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the stars began to burnthrough the sheets of clouds,and there was a new voicewhich you slowlyrecognized as your own

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Athletes take care of their bodies. Writers must similarly take care of the sensibility that houses the possibility of poems. There is nourishment in ...more

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Still, what I want in my lifeis to be willingto be dazzled—to cast aside the weight of factsand maybe evento float a littleabove this difficult world.

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Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

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Language is rich, and malleable. It is a living, vibrant material, and every part of a poem works in conjunction with every other part - the content, ...more

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You do not have to be good.You do not have to walk on your kneesfor a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.You only have to let the soft animal...more

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I know many lives worth living.

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To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.

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Sometimes I dreamthat everything in the world is here, in my room, in a great closet, named and orderly,and I am here too, in front of it, hardly able...more

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The Fourth Sign of The Zodiac (Part 3) by Mary OliverI know, you never intended to be in this world.But you’re in it all the same.So why not get start...more

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I went down not long agoto the Mad River, under the willowsI knelt and drank from that crumpled flow, call itwhat madness you will, there's a sickness...more

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Poetry is a life-cherishing force.

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DogfishI wantedThe past to go away, I wantedTo leave it, like another country; I wantedMy life to close, and openLike a hinge, like a wing, like the p...more

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Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as b...more

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The sea can do craziness, it can do smooth, it can lie down like silk breathing or toss havoc shoreward; it can give gifts or withhold all; it can ris...more