Shout out to all my fellow late bloomers.

Originally published in 1895 in the Lark magazine.

Citation here from the library steps & picture from original format

1895 pic & bio from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_Cow
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gelett_Burgess

This poem haunts me and I’m grateful for it.

“Tell him / that it is we who are important” rings in my mind all the time

Rochester’s wit is brilliant, but his life was brutal — loved his wife, had countless affairs, died of syphilis at 33. His poems feel like self-aware confessions of emptiness beneath the libertine bravado. Anyone read his biography? Does his life change how you read his work?

(see comment for a short explanation!)

Published in Seneca Review (https://senecareview.hws.edu)

I am looking for poems I can put on a place card for each guest at my wedding. So things that aren’t super long in length, they’d fit in a 9x4 inch card. The theme is friendship and connection, not really romantic love. The poems are for the guests.

I have picked out these ones so far

The orange wendy cope
Late fragment Raymond carver
For Monty Jean valentine
The present WS Merwin
Untitled one by Gregory Orr from the book of the beloved

I’d love other ideas!

While I wrought out these fitful Danaan rhymes,
My heart would brim with dreams about the times
When we bent down above the fading coals
And talked of the dark folk who live in souls
Of passionate men, like bats in the dead trees;
And of the wayward twilight companies
Who sigh with mingled sorrow and content,
Because their blossoming dreams have never bent
Under the fruit of evil and of good:
And of the embattled flaming multitude
Who rise, wing above wing, flame above flame,
And, like a storm, cry the Ineffable Name,
And with the clashing of their sword-blades make
A rapturous music, till the morning break
And the white hush end all but the loud beat
Of their long wings, the flash of their white feet.

After the teacher asked if anyone had
a sacred place
and the students fidgeted and shrunk
in their chairs, the most serious of them all
said it was his car,
being in it alone, his tape deck playing
things he'd chosen, and others knew the truth
had been spoken
and began speaking about their rooms,
their hiding places, but the car kept coming
up, the car in motion,
music filling it, and sometimes one other person
who understood the bright altar of the dashboard
and how far away
a car could take him from the need
to speak, or to answer, the key
in having a key
and putting it in, and going.

Reprinted from Between Angels: Poems by Stephen Dunn. Copyright 1989, W.W. Norton & Co. Inc.

Hello everybody, there was a haiku i read in my childhood that always stuck with me. I was able to recall it for years at will but now I realize i cant seem to recall the words anymore.

I couldn't find it on Google when I was searching. I was so young I never thought to remember the author, but it was a really beautiful collection of words.

It was something along the lines of:

You ask me to dance

Though I dont know how to dance

But for you ill try

Would anyone know something close to this haiku?

I’m writing a sonnet for my bf. I’m struggling to find things that rhyme with the word “cherub”. For reference, I have a south English accent.