Poetry Fridays
Poetry Friday: Wallace Stevens’ The Emperor of Ice-Cream
The Emperor of Ice Cream
by Wallace Stevens, from Harmonium
Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dwadle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month’s newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of [...]
Poetry Friday: Wallace Stevens’ “The Snow Man”
The Snow Man
by Wallace Stevens, from Harmonium
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of [...]
Poetry Friday: Tu Fu’s “South Wind”, Trans. by Kenneth Rexroth
“South Wind”
by Tu Fu, trans. Kenneth Rexroth, collected in A Book of Luminous Things: An International Anthology of Poetry
The days grow long, the mountains
Beautiful. The south wind blows
Over blossoming meadows.
Newly arrived swallows dart
Over the streaming marshes.
Ducks in pairs drowse on the warm sand.
Poetry Friday: Pattiann Rogers’s “The Significance of Location”
“The Significance of Location” from Firekeeper
by
Pattiann Rogers
The cat has the chance to make the sunlight
Beautiful, to stop it and turn it immediately
Into black fur and motion, to take it
As shifting branch and brown feather
Into the back of the brain forever.
The cardinal has flown the sun in red
Through the oak forest to the lawn.
The finch has [...]
Poetry Friday: Mary Oliver’s “Spring”
“Spring” from House of Light
by Mary Oliver
Somewhere
a black bear
has just risen from sleep
and is racing
down the mountain.
All night
in the brisk and shallow restlessness
of early spring
I think of her
her four black fists
flicking the gravel
her tongue
like a red fire
touching the grass,
the cold water.
There is only one question:
how to love this world.
I think of her
rising
like a black [...]
Poetry Friday: Langston Hughes’ Dreams
In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday, a poem from Langston Hughes–out of my favorite kid lit poetry anthology EVER (Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle…And Other Modern Verse):
Dreams
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen [...]
