them
that her name was Joan of Arc.
I was in that army, yes I stayed a little while;
I want to thank you, Joan of Arc,
for treating me so well.
And though I wear a uniform I was not born to fight;
all these wounded boys you lie beside,
goodnight, my friends, goodnight.

I came upon a wedding that old families had contrived;
Bethlehem the bridegroom,
Babylon the bride.
Great Babylon was naked, oh she stood there trembling for me,
and Bethlehem inflamed us both
like the shy one at some orgy.
And when we fell together all our flesh was like a veil
that I had to draw aside to see
the serpent eat its tail.

Some women wait for Jesus, and some women wait for Cain
so I hang upon my altar
and I hoist my axe again.
And I take the one who finds me back to where it all began
when Jesus was the honeymoon
and Cain was just the man.
And we read from pleasant Bibles that are bound in blood and skin
that the wilderness is gathering
all its children back again.

The rain falls down on last year's man,
an hour has gone by
and he has not moved his hand.
But everything will happen if he only gives the word;
the lovers will rise up
and the mountains touch the ground.
But the skylight is like skin for a drum I'll never mend
and all the rain falls down amen
on the works of last year's man.

Leonard Cohen

Stranger Song (Leonard Cohen)

2007-01-31T17:28:00.001-08:00

interupted
Originally uploaded by anhtu.

It's true that all the men you knew were dealers
who said they were through with dealing
Every time you gave them shelter
I know that kind of man
It's hard to hold the hand of anyone
who is reaching for the sky just to surrender,
who is reaching for the sky just to surrender.
And then sweeping up the jokers that he left behind
you find he did not leave you very much
not even laughter
Like any dealer he was watching for the card
that is so high and wild
he'll never need to deal another
He was just some Joseph looking for a manger
He was just some Joseph looking for a manger

And then leaning on your window sill
he'll say one day you caused his will
to weaken with your love and warmth and shelter
And then taking from his wallet
an old schedule of trains, he'll say
I told you when I came I was a stranger
I told you when I came I was a stranger.

But now another stranger seems
to want you to ignore his dreams
as though they were the burden of some other
O you've seen that man before
his golden arm dispatching cards
but now it's rusted from the elbows to the finger
And he wants to trade the game he plays for shelter
Yes he wants to trade the game he knows for shelter.

Ah you hate to see another tired man
lay down his hand
like he was giving up the holy game of poker
And while he talks his dreams to sleep
you notice there's a highway
that is curling up like smoke above his shoulder.
It is curling just like smoke above his shoulder.

You tell him to come in sit down
but something makes you turn around
The door is open you can't close your shelter
You try the handle of the road
It opens do not be afraid
It's you my love, you who are the stranger
It's you my love, you who are the stranger.

Well, I've been waiting, I was sure
we'd meet between the trains we're waiting for
I think it's time to board another
Please understand, I never had a secret chart
to get me to the heart of this
or any other matter
When he talks like this
you don't know what he's after
When he speaks like this,
you don't know what he's after.

Let's meet tomorrow if you choose
upon the shore, beneath the bridge
that they are building on some endless river
Then he leaves the platform
for the sleeping car that's warm
You realize, he's only advertising one more shelter
And it comes to you, he never was a stranger
And you say ok the bridge or someplace later.

And then sweeping up the jokers that he left behind ...

And leaning on your window sill ...

I told you when I came I was a stranger.

Leonard Cohen

Fare Well (Federico García Lorca)

2007-01-31T17:14:00.001-08:00

Take this longing ....
Originally uploaded by hefestus.

If I die,
leave the balcony open.

The little boy is eating oranges.
(From my balcony I can see him.)

The reaper is harvesting the wheat.
(From my balcony I can hear him.)

If I die,
leave the balcony open!

Federico García Lorca

A Life (Sylvia Plath)

2007-01-31T17:06:00.001-08:00

Luna de nieve/snow moon
Originally uploaded by Molotovio.

Touch it: it won't shrink like an eyeball,
This egg-shaped bailiwick, clear as a tear.
Here's yesterday, last year ---
Palm-spear and lily distinct as flora in the vast
Windless threadwork of a tapestry.

Flick the glass with your fingernail:
It will ping like a Chinese chime in the slightest air stir
Though nobody in there looks up or bothers to answer.
The inhabitants are light as cork,
Every one of them permanently busy.

