Poem of the Week: “Song of the Witches: ‘Double, double toil and trouble’ by William Shakespeare

Center for Poetry intern Charlotte Krause chose this week’s poem. Here’s what she had to say: “I chose this poem because I think it is a super fun and iconic poem for fall and especially Halloween. Shakespeare plays a huge part in how we think about witches today, and I think that this specific poem

Poem of the Week: “Like Vine Maple Red in the Fir,” by Alice Derry

Join us Wednesday, Oct. 16 as Alice Derry and Tess Gallagher open our Fall Writing Series. Like Vine Maple Red in the Fir The season turns. The trees wound the streets. We too want to be touched. We press a scab to feel the pain. Or tongue that place in the mind which yields a

Poem of the Week: Hoar-Frost, by Amy Lowell

  In the cloud-grey mornings I heard the herons flying; And when I came into my garden, My silken outer-garment Trailed over withered leaves. A dried leaf crumbles at a touch, But I have seen many Autumns With herons blowing like smoke Across the sky.  

Poem of the Week: “Home,” by Bruce Weigl

Home   I didn’t know I was grateful          for such late-autumn                   bent-up cornfields   yellow in the after-harvest          sun before the                   cold plow turns it all over   into never.          I didn’t know                   I would enter this music   that translates the world          back into

Poem of the Week: “The Season of Phantasmal Peace,” by Derek Walcott

The Season of Phantasmal Peace by Derek Walcott   Then all the nations of birds lifted together the huge net of the shadows of this earth in multitudinous dialects, twittering tongues, stitching and crossing it. They lifted up the shadows of long pines down trackless slopes, the shadows of glass-faced towers down evening streets, the

Poem of the Week: “Slowly,” by Denise Levertov

Slowly ~Denise Levertov   Spirit has been alone of late. Built a house of fallen leaves among exposed tree-roots. Plans dreamily to fetch water   from a stone well. Sleeps hungrily. Waking, is mute, listening. Spirit doesn’t know what the sound will be, song or cry. Perhaps   one word. Holds at heart a red

Poem of the Week: Last Hill in a Vista

Last Hill in a Vista by Louise Bogan Come, let us tell the weeds in ditches How we are poor, who once had riches, And lie out in the sparse and sodden Pastures that the cows have trodden, The while an autumn night seals down The comforts of the wooden town. Come, let us counsel

Poem of the Week: “After Apple Picking” by Robert Frost

My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a treeToward heaven still,And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fillBeside it, and there may be two or threeApples I didn’t pick upon some bough.But I am done with apple-picking now.Essence of winter sleep is on the night,The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.I cannot rub the strangeness

Poem of the Week: “Now it is fall” by Edith Södergran

Poem of the Week: “Now it is fall,” by Edith Södergran Now it is fall by Edith Södergran Translated from the Swedish by Averill Curdy when all the golden birds fly home across the blue deep water; On shore I sit rapt in its scattering glitter; departure rustles through the trees. This farewell is vast