A POEM ABOUT WHITE APPLES white apples, first apples of summer, with skin as delicate as a baby’s, crispy like white winter snow. your smell won’t let me sleep, this is how dead men are haunting their murderers’ dreams. white apples, this is how every july the earth gets heavier under your weight. and here [...]
by Sidney Lanier Superb and sole, upon a plumed spray That o’er the general leafage boldly grew, He summ’d the woods in song; or typic drew The watch of hungry hawks, the lone dismay Of languid doves when long their lovers stray, And all birds’ passion-plays that sprinkle dew At morn in brake or bosky [...]
American Life in Poetry: Column 067 BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006 One in a series of elegies by New York City poet Catherine Barnett, this poem describes the first gathering after death has shaken a family to its core. The father tries to help his grown daughter forget for a moment that, a [...]
American Life in Poetry: Column 066 BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006 Some of the most telling poetry being written in our country today has to do with the smallest and briefest of pleasures. Here Marie Howe of New York captures a magical moment: sitting in the shelter of a leafy tree with the [...]
American Life in Poetry: Column 065 BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006 Visiting a familiar and once dear place after a long absence can knock the words right out of us, and in this poem, Keith Althaus of Massachusetts observes this happening to someone else. I like the way he suggests, at the end, [...]
Sonnet She took the dappled partridge flecked with blood, And in her hand the drooping pheasant bare, And by his feet she held the woolly hare, And like a master painting where she stood, Looked some new goddess of an English wood. Nor could I find an imperfection there, Nor blame the wanton act that [...]
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006 Remember those Degas paintings of the ballet dancers? Here is a similar figure study, in muted color, but in this instance made of words, not pigment. As this poem by David Tucker closes, I can feel myself holding my breath as if to help the dancer hold her [...]
Im Jardin des Plantes, Paris Sein Blick ist vom Vorübergehn der Stäbe so müd geworden, daß er nichts mehr hält. Ihm ist, als ob es tausend Stäbe gäbe und hinter tausend Stäben keine Welt. Der weiche Gang geschmeidig starker Schritte, der sich im allerkleinsten Kreise dreht, ist wie ein Tanz von Kraft um eine Mitte, [...]
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE Everywhere I travel I meet people who want to write poetry but worry that what they write won’t be “any good.” No one can judge the worth of a poem before it’s been written, and setting high standards for yourself can keep you from writing. And if you don’t [...]
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE Most of us have taken at least a moment or two to reflect upon what we have learned from our mothers. Through a catalog of meaningful actions that range from spiritual to domestic, Pennsylvanian Julia Kasdorf evokes the imprint of her mother’s life on her own. As the poem [...]