At their feet, the sea waves bow in single file.
Never trespassing in bad temper:
Stalling in midair,
Short-reined, pawing like paradeground horses.
Overhead, the clouds sit tasseled and fancy

As Victorian cushions. This family
Of valentine faces might please a collector:
They ring true, like good china.

Elsewhere the landscape is more frank.
The light falls without letup, blindingly.

A woman is dragging her shadow in a circle
About a bald hospital saucer.
It resembles the moon, or a sheet of blank paper
And appears to have suffered a sort of private blitzkrieg.
She lives quietly

With no attachments, like a foetus in a bottle,
The obsolete house, the sea, flattened to a picture
She has one too many dimensions to enter.
Grief and anger, exorcised,
Leave her alone now.

The future is a grey seagull
Tattling in its cat-voice of departure.
Age and terror, like nurses, attend her,
And a drowned man, complaining of the great cold,
Crawls up out of the sea.

Sylvia Plath

Skater (Ted Kooser)

2007-01-31T16:57:00.001-08:00

Two more ice skaters
Originally uploaded by Samuel K.

She was all in black but for a yellow pony tail
that trailed from her cap, and bright blue gloves
that she held out wide, the feathery fingers spread,
as surely she stepped, click-clack, onto the frozen
top of the world. And there, with a clatter of blades,
she began to braid a loose path that broadened
into a meadow of curls. Across the ice she swooped
and then turned back and, halfway, bent her legs
and leapt into the air the way a crane leaps, blue gloves
lifting her lightly, and turned a snappy half-turn
there in the wind before coming down, arms wide,
skating backward right out of that moment, smiling back
at the woman she'd been just an instant before.

Ted Kooser

Carrie (Ted Kooser)

2007-01-31T16:53:00.001-08:00

Blue. Light.
Originally uploaded by James Rye.

"There's never an end to dust
and dusting," my aunt would say
as her rag, like a thunderhead,
scudded across the yellow oak
of her little house. There she lived
seventy years with a ball
of compulsion closed in her fist,
and an elbow that creaked and popped
like a branch in a storm. Now dust
is her hands and dust her heart.
There's never an end to it.

Ted Kooser

Barbara (Jacques Prévert)

2007-01-30T17:28:00.001-08:00

BREST RAIN
Originally uploaded by East eneko.

Rappelle-toi Barbara
Il pleuvait sans cesse sur Brest ce jour-là
Et tu marchais souriante
Épanouie ravie ruisselante
Sous la pluie
Rappelle-toi Barbara
Il pleuvait sans cesse sur Brest
Et je t'ai croisée rue de Siam
Tu souriais
Et moi je souriais de même
Rappelle-toi Barbara
Toi que je ne connaissais pas
Toi qui ne me connaissais pas
Rappelle-toi
Rappelle-toi quand même jour-là
N'oublie pas
Un homme sous un porche s'abritait
Et il a crié ton nom
Barbara
Et tu as couru vers lui sous la pluie
Ruisselante ravie épanouie
Et tu t'es jetée dans ses bras
Rappelle-toi cela Barbara
Et ne m'en veux pas si je te tutoie
Je dis tu à tous ceux que j'aime
Même si je ne les ai vus qu'une seule fois
Je dis tu à tous ceux qui s'aiment
Même si je ne les connais pas
Rappelle-toi Barbara
N'oublie pas
Cette pluie sage et heureuse
Sur ton visage heureux
Sur cette ville heureuse
Cette pluie sur la mer
Sur l'arsenal
Sur le bateau d'Ouessant
Oh Barbara
Quelle connerie la guerre
Qu'es-tu devenue maintenant
Sous cette pluie de fer
De feu d'acier de sang
Et celui qui te serrait dans ses bras
Amoureusement
Est-il mort disparu ou bien encore vivant
Oh Barbara
Il pleut sans cesse sur Brest
Comme il pleuvait avant
Mais ce n'est plus pareil et tout est abimé
C'est une pluie de deuil terrible et désolée
Ce n'est même plus l'orage
De fer d'acier de sang
Tout simplement des nuages
Qui crèvent comme des chiens
Des chiens qui disparaissent
Au fil de l'eau sur Brest
Et vont pourrir au loin
Au loin très loin de Brest
Dont il ne reste rien.

Jacques Prévert

Alicante (Jacques Prévert)

2007-01-30T17:07:00.001-08:00

Alicante_Fischer
Originally uploaded by Thinkabout.

