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Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Searching... Author: FORCHE, CAROLYN Matches Found: 102 Forche, Carolyn Poet's Biography Alternate Author Name(s): Sidlosky, Carolyn 102 poems available by this author ANCAPAGARI Poem Text First Line: In the morning of the tribe this name ancapagari was given to these Last Line: Tongue. It is the name of the god who has come from among us Subject(s): Mountains; Hills; Downs (great Britain) ANCAPAGARI First Line: In the morning of the tribe this name ancapagari was given to these Last Line: Who has come from among us Subject(s): Mountains ANGEL OF HISTORY First Line: There are times when the child seems delicate Last Line: I told her everything. %and what did she say AS CHILDREN TOGETHER Poem Text Recitation by Author First Line: Under the sloped snow Subject(s): Children; Family Life; Childhood; Relatives AS CHILDREN TOGETHER First Line: Under the sloped snow BECAUSE ONE IS ALWAYS FORGOTTEN First Line: When viera was buried we knew it had come to an end BLUE HOUR First Line: The moon slips from its cerement, and my son, already disappearing into Last Line: The dolls were dolls, the curtain a curtain. The one in the grave said yes %adieu, country. Adieu, f BOOK CODES: 1 First Line: We must know whether Last Line: Nothing except what can be said BOOK CODES: 2 First Line: A field tunneled by mice the same thought continually Last Line: Whoever can cry should come here BOOK CODES: 3 First Line: Stories no more substantial than the clouds or what had been his face Last Line: At the moment of the birth of this cloud BURNING THE TOMATO WORMS First Line: That from which these things are born Last Line: Wrung the rags into the stoop %kept it from me %whatever she saw CITY WALK-UP, WINTER 1969 First Line: There is the morning shuffle of traffic confined COLONEL First Line: What you have heard is true. I was in his house. His wife carried a tray Last Line: Some of the ears on the floor were pressed to the ground Subject(s): Men; Military; War DEPARTURE Poem Text First Line: We take it with us, the cry Last Line: Of cities we slipped through Subject(s): War DEPARTURE First Line: We take it with us, the cry Last Line: Were brief, like the smallest %of cities we slipped through Subject(s): War DULCIMER MAKER First Line: Calf-deep in spruce dust Last Line: It will not be as far away, / as unfamiliar. Subject(s): Labor & Laborers; Work; Workers DULCIMER MAKER First Line: Calf-deep in spruce dust Subject(s): Labor And Laborers EARLY NIGHT First Line: I wrap myself in sheep leather ELEGY First Line: The page opens to snow on a field: boot-holed month, black hour Last Line: And you, smoke, dissonance, a psalm, a stairwell ENDURANCE First Line: In belgrade, the windows of the tourist Last Line: I am trying to tell you something Subject(s): Yugoslavia FOR THE STRANGER Poem Text Recitation by Author First Line: Although you mention venice Last Line: We will give it to each other. Subject(s): Tourists FOR THE STRANGER First Line: Although you mention venice Subject(s): Tourists ISLAND First Line: In deya when the mist Last Line: Carolina, do you know how long it takes %any one voice to reach another? KALALOCH Poem Text First Line: The bleached wood massed in bone piles Subject(s): Seashore; Lesbians; Beach; Coast; Shore KALALOCH First Line: The bleached wood massed in bone piles LETTER TO A CITY UNDER SIEGE Poem Text Recitation by Author First Line: Turning the pages of the book you have lent me of your wounded city Subject(s): City & Town Life MEMORY OF ELENA First Line: We spend our morning Last Line: Waiting with their tongues cut out %for this particular silence MOUNTAIN ABBEY, SURROUNDED BY ELK HORNS First Line: Bells crack ice, white cattle NOCTURNE First Line: What happened? His face was visible and then not. Around him fell snow Last Line: These are the words no longer %here are the photographs taken when we were alive NOTEBOOK OF AN UPRISING: 10 First Line: Beyond the tarred teplice road, past cut fields, tarpaulin-covered hayricks Last Line: Somewhere here, somewhere with his name carved into a wall, are the words %into your sun-blessed lif NOTEBOOK OF AN UPRISING: 11 First Line: In the cafe across from zivnostenska banka we are able to buy %a sack of bread Last Line: We leave our konvalinka for the saint, white tulips for the mother of god NOTEBOOK OF AN UPRISING: 18 First Line: We find her in a block of worker housing flats on a small namesti %bordering a Last Line: The little ones in graves the size of pillows NOTEBOOK OF AN UPRISING: 25 First Line: East berlin is swept clean, its walks sheltered by oaks. There is nothing Last Line: And the people from the east passed from their side %into a world unbearable to them NOTEBOOK OF AN UPRISING: 4 First Line: So we are going back, to the invisible railyard shed and the poppy-seed cakes Last Line: What you did not love any longer was a world that