DPF / Lowell

For women of every varying belief today, from No More Masks: An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Women Poets. 

from The Sisters / by Amy Lowell

Sappho would speak, I think, quite openly,
And, Mrs. Browning guard a careful silence,
But Emily would set doors ajar and slam them
And love you for your speed of observation.

DPF / Brecht

For the day and its implications for everything, from an article on poetryfoundation.org:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/features/articles/detail/92130.

from Carolyn Forche’s epigraph for Against Forgetting / by Bertolt Brecht, translated by ______

In the dark times, will there also be singing?
         Yes, there will be singing.
         About the dark times.

DPF / Collins

For watching oneself barrel through life and wanting to choose to be the self who goes back for the book, from Picnic, Lightning.

from I Go Back to the House for a Book / by Billy Collins

another me that did not bother
to go back to the house for a book
heads out on his own,
rolls down the driveway,
and swings left toward town

DPF / Collins

For rising to the occasion, which is hopefully what will happen on this day, from Picnic, Lightning.

from What I Learned Today / by Billy Collins

I had never heard of John Bernard Flannagan,
American sculptor,
until I found him on page 961
of the single-volume encyclopedia I am reading
at the rate of one page each day.

DPF / Collins

For reading, in this week before the Battle of the Books, from Picnic, Lightning.

from Marginalia / by Billy Collins

Sometimes the notes are ferocious,
skirmishes against the author
raging along the borders of every page
in tiny black script.

DPF / Celan

For the new landscape of the new year, and naturally, for this weekend’s playoffs, from Poems of Paul Celan, translated by Michael Hamburger.

from Draft of a Landscape / by Paul Celan

Lavas, basalts, glowing
stone from the world’s heart.
Wellspring tuff
where light grew for us, before
our breath.

DPF / Hughes

For finally finishing the amazing play, A Raisin in the Sun, from one of my favorite poems, the epigraph.

from What happens to a dream deferred / by Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?

DPF / Disch

For weather, from an Iowan’s poem, from poetryfoundation.org. Our weather page here in the valley scheduled rain for every day this week; in our time of drought, anything from the sky met mostly ecstatic umbrellas this week.

from Ode to a Blizzard / by Tom Disch

Winning the same argument year
After year by making the opposition
Disappear!

DPF / Tate

For bookstores, from Memoir of the Hawk. When I was younger, I traveled the United States in search of great, used bookstores. I found so many! In related news, I miss you so much, Mr. Tate.

from Memory / by James Tate

Bookstore with a donkey in its heart,
bookstore full of clouds and
sometimes lighting, showers.
Books just in from Australia,
books by madmen and giants.

DPF / Shapiro

For the love of vowels, from Poetry, January 2017.

from An Owl (in Memory of Gil) / by David Shapiro

Owl small be enough
The child for all his feathers was a cold.
Oh wow the owl.