Une orange sur la table
Ta robe sur le tapis
Et toi dans mon lit
Doux présent du présent
Fraîcheur de la nuit
Chaleur de ma vie.

Jacques Prévert

Les feuilles mortes (Jacques Prévert)

2007-01-30T17:04:00.001-08:00

At the Jardin de Luxenburg
Originally uploaded by hefestus.

Les feuilles mortes

C'est une chanson, qui nous ressemble
Toi tu m'aimais et je t'aimais
Nous vivions tous, les deux ensemble
Toi que m'aimais moi qui t'aimais
Mais la vie sépare ceux qui s'aiment
Tout doucement sans faire de bruit
Et la mer efface sur la sable les pas des amants désunis

Oh! je voudrais tant que tu te souviennes
Des jours heureux oů nous étions amis
En ce temps-la la vie était plus belle,
Et le soleil plus brűlant qu'aujourd'hui
Les feuilles mortes se ramassent a la pelle
Tu vois, je n'ai pas oublié...
Les feuilles mortes se ramassent a la pelle,
Les souvenirs et les regrets aussi
Et le vent du nord les emporte
Dans la nuit froide de l'oubli.
Tu vois, je n'ai pas oublié
La chanson que tu me chantais.

C'est une chanson qui nous ressemble
Toi, tu m'aimais et je t'aimais
Et nous vivions tous deux ensemble
Toi qui m'aimais, moi qui t'aimais
Mais la vie sépare ceux qui s'aiment
Tout doucement, sans faire de bruit
Et la mer efface sur le sable
Les pas des amants désunis.

Les feuilles mortes se ramassent a la pelle,
Les souvenirs et les regrets aussi
Mais mon amour silencieux et fidele
Sourit toujours et remercie la vie
Je t'aimais tant, tu étais si jolie,
Comment veux-tu que je t'oublie?
En ce temps-la, la vie était plus belle
Et le soleil plus brűlant qu'aujourd'hui
Tu étais ma plus douce amie
Mais je n'ai que faire des regrets
Et la chanson que tu chantais
Toujours, toujours je l'entendrai!

C'est une chanson qui nous ressemble
Toi, tu m'aimais et je t'aimais
Et nous vivions tous deux ensemble
Toi qui m'aimais, moi qui t'aimais
Mais la vie sépare ceux qui s'aiment
Tout doucement, sans faire de bruit
Et la mer efface sur le sable
Les pas des amants désunis.

(musique: Joseph Kosma, paroles: Jacques Prévert, interprete pour la premiere fois par Yves Montand en 1946)

Jacques Prévert

Chanson pour les enfants l’hiver (Jacques Prévert)

2007-01-30T17:01:00.001-08:00

Paris Jardin de Luxenbourg
Originally uploaded by hefestus.

Dans la nuit de l’hiver galope un grand homme blanc.
C’est un bonhomme de neige avec une pipe en bois,
un grand bonhomme de neige poursuivi par le froid.

Il arrive au village.
Voyant de la lumière,
le voilà rassuré.

Dans une petite maison, il entre sans frapper
et pour se réchauffer
s’assoit sur le poêle rouge
et d’un coup disparaît,
ne laissant que sa pipe au milieu d’une flaque d’eau,
ne laissant que sa pipe et puis son vieux chapeau...

Jacques Prévert

A First Confession (William Butler Yeats)

2007-01-30T16:56:00.001-08:00

Vinterkyss
Originally uploaded by AN Kim.

I admit the briar
Entangled in my hair
Did not injure me;
My blenching and trembling,
Nothing but dissembling,
Nothing but coquetry.

I long for truth, and yet
I cannot stay from that
My better self disowns,
For a man's attention
Brings such satisfaction
To the craving in my bones.

Brightness that I pull back
From the Zodiac,
Why those questioning eyes
That are fixed upon me?
What can they do but shun me
If empty night replies?

William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats

2007-01-30T16:52:00.000-08:00

Biography

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) was born in Dublin. His father was a lawyer and a well-known portrait painter. Yeats was educated in London and in Dublin, but he spent his summers in the west of Ireland in the family's summer house at Connaught. The young Yeats was very much part of the fin de siècle in London; at the same time he was active in societies that attempted an Irish literary revival. His first volume of verse appeared in 1887, but in his earlier period his dramatic production outweighed his poetry both in bulk and in import. Together with Lady Gregory he founded the Irish Theatre, which was to become the Abbey Theatre, and served as its chief playwright until the movement was joined by John Synge. His plays usually treat Irish legends; they also reflect his fascination with mysticism and spiritualism. The Countess Cathleen (1892), The Land of Heart's Desire (1894), Cathleen ni Houlihan (1902), The King's Threshold (1904), and Deirdre (1907) are among the best known.

After 1910, Yeats's dramatic art took a sharp turn toward a highly poetical, static, and esoteric style. His later plays were written for small audiences; they experiment with masks, dance, and music, and were profoundly influenced by the Japanese Noh plays. Although a convinced patriot, Yeats deplored the hatred and the bigotry of the Nationalist movement, and his poetry is full of moving protests against it. He was appointed to the Irish Senate in 1922. Yeats is one of the few writers whose greatest works were written after the award of the Nobel Prize. Whereas he received the Prize chiefly for his dramatic works, his significance today rests on his lyric achievement. His poetry, especially the volumes The Wild Swans at Coole (1919), Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), The Tower (1928), The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933), and Last Poems and Plays (1940), made him one of the outstanding and most influential twentieth-century poets writing in English. His recurrent themes are the contrast of art and life, masks, cyclical theories of life (the symbol of the winding stairs), and the ideal of beauty and ceremony contrasting with the hubbub of modern life.

From Nobel Lectures, Literature 1901-1967, Editor Horst Frenz, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1969

This autobiography/biography was first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.

William Butler Yeats died on January 28, 1939.

A Cradle Song

2007-01-30T16:51:00.001-08:00

lotharpfad
Originally uploaded by heavenuphere.

THE angels are stooping
Above your bed;
They weary of trooping
With the whimpering dead.
God's laughing in Heaven
To see you so good;
The Sailing Seven
Are gay with His mood.
I sigh that kiss you,
For I must own
That I shall miss you
When you have grown.

William Butler Yeats

Alba (Ezra Pound)

2007-01-30T15:24:00.001-08:00

Lily of the valley, Pt. 2
Originally uploaded by Don Gru.

As cool as the pale wet leaves
of lily-of-the-valley
She laid beside me in the dawn

Ezra Pound

A Girl (Ezra Pound )

2007-01-30T15:18:00.001-08:00

memories
Originally uploaded by fabikinhas_world.

The tree has entered my hands,
The sap has ascended my arms,
The tree has grown in my breast -
Downward,
The branches grow out of me, like arms.

Tree you are,
Moss you are,
You are violets with wind above them.
A child - so high - you are,
And all this is folly to the world.

Ezra Pound

all in green (ee cummings)

2007-01-30T13:52:00.001-08:00

Originally uploaded by maz hewitt.

all in green

All in green went my love riding
on a great horse of gold
into the silver dawn.

Four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
the merry deer ran before.

Fleeter be they than dappled dreams
the swift red deer
the red rare deer.

Four red roebuck at a white water
the cruel bugle sang before.

Horn at hip went my love riding
riding the echo down
into the silver dawn.

Four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
the level meadows ran before.

Softer be they than slippered sleep
the lean lithe deer
the fleet flown deer.

Four fleet does at a gold valley
the famished arrow sang before.

Bow at belt went my love riding
riding the mountain down
into the silver dawn.

Four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
the sheer peaks ran before.

Paler be they than daunting death
the sleek slim deer
the tall tense deer.

Four tall stags at the green mountain
the lucky hunter sang before.

All in green went my love riding
on a great horse of gold
into the silver dawn.

Four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
my heart fell dead before.

ee cummings

An Appearance (Sylvia Plath)

2007-01-30T13:09:00.001-08:00

IMAG0023
Originally uploaded by MIU!.

The smile of iceboxes annihilates me.
Such blue currents in the veins of my loved one!
I hear her great heart purr.

From her lips ampersands and percent signs
Exit like kisses.
It is Monday in her mind: morals

Launder and present themselves.
What am I to make of these contradictions?
I wear white cuffs, I bow.

Is this love then, this red material
Issuing from the steele needle that flies so blindingly?
It will make little dresses and coats,

It will cover a dynasty.
How her body opens and shuts --
A Swiss watch, jeweled in the hinges!

O heart, such disorganization!
The stars are flashing like terrible numerals.
ABC, her eyelids say.

Sylvia Plath

A Song (Walt Whitman)

2007-01-30T13:03:00.001-08:00

In his footsteps...
Originally uploaded by specialagentkate.

