A Fixed Idea

What torture lurks within a single thought
When grown too constant; and however kind,
However welcome still, the weary mind
Aches with its presence. Dull remembrance taught
Remembers on unceasingly; unsought
The old delight is with us but to find
That all recurring joy is pain refined,
Become a habit, and we struggle, caught.
You lie upon my heart as on a nest,
Folded in peace, for you can never know
How crushed I am with having you at rest
Heavy upon my life. I love you so
You bind my freedom from its rightful quest.
In mercy lift your drooping wings and go.

--Amy Lowell

Father's Song

Yesterday, against admonishment,
my daughter balanced on the couch back,
fell and cut her mouth.

Because I saw it happen I knew
she was not hurt, and yet
a child’s blood so red
it stops a father’s heart.

My daughter cried her tears;
I held some ice
against her lip.
That was the end of it.

Round and round: bow and kiss.
I try to teach her caution;
she tries to teach me risk. 

--Gregory Orr

Playhouse

Under a collapse of honeysuckle
and its fury of bees, under a mulberry

canopy, its wavering thatch of green—
that’s where you’d find us when the voices rose,

playing out civility: leaf-napkins, twig-utensils,
acorn-goblets, tea of wild scallion

and mud. Beside the garden’s tangled
wire. Thimbleberry, chokecherry. Lulled

by the overripe reek of mulch, our own
quiet in failing light. All summerlong

we colluded on a patchwork of dried leaves
stitched together by stems—crimson, bruise,

amber, brick, cinnamon—to blanket us
when those voices called us home.

--Melissa Stein

Having to explain what's going on

"When you're busy with horses, people can see that you are busy, but when you're busy making a poem, you look as if you're in a state of idleness and you feel a little strange or embarrassed having to explain what's going on." --Alice Munro

Pure, easy, delectable sorrow

"I like being sad, which mystified her; I like it until I reach the nadir where sadness changes, as if chemically, to repulsion and self-loathing, making me wish that I was 'capable' of 'handling' things instead of turning away from them in disgust until my disgust disgusts me, and my anger at my inadequacy as a human being angers me, and all of that pure, easy, delectable sorrow gets squandered." --Kristen Iskandrian

Then I am listening

"I can go months without writing; I am often waiting to feel angry, or for any emotional event, or just a deadline to push me. But accepting the stretches of not writing is okay, too. I mean: If I feel alert and awake and thoughtful and without remorse, then I am listening, which for me is also writing." --Corina Copp

It is I who feel profoundly fucked up

"When I was at Harvard, Jamaica Kincaid once said in our workshop, 'Write about that which most embarrasses you.' I think that's profoundly good advice. It's so easy, isn't it, to climb atop a soapbox and recite a poem about the ways in which we believe the world is fucked up? Who, for example, doesn't know the whole world is in cinders. And so I believe my work can be more effective, can reach deeper inside the reader if I say, 'It is I who feel profoundly fucked up,' and then explore why, meticulously." --Robin Coste Lewis