First, her tippet made of tulle,
easily lifted off her shoulders and laid
on the back of a wooden chair.

And her bonnet,
the bow undone with a light forward pull.

Then the long white dress, a more
complicated matter with mother-of-pearl
buttons down the back,
so tiny and numerous that it takes forever
before my hands can part the fabric,
like a swimmer’s dividing water,
and slip inside.

You will want to know
that she was standing
by an open window in an upstairs bedroom,
motionless, a little wide-eyed,
looking out at the orchard below,
the white dress puddled at her feet
on the wide-board, hardwood floor.

The complexity of women’s undergarments
in nineteenth-century America
is not to be waved off,
and I proceeded like a polar explorer
through clips, clasps, and moorings,
catches, straps, and whalebone stays,
sailing toward the iceberg of her nakedness.

Later, I wrote in a notebook
it was like riding a swan into the night,
but, of course, I cannot tell you everything -
the way she closed her eyes to the orchard,
how her hair tumbled free of its pins,
how there were sudden dashes
whenever we spoke.

What I can tell you is
it was terribly quiet in Amherst
that Sabbath afternoon,
nothing but a carriage passing the house,
a fly buzzing in a windowpane.

So I could plainly hear her inhale
when I undid the very top
hook-and-eye fastener of her corset

and I could hear her sigh when finally it was unloosed,
the way some readers sigh when they realize
that Hope has feathers,
that reason is a plank,
that life is a loaded gun
that looks right at you with a yellow eye.

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole.
I thank whatever Gods may be
for my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance,
My head is bloody but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade.
And yet the terror of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
how charged with punishments the scroll;
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.

I do not grudge them: Lord, I do not grudge
My two strong songs that I have seen go out
To break their strength and die, they and a few,
In bloody protest for a glorious thing,
They shall be spoken of among their people,
The generations shall remember them,
And call them blessed;
But I will speak their names to my own heart
In the long nights;
The little names that were familiar once
Round my dead hearth.
Lord, thou art hard on mothers:
We suffer in their coming and their going;
And tho’ I grudge them not, I weary, weary
Of the long sorrow- And yet I have my joy;
My sons were faithful, and they fought.

Yeah. Invoking both a mother’s grief and a fierce struggle for independence all in one poem. I feel more manly just thinking about Pearse some days.

I don’t necessarily admire the man that Edward Estlin Cummings was, but I love his poetry.

John Ciardi, William Carlos Williams, Mary Oliver, Denise Levertov, Alan Dugan, Pablo Neruda, Federico Garcia Lorca, Adam Zagajewski, Miller Williams, Billy Collins, Charles Simic, James Tate, Brian Patten are all favorites of mine.

I’ll echo many of the poets that have already been suggested:

Blake
“Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none go to buy”

Wordsworth
The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

Eliot
The river’s tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf
Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind
Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.

Donne
Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th’ other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.

Thoreau
Hardy
So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.

I have also recently become a fan of several of the UK-based “dub-poets.”

Linton Kwesi Johnson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zq9OpJYck7Y

Benjamin Zephaniah
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3HjMcY50Kc&feature=related