poesy

april is national poetry month.

yay april!

in honor of national poetry month, the academy of american poets launched a new section of their website called life lines. anyone with the inclination can post their favorite lines of poetry and write about why those poems are significant to them. the website breaks my heart, in all the good ways. the personal stories behind certain poems range from horrors in war to a father's cancer to a first pregnancy to falling in love to just gratitude for the poem's existence. these are the poems that people lean on just to get through their every day.

i understand that.

so ... i'm indulging myself. i know poetry is usually kept here. but i wanted to share a few of my own little life lines, in no particular order. or maybe these are actually the poems that drown me?

anyways. maybe you will find something in them, too:

These are merely instances
—Wallace Stevens, from "Theory"

I know the forms of care, and understand the grammar of desire.
I understand that life is an affair of words, and that the
Hope of duplicating it is a delusion.
— John Koethe, from "The Constructor"

I will put Chaos into fourteen lines
And keep him there
— Edna St. Vincent Millay, from an untitled sonnet

I don't know what it was I wanted to hold onto.
I kept losing it and I didn't know what it was
Except I wanted to hold onto it. The drink kept it in,
So at least for awhile it felt as if I had it,
Whatever it was. But it was the drink that had it
And held it and had hold of me too. Asshole.
— David Ferry, from "Song of the Drunkard"

As if hands were enough
To hold an avalanche off.
— Thom Gunn, from "The Man with Night Sweats"

For an hour or two the evening has no limits
Or so it seems to you as you walk the pavements
Of this, your adoptive city.
— Stuart Dischell, from "Evening"

You were the perfection of my life
And I couldn't have you. That is, I didn't.
I couldn't think. I wrote, instead. I would have had
To think hard, to figure everything out
About how I could be with you,
Really, which I couldn't do
In those moments of permanence we had
As we walked along.
— Kenneth Koch, from "To Marina"

and finally, here's a longer excerpt of my favorite poem, which i've read almost daily since i moved to new york:

Sometimes I think that I can feel the outside world
Relax, and feel its weight become a part of me again.
The thoughts that linger in the mind, the sounds that
Filter through the trees—these things aren't merely
Signs of some imaginary life to be denied me while the
Heart of everything I used to have remains alive. It
Troubles me that time should make things sweeter, that
Instead of learning how to perceive things as they are I've
Learned to lose them, or to see them as they disappear
Into the insubstantial future. Everything here is mine,
Or lies within my power to accept. I want to find a way
To live inside each moment as it comes, then let it go
Before it breaks up in regret or disillusionment. I've
Constantly defined myself by difference, yet after all
These years I feel as far away as ever from the kind of
Strength I'd hoped the differences would bring. Where
Is that boundless life I know exists beyond the words?
When will the fear that makes me cling to them be gone
And leave me undivided? I can hear the transitory song
The birds sing, but what dominates my mind remains the
Faint, insistent one that draws me back into this dim
Interior where something waits for me, and waits alone.
— John Koethe, from "Between the Lines"