Aug. 1st, 2012

somethingdarker: (Default)
Divert yourself with 19th century Russian novels - Dean Young "So the Grasses Grow" [Poetry April 2005]

More glories than he bought at Aberdeen - T.W.P. "Letter Second: To Thomas Carlyle, Esquire, London" [The Knickerbocker v.22, no.1, July 1843]

Acheron )

Fashioned of Aegean foam and languorous moonlight - Arthur Stringer "Hephaestus"

Broke in a surf of blood along the Aisne - Alan Seeger "The Aisne (1914-15)"

In the shadow of the Alamo - Molly Spotted Elk [Molly Alice Nelson] "[Down in the land of roses]"

Everything seems romantic in Alaska - Victoria Chang "A Woman with a Bird"

Hallowed fair Albion's selectest age - William Wallace "The Stage" [Graham's Magazine v.XXI no.1, July 1842]

And Albyn's thousand harps awake - Felicia Hemans "Wallace's Invocation to Bruce"

The august eye of Aldebaran - Lola Ridge "Fame"

Alexandria )

Alps.

That cloak the Amazon and its serpentine tributaries - Bruce Boston & Robert Frazier "A Compass for the Mutant Rain Forest"

America.

Andes )

Andromeda )

On tiptoe from childhood to Annunciation - Rainer Maria Rilke "Mary Virgin" transl. by Jessie Lemont

Antarctic.

To render strong Antares blind - Clark Ashton Smith "The Star Treader"

The still shimmering plastic shards of the Anthropocene - Keith Taylor "I Will Lift Up Mine Eyes"

For a seat on Appalachia's brow - Joseph Rodman Drake "To a Friend"

Aquarius )

Arcadia )

Publicity is the keystone in the Arch of Triumph - Rudolph Valentino "Reflections at Random (To A.T.)"

In pre-Archaean periods of elemental stress - William Hodgson Ellis "When You and I were Young, Adam"

Arctic.

Arcturus )

Shall learn the quietness of Arden - Sterling A. Brown "To a Certain Lady, in Her Garden"

Argo )

The sighing zephyrs of sandy Argos - Edward J. O'Brien "Hellenica"

Ark.

Paper all of Arkansas with your missing - Hala Alyan "Aleppo"

Murderers entombed behind Arkham's walls - Andrew Kozma "The Black Death" [Strange Horizons 8 Sept. 2025]

Armada.

Armageddon )

In Arno's vale you made yourself a nest - T.W.P. "Letter Fourth to Walter Savage Landor, Florence. by the Hands of Samuel Rogers, Esq., London" [The Knickerbocker v.22 no.4, Oct. 1843]

Assyria )

Athens.

Atlantic.

Atlantis.

Under the frigid twinkling of Gemini and Auriga - Andre F. Peltier "Hockey Night in Emmett County"

Avalon )

What a gradient through Avernus - A Provisional Committee of Contributors "The Grand General Junction and Indefinite Extension Railway Rhapsody" [Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, no.CCCLXI, v.LXII, Nov. 1845]

Avon )

When Ninevah and Tyre and Baalbec of the waste went down in blood - Odell Shepard "The Watcher in the Sky"

Babel.

The red moon from Babelmandel's strand looks - N.H. Carter "[No verdure smiles; no crystal fountains play]" [The Knickerbocker v.22, no.1, July 1843] (Island currently known as Perim)

Babylon.

In vain perused her Baedeker's close-printed sheets - Leonard Bacon "Fame"

spent my days staring into the eye of the Baltic - Asiya Wadud "attention as a form of ethics [excerpt]"

A mass grave of all our Barbies interred in a pyramid - Josh Pearce "Plastic Paradise Awaits" [Strange Horizons 2 Feb. 2025]

Bastile )

Bedlam )

Airs from the Beggar's Opera on broken fiddles played - Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman "The Beggar King"

Where the remote Bermudas ride - Andrew Marvell "Bermudas"

Through Bermuda triangles of blood - Kamilah Aisha Moon "Fibroids"

While Bethel's thunder peal'd another story - J. Fairfax McLaughlin writing as Pasquino "The American Cyclops, the Hero of New Orleans, and Spoiler of Silver Spoons"

Wise Men lost on their way to Bethlehem - Martin Espada "Flowers and Bullets"

For a true bit of Birmingham's best brass - T.W.P. "Letter Second: To Thomas Carlyle, Esquire, London" [The Knickerbocker v.22, no.1, July 1843]

The psychosis behind Birth of a Nation - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Whistle"

Black Sea )

Cheap balloon juice of a Blarney brew - Wallace Irwin "An Inside Con to Refined Guys"

Over the horizon of the Blue Ridge Mountains - Aliki Barnstone "The Sign as You Exit the Artist's Colony Says 'The Real World'"

And started up Box Hill after the moon - Amy Lowell "On a Certain Critic" [The Little Review, Mar. 1917, v.3, no.9]

