HOW TO BE A POET by WENDELL BERRY Make a place to sit down. Sit down. Be quiet. You must depend upon affection, reading, knowledge, skill—more of each than you have—inspiration, work, growing… @Berry_Center @CounterpointLLC @PoetryFound bit.ly/WendellBerry-H…

AFTER IRAQ SWEIDAN by HALA ALYAN I’m not sure you’d want what I’ve stolen. I’m not sure I say your name right. I forgot about you with my mouthful of cake. My scales. My husband. My fingertips smelling of weed. I know you’re in… @eccobooks @PoetryFound bit.ly/Alyan-AfterIra…

AFTER THE FIRE by ADA LIMÓN You ever think you could cry so hard that there’d be nothing left in you, like how the wind shakes a tree in a storm until every part of it is run through with wind? I live in the low parts… @adalimon @Milkweed_Books @onbeing bit.ly/Limón-AfterThe…

CURL by DIANE SEUSS No longer at home in the world and I imagine never again at home in the world. Not in cemeteries or bogs churning with bullfrogs. Or outside the old pickle shop. I once made myself at home on that… @dlseuss @GraywolfPress @nybooks bit.ly/Seuss-Curl

LOVE'S UNSWERVING GAZE by LI-YOUNG LEE What was told to me in a whisper I must now repeat under my breath: The true lover lives only to love the beloved. What was said to me so softly I had to lean my ear closer to her mouth to hear, I must now lean… @wwnorton @yalereview

SUMMER, 1964 by VICTORIA CHANG There are 1645 boxes. Inside each box is a small white dot. On some days, the dot looks like a dot. On other days, each dot is one of my tears. 1645 tears in the last week. Mary Ruefle… @VChangPoet @yalereview @fsgbooks bit.ly/Chang-Summer19…

GRIEF IS A SUDDEN ROOM bu MARGARET RAY Grief is a sudden room. After flailing around, breaking all the furniture inside it for years, you can think you’ve shut the ancient door behind you, but the latch hasn’t worked… @mbrrray @boaeditions @TheFLReview bit.ly/Ray-GriefIsASu…

THE BLIND LEADING THE BLIND by LISEL MUELLER Take my hand. There are two of us in this cave. The sound you hear is water; you will hear it forever. The ground you walk on is rock. I have been here before. People come here to… @poetryfoundation @lsupress bit.ly/Mueller-TheBli…

LIGHT HOME by KWAME DAWES Build me a house of light, stretches of emptiness glaring into an open sky calling the colors in; but mostly the white light that consumes shadows, that turns this body of riverbed brown… @kwamedawes @SoInReview @Poetry_Daily bit.ly/Dawes-LightHome

BLACK LOVE by EVIE SHOCKLEY my love is black though my love is not black :: think the darkness cradling the milky way :: imagine quick light flowing down the back of my throat, glowing—i swallow the day :: my love is black… @seminewblack @POETSorg bit.ly/Shockley-black…

A LITANY FOR SURVIVAL by AUDRE LORDE For those of us who live at the shoreline standing upon the constant edges of decision crucial and alone for those of us who cannot indulge the passing dreams of choice who love in doorways… @wwnorton @PoetryFound bit.ly/Lorde-ALitanyF…

MYTH by NATASHA TRETHEWEY I was asleep while you were dying. It’s as if you slipped through some rift, a hollow I make between my slumber and my waking, the Erebus I keep you in, still trying not to let go. You’ll be… @NTrethewey @NewsHour @eccobooks to.pbs.org/3T1xP4v

EYES ONLY by LINDA PASTAN Dear lost sharer of silences, I would send a letter the way the tree sends messages in leaves, or the sky in exclamations of pure cloud. Therefore I write in this blue ink, color of secret veins and… @wwnorton @PoetryFound bit.ly/Pastan-EyesOnly

A POSTCARD FROM GREECE by A. E. STALLINGS Hatched from sleep, as we slipped out of orbit Round a clothespin curve new-watered with the rain, I saw the sea, the sky, as bright as pain, That outer space through which… @ae_stallings @fsgbooks @PoetryFound bit.ly/Stallings-APos…

VOICEOVER by RITA DOVE Impossible to keep a landscape in your head. Try it: All you'll get is pieces—the sun emerging from behind the mountain ridge, smoke coming off the ice on a thawing lake. It's as if our heads can't contain… @wwnorton @Poetry_Daily bit.ly/Dove-Voiceover

ON HIS BLINDNESS by JORGE LUIS BORGES In the fullness of the years, like it or not, a luminous mist surrounds me, unvarying, that breaks things down into a single thing, colorless, formless. Almost into a thought. The elemental, vast night… @PoetryFound bit.ly/Borges-OnHisBl…

I'VE BEEN THINKING ABOUT LOVE AGAIN by VIEVEE FRANCIS Those who live to have it and those who live to give it. Of course there are those for whom both are true, but never in the same measure. Those who have it to give are… @sewaneereview @Poetry_Daily bit.ly/Francis-IveBee…

IT IS THE TIME OF RAIN AND SNOW by IZUMI SHIKIBU It is the time of rain and snow I spend sleepless nights And watch the frost Frail as your love Gathers in the dawn. @NewDirections @POETSorg bit.ly/Shikibu-ItIsTh…

LINES FOR WINTER by MARK STRAND Tell yourself as it gets cold and gray falls from the air that you will go on walking, hearing the same tune no matter where you find yourself— inside the dome of dark or under the cracking… @penguinrandom @PoetryFound bit.ly/Stand-LinesFor…

BLIZZARD by WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS Snow: years of anger following hours that float idly down — the blizzard drifts its weight deeper and deeper for three days or sixty years, eh? Then the sun! a clutter of yellow and blue… @PoetryFound @newdirections bit.ly/Williams-Blizz…

AFTER THE BEGINNING, BEFORE THE END by DEBORAH BROWN My life is in this story of love that leaves me between this and that. How can I know what is on the other side of this story until I walk toward the edge? A preposition… @boaeditions @PoetryFound bit.ly/Brown-AfterThe…