Rainer Maria Rilke (translated from the German by Edward Snow)
I can see that the storms are coming
by the trees, which out of stale lukewarm days
beat against my anxious windows,
and I can hear the distances say things
from the book
The Book of Images /
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
What Sparks Poetry is a serialized feature in which we invite poets to explore experiences and ideas that spark new poems. In the newest series, The Poems of Others II, twenty-four poets pay homage to the poems that led them to write.
- February 16, 2020
Jeff Kass
Sent down a student clearly unprepared
to schlep seven pizzas (including one gluten-free)
upstairs to the classroom, so I did it for him, an extra
ten minutes of my time while another customer’s
delivery camped in the car, and I don’t know what
kind of class it was, possibly marketing, something
in the how-to-make-money-by-lying-to-people genre.
- February 15, 2020
Anthony Anaxagorou
so gently
have the children
been washed
& scented
with lavender.
against their will.
- February 14, 2020
Mary Ruefle
The past has trudged to this one spot
with a flashlight in its mouth
- February 13, 2020
Hasan Alizadeh (translated from the Persian by Rebecca Ruth Gould & Kayvan Tahmasebian)
Nights when you fall in love with her again,
when the seabird is gone.
A chair,
unpleasantly the colour of bones...
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