COME, I will make the continent indissoluble;
I will make the most splendid race the sun ever yet shone upon;
I will make divine magnetic lands,
With the love of comrades,
With the life-long love of comrades.

I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of
America, and along the shores of the great lakes, and all over
the prairies;
I will make inseparable cities, with their arms about each other's
necks;
By the love of comrades,
By the manly love of comrades.

For you these, from me, O Democracy, to serve you, ma femme! 10
For you! for you, I am trilling these songs,
In the love of comrades,
In the high-towering love of comrades.

Walt Whitman

After Years (Ted Kooser)

2007-01-30T12:58:00.001-08:00

Originally uploaded by fabikinhas_world.

After Years

Today, from a distance, I saw you
walking away, and without a sound
the glittering face of a glacier
slid into the sea. An ancient oak
fell in the Cumberlands, holding only
a handful of leaves, and an old woman
scattering corn to her chickens looked up
for an instant. At the other side
of the galaxy, a star thirty-five times
the size of our own sun exploded
and vanished, leaving a small green spot
on the astronomer's retina
as he stood on the great open dome
of my heart with no one to tell.

Ted Kooser

A Birthday Poem (Ted Kooser)

2007-01-30T12:52:00.001-08:00

a familiar view
Originally uploaded by maxivida.

Just past dawn, the sun stands
with its heavy red head
in a black stanchion of trees,
waiting for someone to come
with his bucket
for the foamy white light,
and then a long day in the pasture.
I too spend my days grazing,
feasting on every green moment
till darkness calls,
and with the others
I walk away into the night,
swinging the little tin bell
of my name.

Ted Kooser

LES PASSANTES

2007-01-30T12:25:00.000-08:00

Je veux dédier ce poème
A toutes les femmes qu'on aime
Pendant quelques instants secrets
A celles qu'on connait à peine
Qu'un destin différent entraîne
Et qu'on ne retrouve jamais

A celle qu'on voit apparaître
Une seconde à sa fenêtre
Et qui, preste, s'évanouit
Mais dont la svelte silhouette
Est si gracieuse et fluette
Qu'on en demeure épanoui

A la compagne de voyage
Dont les yeux, charmant paysage
Font paraître court le chemin
Qu'on est seul, peut-être, à comprendre
Et qu'on laisse pourtant descendre
Sans avoir effleuré sa main

A la fine et souple valseuse
Qui vous sembla triste et nerveuse
Par une nuit de carnaval
Qui voulu rester inconnue
Et qui n'est jamais revenue
Tournoyer dans un autre bal

A celles qui sont déjà prises
Et qui, vivant des heures grises
Près d'un être trop différent
Vous ont, inutile folie,
Laissé voir la mélancolie
D'un avenir désespérant

Chères images aperçues
Espérances d'un jour déçues
Vous serez dans l'oubli demain
Pour peu que le bonheur survienne
Il est rare qu'on se souvienne
Des épisodes du chemin

Mais si l'on a manqué sa vie
On songe avec un peu d'envie
A tous ces bonheurs entrevus
Aux baisers qu'on n'osa pas prendre
Aux cœurs qui doivent vous attendre
Aux yeux qu'on n'a jamais revus

Alors, aux soirs de lassitude
Tout en peuplant sa solitude
Des fantômes du souvenir
On pleure les lêvres absentes
De toutes ces belles passantes
Que l'on n'a pas su retenir

Antoine Pol

Famous song sung by Georges Brassens.

At Jardin de Luxenbourg
Originally uploaded by hefestus.

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night (Dylan Thomas)

2007-01-29T18:50:00.000-08:00

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dylan Thomas

Originally uploaded by maz hewitt.

Clown in the Moon (Dylan Thomas)

2007-01-29T18:48:00.000-08:00

My tears are like the quiet drift
Of petals from some magic rose;
And all my grief flows from the rift
Of unremembered skies and snows.

I think, that if I touched the earth,
It would crumble;
It is so sad and beautiful,
So tremulously like a dream.

Dylan Thomas

Originally uploaded by Emelobi.

Flying at Night (Ted Kooser)

2007-01-29T18:16:00.000-08:00

Flying at Night

Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations.
Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies
like a snowflake falling on water. Below us,
some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death,
snaps on his yard light, drawing his sheds and barn
back into the little system of his care.
All night, the cities, like shimmering novas,
tug with bright streets at lonely lights like his.

Ted Kooser

memento mori 2
Originally uploaded by TommyOshima.

