sources

criteria

tl;dr: lines I like from poems I'm familiar with that won't give anybody any nightmares.

So, basically, the first criterion I set was that all the quotes had to be from poems, just to narrow the field to something kind of manageable. I didn't want to have one hundred million different messages.^[1]

The other thing is that they had to be punchy—one line, maybe two. This was a simple space consideration. This immediately cut out some of my favorite lines (like, there would be way more Luke Kennard on the list if I didn't have space concerns).^[2]

I also tried not to go for anything too terribly depressing or blatantly unfriendly, you know? So no "I drink to our ruined house" (Anna Akhmatova, "The Last Toast") and no "What but design of darkness to appall?–/If design govern in a thing so small" (Robert Frost, "Design"), despite their iconicity and punchiness and despite my personal affection for them. Definitely no "What evil, what unspeakable crime/Have you made your life worth?" (W.D. Snodgrass, "After Experience Taught Me..."). Sylvia Plath was basically entirely disqualified on this criterion.^[3]

An important thing to take from all this is that these are very much favorite lines from poems rather than lines from favorite poems. Like, I have a bit from Luke Kennard's Notes on the Sonnets on here, but it's not from my very favorite poem in the collection^[4] because there was just no way to condense it down enough. On the flip side, I like "Rhapsody on a Windy Night" well enough, but the bit I've included here is the only part I love.

header messages

"...hum a little, Mr Bones."

—John Berryman, "Dream Song 76"

"I see him there on a night like this but cool..."

—Anne Carson, "On Ovid"

"...the way/that desire can make anything into a god."

—Mark Doty, "The Death of Antinous"

"Midnight shakes the memory/As a madman shakes a dead geranium."

—T. S. Eliot, "Rhapsody on a Windy Night"

"Something there is that doesn't love a wall..."

—Robert Frost, "Mending Wall"

"What peaches and what penumbras!"

—Allen Ginsburg, "A Supermarket in California"

"We speak only/to the dead, someone tells me..."

—Elisa Gonzales, "After My Brother's Death, I Reflect on the Iliad"

"Innocence is no earthly weapon."

—Geoffrey Hill, "Ovid in the Third Reich"

Διὸς δ’ ἐτελείετο βουλή.

("And the will of Zeus was done.")

—Homer, Il. 1.5

"Glory be to God for dappled things..."

—Gerard Manley Hopkins, "Pied Beauty"

"Gods make their own importance."

—Patrick Kavanaugh, "Epic"

"Unblessed in the evening air, unblessed."

—Luke Kennard, "'Look in the glass and tell the face thou viewest' (3)"

Illa fuit mentis prima ruina meae.

("That was the first fall of my mind.")

—Ovid, Heroides 12.32

Abstulerant oculi lumina nostra tui.

("Your eyes had robbed mine of light.")

—Ovid, Heroides 12.36

Non est, quam piget esse, pia.

("She who regrets being faithful is not.")

—Ovid, Heroides 14.14

Ars adeo latet arte sua.

("Art such that it hids its own art.")

—Ovid, Metamorphoses 10.252

Omnia mutantur, nihil interit.

("All things change, nothing is lost.")

—Ovid, Metamorphoses 15.165

"Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing."

—Sylvia Plath, "Child"

μήτε μοι μέλι μήτε μέλισσα

("Neither honey nor the honeybee for me")

—Sappho, fragment 146

Ὦ φάος ἁγνὸν/καὶ γῆς ἰσόμοιρ' ἀήρ...

("O holy light/and air equal upon the earth...")

—Sophocles, Electra 86–86

Fervet opus redolentque thymo fraglantia mella.

("The work hums along, the honey smells of thyme.")

—Vergil, Aeneid 1.436

Though I'm sure Aware would have loved going through and refresing the page one hundred million times to see them all (hi, Aware).^{^}
For all that his Notes on the Sonnets is set at a weird boundary-less, undefined sort of house party, context is actually really important to most of my favorite bits of his.^{^}
I did slip in one just because I do love her and also I don't like being told what to do, even by myself.^{^}
That would be "'Mine eye hath play'd the painter and hath stell'd' (24)", which is absolutely unforgettable.^{^}