Kenneth Rexroth – Toward an Organic Philosophy

“And the living light in the water Shivering away from the swimming hand, Creeping against the lips, filling the floating hair.”

Yusuf Komunyakaa – Praising Dark Places

“In this cellular dirt & calligraphy of excrement, Light is a god-headed Law & weapon.”

Stanley Kunitz – The War Against the Trees

“They struck and struck again, And with each elm a century went down.”

Pablo Neruda – Today

“Today, how many hours are falling into the well, into the net, into time”

Edna St. Vincent Millay – “What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why”

“I cannot say what loves have come and gone, I only know that summer sang in me A little while, that in me sings no more.”

Adam Zagajewski – Another Life

“you like to see the stars, belonging to no one, stars like knives that wound us”

Gwendolyn Brooks – To Be in Love

“To be in love Is to touch with a lighter hand.”

Stevie Smith – Not Waving but Drowning

“I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning”

KB Brookins – Good Grief

“The American government can only do what systems driven by green paper, violence & ache can do.”

William Carlos Williams – Spring and All

“Still, the profound change has come upon them: rooted, they grip down and begin to awaken”

Donika Kelly – I Never Figured How to Get Free

“I never learned how to get free. I never learned how not to have anyone’s blood on my own soft hands.”

Linda Gregg – It Is the Rising I Like

“I must live in the suffering and desire of what rises and falls. The terrible blind grinding of gears against our bodies and lives.”