And that my soul embraces you this hour, and we affect each other without ever seeing each other, and never perhaps to see each other, is every bit as wonderful. — Walt Whitman, from “Song of Myself,” Leaves of Grass (Simon Schuster, August 1st 2006) Originally published July 4th 1855.
And in the predawn when we had slept for centuries in a drenching sweet rain you touched me and the springs of clear water beneath my skin were new knowledge. And I loved you in this city of death. — Joy Harjo, from “The Myth of Blackbirds,” The Woman Who Fell from the Sky: Poems… Continue reading Joy Harj
Not knowing when the Dawn will come,I open every Door,Or has it Feathers, like a Bird,Or Billows, like a Shore— ― Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (Little, Brown and Company January 30, 1976) First published January 1, 1890)
Is this love, now that the first love has finally died, where there were no impossibilities? ―Frank O’Hara, from “Poem,” Lunch Poems (City Lights Publishers; 1st edition, January 1, 2001) Originally published 1964.
WHOEVER you are, I fear you are walking the walks of dreams,I fear those realities are to melt from under your feet and hands;Even now, your features, joys, speech, house, trade, manners, troubles, follies, costume, crimes, dissipate away from you,Your true soul and body appear before me,They stand forth out of affairs—out of commerce, shops, law, science, work, farms, clothes,… Continue reading Walt Whitman,
Only the poem weeps. — Hayden Carruth, “The Sleeping Beauty,” Collected Longer Poems (Copper Canyon Press November 1, 1993)
The Vale of Soul-Making 