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Author: HASS, ROBERT
Matches Found: 130


Hass, Robert    Poet's Biography
130 poems available by this author


A STORY ABOUT THE BODY    Poem Text    
First Line: The young composer, working that summer at an artist's colony
Subject(s): Men


ADHESIVE: FOR EARLENE       
First Line: How often we overslept %those grey enormous mornings
Last Line: To have the price of les enfants de paradis


AFTER I SEIZED THE PENTAGON       
First Line: Washington was calm, murderous, neo-classical
Last Line: Where spring is clement and the land an aftermath


AFTER THE GENTLE POET KOBAYASHI ISSA    Poem Text    
Last Line: In the saucepan
Subject(s): Nature; Youth; Aging


AGAINST BOTTICELLI (1)       
First Line: In the life we lead together every paradise is lost
Last Line: We will look at each other steadily %and butcher them and skin them


AGAINST BOTTICELLI (2)       
First Line: The myth they chose was the constant lovers
Last Line: The one with sad eyes who represents pleasure, %had a canvas to herself, entirely to herself


APPLE TREES AT OLEMA       
First Line: They were walking in the woods along the coast
Last Line: Gravely and delicately, as if it were the key, %and then he wanders among strangers all he wants


BARN       
First Line: I followed my breath each dawn to work the barn
Last Line: And pray each night the damn thing will not burn


BERKELEY ECLOGUE       
First Line: Sunlight on the streets in afternoon
Last Line: It didn't cost me anything. %anything?


BETWEEN THE WARS    Poem Text    
First Line: When I ran, it rained. Late in the afternoon
Last Line: Starved children begging chocolate on the tracks
Subject(s): Youth; War


BETWEEN THE WARS       
First Line: When I ran, it rained. Late in the afternoon
Last Line: Starved children begging chocolate on the tracks


BLACK MOUNTAIN, LOS ALTOS       
First Line: Clumps of ghostly buckeye


BOOKBUYING IN THE TENDERLOIN       
First Line: A statuary christ bleeds sweating grief
Last Line: This riding out the dying of the west


BOSTON MARKET       
First Line: Beneath cool shade of tamaracks
Last Line: Because, by god, I've got to get my price


CALM    Poem Text    
First Line: September sun, a little fog in the mornings. No sanctified terror
Subject(s): Calm; Placid; Undisturbed; Tranquility


CALM       
First Line: September sun, a little fog in the mornings. No sanctified terror
Last Line: Carved by a muskrat in the blue-gray distance of the pond, black-eyed susans every- %where. You can
Subject(s): Calm


CHILD NAMING FLOWERS       
First Line: When old crones wandered in the woods
Last Line: And so cold %I could hardly move


CHURCHYARD       
First Line: Somerset maugham said a professional was someone who could do his %best work


CONSCIOUSNESS    Poem Text     Recitation by Author
First Line: First image is blue sky, nothing in it, and not understood as sky, a field of blue
Last Line: "loves itself,"" george oppen wrote. My poor father"
Subject(s): Consciousness


CONVERSION       
First Line: Walking down the stairs this morning in the bitter cold, in the old house's


CUTTINGS       
First Line: You count up everything you have


DRAGONFLIES MATING       
First Line: The people who lived here before us
Last Line: Into the receiver body. They can't separate probably until it is done


DUCK BLIND       
First Line: He was a judge in louisiana-this is a story told by his daughter


ENGLISH: AN ODE       
First Line: De quien son las piedras del rio
Last Line: They hold the hope of morning


ENVY OF OTHER PEOPLE'S POEMS        Recitation by Author
First Line: In one version of the legend the sirens couldn't sing
Subject(s): Poetry & Poets; Homer (10th Century B.c.); Iliad; Odyssey


EZRA POUND'S PROPOSITION    Poem Text    
First Line: Beauty is sexual, and sexuality
Last Line: Across her cheekbones and her lovely skin
Subject(s): Economics


FAINT MUSIC    Poem Text     Recitation by Author
First Line: Maybe you need to write a poem about grace.
Last Line: First an ego, and then pain, and then the singing
Subject(s): Love - Loss Of; Grief; Man-woman Relationships; Pain; Sorrow; Sadness; Male-female Relations; Suffering; Misery


FAINT MUSIC       
First Line: Maybe you need to write a poem about grace
Last Line: First an ego, and then pain, and then the singing


FEAST       
First Line: The lovers loitered on the deck talking
Last Line: Crying. She didn't know what she wanted
Subject(s): Food And Eating; Grief


FIRST THINGS AT THE LAST MINUTE    Poem Text     Recitation by Author
First Line: The white water rush of some warbler’s song
Last Line: With you, will have their way
Subject(s): Dreams


FORTY SOMETHING       
First Line: She says to him, musing, 'if you ever leave me
Last Line: Down into his eyes. 'you understand? Your heart


FRIDA KAHLO: IN THE SALIVA       
First Line: In the saliva %in the paper
Last Line: In his mouth - diego - in his lies


GARDENS OF WARSAW       
First Line: The rain loves the afternoon and the tall lime trees
Last Line: At the embassies. Even the murderers are on vacation


GRAVEYARD AT BOLINAS       
First Line: Yews as tall as pines


HAPPINESS       
First Line: Because yesterday morning from the steamy window
Last Line: Our eyes squinched up like bats


HARBOR AT SEATTLE       
First Line: They used to meet one night a week at a place on top of telegraph hill


HAVE YOU HEARD OF MADAM LUPESCU       


HEROIC SIMILE       
First Line: When the swordsman fell in kurosawa's seven samurai
Last Line: There are limits to imagination


HEROIC SMILE    Poem Text    
First Line: When the swordsman fell in kurosawa's seven samurai
Last Line: There are limits to imagination
Subject(s): Motion Pictures; Movies; Cinema


HUMAN WISHES       
First Line: This morning the sun rose over the garden wall and a rare blue sky
Last Line: The horses at newmarket. He might parley it into a fortune


HUMPBACK       
First Line: This time it's days before the mountain of the flesh
Last Line: And will not leave


I AM YOUR WAITER TONIGHT AND MY NAME IS DIMITRI        Recitation by Author
Subject(s): Immigrants; War; Emigrant; Emigration; Immigration


IMAGE       
First Line: The child brought blue clay from the creek
Last Line: Where the deer sometimes showed themselves at sundown


IMPROMPTU POEM        Recitation by Author


IN THE BAHAMAS       
First Line: The doctor looked at her stitches thoughtfully
Last Line: Now there is a truly appalling place'


INTERRUPTED MEDITATION    Poem Text    
First Line: Little green involute fronds of fern at creekside
Last Line: Someone gave the name, sometime, of pearly everlasting
Subject(s): Disappointment; Nature; Life


INTERRUPTED MEDITATION       
First Line: Little green involute fronds of fern at creekside
Last Line: Someone gave the name, sometime, of pearly everlasting


IOWA CITY: EARLY APRIL       
First Line: This morning a cat - bright orange - pawing at the one patch of
Last Line: And the crows' calls, even before you open your eyes, at sunup


JANUARY       
First Line: Three clear days


JATUN SACHA       
First Line: First she was singing. Then it was a gold thing, her singing
Last Line: Birth cries, and a gold thing, ringing


LATE SPRING       
First Line: And then in mid-may the first morning of steady heat


LAYOVER       
First Line: Thin snow falling on the runway at anchorage
Last Line: The stale air, breathed and breathed, we have been sharing


LETTER TO A POET       
First Line: A mockingbird leans
Last Line: This world did not invite us


LULLABY FOR THE MATHEMATICIAN       
First Line: Come, your mircles of math have gone to sleep
Last Line: And into arms that make all metaphor


MAPS       
First Line: Sourdough french bread and pinot chardonnay
Last Line: Is a skunk %he shuns the day


MEASURE    Poem Text     Recitation by Author
First Line: Recurrences. / coppery light hesitates
Last Line: That forms these lines
Subject(s): Trees


MEASURE       
First Line: Recurrences
Last Line: That forms these lines


MEDITATION AT LAGUNITAS    Poem Text    
First Line: All the new thinking is about loss
Subject(s): California; Deconstructionism; Language; Longing; Words; Vocabulary


MEDITATION AT LAGUNITAS       
First Line: All the new thinking is about loss
Last Line: Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings, %saying blacberry, blackberry, blackbrry
Subject(s): California; Deconstructionism; Language; Longing


MISERY AND SPLENDOR    Poem Text     Recitation by Author
First Line: Summoned by conscious recollection, she
Last Line: To which they can’t admit they can never be admitted
Subject(s): Man-woman Relationships; Male-female Relations


MISERY AND SPLENDOR       
First Line: Summoned by conscious recollection, she
Last Line: To which they can't admit they can never be admitted


MONARCHS       
First Line: The world this morning is not miraculous
Last Line: Or simply by our notion that desire %outlives the body in its flight


MUSEUM       
First Line: On the morning of the kathe kollowitz, a young man and woman


MY MOTHER'S NIPPLES       
First Line: They're where all displacement begins
Last Line: I remembered that she only ever spoke happily %of high school


NATURAL THEOLOGY       
First Line: White daisies against the burnt orange of the windowframe


NOTE ON IOWA CITY: EARLY APRIL       
First Line: The raccoon stared down from the crotch of a tree
Last Line: And there was nothing there


NOVELLA       
First Line: A woman who, as a thirteen-year-old girl, develops a friendship


OLD DOMINION    Poem Text     Recitation
First Line: The shadows of late afternoon and the odors
Subject(s): Chekhov, Anton (1860-1904); Hope; Jarrell, Randall (1914-1965); Tennis; Optimism


OLD DOMINION       
First Line: The shadows of late afternoon and the odors
Last Line: Whites who look so graceful from this distance
Subject(s): Chekhov, Anton (1860-1904); Hope; Jarrell, Randall (1914-1965); Tennis


ON SQUAW PEAK       
First Line: I don't even know which sadness


ON THE COAST NEAR SAUSALITO    Poem Text    
First Line: I won't say much for the sea
Subject(s): Seashore; Beach; Coast; Shore


ON THE COAST NEAR SAUSALITO       
First Line: I won't say much for the sea
Last Line: We stared down centuries
Subject(s): Seashore


ORIGIN OF CITIES       
First Line: She is first seen dancing which is a figure
Last Line: The craftsmen work in bronze and gold, accounts %are kept carefully, what goes out, what returns


OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS       
First Line: In white, %the unpainted statue of the young girl
Last Line: And the days churned by, %navigable sorrow


PALO ALTO: THE MARSHES (1)       
First Line: She dreamed along the beaches of this coast
Last Line: The striped shadows of the cattails %twitch like nerves


PALO ALTO: THE MARSHES (10)       
First Line: Here everything seems clear
Last Line: They say she died in redwood city, %cursing 'the goddamned anglo-yankee yoke.'


PALO ALTO: THE MARSHES (11)       
First Line: The otters are gone from the bay
Last Line: It is morning. Citizens are rising %to murder in their moral dreams


PALO ALTO: THE MARSHES (2)       
First Line: Mud, roots, old cartridgs, and blood
Last Line: High overhead, the long silence of the gese


PALO ALTO: THE MARSHES (3)       
First Line: We take no prisoners,' john fremont said
Last Line: And terns rise like seafoam %from the breaking surf


PALO ALTO: THE MARSHES (4)       
First Line: Kit carson's antique .45, blue
Last Line: Ramon de haro, jose de los reyes berryessa %runs darkly to the old ooze


PALO ALTO: THE MARSHES (5)       
First Line: The star thistles: erect, surprised


PALO ALTO: THE MARSHES (6)       
First Line: And blooming %violet caterpillar hairs. One
Last Line: The books don't say which. %they were twins


PALO ALTO: THE MARSHES (7)       
First Line: In california in the early spring
Last Line: Like autumn, clarifies %like pain


PALO ALTO: THE MARSHES (8)       
First Line: Well I have dreamed this coast myself
Last Line: Where the dead bass surface %and their flacid bellies bob


PALO ALTO: THE MARSHES (9)       
First Line: A chill tightens the skin
Last Line: And still they saw the black smoke %smear the sky above the pines


PASCHAL LAMB       
First Line: Well, david had said-it was snowing outside and his voice contained


PICKING BLACKBERRIES WITH A FRIEND .. READING JACQUES LACAN    Poem Text    
First Line: August dust is here. Drought
Subject(s): Language; Words; Vocabulary


PICKING BLACKBERRIES WITH A FRIEND .. READING JACQUES LACAN       
First Line: August dust is here. Drought
Last Line: Goes to get a bigger pot
Subject(s): Language


PORNOGRAPHER       
First Line: He has finished a day's work
Last Line: In what is sometimes morning warmth %sometimes evening chill


PRIVILEGE OF BEING    Poem Text     Recitation by Author
First Line: Many are making love. Up above, the angels
Last Line: And to the immense, illiterate, consoling angels
Subject(s): Love - Erotic; Life


PRIVILEGE OF BEING       
First Line: Many are making love. Up above, the angels
Last Line: And to the immense, illiterate, consoling angels


QUARTET       
First Line: The two couples having dinner on saturday night-it is late fall


REGALIA FOR A BLACK HAT DANCER       
First Line: In the morning, after running along the river
Last Line: If you were supposed to eat the bones. You were. I did


RETURN OF ROBINSON JEFFERS       
First Line: He shuddered briefly and stared down the long valley
Last Line: Beyond the leached ashes of dead fire, %the small jeweled hunger in the seabirds' eye
Subject(s): Jeffers, Robinson (1887-1962)


RITE OF SPRING       
First Line: Our ewe's slung belly swells
Last Line: To pucker whiskered lips, %to suckle one pink teat


RUSIA EN 1931    Poem Text    
First Line: The archbishop of san salvador is dead, murdered by no one knows
Subject(s): Spanish Civil War (1936-1939)


RUSIA EN 1931       
First Line: The archbishop of san salvador is dead, murdered by no one knows
Last Line: And vallejo: 'think of the unemployed. Think of the forty million %families of the hungry...'
Subject(s): Spanish Civil War (1936-1939)