A bucketful of Boyne to put the sunrise out - T.M. Kettle "Ulster (A Reply to Rudyard Kipling)"

Brazil )

And exiled Britons toss their daily port - T.W.P. "Letter Second: To Thomas Carlyle, Esquire, London" [The Knickerbocker v.22, no.1, July 1843]

Swim the violent current down Broadway - Angela Liu "Dow Jones Dream"

Tales that haunt the Brocken and whisper down the Rhine - John Greenleaf Whittier (uncredited) "Cobbler Keezar's Vision" [The Atlantic Monthly v.07 no.40, Feb. 1861]

As it festers every August in Brooklyn - Nicole Callihan "Summer Elegy"

Byzantine/Byzantium )

Ten gold suns in California - Vachel Lindsay "The Golden Whales of California"

Through the depths of the Cambrian fen - Langdon Smith "Evolution"

Camelot )

Canaan )

Martyrdom in the far Canada of a hospital room - Thom Gunn "Lament"

Caribbean )

Carthage )

Caspian [Sea] )

A humble cloud can bust the lamp of Cassiopeta [sic] - John Grey "Skywatching"

Caught sturgeon in the reed-filled Caspian - Juliana Spahr "December 2, 2002"

Captured in Syrian ivory and Caucasian tin - Eric Ekstrand "Family Solo"

Snow-clad Cenis' heart of stone might melt - E.B. Impey "The Savoyard" [Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction v.20 no.573, Oct. 27, 1832]

The many intricate songs of birds flying in Central Park - Nancy Mercado "New York at 42"

Within that curtain of Charybdis - Grenville Mellen "Niagara"

Who tills the Chersonesus' fruitful soil - Euripedes "Hecuba" transl. by Michael Wodhull

an intermingling of viridian and chetwode horizons - Raina J. León "making life on a palette"

You're Iowa in the novel about Chicago - Jaswinder Bolina "Portrait of the Minor Character"

On Chimborazo's summits treads sublime - Anna Laetitia Barbauld "Eighteen Hundred and Eleven"

The ridged wings of Chicxulub's impact - M. Frost "Pterosaur" [Strange Horizons 22 Sept. 2025]

Curtailed by the ever-growing Christmas trees - Nwuguru Chidiebere Sullivan "Gosh, It's Too Beautiful to Exist Briefly in a Parallel Planet"

Cimmerian depths of mystery and sin - Iris Tree "Streets"

Under the comfort of Cincinnati fog - Yalie Saweda Kamara "Listening to Nina Simone Sing 'Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues'"

From Clee to heaven the beacon burns - A.E. Housman "A Shropshire Lad I"

Drive by Coachella to the Salton Sea - Christian Gullette "Coachella Elegy"

Seek Cocytus' stream that runs wailing below - Friederich Schiller "Group from Tartarus" transl. not credited

And long the way from Colchis - Bayard Taylor "Hylas"

They nailed the Colosseum down - Oliver Herford "J. Pierpont Morgan"

Colossus of Rhodes )

Hands it back like prizes from Crackerjack - Sarah Getty "That Woman"

Our Cressy's too have dwindled since to penny things - Thomas Hood "A Lament for the Decline of Chivalry" [Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction v.10 no.288, supplementary number, 1828]

Re-staging that same old Cretaceous deathmatch - Catherynne M. Valente "What the Dragon Said: A Love Story"

By the slaughter of the Cretan bull redeemed - Euripedes "Hercules Distracted" transl. by Michael Wodhull

That loved herb which best in Cuba grows - T.W.P. "Letter Second: To Thomas Carlyle, Esquire, London" [The Knickerbocker v.22, no.1, July 1843]

The last age by Cumae's Sibyl sung - Virgil "Eclogues IV" (transl. not identified)

Reduced to the greeting card section of CVS - Ishmael Reed "Skin Tight"

Cast in the unstilted Cyclades - T.S. Eliot "Sweeney Erect"

They raze Cygnus with worries for the next day - John Grey "Skywatching"

Before erupting in a field of Dakota corn - Vijay Seshadri "Trailing Clouds of Glory"

From the source of the Moldau to that of the Danube - "The Good Goddess of Poverty [A Prose Ballad, translated from the French]" [The Continental Monthly v.4 no.3, Sept. 1863]

Dead Sea )

Elbowed thru a Deadwood City saloon door - Paul Cameron Brown "Ace of Spades"

Delaware )

Delphi.

The calorie content of the Diet of Worms - Howard Nemerov "To David, About His Education"

Where Dionean Caesar's star comes forth in heaven - Virgil "Eclogues IX" (transl. not identified)

Disney )

In those weird wastes of Dixie - Effie Lee Newsome "Exodus"

Sprung from Dodona's tree oracular - Kostes Palamas "Our Home" transl. by Aristides E. Phoutrides

Domesday Book )

Their domino theory of quarrels - John Trudell "Restless Situations"

Demagogue tongues that sow the dragon-teeth - Thomas Aird "The Old Soldier" [Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine no.CCCCXXXVI, v.LXXI, Feb. 1852]

Eden.

Egypt.

El Dorado )

And lurked before the walls of Elsinore - Jo Walton "The Godzilla Sonnets: ii) Godzilla in Shakespeare"

Elysium.

The emperor's new clothes aren't my size - John Trudell "Isn't My Life/Elk Song"

England/English.

As Demeter mourned through many-fountained Enna - Arthur Stringer "Hephaestus"

Convoluted Enochian cyphers occupying and freeing up the mind - Bogi Takács "Torah and Secular Learning"

Houses Pegasus and Equules in its dusty windows - John Grey "Skywatching"

The shades profound of Erebus, beneath the ground interred - Euripedes "Helen" transl. by Michael Wodhull

Etna )

Euphrates )

Europe )

Crossed the boisterous Euxine tide - Euripedes "Hercules Distracted" transl. by Michael Wodhull
[Black Sea]

The square root of Everest - Howard Nemerov "To David, About His Education"

Where the snake and alligator lurk in endless everglades - George B. Peck "The Vision: Inscribed to Teachers to Contrabands in the South" [The Continental Monthly v.6 no.6, Dec. 1864]

Evolution called itself a natural history store - Margaret Ross "Evolution" [store called Evolution]

Exodus.

A longhorn winding its bells through the Field of Reeds - Ishmael Reed "I Am a Cowboy in the Boat of Ra"

Grieved in Florence for April sallies - Anne Spencer "Life-Long, Poor Browning..." [Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Negro Poets, ed. by Countee Cullen, 1927]

Red tide strangling Florida's shore - Teri Ellen Cross Davis "Migraines have their say"

While Fomalhaut peers in through southward mists - H.P. Lovecraft "Fungi of Yuggoth [XIV. Star-winds]"

Never really left the Forbidden City of your heart - Alexandra Seidel "The City that Wasn't There"

Our private fountain of youth - Andre F. Peltier "After Soccer Practice"

France )

That Sinbad once sailed to Gaza - Ammiel Alcalay "My Apologies"

Gehenna )

Gemini )

Germany )

Gethsemane.

The jagged cheek of Gibraltar - Ariana Reines "Blue Palestine"

Glass Slipper )

Golconda's pearls and diamonds rich - Manuel José Othón "The River" transl. by Alice Stone Blackwell

in the beginning was the gold rush - Jayson P. Smith "on fathers & swords"

Golden Age )

That you will worship a golden calf - "The Seaside Sibyl"

Golden Fleece )

The sun remembered Golgotha - Elinor Jenkins "Ecce Homo!"

Gomorrah )

The wretched hour I ty'd the Gordian Knot - "The Pleasures of a Single Life, Or, The Miseries of Matrimony" [1709]

Gotham's three wise men we be - Thomas Love Peacock "The Men of Gotham"

Grail.

Preaches the holy search for a Grand Unifying Theory - Kaya Skovdatter "What Beautiful Heavens These"

crawled inside a grandfather paradox - M. Darusha Wehm "The Chrononaut"

Unwound them where the Great Bear swung - Francis Sherman "A Canadian Calendar: X. Fellowship"

Rolls and laps in a new Great Flood - Giorgiomaria Cornelio "La specia storta (The Bent Species)" transl. by Moira Egan

Greece/Greek.

Where Greenland's everlasting glaciers rise - W.H. Rhodes "Masonry"

Takes his sacramental sip of Guinness and resets the sky - M.C. Childs "The Admiral Pub Pinball Repairman Repairs Witch Mountain" [Strange Horizons 19 May 2025]

Hades.

Fugitive lives docking in Halifax - Jay Wright "Somewhere between here and Belen"

Give Harlem's king one spoon - Bob Kaufman "Lorca"

Hesperides.

Long dead before Hollywood dividends could ever come - G. O. Clark "Mary Has a Prophetic Vision"

Kissing the dust of the Holy Land - Adelaide Anne Proctor "Verse: Rest"

Seed of the fierce flame that burned on Horeb - Lola Ridge "Firehead part III: Judas 3: The Void"

Where slain umbrellas travel across the Hudson River - Sally Wen Mao "Resurrection"

Has robbed the spoil of Hybla's bees - Maurice Baring "Phedre"

Wander through wild Hyperborean glades - Hilaire Belloc "A Moral Alphabet: K"

Iberia's brood with iron sway kept down - M.E. Thropp "The City of Mexico. Written While the War Was Pending" [Graham's Magazine v.XXII no.12, Dec. 1848]

The unmagical invitations of Iceland - Seamus Heaney "North"

Descending over Ida's slopes of snow - W.E.A. "The Buried Flower" [Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, no.CCCXCIII, July 1848, v.LXIV]

