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Poetry Living @poetryliving.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

"They'll see how beautiful I am And be ashamed,— I, too, am America." #LangstonHughes #TheWearyBlues #BlackHistoryMonth #Hughesday

EPILOGUE

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.

Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—

I, too, am America.

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Bookchat @bookchat.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

For Those Who Have Sacrificed in the Streets of Minneapolis: “Your Lifetime is a Knife” –after Mary Oliver on Keats Your lifetime is a knife. You could eat a plum, peel the darkly sour sun; or brandish it daily just because you can; or hide it each #Features #FictionandPoetry

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For Those Who Have Sacrificed in the Streets of Minneapolis

“Your Lifetime is a Knife” –after Mary Oliver on Keats Your lifetime is a knife. You could eat a plum, peel the darkly sour sun; or brandish it daily just because you can; or hide it each

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Poetry Living @poetryliving.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

"This being human is a guest house" May your sorrows be nothing but temporary visitors who clear the way for new delights. #Rumi #TheGuestHouse #poetry

"This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond."

The Guest House, Witten by Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks

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Poetry Living @poetryliving.bsky.social · 22/02/2025

He does not enter a house at night, or when it rains. He is not afraid of the wind, though he is cautious. He watches the snake, that stripe of black fire, until it flows away[...] He keeps his prayer under his tongue. In his whole life he has never missed the rising of the sun #MaryOliver #Caturday

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Poetry Living @poetryliving.bsky.social · 21/02/2025

What I want to say is that the past is the past, and the present is what your life is, and you are capable of choosing what that will be, darling citizen So come to the pond, or the river of your imagination, or the harbor of your longing and put your lips to the world And live your life #MaryOliver

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Poetry Living @poetryliving.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

"I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. The last scud of day holds back for me, It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds, It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk." #Poetry #WaltWhitman #SongOFMyself

Picture of a landscape of dark mountains, above it there's a lighter sky and above that there are dark clouds.

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Margaret J Park, M.Div. @megpark.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

“Re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your soul. (Walt Whitman). For that to be the opportunity afforded, you must reflect on what is in your soul.

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SIXTY SENSE @sixtysense.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, not look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books. You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, you shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself. Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

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Poetry Living @poetryliving.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

"What is money for? To spend, he says. And wine? To drink. And women? To love. And today? For joy. And tomorrow? For joy. And the green sea For strength, And the brown land For laughter. And nothing hereafter." #Poetry #LangstonHughes #YoungSailor #Hughesday

White text on a blue background featuring the silhouette of a bird and a plant.

The text reads:

"Today?
For joy.
Tomorrow?
For joy.
The green sea
For strength,
The brown land
For laughter.
and nothing hereafter."

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Nurse Smitty @apsmith1.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

Langston Hughes Quoted: O, let America be America again The land that never has been yet And yet must be – the land where every man is free.” “Hold fast to your dreams, for without them life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly” 💯💙

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Sari @stramentum.bsky.social · 15/02/2025

I illustrated one of my favorite poems (wild geese by Mary Oliver) so I could frame it and hang it in m bedroom ✨

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gilly-gilly.bsky.social @gilly-gilly.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

Things! Burn them, burn them! Make a beautiful fire! More room in your heart for love, for the trees! For the birds who own nothing—the reason they can fly. -Mary Oliver

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Poetry Living @poetryliving.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

"The man who has many answers is often found in the theaters of information where he offers, graciously, his deep findings. While the man who has only questions, to comfort himself, makes music." #MaryOliver #TheManWhoHasManyAnswers #MaryMonday

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Rachel Lense is Professionally Curious @rachellense.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

Over the years, I've found comfort in writing out other people's #poetry and drawing little sketches to accompany them. Please enjoy Mary Oliver's "What Gorgeous Thing" with a cute, fat birb and spring blossoms. 💙📚🐦🌱🌸🪶

Black and white sketches of an Eastern Bluebird and 5-petaled flowers blooming on naked branches accompany a hand-written version of the poem "What Gorgeous Thing" by Mary Oliver.

I do not know what gorgeous thing
the bluebird keys saying,
his voice easing out of his throat,
beak, body into the pink air
of the early morning. I like it
whatever it is. Sometimes
it seems the only thing in the world
that is without dark thoughts.
Sometimes it seems the only thing
in the world that is without
questions that can't and probably
never will be answered, the
only thing that is entirely content
with the pink, then clear white
morning and, gratefully, says so.

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Poetry Living @poetryliving.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

"I also say it is good to fall, battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won. I beat and pound for the dead, I blow through my embouchures my loudest and gayest for them. Vivas to those who have fail'd!" #Poetry #WaltWhitman #SongOfMyself #WhitmanWednesday

Words against a blackground featuring some mountains on the bottom.

The words read:

"Battles are
lost
in the same spirit in which they are
won.

Walt Whitman"

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Poetry Living @poetryliving.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

"I have been bent and broken, but -I hope- into a better shape." #Poetry #EmilyDickinson

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Poetry Living @poetryliving.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

Today is the 62nd anniversary of the death of Sylvia Plath, who captured loneliness in a way that continues to resonate with so many. #Poetry #SylviaPlath #TheUnabridgedJournals

And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter — they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long.
- Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

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Poetry Living @poetryliving.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

"They'll see how beautiful I am And be ashamed,— I, too, am America." #LangstonHughes #TheWearyBlues #BlackHistoryMonth #Hughesday

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Poetry Living @poetryliving.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

"We are not women who measure ourselves by the underestimation of others [...] Women are the schoolhouses of our humanity Women are the architects of our communities Women are the prophets of our potential" #MerallSherif #InternationalDayOfWomenAndGirlsInScience #WomenInSTEM 🧪

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Poetry Living @poetryliving.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

“A lifetime isn’t long enough for the beauty of this world and the responsibilities of your life. Scatter your flowers over the graves, and walk away. Be good-natured and untidy in your exuberance.” #Poetry #MaryOliver #TheLeafAndTheCloud

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Poetry Living @poetryliving.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

"Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you. You must travel it by yourself. It is not far. It is within reach. Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know." #Poetry #WaltWhitman #SongOfMyself

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Poetry Living @poetryliving.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

"Why do I have so many thoughts, they are driving me crazy. Why am I always going anywhere, instead of somewhere? Listen to me or not, it hardly matters. I’m not trying to be wise, that would be foolish."