Ted Kooser Bio

2007-01-29T17:40:00.000-08:00

Ted Kooser is one of Nebraska’s most highly regarded poets and served as the United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004 - 2006. A professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, he is the author of eleven full-length collections of poetry, including Delights and Shadows (Copper Canyon Press, 2004) and Weather Central (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994). Over the years his works have appeared in many periodicals including The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, Poetry, The Hudson Review, The Nation, The American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, and Antioch Review. Koosers’ poems are included in textbooks and anthologies used in both secondary schools and college classrooms across the country. He has received two NEA fellowships in poetry, the Pushcart Prize, the Stanley Kunitz Prize, The James Boatwright Prize, and a Merit Award from the Nebraska Arts Council.

Kooser has read his poetry for The Academy of American Poets in New York City as well as for many university audiences including those of the University of California at Berkeley, Cornell at Ithaca, Case Western Reserve at Cleveland, The School of the Art Institute in Chicago, and Wesleyan University in Connecticut. He has conducted writing workshops in connection with many of these readings.

In addition to poetry, Kooser has written in a variety of forms including plays, fiction, personal essays, and literary criticism. His first book of prose, Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps (University of Nebraska Press, 2002), won the Nebraska Book Award for Nonfiction in 2003 and Third Place in the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award in Nonfiction for 2002. The book was chosen as the Best Book Written by a Midwestern Writer for 2002 by Friends of American Writers. It also won the Gold Award for Autobiography in ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year Awards. The University of Nebraska Press will publish his newest book The Poetry Home Repair Manual in January 2005. The book will give beginning poets tips for their writing.

Currently he is editor and publisher of Windflower Press which specializes in the publication of contemporary poetry. Though mostly inactive now, Windflower published a number of books as well as two literary magazines, The Salt Creek Reader (1967-1975) and The Blue Hotel (1980-1981). The Salt Creek Reader was awarded several grants of support from the National Endowment of the Arts through The Coordination Council of Literary Magazines. Kooser published several anthologies through Windflower Press. One of these, The Windflower Home Almanac of Poetry, was listed by Library Journal as one of the best books from small presses for 1980. Seventeen Danish Poets in Translation received international notice, and As Far As I Can See; Contemporary Writing of the Middle Plains is in use as a text in secondary schools and colleges across the plains region. In 1999, Kooser published Roy Scheele's Keeping the Horses as a fundraising project for the Nebraska Literary Heritage Association.

Born in Ames, Iowa, in 1939, Kooser earned a BS at Iowa State University in 1962 and an MA at the University of Nebraska in 1968. He is a former vice-president of the Lincoln Benefit Life, where he worked as an insurance representative for many years. He lives on an acreage near the town of Garland, Nebraska, with his wife, Kathleen Rutledge, and dogs, Alice and Howard. He also has a son, Jeff, and a granddaughter, Margare

Tattoo (Ted Kooser)

2007-01-29T17:34:00.000-08:00

Tattoo

What once was meant to be a statement—
a dripping dagger held in the fist
of a shuddering heart—is now just a bruise
on a bony old shoulder, the spot
where vanity once punched him hard
and the ache lingered on. He looks like
someone you had to reckon with,
strong as a stallion, fast and ornery,
but on this chilly morning, as he walks
between the tables at a yard sale
with the sleeves of his tight black T-shirt
rolled up to show us who he was,
he is only another old man, picking up
broken tools and putting them back,
his heart gone soft and blue with stories.

from Delights & Shadows, Copper Canyon Press, Port Townsend, WA 2004

Ted Kooser

pedestrians
Originally uploaded by maxivida.

Father (Ted Kooser)

2007-01-29T17:31:00.000-08:00

Father

Today you would be ninety-seven
if you had lived, and we would all be
miserable, you and your children,
driving from clinic to clinic,
an ancient fearful hypochondriac
and his fretful son and daughter,
asking directions, trying to read
the complicated, fading map of cures.
But with your dignity intact
you have been gone for twenty years,
and I am glad for all of us, although
I miss you every day—the heartbeat
under your necktie, the hand cupped
on the back of my neck, Old Spice
in the air, your voice delighted with stories.
On this day each year you loved to relate
that the moment of your birth
your mother glanced out the window
and saw lilacs in bloom. Well, today
lilacs are blooming in side yards
all over Iowa, still welcoming you.

from Delights & Shadows, Copper Canyon Press, Port Townsend, WA 2004

Joy
Originally uploaded by Navelfluff.