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Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Searching... Author: DEFREES, MADELINE Matches Found: 115 Defrees, Madeline Poet's Biography Alternate Author Name(s): Mary Gilbert, Sister; De Frees, Madeline 115 poems available by this author A WOMAN POSSESSED Poem Text First Line: She remembered the charge Last Line: And the woman, old Subject(s): Women; Bulls ALADDIN LAMP Poem Text First Line: With luck and the slow hand of the lover Last Line: In the window blazes. Subject(s): Antiques; Fire; Lamps ALMANAC Poem Text First Line: Into my ravaged garden as into the tattered Last Line: I follow crossing over. Subject(s): Decay; Gardens & Gardening; Rot; Decadence AN ELEGY FOR DAN Poem Text Subject(s): Death; Dead, The ANDREW CARNEGIE COMPARED TO THE AIR WE BREATHE (1835-1919) First Line: Because his parents believed in pets, andrew kept Last Line: But give back with interest. This poem for instance, %dead or alive, it's own reward ANTIQUE CONVENT PARLOR Poem Text First Line: Flowers would only die in the fluted bowl, Last Line: Outwits the pilfering dust. Subject(s): Antiques; Convents ARTHUR STRANGEWAYS First Line: His name stands first on a chart of my father's Last Line: The marvellous dusk, as we savored our %strange arthurian supper, perfectly happy ATLAS OF OREGON First Line: After a day of horizontal rain Subject(s): Nuclear War BEETLE LIGHT; FOR DANIEL HILLEN Poem Text First Line: Hornets collect on the side of the sun Last Line: The exterminator. Very soon they will die. Subject(s): Extermination & Exterminators; Insects; Light; Poetry & Poets; Bugs BESIDE MILL RIVER Poem Text First Line: When my key sticks in the neighbor's Last Line: High-rise of sleep. Subject(s): Houses; Identity; Neighbors BISHOPS BRING TABLETS OF STONE First Line: Mother went to school in a cyclone cellar. She learned Last Line: The bishop who rode a mule called her %strawberry blond. By the time I came on the scene %it had tur BLUEPRINTS Poem Text First Line: From a long way off I can see the cross- Last Line: Be the planner's. This one touched my heart. Subject(s): Amish; Farm Life; Memory; Mennonites; Agriculture; Farmers BREACHING THE ROCK Poem Text First Line: Pacific, the true misnomer: around the columbia Last Line: Ready to settle for less. Subject(s): Labor & Laborers; Pacific Ocean; Storms; Work; Workers BROKEN SLEEP Poem Text First Line: Three times a night, I climb from my percocet Subject(s): Dreams; Nightmares BURNING QUESTIONS First Line: Three times a week mother set fire to the orphanage Last Line: On our floor her wishes were law. For a minute %I nearly forgot she was mother CENSUS OF ANIMAL BODIES: DRIVING HOME First Line: My headlights raise them up: a dash Last Line: Crude beside these warnings: you will %smell this death for miles. CLARE OF ASSISI Poem Text First Line: Far ahead, we could already make out the bishop Last Line: Hear those bells under water. Subject(s): Confirmation; Names; Nuns CLEMATIS MONTANA Poem Text First Line: Flocks of itinerant stars, flung from night's Last Line: Pool of the soul's wide summer. Subject(s): Butterflies; Insects; Stars; Summer; Bugs COUNTING THE WINTER DEAD Poem Text First Line: Off the oregon coast, thirty-three in storm and sudden Last Line: Voracious and benign, spare us o lord! Subject(s): Death; Fish & Fishing; Funerals - At Sea; Oregon; Dead, The; Anglers; Burials At Sea CROSSARMS Poem Text First Line: On a cold day, this six-foot stepladder's a hardship Last Line: Will sleep as one, our names written on water. Subject(s): Newspapers; Poetry & Poets; Journalism; Journalists DENBY ROMANY: 1 First Line: Footloose that year, I borrowed flatware Last Line: Character, each bowl a free original, %the eye its only mold DENBY ROMANY: 2 First Line: Deep freeze! The kids on the playground Last Line: The child who never was %when I was young DENBY ROMANY: 3 First Line: A continent from montant, far from the china Last Line: Break my fast at home, %approach the table of the lord DENBY ROMANY: 4 First Line: Late in her seventh decade, a gypsy in the blood Last Line: Five against the leash when darkness fell. No %wonder everything crashed around her DENBY ROMANY: 5 First Line: Heavy as lilac and honeysuckle at mullioned Last Line: I tend them. They tell me more than %desctruction inhabits the volatile air DENBY ROMANY: 6 First Line: Today you are in jerusalem, a good man Last Line: Weeping. Why do you seek out the holy if not %from some need for comfort? DENBY ROMANY: 7 First Line: And yet, and yet, always that gilt-edged missal Last Line: So easily said to another. %I give you my clay feet, my crooked lines DIALOGUE PARTLY PLATONIC Poem Text First Line: When we met by chance at the letter Last Line: In the upstairs dark. Subject(s): Memory; Strangers DOUBLE DUTCH Poem Text First Line: Dutch on both sides of his family tree-now I can Last Line: I'm dutch. Subject(s): Identity; Nations; Netherlands; Holland; Dutch People DRIVING HOME Poem Text First Line: The wheels keep pulling Last Line: It may not carry me much longer. Subject(s): Driving & Drivers; Night; Roads; Bedtime; Paths; Trails ELEGY FOR ARNOLD Poem Text First Line: Alone in my living room, I let waves of the music Last Line: Of a love come into its own. Subject(s): Death; Liberty Bell; Loss; Dead, The EMILY DICKINSON AND GERARD MANELY HOPKINS Poem Text First Line: My notebook shows they took a formal cruise, Last Line: Was warped for good. I am the living proof. Variant Title(s): Emily Dickinson And Gerard Manley Hopkins Subject(s): Ancestors & Ancestry; Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886); Hopkins, Gerard Manley (1844-1889); Heritage; Heredity EMINENT VICTORIANS First Line: Those years I hated them meant simply: I did not Last Line: I believed an ice box: father, watch your priestly %hand frostbite more dangerous than fire ERNST BARLACH First Line: Frost and hunger. Your stolen title, the one thing left Last Line: Not knowing themselves %numb on the great bronze clapper EXISTING LIGHT; FOR LEE NYE Poem Text First Line: A picture is worth a thousand words Last Line: Where I stood, half woman, half nun, exposed. Subject(s): Identity; Nuns; Secrets FIGURES FOR A CAROUSEL: 4. THE RIDE First Line: Imagination rode the terror on the terrace Last Line: Sleeping body, and oh! The terrible air! FIGURES FOR A CAROUSEL: 5. THE CHILD First Line: He would not stay confined in that maternal arch Last Line: One they'd given: child of the place of skulls FIRST-CLASS RELICS: LETTER TO DENNIS FINNELL First Line: I wanted to wear your name religiously for the rest %of my life Last Line: By the date book next to the calendar of martyrs Variant Title(s): Epitaph Of La Graunde Amour FROM THE CLERESTOREY First Line: The monk who fasted all morning dips his bread Last Line: Far off, he hears %the brotherly chant of those choiring voices FROM THE DARKROOM Poem Text First Line: The image comes up slowly where light fell, Last Line: Against the lesson all love spurns. Subject(s): Photography & Photographers GALILEO'S CASE REOPENED (1564-1642) Poem Text First Line: Lie still, son galileo, while we crack Last Line: Your brain flowers like a solar model. Subject(s): Galileo (1564-1642); Galileo Galilei GEOGRAPHY AS WARNING Poem Text First Line: The wildcat drilling started in 1919, the year Last Line: Wrecks containing treasure, the flowering skull. Subject(s): Seashore; Beach; Coast; Shore GEORGE ELIOT (MARY ANN EVANS CROSS) Poem Text First Line: Lost in her stories' complex flow, I drowned Last Line: Listening in. Subject(s): Eliot, George (1819-1880); Idols; Evans, Mary Ann GILBERT OF SEMPRINGHAM Poem Text First Line: Plain gilbert to me, who wore with a heavy veil Last Line: Not even my name new-borne? Subject(s): Catholic Church - Liturgy; Nuns GOLD RING TRIAD First Line: This ragged sunflower face glows from the brush Last Line: Forgiven, ring of abandoned lives %knit into my own GRANDMOTHER GRANT Poem Text First Line: Not the rejected lies of the new york foundling Last Line: Here is my claim. I need to come into my own. Subject(s): Identity; Mothers & Daughters; Nuns GRETA GARBO AND THE STAR MESSENGER Poem Text First Line: Her face the preface to water, stirred Last Line: Bends into the current and is gone. Subject(s): Garbo, Greta (1905-1990); Secrets HAGIOS PANAGHIOTES: THE CHURCH IN TOLON Poem Text First Line: Feeling nervous, out of place and halfway through Last Line: On the dead. Light the candle one more time. Subject(s): Public Worship; Church Attendance HANGING THE BLUE NUNS; FOR WARREN CARRIER Poem Text First Line: Like saints in cathedral windows, they look Last Line: Errors — over the shrine of the past. Subject(s): Nostalgia; Nuns HONESTY Poem Text First Line: Money doesn't grow on trees, my mother said Last Line: In water I waited for incoming tide. Subject(s): Grandparents; Honesty; Money; Mothers; Grandmothers; Grandfathers; Great Grandfathers; Great Grandmothers HONEY HUNTERS OF NEPAL First Line: These are big game bees. When I'm after something Last Line: Her milk recovered my life from the foxglove of %formula. Here is her snapshot in the family album HOPE DIAMONDS Poem Text First Line: One hundred fifty miles down, these uncut Last Line: Wage. The burning faces near as the constant desert. Subject(s): Diamonds; Mines & Miners HORATIO ALGER (1834-1899) First Line: Books were the air I breathed, curled in the morris Subject(s): Alger, Horatio (1832-1899); Clergy; Writing & Writers; Priests; Rabbis; Ministers; Bishops HORATIO ALGER (1834-1899) First Line: Books were the air I breathed, curled in the morris Last Line: Like author unknown, %like anonymous, I had arrived, %was secretly famous Subject(s): Alger, Horatio (1832-1899); Clergy; Writing And Writers IMAGINARY ANCESTORS: MARIANNE MOORE Recitation First Line: Marianne moore, did you wear the tricorne Subject(s): Moore, Marianne (1887-1972) IMAGINARY ANCESTORS: MARIANNE MOORE First Line: Marianne moore, did you wear the tricorne Last Line: Says, if only on the gallows Subject(s): Moore, Marianne (1887-1972) IMAGINARY ANCESTORS: THE GIRAFFE WOMAN OF BURMA Poem Text First Line: Their voices reach us as if from the shaft Last Line: Lies close to you as air. Help me to hold up my head. Variant Title(s): The Giraffe Women Of Burma Subject(s): Burma; Women - Abused; Wife Beating IN THE HELLGATE WIND Poem Text First Line: January ice drifts downriver Last Line: As the river I cross over. Subject(s): Change; West (u.s.); Winter; Women; Southwest; Pacific States IN THE LOCKER ROOM Poem Text First Line: I surprise the women Last Line: And bring on the body in person. Subject(s): Nudity; Privacy; Nakedness IN THE MIDDLE OF PRIEST LAKE Poem Text First Line: Sister margaret clare Last Line: Mother superior holds fast. Subject(s): Clothing & Dress; Nuns KEEPING UP WITH THE SIGNS Poem Text First Line: Meadowlarks nesting march to august yield Last Line: Three clear notes do not. Walk in open field. Variant Title(s): Keeping Up With Sings Subject(s): Birds; Larks; Signs & Signboards; Skylarks LECTURE UNDER THE MOOSE First Line: Ritual brought us together under that wide Last Line: Tranced eyes and reckless heads %lifted off to interstellar spaces MARIA CALLAS, THE WOMAN BEHIND THE LEGEND* Poem Text First Line: Her biographer gives us the woman, the artist Last Line: To the other side. Variant Title(s): Maria Calla, The Woman Behind The Legend Subject(s): Callas, Maria (1923-1977) NAMING THE CATARACTS Poem Text First Line: If my doctors had told me, you have stars in your eyes, Subject(s): Old Age; Sight NEST GATHERS OF TIGER CAVE, THAILAND First Line: Whatever the swiftlets fly, we follow. Two miles Last Line: Battery. Next week, in hong kong, some man from %another world will order bird's nest soup NEW ENGLAND INTERLUDE First Line: None of this seems real, seen from the east ON MY FATHER'S SIDE Poem Text First Line: Off the coast of council bluffs, great grandfather's Last Line: Through my father's impossible speech. Subject(s): Ancestors & Ancestry; Heritage; Heredity PAULA EXECUTES THE ANGELS First Line: By rights this should have been an easy piece Last Line: Each having worked