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Solivagant @wanderingsag.bsky.social · 09/02/2025

yes, I am willing to be that wild darkness, that long, blue body of light. ~Mary Oliver

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Poetry Living @poetryliving.bsky.social · 09/02/2025

"I thought the earth remembered me, she took me back so tenderly, arranging her dark skirts, her pockets full of lichens and seeds. [...] By morning I had vanished at least a dozen times into something better."

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Poetry Living @poetryliving.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

"My mother was the mossy stream out behind the house [...] My father was a demon of frustrated dreams [...] I sweep the closets. I leave the house. I mention them now, I will not mention them again. It is not lack of love nor lack of sorrow. But the iron thing they carried, I will not carry."

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Poetry Living @poetryliving.bsky.social · 04/10/2024

"Every morning I walk like this around the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart ever close, I am as good as dead. Every morning, so far, I’m alive." (Landscape) #Poetry

A blue sky behind dark mountains mirrored on a pond

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Solivagant @wanderingsag.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry. ~Mary Oliver

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Kathryn Bettendorf @katbette.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

A poem by Mary Oliver has been rattling around in my heart and head for the past week. “Here is a story to break your heart. Are you willing? . . . I mean that it break open and never close again to the rest of the world.” Artists, the world needs you now more than ever.

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Poetry Living @poetryliving.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

"In the personal life there is always grief more than enough, a heart load for each of us on the dusty road. I suppose there is a reason for this, so I will be patient, acquiescent. But I will live nowhere except here, by Ocean, trusting equally in all blast and welcome of her sorrowless salt self"

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Poetry Living @poetryliving.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

"Another morning and I wake with thirst for the goodness I do not have"

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Donna Y Ferris @donnayferris.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

“There are things you can’t reach. But you can reach out to them, and all day long. The wind, the bird flying away…And it can keep you busy as anything else, and happier.” -Mary Oliver

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Poetry Living @poetryliving.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

This one has already circulated a lot over the past few weeks but honestly it's all I've been able to think about lately

OF THE EMPIRE

We will be known as a culture that feared death
and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity
for the few and cared little for the penury of the
many. We will be known as a culture that taught
and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke
little if at all about the quality of life for
people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All
the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a
commodity. And they will say that this structure
was held together politically, which it was, and
they will say also that our politics was no more
than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of
the heart, and that the heart, in those days,
was small, and hard, and full of meanness.

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Poetry Living @poetryliving.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

"I would say that there exist a thousand unbreakable links between each of us and everything else, and that our dignity and our chances are one. We are each other's destiny."

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Marco Rosenkranz @marcorosenkranz.de · 26/01/2025

Poetry is one of the ancient arts, and it began as did all the fine arts, within the original wilderness of the earth. —Mary Oliver

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thethinblackduke.bsky.social @thethinblackduke.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

“All night I heard the small kingdoms breathing around me, the insects, and the birds who do their work in the darkness. All night I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling with a luminous doom. By morning I had vanished at least a dozen times into something better.” ~Mary Oliver

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Poetry Living @poetryliving.bsky.social · 26/01/2025

"O, I go to see the great ships ride from harbor, And my wounds leap with impatience, yet I turn back To sort the weeping ruins of my house: Here or nowhere I will make peace with the fact."

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Jane McKinney @janemckinney.bsky.social · 25/01/2025

Tried to find a specific sticker I saw in the wild but this was the best thing that came up:

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Poetry Living @poetryliving.bsky.social · 25/01/2025

"I pray for the desperate earth. I pray for the desperate world. I do the little each person can do, it isn't much. Sometimes the river murmurs, sometimes it raves...."

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Poetry Living @poetryliving.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

"In the beginning I was so young and such a stranger to myself I hardly existed. I had to go out into the world and see it and hear it and react to it, before I knew at all who I was, what I was, what I wanted to be."

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Elizabeth Hartzell @elizabethharts.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

“Living Gently” “Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing. And gave it up. And took my old body and went out into the morning, and sang.”-Mary Oliver 8x10 limited edition prints available 🕊️ DM for details ✨ #livinggently #nature #maryoliver #rest #soul #singing #art

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Poetry Living @poetryliving.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

"Your heart is beating, isn't it? You're not in chains, are you? There is nothing more pathetic than caution when headlong might save a life, even, possibly, your own." #Poetry

Photo of a park, with a lake surrounded by lush green foliage. The lake reflects the blue sky.

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Poetry Living @poetryliving.bsky.social · 22/01/2025

"You don't want to hear the story of my life, and anyway I don't want to tell it, I want to listen to the enormous waterfalls of the sun. And anyway it's the same old story a few people just trying one way or another, to survive Mostly, I want to be kind"

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MrsEmilyFinch @mrsemilyfinch.bsky.social · 19/01/2025

Mary Oliver bringing truth this morning. @maryoliverdaily.bsky.social

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