BEFORE GENESIS

BY OCTAVIO GONZALEZ Tavi is a professor at Wellesley College. His first poetry collection, “The Book of Ours,” came out in 2009 from Momotombo Press.

THE ALCHEMIST

BY CELINA REYNES, ’16 I did it. Not with mercury, or chalky beads of sulfur, but with humble stone I swept Aristotelian philosophy under the rug. It was heaven doing it while everybody was asleep; holding it beneath my lamp-light just to see it glitter. I couldn’t help myself. I ate it up. Now my […]

30 POETS/30 DAYS: EMILY DICKINSON

You can listen to an interesting NPR podcast about Emily Dickinson and her influence on former U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins here. I’m Nobody! Who are you? Are you – Nobody – too? Then there’s a pair of us! Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know! How dreary – to be – Somebody! How public – like a Frog – To tell one’s name – the livelong June – To an […]

LIGHTLY

BY CAROLINE ARNOLD, ’16 Someone, I can’t remember who, said I should live lightly; So I turned on every light in the room and stood with my eyes wide open retina burning, swallowed a firefly then walked to the edge of a forest fire a hundred feet tall flames licking my toes. There are feelings […]

30 POETS/30 DAYS: Walt Whitman

From “Song of Myself”: Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d the earth much? Have you practis’d so long to learn to read? Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems? Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems, You shall possess […]

OFF TO BRUNCH

BY GENEVIEVE ROGERS, ’16 Next to a sun-bleached toy house scattered with cookware scraggled dolls and a bag of empty cans, on a dead end street with the same name as the one I want to be on a town and a half away, I study the map and consider how late I am going […]

Everyday Singularities

BY DIEDERIQUE VAN DER KNAAP, ’18 Strangeness Becomes me. The soft grey Of empty lights Illuminating my preference For unlit space. A preference For a lack; How strange. Strangeness Surrounds me. The quiet Pierced By inaudible clamor Which only I hear. The utterance Of stillness; How strange. Strangeness Inside me. The quiet hum Of an […]

#30Days

Wellesley College will be participating in National Poetry Writing Month, starting on April 1st. Fill out the form below to suggest additions to our website. Submit links to articles, fun quotes, short films or comments related to poetry. To submit a poem, send an email to Celina Reynes, Alison Lanier, and Elizabeth Grice @ Wellesley.edu