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Eyes

Our light is never spent.
Is spent.

Thus have we scooped out
maceration reservoirs.

We will blaze forth
what remains
as pixels.

Great angels
fly at our behest
between towers,

along axons and dendrites,

so that things stand
as they stand

in the recruited present.

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Selected

Poems worth returning to

In their trapeze act they can connect …

Florence Grossman

Cornel West makes the point that hope is different from American optimism. After the initial presidential election results come in, I stop watching the news. I want to continue watching, charting, and discussing the counts, the recounts, the hand counts, but I can­not. I lose hope. However Bush came to have won, he would still be winning ten days later and we would still be in the throes of our American optimism. All the non-reporting is a distraction from Bush himself, the same Bush who can't remember if two or three people were convicted for dragging a black man to his death in his home state of Texas. …

Claudia Rankine

These roads will take you into your own country. …

Muriel Rukeyser

Up — or out? — here: …

Jameson Fitzpatrick

I called and her eyes lit with recognition, …

Paul Goodman

(as on TV) …

Rodrigo Toscano

Even the wind wants …

Adonis

The wave of that year …

Bei Dao

The glossary

The language about poetry

From aubade to zuihitsu, 207 definitions of the forms, figures, and schools that shape the line.

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Accentual verseAccentual-syllabic verseAcmeismAlcaicAlexandrineAmbiguity