Iliad )

India/Indian )

As the Indus turns him back - Vachel Lindsay "Shantung, or the Empire of China Is Crumbling Down"

You're Iowa in the novel about Chicago - Jaswinder Bolina "Portrait of the Minor Character"

Before the mad clicking on an iPod commenced to spin - Dimitri Reyes "Speakers"

Too greatly noble for this iron age - Aldous Huxley "Villiers de l'Isle-Adam"

On Hell's last engine of the Iron Cross - Richard Le Gallienne "To Belgium"

When Israel's race from bondage fled - Charles Sprague "An Ode Pronounced Before the Inhabitants of Boston, September the Seventeenth, 1830, at the Centennial Celebration of the Settlement of the City"

Fair Italy with atmosphere of fire - David Gray "The Luggie I [sonnet]"

Taking the treacherous road to Ithaka - Tony Hoagland "The Third Dimension"

Jacob's Ladder )

Jericho.

Jerusalem )

Jordan.

A Judas' kiss will burn your cheek - Frank Horne "On Seeing Two Brown Boys in a Catholic Church"

Shackles fall upon the Judgment Day - Jean Toomer "Cotton Song" [Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Negro Poets, ed. by Countee Cullen, 1927]

Jupiter.

And Kansas knew his valor when he fought her rights to save - "The Kansas John Brown Song" [The Continental Monthly v.1 no.6, June 1862]

Upheavals in the steppes of Kazakhstan - Janet Kauffman "Undercurrent"

that hauled Kilimanjaro into Kentucky - upfromsumdirt (Ron Davis) "To Stand Down (And To Stand By)"

that hauled Kilimanjaro into Kentucky - upfromsumdirt (Ron Davis) "To Stand Down (And To Stand By)"

That locked King Philip's War in its annulated core - Stanley Kunitz "The Testing-Tree"

Pack a snack-bag with the Kraft food groups - Geoffrey Brock "Trip Hop"

La Mancha's cavalier reposes - Benjamin West Ball "Elfin Land"

Driven by the winds from the great Lake Victoria - Nicolás Guillén "The Clouds" transl. by Aaron Coleman

Latin )

Latmos )

Lebanon )

Lent )

Lethe.

Bees whose stings were deadlier than the Libyan asp - Hanford Lennox Gordon "The Captain's Story"

By Lima's crumbling walls I'd pondered - E. Curtiss Hine, U.S.N. "Homeward Bound" [Graham's Magazine v.XXXII no.6, June 1848]

Limbo.

Darkness from the Little Dipper's spoon - Chris Dombrowski "Statesboro Blues"

London.

Los Angeles )

Fare with undiminished speed toward Lyra's stars - Harry Martinson "Aniara 13" transl. by Stephen Klass and Leif Sjöberg

The roads go out to Macedon - Furnley Maurice "Little Boys"

Let someone else ascend the heights of Machu Picchu - Dana Gioia "Travel"

The red clay of Macon dusting his bones - Peter Balakian "Little Richard"

The hundred year old air in Macy's - Natalie Goldberg "Home"

A gift from Madagascar - Timothy Donnelly "Hymn to Edmond Albius"

Only the bullying sun of Madrid - Seamus Heaney "Singing School: 4. Summer 1969"

Like the tearful saint of Magdala - S.R.H. "Mabel" (in The Cornhill Magazine v.1 no.3)

Who visited Magic Kingdom every summer - Leonora Simonovis "Little Bruja"

Manhattan )

Manna.

Chalice from Marah's bitterest spring distill'd - Judas Hallevy bar Samuel "The Burden of Sion" transl. by Joseph Mainzer and adapted by Delta [Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, no.CCCLXVI, v.LIX, Apr. 1846]

Marathon.

The black lungs of the Marlboro woman - Hilarie Jones "The Teacher"

Mars.

That redder rain on bloody Marston Moor - "The Watchword" [The Continental Monthly v.1 no.2, Feb. 1862]

The Mayan night breathing deep - Joseph Bruchac "Neh Tsoi"

On the way to Mecca, many dangers - Rumi "Someone Digging in the Ground" transl. by Coleman Barks

Black Mercedes with the Ayn Rand vanity plate - Kevin Prufer "Bread and Cake"

Mercury.

Scrolling through Merriam Webster's youngest words - Jen DeGregorio "No Isms Except Neologism"

O'er the Midgard-monster mighty Thor loomed - Hanford Lennox Gordon "Pauline"

Revealing the curved arc of our shared Milan - Kiki Petrosini "Terrorem"

Milk and Honey

Milky Way.

In which I escape to the Minnesota lakes - Jameka Williams "Self-Care is a Psy-Op"

Mississippi.

