Epidermal Macabre The Geranium Journey into the Interior In a Dark Time The Waking I Knew a Woman The Reckoning Night Journey My Papa's Waltz Elegy for Jane The Far Field ...

The Geranium When I put her out, once, by the garbage pail, She looked so limp and bedraggled, So foolish and trusting, like a sick poodle, Or a wizened aster in late September, I brought her back in again For a new routine-- Vitamins, water, and whatever Sustenance seemed sensible At the time: she'd lived So long on gin, bobbie pins, half-smoked cigars, dead beer, Her shriveled petals falling ...

Poems by Theodore Roethke and Elizabeth Bishop By Robert Hass August 9, 1998 A reader from Maryland writes to ask where the villanelle came from. I looked it up: a very old Italian folk song form brought into medieval French poetry and then brought into English by poets at the end of the 19th century. It is based on an intricate rhyme scheme and a schematic repetition of key lines. The effect is ...