had lost its soul NOTEBOOK OF UPRISING: 1 First Line: The hand moves across the page of its own accord Last Line: So she drew her finger across her throat NOTEBOOK OF UPRISING: 10 First Line: Beyond the tarred teplice road, past cut fields, tarpaulin-covered hayricks Last Line: Into your sun-blessed life NOTEBOOK OF UPRISING: 11 First Line: In the cafe across from zivnostenska banka we are able to buy Last Line: We leave our konvalinka for the saint, white tulips for the mother of god NOTEBOOK OF UPRISING: 12 First Line: Along leninova, soot pines and state trucks Last Line: It is playing chess with us NOTEBOOK OF UPRISING: 13 First Line: A two-hour queue for pears, a waxen hill of spent tapers where Last Line: On a wreath's black ribbon, the word for scaffold: popravist e NOTEBOOK OF UPRISING: 14 First Line: We cross the danube into a world in decline Last Line: A window not opened in twenty-two years NOTEBOOK OF UPRISING: 15 First Line: The past is not where you left it, svetko Last Line: There is a diary open to the words cannot remain here NOTEBOOK OF UPRISING: 16 First Line: What has eaten these walls? Wind in the mustard fields Last Line: As if there were a corpse in the armoire NOTEBOOK OF UPRISING: 17 First Line: A mirror of swans, a gesture of regret, bridge stones rippling in the vltava Last Line: A memory barely retrieved from a fire is (the past) in its hiding place NOTEBOOK OF UPRISING: 18 First Line: We find her in a block of worker housing flats on a small namesti bordering Last Line: The little ones in graves the size of pillows NOTEBOOK OF UPRISING: 19 First Line: This is a map drawn from memory of the specular itinerary of exile Last Line: Before enduring it we will endure it NOTEBOOK OF UPRISING: 2 First Line: Anna stands in a ring of thawed snow, stirring a trash fire in an iron drum Last Line: They didn't want you to know the past. They were hoping in this way you could escape it NOTEBOOK OF UPRISING: 20 First Line: This is what we have taken the ordinary world to mean: Last Line: And memory a reliquary in a wall of silence NOTEBOOK OF UPRISING: 21 First Line: Near the stone walls of the bridgeworks we met night after night but no one Last Line: Not this winter but another NOTEBOOK OF UPRISING: 22 First Line: A little burnt sorrow, truck-rutted fields Last Line: It was as if we'd been given to walk through a world to come NOTEBOOK OF UPRISING: 23 First Line: In a small hotel built not on its own remains but in place of itself Last Line: The train rose along the bank above the tiled roofs, its windows blinded by mud and smoke NOTEBOOK OF UPRISING: 24 First Line: The same bells ringing then Last Line: More actually than if she'd been with him NOTEBOOK OF UPRISING: 25 First Line: East berlin is swept clean, its walks sheltered by oaks Last Line: Into a world unbearable to them NOTEBOOK OF UPRISING: 26 First Line: Storm light, bare orchards, the heavens briefly open Last Line: Yellow brooks of waste lit the hayfields NOTEBOOK OF UPRISING: 27 First Line: If you ask them anything they go on telling you the same thing forever Last Line: Whispering not truth but a need for truth when one word is many things NOTEBOOK OF UPRISING: 28 First Line: They've made a shrine in hissing rain to jan palach near where four men Last Line: So the cry is cut from its stalk NOTEBOOK OF UPRISING: 3 First Line: Smoke wrote from its fire something brief Last Line: The earth is tired and marked, human after human NOTEBOOK OF UPRISING: 4 First Line: So we are going back, to the invisible railyard shed and poppy-seed cakes. Last Line: What you did not love any longer was a world that had lost its soul NOTEBOOK OF UPRISING: 5 First Line: There are more geese than people in this village and the geese know it Last Line: Are an insomniac who has gone to bed on an ordinary august night NOTEBOOK OF UPRISING: 6 First Line: Alenka: you must not speak any more. Last Line: I am going to tell you NOTEBOOK OF UPRISING: 7 First Line: His grave is strewn with slipper flowers in a coppice of loss Last Line: That he had escaped the fate of the others was unknown to her NOTEBOOK OF UPRISING: 8 First Line: This is close, and passing time brings it no closer: the years, cities Last Line: Then someone calling. It might be from the past. It has that quality NOTEBOOK OF UPRISING: 9 First Line: Folded swans in the mirror, vltava Last Line: Holding a banner completely fashioned of hope ON RETURNING TO DETROIT Poem Text First Line: Over the plum snow, the train's blond smoke Last Line: Lowers the awnings over the shop stalls of fruit Subject(s): Detroit, Michigan; Railroads; Railways; Trains ON RETURNING TO DETROIT First Line: Over the plum snow, the train's blond smoke Last Line: Lowers the awnings over the shop stalls of fruit Subject(s): Detroit, Michigan; Railroads PHOTOGRAPH OF MY ROOM Poem Text First Line: Thirty years from now, you might Last Line: Who has no belongings. Subject(s): Czechoslovakia; Photography & Photographers; Slovakia PHOTOGRAPH OF MY ROOM First Line: Thirty years from now, you might Last Line: Who has no belongings Subject(s): Czechoslovakia; Photography And Photographers POEM FOR MAYA Poem Text First Line: Dipping our bread in oil tins Subject(s): Spain; Relationships RECORDING ANGEL: 1 First Line: Memory insists she stood there, able to go neither forward nor back Last Line: Under the leprous trees a white siren of sun RECORDING ANGEL: 10 First Line: Having taken these white rooms for a season, I imagine that it might be Last Line: This is my cap. This is my coat. Here's my shaving gear in its linen sack RECORDING ANGEL: 2 First Line: A row of cabanas with white towels near restorative waters where once Last Line: The sea strikes a bottle against a rock RECORDING ANGEL: 3 First Line: The photographs were found at first by mistake in the drawer Last Line: Don't say I was there. Always say I was never there RECORDING ANGEL: 4 First Line: The child asks about earth Last Line: We must try then to send a message ending with the word night RECORDING ANGEL: 5 First Line: A river that later caught fire Last Line: Hello child, hang your coat here. This is what she said after so many years. This was all she said RECORDING ANGEL: 6 First Line: It was an island wrapped in white fog, angel island, a wingless rock Last Line: These ruins are to the future what the past is to us RECORDING ANGEL: 6 (REVISED) First Line: Then they all got drunk Last Line: These ruins are to the future what the past is to us RECORDING ANGEL: 7 First Line: Someone has written fuck with dogshit on the walls of simone's atelier Last Line: He departed with great pledges of love and went back to his life never to all her again RECORDING ANGEL: 8 First Line: Dear l, I thought I knew what I was doing Last Line: Here, in this open field, that can never be a field again RECORDING ANGEL: 9 First Line: It isn't necessary to explain Last Line: Where an angry god, spilled blood itself, lives REUNION Poem Text First Line: On the phonograph, the voice Subject(s): Love REUNION First Line: On the phonograph, the voice Last Line: Of a woman singing of a man %who could make her do anything Subject(s): Love SAN ONOFRE, CALIFORNIA First Line: We have come far south Last Line: The cries of those who vanish %might take years to get here SELECTIVE SERVICE First Line: We rise from the snow where we've Last Line: We lie down in the fields and leave behind %the corpses of angels SEQUESTERED WRITING Poem Text First Line: Horses were turned loose in the child's sorrow. Subject(s): Ghosts SKIN CANOES Poem Text First Line: Swallows carve lake wind Subject(s): Canoes SKIN CANOES First Line: Swallows carve lake wind Last Line: From where I had vanished TAKING OFF MY CLOTHES Poem Text First Line: I take off my shirt, I show you. Subject(s): Human Body; Love - Erotic; Man-woman Relationships; Male-female Relations TAKING OFF MY CLOTHES First Line: I take off my shirt, I show you Last Line: Your own hands are lying TESTIMONY OF LIGHT First Line: Outside everything visible and invisible a blazing maple Last Line: The worst is yet to come THE ANGEL OF HISTORY [IN APRIL, THE LILACS COME, WRAPPED IN LE MONDE] Recitation by Author THE COLONEL Poem Text Recitation by Author First Line: What you have heard is true. I was in his house. His wife carried a tray Subject(s): Men; Military; War THE GARDEN SHUKKEI-EN Poem Text First Line: By way of a vanished bridge we cross this river Last Line: It is the bell to awaken god that we've heard ringing Subject(s): Antinuclear Movement; Nuclear War; Nuclear Freeze; Atomic Bomb; Hydrogen Bomb THE GHOST OF HEAVEN Poem Text First Line: Sleep to sleep through thirty years of night THE LIGHT KEEPER Poem Text Recitation by Author First Line: A night without ships. Foghorns called into walled cloud, and you Subject(s): Lighthouses; Death; Life; Dead, The THE LOST SUITCASE Poem Text Recitation by Author First Line: So it was with the suitcase left in front Subject(s): Poetry & Poets THE MORNING BAKING Poem Text First Line: Grandma, come back, I forgot Subject(s): Grandparents; Grandmothers; Grandfathers; Great Grandfathers; Great Grandmothers THE MUSEUM OF STONES Poem Text Recitation by Author First Line: These are your stones, assembled in matchbox and tin, Subject(s): Stones; Granite; Rocks THE VISITOR Poem Text First Line: In spanish he whispers there is no time left. Subject(s): Prisons & Prisoners; Spain; Convicts THIS NEED NOT HAVE BEEN SO First Line: We were there, our tracks leaving Last Line: How I would hold them to my face TRAVEL PAPERS Poem Text First Line: By boat to seurasaari where Subject(s): Travel; Journeys; Trips VISITOR First Line: In spanish he whispers there is no time left Last Line: There is nothing one man will not do to another WHAT COMES Recitation by Author Subject(s): Despair YEAR AT MUDSTRAW First Line: Listen to the pine splits |
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