Some Great Poets Stopped By Today

Including some Neruda, Gluck, the complete Anne Sexton, Li-Young Lee, even some Lorca (so rarely seen and so quick to go!)

Before shelving these into our poetry section (which you should totally browse), I thought I'd post a poem I stumbled on as I was sifting through Gerald Stern's poetry collection, "American Sonnets."

Peaches

What was I think of when I threw one of my

peach stones over the fence at Metro North,

and didn't I dream as always it would take

root in spite of the gravel and the newspaper,

and wasn't I like that all my life, and who isn't?

I thought of oranges and, later, watermelon

and yellow mangoes hanging from sweetened strings,

but it was peaches, wasn't it, peaches most of

all I thought about and if the two trees that

bore such hard little fruit would only have lived

a few years more how I would have had a sister

and I would have watched her blossom, her brown curls

her blue eyes, though given her family she wouldhave

been wild and stubborn, harsh maybe, she would

be the angry one--how quiet I was--the Chinese

grew their peaches for immortality--the

Russians planted theirs so they could combine

beauty and productivity, that was

my aesthetic too, I boiled my grape leaves,

I ate my fallen applies, loving sister.

~Gerald Stern