onfocus.com : Firstlines

Here I go again ⁱ
Driving across the center of Kansas ⁱⁱ
This landscape, masterpiece of modern terror ⁱⁱⁱ
Wiped out by hugeness of the big electric crane ^iv
Employed against my will in the factory of ideas ^v
Near the end of an extremely important discourse ^vi
I celebrate myself, and sing myself ^vii
I play it cool ^viii
The Soul selects her own Society ^ix
When she rises in the morning ^x
She is standing on my lids ^xi
And death shall have no dominion ^xii
From point A a wind is blowing to point B ^xiii
America I've given you all and now I'm nothing ^xiv
I've stayed in the front yard all my life. ^xv
April is the cruelest month, breeding ^xvi
Panes of sound where stars swerve, ^xvii
fisherman return with the stars of the waters ^xviii
all nearness pauses, while a star can grow ^xix
The years are hurrying ^xx
This kiss, unfinished; ^xxi
There is a precise instant in time ^xxii
Midway in our life's journey, I went astray ^xxiii
From red to green all the yellow dies ^xxiv
It happens that I am tired of being a man. ^xxv
the illusion is that you are simply ^xxvi
The poem of the mind in the act of finding ^xxvii
Poetry is made in bed like love ^xxviii
The hot night makes us keep our bedroom windows open. ^xxix
You do not do, you do not do ^xxx
She drew back; he was calm: ^xxxi
Is lust a deadly sin ^xxxii
If the year is meditating a suitable gift ^xxxiii
so much depends ^xxxiv
on the long shore, lit by the moon ^xxxv
I walk through the long schoolroom questioning; ^xxxvi
All writing is garbage. ^xxxvii

ⁱ Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Starting From San Francisco
ⁱⁱ Naomi Shihab Nye, Kansas
ⁱⁱⁱ Louis Aragon, Tapestry of the Great Fear
^vi Benjamin Péret, On All Fours
^v Jacques Prévert, Against My Will
^vi Jacques Prévert, The Discourse on Peace
^vii Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
^viii Langston Hughes, Motto
^ix Emily Dickinson, 303
^x D.H. Lawrence, Gloire de Dijon
^xi Paul Éluard, Lady Love
^xii Dylan Thomas, And Death Shall Have No Dominion
^xiii Ron Padgett, After the Broken Arm
^xiv Allen Ginsberg, America
^xv Gwendolyn Brooks, A Song in the Front Yard
^xvi T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land
^xvii Antonin Artaud, The Panes of Sound
^xviii Tristan Tzara, Evening
^xix e.e. cummings, all nearness pauses, while a star can grow
^xx Jack Kerouac, Long Island Chinese Poem Rain
^xxi M. Doughty, From a Gas Station outside Providence
^xxii Robert Desnos, Midway
^xxiii Dante Alighieri, The Inferno
^xxiv Guillaume Apollinaire, Windows
^xxv Pablo Neruda, Walking Around
^xxvi Charles Bukowski, splash
^xxvii Wallace Stevens, Of Modern Poetry
^xxviii André Breton, On the Road to San Romano
^xxix Robert Lowell, To Speak of Woe That Is in Marriage
^xxx Sylvia Plath, Daddy
^xxxi Robert Frost, The Subverted Flower
^xxxii Hal Sirowitz, A Question
^xxxiii Judith Wright, Request to a Year
^xxxiv William Carlos Williams, The Red Wheelbarrow
^xxxv Howard Nemerov, The Goose Fish
^xxxvi William Butler Yeats, Among the School Children
^xxxvii Antonin Artaud, All Writing...