Plant vigor along the Missouri - francine j. harris "Oregon Trail, Missouri"

Come close to the Mojave's affection - Faylita Hicks "Self-Care"

From the source of the Moldau to that of the Danube - "The Good Goddess of Poverty [A Prose Ballad, translated from the French]" [The Continental Monthly v.4 no.3, Sept. 1863]

Trapped in an attic with rats that play Monopoly - Fleda Brown "Afternoons at the Lake"

Face to face with Monsanto - Bruce Smith "Ballad and Proposition"

Half a mile down from Monticello - Tess Taylor "Eighteenth Century Remains"

Moscow )

The motown long plays for the comeback of Osiris - Ishmael Reed "I Am a Cowboy in the Boat of Ra"

Naples )

In the best accent of Nebraska's plain - Leonard Bacon "Fame"

Nepenthe )

Neptune.

New England )

Shed these wools of my first winter in Upstate New York - Jen DeGregorio "No Isms Except Neologism"

Niagara Falls.

Nile.

Ninevah.

Noah's Ark: See Ark

You'd better ask the cold North Sea - Rudyard Kipling "Frankie's Trade"

Between Orion and the Northern Wain - Arthur Davison Ficke "To John Cowper Powys, on His 'Confessions'"

Those specters thawing out of the Northwest Passage - Sonya Taaffe "Amitruq Nekyia"

Norway )

Old World.

Olympian/Olympus.

Omaha )

Ending in an ouroboric blaze of regret - Hal Y. Zhang "Majorana, Back Again"

Over the blue Ozark foothills of my wishes - Carl Sandburg "Wilderness"

Pacific )

At once Baroque and Paleolithic - Caroline Harper New "The Archaeology Magazine"

Jewels lost in Palmyra of old - Charles Baudelaire "The Benediction" transl. not credited

Paris [city].

Parnassus )

Where Time has dallied with the Parthenon - David Gray "The Luggie I [sonnet]"

Trying to transfer at the Pearly Gates - Wallace Irwin "An Inside Con to Refined Guys"

A treeful of angels at Peckham Rye - William Rose Benét "Mad Blake"

Houses Pegasus and Equules in its dusty windows - John Grey "Skywatching"

Where Pelion's twilight shadow falls - Bayard Taylor "Hylas"

Filled your streets with your comic Pentecost - T.M. Kettle "Asquith in Dublin"

Levelled Pergamus' beleaguered towers - Euripedes "The Trojan Captives" transl. by Michael Wodhull

Persia )

Perugia's portals and Siena's towers - Elizabeth Rachel Chapman "A Little Child's Wreath XXXVI"

The key to a philosopher's stone - Noel Quiñones "Orange"

Phlegethon )

Phoenicia )

Phrygia )

By steeds that browsed the Phthian lawn - Euripedes "Rhesus" transl. by Michael Wodhull

Half breed son of Pisces and Aquarius - Ishmael Reed "I Am a Cowboy in the Boat of Ra"

The mean annual rainfall on Plato's Republic - Howard Nemerov "To David, About His Education"

Pleiades.

Graze my palm on the Pliocene - Diane Raptosh "American Zebra: Praise Song for the Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument"

Pluto/Plutonian.

Rifling Polaris and the Seven Stars - E.J. Pratt "The Fog"

Pompeii )

Drawn like apostles toward Popocatépetl - Mara Pastor "Los Bustos de Martí/The Busts of Martí" transl. by María José Giménez and Anna Rosenwong

Potomac )

Promised Land.

Punic )

I'll unpack my dark heart and Purell my hands - Geoffrey Brock "Trip Hop"

Purgatorio in the pond's reflection - Charles Wright "With Alighieri on Basin Creek"

Purgatory.

Roland's song comes down from the Pyrenees - Mark Jarman "Song of Roland"

Pythian )

a Galatea in Python too cold to share a bed with - Caroline Mao "When My Father Reprograms My Mother {"

Red Sea )

Rhine )

Where Rigel sends no word of might - Clark Ashton Smith "The Star Treader"

The Road of Ghosts is blue in the heavens - Margaret Noodin "They Arrive" transl. by the author

Clutching their holly on Roanoke island - Paul Cameron Brown "Ancient of Days"

Flies among the Rocky Mountains of my dreams - Carl Sandburg "Wilderness"

Rome.

the roundtable turned square - jessica Care moore "She Was"

Russia.

Rye )

Notes that resound in the caves of Sacromonte - Alexandra Lytton Regalado "The Garden of Earthly Delights"

Sagittarius )

An expanse of sand that beggars the Sahara - Tim Pratt "A Bestiary: Poor Bahamut"

How far is St Helena from a fight in Paris street? - Rudyard Kipling "A Priest in Spite of Himself: A St Helena Lullaby"

Must soon enchain St. Lawrence' [sic] mighty tide - B. Simmons "The Curse of Glencoe" [Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, no.CCCXXVII, v.LIII, Jan. 1843]

Foaming to the sewers of St. Paul - David Wojahn "August, 1953"

And lifts her dome yet higher than St. Paul's - "The Druriad" [1798]

That led to Salem's towers and temple high - J. Rheyn Piksohn "A Contrasted Picture: from 'Passion Ode,' an Unpublished Poem" [The Knickerbocker v.22, no.1, July 1843]

Where Salerno day-dreams in the noon - Josephine Preston Peabody "The Nightingale Unheard"

Drive by Coachella to the Salton Sea - Christian Gullette "Coachella Elegy"

Hot Santa Ana wind mopes across clay courts - Christian Gullette "The Fish"

Saturn.

Saxon )

Strewed their shorn tresses on Scamander's banks - Euripedes "Helen" transl. by Michael Wodhull

Scorpio )

Scotland/Scottish )

Across the silvery dusts of the Sea of Tranquility - Robert Frazier "The Mutant Forests of Mars"

Only the wind from the Seven Hills - Beulah Field "The Wayfarer"

With the stride of seven league boots - C.S. Lewis writing as Clive Hamilton "Dymer. Canto II"

Had heard the voice of the seven sins - Richard Le Gallienne "Sore in Need Was I of a Faithful Friend"

The holy kings ride down by Severn side - G.K. Chesterton "The Ballad of the White Horse: Dedication"

You must have died once in Seville - Andrea Cohen "More Stones"

Shanghai )

Followed Sherman's march, triumphant to the sea - W.H. Rhodes "The Love Knot"

Which made doomed Shinar a memento of human pride - W.H. Rhodes "The Merchant's Exchange"

Wandering across the porcelain Siberia - Joanie Mackowski "Ants [excerpt]"

Waded through rough surf to a sunny beach in Sicily - Nicholas Christopher "1943"

Perugia's portals and Siena's towers - Elizabeth Rachel Chapman "A Little Child's Wreath XXXVI"

Silent Lake with something of wild dimensions - Paul Cameron Brown "Reading the Tides: Petroglyph Park"

Sinai )

cut text="Sirius">Sits in Sirius' disc all night - Robert Frost "Bond and Free"

I plucked down Sirius like a pear - T.M. Kettle "The Lady of Life"

Where parching Sirius set in drought - Herman Melville "The House-top"

Sodom )

Solomon's Seal )

Some sudden spell Soviet doctors connected to his heart - Julia Kolchinsky "Naming"

Spain )

Sparta )

The iron lilies of the Strand - Richard Le Gallienne "A Ballad of London"

Stygian: See Styx/Stygian.

Styx/Stygian.

Sumer/Sumerian )

Superior throbbing her meter deep into the basalt - M. Bartley Seigel "Into the Thicket" [Lake Superior]

Syria )

Taj Mahals that rise out of the mist at dawn - Keith Taylor "Picasso and the Taj Mahal"

Old, with our crystalline bones of Tao - Wang An-Shih "Flourish Time-worn and I Wander Beguiled and Never Meet" transl. by David Hinton

For the vengeance of Tara's proud hill - "The Proclamation" [Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, no.CCCXXXIX, v.LV, Jan. 1844]

Tartarus.

Cast a ray to light lone Tasso's gloom - Marie J. Ewen "Corinna at the Capitol" [Chambers' Edinburgh Journal no.449, 7 Aug. 1852]

The radio impulse pouring from Taurus - Adrienne Rich "Planetarium"

Misplaced my faith in Tennessee - Randall Mann "End Words"

Where the Teslas spun their burnished wheels - David Wojahn "Inauguration Day, 2025"

Replicant echoes in red earth and Tesla coils - Sonya Taaffe "The Chymical Marriage"

Texas )

Thebes )

Thermopylae )

As if eating were a thousand and one nights - Allison Albino "Cast Iron"

Bathes his gory heel in Tiber's rills - W.H. Rhodes "Lost and Found"

I want to breathe in the Tide of cleanliness - Andrea Carter Brown "On Reading Allen Ginsberg's 'Homework'" [italics in the original]

Used to play it on the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates - Waring Cuney "Dust" [Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Negro Poets, ed. by Countee Cullen, 1927]

Time Machine.

Your golden lie of Tir-na-n'Og - T.M. Kettle "Dedication Sonnet to My Wife"

The time we didn't go to Topeka - Jaswinder Bolina "Aviary"

In foam and flame at Trafalgar - G.K. Chesterton "The Secret People"

An arm hanging from the branch of the Tree of Knowledge - Emilio Villa "Poetry is" transl. by Dominic Siracusa

Wrought our souls from the Tremadoc beds - Langdon Smith "Evolution"

Riding the backs of the Trojan Women - Patricia Goedicke "The Reading Club"
[play by Euripides]

Troy.

We will know when we give it a Turing test - David C. Kopaska-Merkel "Raised by Wolves"

Tuscan rhymes of love and wine and dance - Thomas Bailey Aldrich (uncredited) "An Idyl" [The Atlantic Monthly v.07 no.39, Jan. 1861]

Tyre )

From the Tyrrhene foam to the rent heart of Rome - Algernon Charles Swinburn "A Song of Italy"

Eternally exposed at Union Square - Sophie Fink "The Dogs Don't Forgive Us"

The U.S. school-to-prison state's laser-like vision - Joshua Bennett "Reparation"

Shed these wools of my first winter in Upstate New York - Jen DeGregorio "No Isms Except Neologism"

The orchestra whirls me wider than Uranus flies - Walt Whitman "Song of Myself"

Felt the burden of sin in Urban Outfitters - Taylor Byas "Conversion: On Cincinnati's Converted Churches, God, and Lucifer"

Went to Utah on a hired truck - Maya Marshall "The Collection Room"

Valhalla.

Vatican )

Venice.

The ticking clocks in Vermont sway back and forth - Major Jackson "On Disappearing"

The saccharine gardens of Verona - Mitchell Dawson "Poems: Under the Cypresses"

Versailles )

Vesuvius.

Wallowing in an orgy of Baroque facades and Victorian gingerbread - Samantha Pious "Interior Castle" [Strange Horizons 3 March 2025]

Virgo )

From the cold Caspian to the Volga thus the sturgeons pour - T.W.P. "Letter Second: To Thomas Carlyle, Esquire, London" [The Knickerbocker v.22, no.1, July 1843]

Their ears will hear the Wakhan ridge call - Usha Akella "Breaking bread with phonemes"

Walden Pond has been drained - Lawrence Ferlinghetti "Autobiography"

The haze of Wall Street touching clouds of double consciousness - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Day I Saw Barack Obama Reading Derek Walcott's Collected Poems"

Mud of Moscow, scum of Warsaw - Taras Shevchenko "To the Dead" transl. by Alexander Jardine Hunter

Washington's elite that vowed to drown them - Nancy Mercado "I Come to See for Myself"

In the drizzle of this wild west town - Bernadine Evaristo "Amo Amas Amat"

Woolworth )

Within the World-Tree's mighty arms - Richard Le Gallienne "A New Year Letter"

Xanadu )

Her great mansion on the shore of the Yellow River - Chan Tiu-lin "The Willow Leaf" transl. not credited [The Jade Flute, c.1960, Project Gutenberg]

Literary values before the days of YouTube - Elaine Equi "Cats, Now and Forever"

Zen )

Zion )


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somethingdarker: (Default)
I'm not dividing the science terms from the science fiction terms. I'm also throwing some quantum physics adjacent terms here, for now, because the don't fit elsewhere.


Apogee:
An apogee to the heart - Anthony Butts "Apogee"

Asteroid.

Astral.

Astrolabe:
The astrolabe of God's mysteries - Rumi "The Silence of Love" transl. by E.H. Whinfield

A bow about to launch the killer astrolabe - Dean Young "Acceptance Speech"

Astronaut.

Astronomy.

Aurora.

Betelgeuse:
Betelgeuse is a hell of a way to spend a night - Keith S. Wilson "there aren't enough idioms about the stars"

Big Bang.

Black Hole.

Blue Moon:
The blue moon wanes into another cold month - Keith Taylor "After the Holidays"

A blue moon for an instant caught - Cynthia Zarin "Blue Vase"

Blue Star:
The great blue star burns in the ghostland pale - Bliss Carman "A Northern Vigil"

The great blue star burns in the ghostland pale - Bliss Carman "A Northern Vigil"

Burgeoned by the gravity of blue stars and red dwarfs - R.B. Simon "The Galaxy that Swallowed Me from the Inside Out"

Comet.

Constellation.

Corona:
He who conjured the corona - Gregory Pardlo "Giornata 8"

See the corona of your face - Keith S. Wilson "Heliocentric"

Cosmic.

Cosmos.

Crescent Moon:
And never see the crescent moon of Hope - Denis Florence MacCarthy "Advance!"

Who sleeps in the curl of a crescent moon - Lincoln Michel "Another Tuesday Afternoon"

From the cup of the crescent moon - Sara Teasdale "The Wine"

The lake of the crescent moon dries out - Zheng Min "If Curses aren't Accompanied by Deep Thought #9: The Forgotten Yesterday (A dirge of ancient culture)" translator not credited. Source: https://projects.zo.uni-heidelberg.de/archive2/DACHS_Leiden/poetry/MD/Zheng_Min_trans.pdf

Dark Matter.

Dog Star:
Avoid the dogstar's autumn fires - "The Counsel of Pan" transl. by Rennell Rodd

The dog-star of treason grows dim - Oliver Wendell Holmes "The Last Charge" [The Atlantic Monthly v.13 no.76, Feb. 1864]

The green night-baying of the dog-star - D.H. Lawrence "Almond Blossom"

Dwarf [Star]:
Consume cold dwarfs and exploding nebulas - Mike Allen "Deluge"

Warp speed toward a dwarf star - Airea D. Matthews "Altitude"

Earth.

