#5pirt

1. Wild Geese by Mary Oliver http://5thin.gs/KuFHDs

1. The City Limits by A.R. Ammons http://5thin.gs/dOHIlb

Tracy K. Smith (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracy_K._Smith) wins 2012 Pulitzer for her book Life on Mars (http://5thin.gs/HNQhoA). Full details here: http://5thin.gs/HNPYKv

5 poems from the winner:

1. My God, It's Full of Stars http://5thin.gs/JrI7hS

2. Sci-Fi http://5thin.gs/JrJmxw

3. Duende [audio of poet] http://5thin.gs/jVbB8F

4. A Hunger So Honed http://5thin.gs/JrKcdu

5. New Road Station [audio of poet] http://5thin.gs/HNPzry

1. praise song by Lucille Clifton http://5thin.gs/HQRmh0

PraiseSong_ByLucilleClifton.mp3 Listen on Posterous

to my aunt blanche 

who rolled from grass to driveway 

into the street one sunday morning. 

i was ten.      i had never seen 

a human woman hurl her basketball 

of a body into the traffic of the world. 

Praise to the drivers who stopped in time. 

Praise to the faith with which she rose 

after some moments then slowly walked 

sighing back to her family. 

Praise to the arms which understood 

little or nothing of what it meant 

but welcomed her in without judgment, 

accepting it all like children might, 

like God. 

  2. Patience by Kay Ryan http://5thin.gs/HxJ5aZ

  3. The Journey by Mary Oliver http://5thin.gs/HQQby0

  4. Sediments of Santa Monica by Brenda Hillman http://5thin.gs/HQQEAe

  5. The Glass Essay by Anne Carson http://5thin.gs/eyY8C3

1. The Rain by Robert Creeley http://5thin.gs/HKBEk4

The-Rain-by-Robert-Creeley.mp3 Listen on Posterous

All night the sound had

come back again,

and again falls

this quiet, persistent rain.

  What am I to myself

that must be remembered,

insisted upon

so often? Is it

  that never the ease,

even the hardness,

of rain falling

will have for me

  something other than this,

something not so insistent—

am I to be locked in this

final uneasiness.

  Love, if you love me,

lie next to me.

Be for me, like rain,

the getting out

  of the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi-

lust of intentional indifference.

Be wet

with a decent happiness.

  Robert Creeley, “The Rain” from Selected Poems of Robert Creeley. Copyright © 1991 by the Regents of the University of California. Reprinted with the permission of the University of California Press.

Source: Selected Poems of Robert Creeley (University of California Press, 1991)

2. The Clasp by Sharon Olds http://5thin.gs/HmSQsD

  3. The Gift by Li-young Lee http://5thin.gs/HmSt13

  4. What the Bones Know by Carolyn Kizer http://5thin.gs/HdGnNK

  5. Duende by Tracey K. Smith http://5thin.gs/jVbB8F

  Odysseus-Hears-of-the-Death-of-Kalypso-by-Donald-Revell.mp3 Listen on Posterous

1. Odysseus Hears of the Death of Kalypso by Donald 

Revell http://5thin.gs/HbKPYL

All their songs are of one hour

Before dawn, when the birds begin.

I sing another.

In helpless midday, at the hour

Even sparrows have no heart to shrill

Comes news

 . . . Suddenly, the unimaginable

Needs imagination and finds none.

Violet ocean only nothing.

Smoke of thyme and of cedar,

Ornate birds, nothing.

Even a god who came here,

Hearing a sweet voice,   

Would find only old fires now,

Brittle in the blackened trees.   

She was mast and sail. She was

A stillness pregnant with motion,

Adorable to me as, all my life,

I have hidden a cruel, secret ocean

In sinews and in sleep and cowardice.

She forgave me. Once, she wept for me.

Our child died then, and she is with him.

Source: Poetry (June 2008).

2. I Do Not by Michael Palmer http://5thin.gs/HbNZf5

3. Fiction by Rae Armantrout http://5thin.gs/Hc63uo

4. I'm Over the Moon by Brenda Shaughnessy http://5thin.gs/Hc6rsT

5. Blue Statuary by Priscilla Becker http://5thin.gs/Hc821G

Adrienne-Rich-Essential-American-Poets.mp3 Listen on Posterous

1. What Kind of Times Are These http://5thin.gs/H90awN

BY ADRIENNE RICH 1929–2012

There's a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill

and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows

near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted

who disappeared into those shadows.

  I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don't be fooled

this isn't a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,

our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,

its own ways of making people disappear.

  I won't tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods

meeting the unmarked strip of light—

ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:

I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.

  And I won't tell you where it is, so why do I tell you

anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these

to have you listen at all, it's necessary

to talk about trees.

  “What Kind of Times Are These”. © 2002, 1995 by Adrienne Rich, from The Fact of a Doorframe: Selected Poems 1950-2001 by Adrienne Rich. Used by permission of the author and W.W. Norton, Inc.

Source: Dark Fields of the Republic: Poems 1991-1995 (W. W. Norton and Company Inc., 1995)

  2. The Answer by Robert Creeley http://5thin.gs/H8Zurj

  3. [by any measure] by Ben Lerner http://5thin.gs/H90pYI

  4. Broadway by Mark Doty http://5thin.gs/H90DPF

1. In Defense of Our Overgrown Garden by Matthea Harvey http://5thin.gs/imm1du

  2. Revelator by Ron Silliman http://5thin.gs/jRz2gf

  3. The Embrace by Mark Doty

  4. [jumpsuits] by Ben Lerner http://5thin.gs/kT9WHs

  5. Coyote, with Mange by Mark Wunderlich http://5thin.gs/jKbwIx