When I was a young girl salmon fishing with my father in the Straits of Juan de Fuca in Washington State I used to lean out over t...he water and try to look past my own face, past the reflection of the boat, past the sun and darkness, down to where the fish were surely swimming. I made up charm songs and word-hopes to tempt the fish, to cause them to mean biting my hook. I believed they would do it if I asked them well and patiently and with the right hope. I am writing my poems like this. I have used the fabric and the people of my life as the bait.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
You all talk like somebody else made these laws and Pharaoh don't know nothing about 'em. He makes 'em his own self and he's glad ...when we come tell him they hurt. why, that's a whole lot of pleasure to him, to be making up laws all the time and to have a crowd like us around handy to pass all his mean ones on. Why, that's a whole everything under the sun! Next thing you know he'll be saying cats can't have kittens.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The confidence and security of a people can be measured by their attitude toward laxatives. At the high noon of the British sun, s...oldiers in far-flung outposts of the Empire doctored themselves with "a spoonful o' gunpowder in a cuppa 'ot tea." Purveyors and users of harsh laxatives were not afraid of being thought mean and unfriendly just because their laxatives were. But in America, the need to be nice is so consuming that nobody would dare take a laxative that makes you run up the stairs two at a time, pushing others aside and yelling, "Get out of the way!"LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Thou art a beaten dog beneath the hail, A swollen magpie in a fitful sun,... Half black half white Nor knowst'ou wing from tail Pull down thy vanity How mean thy hatesLESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Thank you and Mrs. Emerson for your long kindness to me.... I have been your pensioner for nearly two years, and still left free a...s under the sky. It has been as free a gift as the sun or the summer, though I have sometimes molested you with my mean acceptance of it,--I who have failed to render even those slight services of the hand which would have been for a sign at least; and, by the fault of my nature, have failed of many better and higher services. But I will not trouble you with this, but for once thank you as well as Heaven.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a rever...y, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sang around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some traveller's wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance. I realized what the Orientals mean by contemplation and the forsaking of works.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goet...h down, and hasteth to the place where he arose.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Where the Youth pined away with desire, And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow,... Arise from their graves and aspire, Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Ah, Sun-flower, weary of time, Who countest the steps of the Sun,... Seeking after that sweet golden clime Where the traveller's journey is done: Where the Youth pined away with desire, And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow Arise from their graves, and aspire Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »