i do love listmaking…
here be two decidedly incomprehensive lists based on highly arbitrary criteria — off the top of my head and in no particular order:
rattling like a bag of bones:
"gretel, from a sudden clearing" & "the promise" & "what the silence says" & "calvary" by marie howe,
"i watched you disappear” by anya krugovoy silver,
"the song of hen's head" & "this is a photograph of me" & "a sad child" by margaret atwood,
"bruise ghazal" & "i go back to may 1937" by sharon olds,
"harold's leap" & "deeply morbid" & "the orphan reformed" & "do take muriel out" & "not waving but drowning" by stevie smith,
"we who are your closest friends" by phillip lopate,
"the loft" by richard jones,
"eating together" & "death poem" & "party" & "you with the crack running through you" & "the numbers" by kim addonizio,
"thanks" by w. s. merwin,
"the bee meeting" & "lady lazarus" & "daddy" & "sheep in fog" & "fever 103" by sylvia plath,
"yesterday he still looked in my eyes" by marina tsvetaeva,
"we don't know how to say goodbye" & "the last toast" by anna akhmatova,
"unknown girl in the maternity ward" & "lessons in hunger" & "the truth the dead know" by anne sexton,
"anne sexton’s last letter to god" by tracey herd,
"aubade" & "the mower" by philip larkin,
"the blue bowl" by jane kenyon,
"her long illness" by donald hall,
"myth" by natasha trethewey,
"the drowned girl" by bertolt brecht,
"in bertram's garden" by donald justice,
"ovid in the third reich" by geoffrey hill,
"report from a besieged city" by zbigniew herbert,
"napoleon" by miroslav holub,
"me up at does" by e.e. cummings,
"snow line" by john berryman,
"the hollow men" by t. s. eliot,
"dedication" & "in warsaw" by czesław miłosz—
resonating like a bright bell:
"what the living do" & "my dead friends" & "magdalene, afterwards" by marie howe,
"funny" by anna kamieńska,
"woman unborn & "i'll open the window" & “tomorrow they’ll cut me open” by anna świrszczyńska,
"the book of hours" by b. h. fairchild,
"there is a gold light in certain old paintings" by donald justice,
"when eurydice saw him..." (an excerpt) by gregory orr,
"sometimes, when the light" & "the blind leading the blind" & "there are mornings" & "monet refuses the operation" by lisel mueller,
"try to praise the mutilated world" & "transformation" by adam zagajewski,
"the end and the beginning" & "the tower of babel" & "discovery" & "thank-you note" by wisława szymborska,
"all in green went my love riding" by e. e. cummings,
"while eating a pear" & "the dead" by billy collins,
"never again would the birds' song be the same" by robert frost,
"a meeting" by wendell berry,
"death at daybreak" by anne reeve aldrich,
"next time" by joyce sutphen,
"the god abandons antony" by c. p. cavafy,
"musee des beaux arts" by w. h. auden,
"failing and flying" by jack gilbert,
"goodtime jesus" by james tate,
"all my friends are finding new beliefs" by christian wiman,
"i’m glad your sickness" by marina tsvetaeva,
"angels" by maurya simon,
"the saints" by margaret atwood,
"dirge without music" by edna st. vincent millay,
"a refusal to mourn the death, by fire, of a child in london" & "fern hill" & "do not go gentle into that good night" & "and death shall have no dominion" by dylan thomas,
"high windows" & "an arundel tomb" by philip larkin,
"please read" by mary ruefle,
"it was not death, for i stood up" by emily dickinson,
"men made out of words" by wallace stevens,
"ash wednesday" by t. s. eliot,
"on angels" & "this world" & "if there is no god" & "encounter" by czesław miłosz.
