Brodsky, from "A Part of Speech."

... and when “the future” is uttered, swarms of mice
rush out of the Russian language and gnaw a piece
of ripened memory which is twice
as hole-ridden as real cheese.
After all these years it hardly matters who
or what stands in the corner, hidden by heavy drapes,
and your mind resounds not with a seraphic “doh,”
only their rustle. Life, that no one dares
to appraise, like that gift horse’s mouth,
bares its teeth in a grin at each
encounter. What gets left of a man amounts
to a part. To his spoken part. To a part of speech.

--Joseph Brodsky, from “A Part of Speech”

from John Ashbery

The extreme austerity of an almost empty mind
Colliding with the lush, Rousseau-like foliage of its desire to communicate
Something between breaths, if only for the sake
Of others and their desire to understand you and desert you
For other centers of communication, so that understanding
May begin, and in doing so be undone.


from "And Ut Pictura Poesis Is Her Name"

Lines that knock my socks off: A. R. Ammons

from Corsons Inlet (Thanks to my workshop instructor for choosing this as one of the first two discussion poems for the class... The other one is this, equally amazing in an entirely different way, although both are perfect unions of form and function... bodes well for the course.)

the possibility of rule as the sum of rulelessness

and later in the poem...

no arranged terror: no forcing of image, plan,
or thought:
no propaganda, no humbling of reality to precept:

terror pervades but is not arranged, all possibilities
of escape open: no route shut, except in
the sudden loss of all routes: