Poetry Friday: Richard Wilbur, "The Writer"

Although I've shared Richard Wilbur's "The Writer" numerous times (along with loads of other Wilbur treasures), I never tire of this gorgeous poem. It fits beautifully with the relationship theme I've been chasing — this week, we drop in on a father and his junior-high-school-aged daughter. (I love the final lines so much.) 

The Writer
by Richard Wilbur


In her room at the prow of the house
Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,
My daughter is writing a story.

I pause in the stairwell, hearing
From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys
Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.

Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:
I wish her a lucky passage.

But now it is she who pauses,
As if to reject my thought and its easy figure.
A stillness greatens, in which

The whole house seems to be thinking,

(Read the rest here, at Poets.org. And to hear Richard Wilbur read it, go here.)

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The fabulous Tabatha Yeatts has the Poetry Friday round-up this week at The Opposite of Indifference. 

Poetry Friday: January Gill O'Neil

Simple, lovely, and simply lovely: to my dearest women friends, a relationship like no other. 

In the Company of Women
by January Gill O’Neil

Make me laugh over coffee,
make it a double, make it frothy
so it seethes in our delight.
Make my cup overflow
with your small happiness.
I want to hoot and snort and cackle and chuckle.
Let your laughter fill me like a bell.
Let me listen to your ringing and singing
as Billie Holiday croons above our heads.

....

(Read the rest of this short, wonderful poem here, at Poets.org.) 

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Delightful Denise Krebs, at Dare to Care, has the Poetry Friday round-up this week. 

Photo courtesy of Pixabay. 

Poetry Friday: "Forty Years" by Mary Oliver

        Photo courtesy of Sponchia at Pixabay. 

The last two weeks I shared poems that were simple, lovely, and simply lovely as they touched on the intricacies of relationships. This week, another in that vein: this one's about the poet's relationship with language. 


Forty Years
by Mary Oliver

for forty years
the sheets of white paper have
passed under my hands and I have tried
    to improve their peaceful

emptiness putting down
little curls little shafts
of letters words
    little flames leaping

not one page
was less to me than fascinating

....

(Read the whole thing here, at the Poetry Foundation.) 

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This week's wonderful host, Tracey Kidd-Judson, is cooking up some Poetry Friday inspiration at Tangles and Tales. 

Photo courtesy of Sponchia at Pixabay.