out her uneasy peace PENDANT WATCH First Line: In missoula, montana, where the townsfolk water Last Line: And the captain knows. And I know. We have it timed to the second PORTOFINO Poem Text First Line: Why, on his wine - Last Line: Turned gold in the fall? Subject(s): Drinks & Drinking; Memory; Wine POWER FAILURE Poem Text First Line: Walking the shore, augustine hoped to comprehend Last Line: The mist will rise. Subject(s): Beachcombers; Seashore; Weather; Beach; Coast; Shore PSALM FOR A NEW NUN Poem Text First Line: My life was rescued like a bird from the fowler's snare. Last Line: Heaven and earth. Yes, earth. Subject(s): Nuns QUARREL First Line: Because you were small and loud and cruel Last Line: And the night you were leaving Subject(s): Grief; Quarrels SAHARAN NOMADS First Line: Like the bedouin cooking his dinner Last Line: In the wasteland. Something fatal %comes on I'm not certain what (past accident, plot) uncontrollabl SANDING THE CHAIRS Poem Text First Line: All the way down to clean wood where the grain Last Line: The curve of wood stays firm in the muscles. Subject(s): Furniture; Past; Repairing; Mending SCARECROW GARDENS Poem Text First Line: Late-summer squash put out to sea Last Line: In many forms: the best is art. Subject(s): Art & Artists; Gardens & Gardening; Gold SCENES OUT OF SEQUENCE: WHAT THE COASTWISE KNOW First Line: The old coast guardsman walks along the seaside Last Line: The swollen bulbs of kelp: shape of an amber %beet tossed up by the tide SCISSOR-TAILED SWALLOW First Line: Dives from the cliff %and the pale air is altered if only Last Line: Against the vault by the hand's trajectory %bold as a falcon SEVEN QUESTIONS FOR CATHERINE-AT-THE-WHEEL First Line: Who could refuse the saint who gave her name Last Line: The demon, whose black right hand I gripped %two decades past, driving my first chevrolet? SHACKLETON First Line: Two faces of the same coin: poet and explorer. This Last Line: Destined to go down, a bride of the sea. Subject(s): Explorers; Funerals - At Sea; Sea Voyages; Shackleton, Sir Ernest (1874-1922); Exploring; Discovery; Discoverers; Burials At Sea SISTER MARIA CELESTE, GALILEO'S DAUGHTER, WRITES TO FRIEND Poem Text First Line: Again I am at sea. If this be faith , it is not Last Line: The battered hulk to the ocean floor. Variant Title(s): Sister Maria Celeste, Galileo's Daughter, Writes To A Friend Subject(s): Discontent; Faith; Dissatisfaction; Belief; Creed SKID ROW Poem Text First Line: Out of the depths have I cried, o lord, Last Line: The bruised reed breaks and the sparrow falls. Subject(s): Grief; Solitude; Sorrow; Sadness; Loneliness SLEEPWALKER'S DIALOGUE* First Line: Stage manager: out of the shadows, over the years, the miles, Last Line: Grant: this war of quotation grows tiresome . Let us have %peace. -presidential candidate ulysses si SMOKEHOUSE BLUES Poem Text First Line: The bluebird of happiness, once in a blue moon Subject(s): Blue (color) SPIRITUAL EXERCISES Poem Text First Line: Knees up! Sophie shouts. We're jogging in place Last Line: Beach towel, heavenly clothes. Subject(s): Activity; Exercise STANDING BY ON THE THIRD DAY First Line: Coming late to your bed in sleet-ridden Last Line: We have only %this night and the one behind it STILL LIFE Poem Text First Line: After your letter arrived I left the oven on Last Line: All in shadow that I must bathe and dress. Subject(s): Absence; Letters; Love - Loss Of; Separation; Isolation SWIMMING IN CATEGORIES First Line: The trust these women float past in could break TERESA OF AVILA First Line: Part of her soul ran deeper than still waters Last Line: First moments after we dive to the bottom %discover the rapture of the deep THE BOOK OF SEDIMENTS Poem Text First Line: Eye is an ocean bounded on every side by desert, Last Line: Through undreamed light and water. Subject(s): Sea; Ocean THE CHOW, A DOG OF ANCIENT ORIGIN, HAS A BLUE-BLACK TONGUE Poem Text First Line: Yet we accept her kisses, affectionate as air Last Line: Glances off the black- / lined mouth, the dogtooth violet Subject(s): Dogs; Tongues THE DAY YOU WERE LEAVING Poem Text First Line: The lock stuck on the attic door Last Line: And the night you were leaving. Subject(s): Grief; Sorrow; Sadness THE EYE Poem Text First Line: Lodged in a bony orbit in the skull, the eye Subject(s): Eyes THE FAMILY GROUP Poem Text First Line: That sunday at the zoo I understood the child Last Line: The strange uncertain rumor of the sea. Subject(s): Childlessness; Children; Parents; Childhood; Parenthood THE ODD WOMAN Poem Text First Line: At parties I want to get even, Last Line: And leave for the long river drive to town. Subject(s): Parties; Single People; Women - Middle Aged; Bachelors; Unmarried People THE OUTSIDER Poem Text First Line: Diagonals of mindless snow Last Line: Ripples of light and waves of song. THE POETRY OF EYES Poem Text First Line: In a dark time, roethke writes Subject(s): Eyes THE VISIONARY UNDER THE KNIFE Poem Text Subject(s): Surgery THE WOMEN WITH FABLED HAIR Poem Text First Line: In the life to come I unravel and let down Last Line: Dense longing. Variant Title(s): The Woman With Fabled Hair Subject(s): Hair; Longing TO MARILYN MONROE WHOSE FAVORITE COLOR WAS WHITE Poem Text First Line: When you wriggled onto the silver screen, marilyn- Last Line: White sleep history promised. Subject(s): Chastity; Monroe, Marilyn (1926-1962); White (color) TUAREG SMITH First Line: Working a silver padlock the size of a Last Line: That is called beautiful, where such as %they have they give TUMBLEWEED First Line: Detachable. The mobile american par excellence Last Line: To dignify becoming sprung from dust Subject(s): Weeds ULYSSES S. GRANT (1822-1885) First Line: The treasury voted nine to one against your ordinary Last Line: As she lies without a coat of arms. Subject(s): Ancestors & Ancestry; Death; Grant, Ulysses Simpson (1822-1885); Heritage; Heredity; Dead, The UNCLE MATT'S FARM IN CHERRY GROVE First Line: The uncle not really an uncle, mother's second- Last Line: Coat, red were the frayed %light fell and the natural musk VARIATIONS ON THE EDIBLE TUBER First Line: The thing I hate most is eating potatoes Last Line: Condition however extreme %this new feeling Subject(s): Food Habits; Potatoes VERMEER'S A WOMAN HOLDING A BALANCE Poem Text First Line: Picture-within-a-picture closed on themselves: a Last Line: Try to cross it. The painting means: itself. Subject(s): Paintings & Painters; Vermeer, Jan (1632-1675) VISITING SUNDAY: CONVENT NOVITIATE Poem Text First Line: The parlor doors shall be glazed, the custom book Last Line: To write the lyric. Subject(s): Convents; Cousins; Musical Instruments; Pianos VOICES First Line: Socrates, you heard them too, these voices Last Line: Of earth splitting under us: thunder and chaos %in brainpans of sky WHAT I MISTOOK FOR HEATHER Poem Text First Line: Was creeping thyme the gardener said, Last Line: Far step across the moon. Subject(s): Gardens & Gardening WHAT MAKES OR BREAKS THEM First Line: Greatness was something in the bones: it meant Last Line: The late affair with the scripture wouldn't wash %the woman couldn't write or read WIDOW First Line: There was a self-made widow far back in the trees Last Line: She falls at my feet breaking the cold surface, %ash floating on air the dusr settles WINDOWS RIDING AMTRAK; FOR ABE OPINCAR First Line: Hurtle through night tunnels Last Line: The last remaining link. Subject(s): Railroads; Solitude; Widows & Widowers; Railways; Trains; Loneliness WITH A BOTTLE OF BLUE NUN TO ALL MY FRIENDS First Line: Sisters, / the blue nun has eloped with one Last Line: It's that simple. Subject(s): Change; Drugs & Drug Abuse; Nuns; Narcotics; Opium; Cocaine; Crack; Heroin WOMAN LOCKED IN A MEMORIAL MUSEUM Poem Text First Line: Her lips remain sealed as the walled south face Last Line: Comes finally to rest. Subject(s): Women - Captives WOMAN OF THE VEIL First Line: The veils that hide us are everywhere Last Line: Too strict attention stones a woman's gift. %the mist looked through we know as a metephor |
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