For desolating landscapes, from Great American Prose Poems, edited by David Lehman.
from Borges and I / by Frank Bidart, b.1939
We fill pre-existing forms and when we fill them we change them and are changed.
20th-Century Poetry
DPF / Atwood
For screech owls, from Great American Prose Poems, edited by David Lehman.
from Women’s Novels / by Margaret Atwood, b. 1939
She had the startled eyes of a wild bird. This is the kind of sentence I go mad for.
DPF / Edson
For steering the right direction, from Great American Prose Poems, edited by David Lehman.
from The Pilot / by Russell Edson, b.1935
He thinks he can use the back of a chair as a ship’s wheel to pilot this room through the night.
DPF / Housman
For seventy springs, from Poem A Day, Volume 2, edited by Laurie Sheck.
from Loveliest of Trees / by A.E. Housman (1859-1936)
And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room
DPF / Akhmadulina
For trees in snow, from Poem A Day, Volume 2, edited by Laurie Sheck.
from Silence / by Bella Akhmadulina, b. 1937, translated by Daniel Halpern
And the birds of my throat are dead,
Their gardens turning into dictionaries.
DPF / Brodsky
For flying, from poetryfoundation.org. The rest is here:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/249964#about
from The Hawk’s Cry in Autumn / by Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996)
Wind from the northwestern quarter is lifting him high above
the dove-gray, crimson, umber, brown
Connecticut Valley.
DPF / Untermeyer
For gold of the kind that grows on trees and stems, from poetryfoundation.org. The rest of the poem is here:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/177244
from Feuerzauber / by Louis Untermeyer (1885-1977)
Such golden fires, such yellow—lo, how good
This spendthrift world, and what a lavish God!
DPF / Allen
For the upcoming Mother’s Day, from poetryfoundation.org.
from Rock Me to Sleep / by Elizabeth Akers Allen (1832-1911)
With your light lashes just sweeping my face,
Never hereafter to wake or to weep;—
Rock me to sleep, mother – rock me to sleep!
DPF / Jarrell
For the last day of National Poetry Month, from Poem A Day, Vol 2. So sad to see you go.
from A Sick Child / by Randall Jarrell (1914-1965)
I say, ” Well, thank you very much. Good-bye.”
DPF / Supervielle
Still attempting no repetitions, so here’s a no-repeat for today, from Selected Translations by W.S. Merwin.
from The Tip of the Flame / by Jules Supervielle (French 1884-1960)
All through his life
He had liked to read
By a candle
Daily Poetry Fragments {Semi-Daily} 