Rose Lerner's Blog, page 42

Two in the Campagna
by Robert Browning
I wonder do you feel today
As I have felt since, hand in hand,
We sat down on the grass, to stray
In spirit better through the land,
This morn of Rome and May?
For me, I touched a thought, I know,
Has tantalized me many times,
(Like turns of thread the spiders throw
Mocking across our path) [...:]

After the Movie
by Marie Howe
My friend Michael and I are walking home arguing about the movie.
He says that he believes a person can love someone
and still be able to murder that person.
I say, No, that's not love. That's attachment.
Michael says, No, that's love. You can love someone, then come to a day
when you're forced to [...:]

Love After Love
by Derek Walcott
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved [...:]

Fiveness
by Sibelan Forrester
I speak of beauty sharpened to a point:
Da Vincian figures, angels in the sphere.
It's Aphrodite's number, lingering
code of the body – stretch from palm to heel.
I am so taken with the way you move,
no frozen image can approximate –
only wind in branches, only slow
and gracious rays through interrupting clouds…
A long elastic curve, but [...:]

The Precision
by Linda Gregg
There is a modesty in nature. In the small
of it and in the strongest. The leaf moves
just the amount the breeze indicates
and nothing more. In the power of lust, too,
there can be a quiet and clarity, a fusion
of exact moments. There is a silence of it
inside the thundering. And when the body [...:]

My signing with Gayle Ann Williams, Amy Rench, and Marie-Claude Bourque is in two hours! I think it's going to be lots of fun.
###
The Clod and the Pebble
by William Blake
"Love seeketh not Itself to please,
"Nor for itself hath any care,
"But for another gives its ease,
"And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair."
So sang little Clod [...:]

Today I have a piece up at Fresh Fiction about the difficulty of taking feedback on your writing. I'm giving away a book in the comments! And in honor of that, here's a poem by Dorothy Parker. We writers have our priorities, don't we?
###
Fighting Words
by Dorothy Parker
Say my love is easy had,
  Say [...:]

from "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf"
by ntozake shange
one thing i dont need
is any more apologies
i got sorry greetin me at my front door
you can keep yrs
i dont know what to do wit em
they dont open doors
or bring the sun back
they dont make me happy
or get a mornin paper
didnt [...:]

Love Letter
by Sylvia Plath
Not easy to state the change you made.
If I'm alive now, then I was dead,
Though, like a stone, unbothered by it,
Staying put according to habit.
You didn't just toe me an inch, no–
Nor leave me to set my small bald eye
Skyward again, without hope, of course,
Of apprehending blueness, or stars.
That wasn't it. I [...:]

When You Are Old
by William Butler Yeats
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But [...:]