SAN PEDRO ROAD    Poem Text     Recitation by Author
First Line: Casting, upon a salt creek in the sea-rank air
Last Line: Done with casting, reeling in slowly, casting
Subject(s): Fish & Fishing; Anglers


SANTA BARBARA ROAD       
First Line: Mornings on the south side of the house


SANTA LUCIA II       
First Line: Pleasure is so hard to remember


SEPTEMBER NOTEBOOK: STORIES    Poem Text    
First Line: Everyone comes here from a long way off
Last Line: One of the children said. “I don’t like this story,” said the other


SEVENTH NIGHT       
First Line: It was the seventh night and he walked out to look at stars
Last Line: And the white light eveywhere in that silence was white paper


SHAME: AN ARIA       
First Line: You think you've grown up in various ways
Last Line: And which, if you could love yourself, you would


SHUNGA       
First Line: I've been thinking about the ordinariness of life
Last Line: Teeth clenched, lines tight about the eyes. In the picture %they want this more than anything


SONG       
First Line: Afternoon cooking in the fall sun
Last Line: Slices of green pepper %on a bone-white dish


SONG FOR A BRIDE       
First Line: Where scented apple blossoms blow
Last Line: And heard her father in the room %scold all that he forbade


SONNET    Poem Text     Recitation by Author
First Line: A man talking to his ex-wife on the phone.
Last Line: Patient animals, and tangled vines, and rain.
Subject(s): Love; Divorce; Nostalgia


SONNET       
First Line: A man talking to his ex-wife on the phone
Last Line: Patient animals, and tangled vines, and rain


SPRING DRAWING       
First Line: The man thinks lilacs against white houses, having seen them in the farm


SPRING DRAWING: 2       
First Line: A man says lilacs against white houses, two sparrows, one streaked


SPRING RAIN       
First Line: Now the rain is falling freshly, in the intervals between sunlight


STORY ABOUT THE BODY       
First Line: The young composer, working that summer at an artist's colony
Last Line: Swept them from the corners of her studio -- was full of dead bees
Subject(s): Men


TAHOE IN AUGUST    Poem Text    
First Line: What summer proposes is simply happiness
Subject(s): Tahoe (lake), Sierra Nevada Mountains; Women


TAHOE IN AUGUST       
First Line: What summer proposes is simply happiness
Last Line: The mother she looks like stands at the counter snapping beans
Subject(s): Tahoe (lake), Sierra Nevada Mountains; Women


TALL WINDOWS       
First Line: All day you didn't cry or cry out and you felt like sleeping
Last Line: Diminishings it would be calm and shine


THE APPLE TREES AT OLEMA    Poem Text     Recitation by Author
First Line: They are walking in the woods along the coast
Last Line: And then he wanders among strangers all he wants
Subject(s): Man-woman Relationships; Apple Trees; Male-female Relations


THE FAILURE OF BUFFALO TO LEVITATE    Poem Text    
First Line: Millard fillmore died here
Last Line: Are imprisoned in the chandeliers
Subject(s): Buffalo (city), New York


THE FEAST    Poem Text    
First Line: The lovers loitered on the deck talking
Subject(s): Food & Eating; Grief; Sorrow; Sadness


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY AS A SONG    Poem Text     Recitation by Author
First Line: How like a well-kept garden is your soul
Last Line: To the making of bombs
Subject(s): Poetry & Poets; 19th Century


THE PROBLEM OF DESCRIBING TREES    Poem Text    
First Line: The aspen glitters in the wind
Last Line: The aspen doing something in the wind
Subject(s): Trees


THE RETURN OF ROBINSON JEFFERS    Poem Text    
First Line: He shuddered briefly and stared down the long valley
Last Line: The small jeweled hunger in the seabird’s eye
Subject(s): Jeffers, Robinson (1887-1962)


THEN TIME       
First Line: In winter, in a small room, a man and a woman
Last Line: As creatures seething in a compost heap, then time


THIN AIR       
First Line: What if I did not mention death to get started


TIME AND MATERIALS       
First Line: Layers, as if
Last Line: Some wound of color


TWO VIEWS OF BUSON    Poem Text    
First Line: A french scholar says he affected the chinese manner
Last Line: He saw bubbles of crab-froth among the river reeds
Subject(s): Nature; Love


UNDER THE INFLUENCE       
First Line: I heard him sometime close to 3 a.M.
Last Line: And stole from me the words I thought my own


VINTAGE       
First Line: They had agreed, walking into the delicatessen of sixth avenue
Last Line: That cabernet can't be drunk for another five years


WEED       


WHY I AM AFRAID TO HAVE A SON       
First Line: Windless snow this afternoon
Last Line: I come back to take the blows


WOODS IN NEW JERSEY       
First Line: Where there was only grey, and brownish grey
Last Line: The color of the trees, they hardly seem to move