For the 60’s, from American Poets, Fall-Winter 2014.
from City Lights 1961 / by Diane di Prima b. 1934
How many late nights did we haunt the Store
buying scads of new poems from all corners of the earth
20th-Century Poetry
DPF / Tewa Song
A prayer, from Poem A Day, Vol. 2, edited by Laurie Sheck.
from Song of the Sky Loom / a Tewa Song, translated by Herbert Joseph Spinders
Then weave for us a garment of brightness;
May the warp be the white light of morning
DPF / McKay
For anyone’s version of Paradise, this one from Jamaica via New York, from Poem A Day, Volume 2, edited by Laurie Sheck.
from The Tropics in New York / by Claude McKay (1889-1948)
Bananas ripe and green, and ginger-root,
Cocoa in pods and alligator pears
DPF / Amichai
For flowers, from Poem A Day, Volume 2, edited by Laurie Sheck. It’s very hard for a Plath devotee to post a poem translated by poor Assia Gutmann, the woman claimed in the same historical vortex.
from My Mother Once Told Me / by Yehuda Amichai (1924-2000), translated by Assia Gutmann
My mother once told me
Not to sleep with flowers in the room.
Since then I have not slept with flowers.
DPF / Swir
For the sea, from A Book of Luminous Things: 20than international anthology of poetry, edited by Czeslaw Milosz.
from The Sea and The Man / by Anna Swir (1909-1984), translated from the Polish by Leonard Nathan and Czeslaw Milosz
You will not tame this sea
either by humility or rapture.
DPF / Cavafy
For crowns and scrolls, from A Book of Luminous Things: an international anthology of poetry, edited by Czeslaw Milosz.
from Waiting for the Barbarians / by Constantine Cavafy (1863-1933)
Why are they carrying elegant canes
beautifully worked in silver and gold?
DPF / Morgan
For bees, from A Book of Luminous Things.
from Honey / by Robert Morgan b. 1944
a sealed relic of sun and time
and roots of many acres fixed
DPF / Leith
One last one for the children of October, from An Eyeball in My Garden, edited by Jennifer Cole Judd and Laura Wyncoop.
from Winking Wot Warning / by Debra Leith
The Wots I’ve seen are three feet high,
With pointed feet turned toward the sky.
DPF / Rexroth
For falling leaves, from A Book of Luminous Things, An International Anthology of Poetry, edited by Czeslaw Milosz.
from Signature of All Things / by Kenneth Rexroth (1905-1982)
On the mirrored sky and forest
For a while
DPF / Shapiro
For autumn, from The Best of the Best American Poetry, 1988-1997, edited by Harold Bloom.
from The Seasons: In Memory of John Cage / by David Shapiro b. 1947
Pencils too heavy to be carried
Dictionaries stuck in the ground
Daily Poetry Fragments {Semi-Daily} 