Death Fugue
Paul Celan, translated from German by Michael Hamburger
Black milk of daybreak we drink it at sundown
we drink it at noon in the morning we drink it at night
we drink and we drink it
we dig a grave in the breezes there one lies unconfined
A man lives in the house he plays with the serpents he [...]
Prepare for my final two final exams (US history and French)
Read Orlando, by Virginia Woolf
Return a fiction book, a French textbook, an English textbook (opened once), and a US history textbook
Finish a painting
Go to work
Pack for a trip to Chicago
Memorize two piano pieces
Sight read a Schubert string quartet; this also means I have to find [...]
A Man Said to the Universe
Stephen Crane
A man said to the universe:
“Sir, I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
“A sense of obligation.”
The Dug-Out
Siegfried Sassoon
WHY do you lie with your legs ungainly huddled,
And one arm bent across your sullen, cold,
Exhausted face? It hurts my heart to watch you,
Deep-shadow’d from the candle’s guttering gold;
And you wonder why I shake you by the shoulder;
Drowsy, you mumble and sigh and turn your head…
You are too young to fall asleep for [...]
Faure’s Second Piano Quartet
James Schuyler
On a day like this the rain comes
down in fat and random drops among
the ailanthus leaves—”the tree
of Heaven”—the leaves that on moon-
lit nights shimmer black and blade-
shaped at this third-floor window.
And there are bunches of small green
knobs, buds, crowded together. The
rapid music fills in the spaces of
the leaves. And the [...]
William Blake moved to Felpham and loved the place. In a letter, he wrote:
…the sweet air & the voices of winds trees & birds & the odours of the happy ground makes it a dwelling for immortals. Work will go on here with God speed–…. I met a plow on my first going out at [...]
Alone I sat
Emily Jane Brontë
Alone I sat; the summer day
Had died in smiling light away;
I saw it die, I watched it fade
From misty hill and breezeless glade;
And thoughts in my soul were gushing,
And my heart bowed beneath their power;
And tears within my eyes were rushing
Because I could not speak the feeling,
The solemn joy around me [...]
A Dirge
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Rough wind, that moanest loud
Grief too sad for song;
Wild wind, when sullen cloud
Knells all the night long;
Sad storm, whose tears are vain,
Bare woods, whose branches strain,
Deep caves and dreary main, –
Wail, for the world’s wrong!
How Do You Write A Poem?
Nikki Giovanni
how do you write a poem
about someone so close
to you that when you say ahhhhh
they say chuuuu
what can they ask you to put
on paper that isn’t already written
on your face
and does the paper make it
any more real
that without them
life would be not
impossible but certainly
more difficult
and why would someone need
a [...]
Poem
Frank O’Hara
When I am feeling depressed and anxious sullen
all you have to do is take off your clothes
and all is wiped away revealing life’s tenderness
that we are flesh and breathe and are near us
as you are really as you are I become as I
really am alive and knowing vaguely what is
and what is important to [...]
