
Poetry Thursday – Genius
- 1.Poetry Thursday!
- 2.Poetry Thursday!
- 3.Poetry almost Thursday, Thanksgiving Edition
- 4.The first day of December, Poetry Thursday
- 5.Boy At the Window — Poetry Thursday
- 6.A Poem About Evolution — Poetry Thursday
- 7.Like Snow – Poetry Thursday
- 8.The Peace of Wild Things – Poetry Thursday
- 9.Rain – Poetry Thursday
- 10.The Real Work – Poetry Thursday
- 11.To The River – Poetry Thursday
- 12.A Beautiful Poem About Internal Darkness
- 13.Poetry Thursday – School Prayer
- 14.Poetry Thursday – Genius
- 15.Poetry Thursday – Soon This Space Will Be Too Small
- 16.A Poem from Stephen Harrod Buhner
- 17.To Bless the Space Between Us – Poetry Thursday!
- 18.Poetry Thursday – A Quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupery
- 19.Poetry Thursday – Sarah Cleghorn
- 20.On a Tree Fallen Across the Road by Robert Frost
- 21.A Noiseless Patient Spider by Walt Whitman
- 22.My Will by Lorna Goodison
- 23.Going Away – A Poem from the Quechua
- 24.Blessing by John O’Donohue
- 25.The Trouble with Poetry by Billy Collins
- 26.Wild Geese by Wendell Berry
- 27.Silence of the Fall by Louisa Paulin
- 28.Poetry Thursday – Karl Ove Knausgaard
- 29.Snow Day by Billy Collins – Poetry Thursday
- 30.Winter Solstice by Jodi Aliesan – Poetry Thursday
- 31.A Brief For The Defense by Jack Gilbert
- 32.Lost by David Wagoner
- 33.Fiddling with the Idiot by Hafiz
- 34.The Sixth of January by David Budbill
- 35.Two Tramps in Mud Time by Robert Frost
- 36.What We Need is Here by Wendell Berry
- 37.Keep Moving Forward by Mitchell Greenwood
- 38.When I am Among the Trees by Mary Oliver
- 39.Praying by Mary Oliver
- 40.Thirst by Mary Oliver
- 41.Blueberries by Mary Oliver
- 42.The Sycamore by Wendell Berry
- 43.Jealous Hearing Someone Laugh by Hafiz
- 44.Advice to Myself by Louise Erdrich
- 45.Egg by C.G. Hanzlicek
- 46.The Broken Gourd by Wendell Berry
- 47.Another Spring by Kenneth Rexroth
- 48.Poetry Thursday – the Visionary Paintings of Paul Laffoley
- 49.Two Poems by Mary Oliver
- 50.What If? A poem by Ganga White
Genius
was what they called you in high school
if you tripped on a shoelace in the hall
and all your books went flying.
Or if you walked into an open locker door,
you would be known as Einstein,
who imagined riding a streetcar into infinity.
Later, genius became someone
who could take a sliver of chalk and squire pi
a hundred places out beyond the decimal point,
or a man painting on his back on a scaffold,
or drawing a waterwheel in a margin,
or spinning out a little night music.
But earlier this week on a wooded path,
I thought the swans afloat on the reservoir
were the true geniuses,
the ones who had figured out how to fly,
how to be both beautiful and brutal,
and how to mate for life.
Twenty-four geniuses in all,
for I numbered them as Yates had done,
deployed upon the calm, crystalline surface-
by Billy Collins