Evening Star.

Event Horizon.

Falling Star.

Freefall:
A broken elevator trying to contain its freefall - Alise Alousi "Skip"

Full Moon.

Galaxy.

Gas Giant:
Can eat all the stars and gas giants - Catherynne M. Valente "What the Dragon Said: A Love Story"

Gravity/Gravitation.

Gravity Well:
Climbing the beanstalk down the gravity well - Kendall Evans and David C. Kopaska-Merkel and Mike Allen "Rattlebox III"

Far from the deep yearning of gravity wells - Yoon Ha Lee "When Soft the Water Fell"

Great Bear:
Unwound them where the Great Bear swung - Francis Sherman "A Canadian Calendar: X. Fellowship"

Half Moon:
The prisoner of half moons - Khalil Gibran "Youth and Age"

Half moons ridged by the saw's tooth - Robert Hass "Heroic Simile"

Harvest Moon:
The harvest moon like some interloper - Anthony Butts "Eight Modes toward Desire"

The harvest moon is burning the waters - Li Po "Picking the Lotus" transl. not credited [The Jade Flute, c.1960, Project Gutenberg]

Ghost songs and love to the harvest moon - Carl Sandburg "Theme in Yellow"

Sing with the owl to the harvest moon - Elizabeth Schmuhl "Premonitions: #39"

Hesper [evening star]:
Sought out lone Hesper's diamond ray - B. Simmons "Moonlight Memories [Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, no.CCCCIII, v.LXV, May 1849]

Horizon.

Hunter's Moon:
Under the pollution of a hunter's moon - Donika Kelly "The Three Birds of the Milky Way"

The hunter's moon illuminates it with her bewitching rays - D.M. Matheson "Petoobok"

Among the sunset hills till the Hunter's Moon arise - Francis Sherman "A Canadian Calendar: VII. Three Grey Days"

Interstellar:
Across interstellar insterstitial spaces - Pixie Bruner "With Serviettes Upon Our Heads" [Strange Horizons 11 August 2025]

Cleaves the interstellar gloom - Robert Frost "Bond and Free"

Interstellar agonies of midnight - Louise Imogen Guiney "The White Sail"

Jupiter.

Leonids:
Meeting with great swarms of leonids - Harry Martinson "Aniara 3" transl. by Stephen Klass and Leif Sjöberg

Light Year.

Lunar.

Mars.

Mercury.

Meteor.

Meteorite:
Falls like meteorite backward into space - D.H. Lawrence "Tommies in the Train"

A meteorite etching a crater on my heart - Ian Li "Not Tied Down" [Strange Horizons 21 July 2025]

Glistening in the continuous rain of meteorites - May Swenson "After the Flight of Ranger 17"

Midnight Sun:
Her night will kisses that midnight sun - W.E. Christian "Weaning Time"

Mistook him for the midnight sun - Oliver Herford "Henrik Ibsen"

The setting midnight sun - J. Patrick Lewis "The European City Song"

bird bones whisper belligerently under midnight sun - K. Meera "Low Flying Owls" [Strange Horizons 21 April 2025]

Milky Way.

Moon.

Moon and Sun.

Moonlet:
A room inside an icy moonlet - David C. Kopaska-Merkel "She's in the Ice"

Moonlight.

Morning Star.

Nadir:
Wayfared at the nadir of the sun - Thomas Hardy "Murmurs in the Gloom (Nocturne)"

From the nadir deep up to the zenith - John Keats "Hyperion"

The joyous zenith and the mute nadir wait - Herman George Scheffauer "The Masque of the Elements"

Nebula.

Neptune.

New Moon.

North Star:
A dowry traded to the North Star - Semaj Brown "Almost Majnun"

Floating, floating, up to the North Star - Yalie Saweda Kamara "Listening to Nina Simone Sing 'Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues'"

By North Star or candlelight - Gregory Pardlo "Copyright"

Mandatory nostalgia for the northern star - Emilio Villa "1941 Piece" transl. by Dominic Siracusa

Northern Lights:
Searching for the truth in caves and under the Northern Lights - Margaret Noodin "I Am Undefeated" transl. by the author

A playmate of the Northern Lights - Tim Pratt "A Bestiary: Laughing Blood"

Across the darkness flung the ribbons of the Northern Light - Francis Sherman "A Canadian Calendar: X. Fellowship"

An Iceberg waltzed with the Northern Light - Albert W. Smith "The Arctic Ball"

Nova/Supernova.

Orbit.

Orrery:
A mental orrery implicit with stars in active orbit - Marie Ponsot "Imagining Starry"

Outer Space.

Parsec:
Somewhere parsecs deep behind your eyes - Mike Allen "Kandinsky's Garden"

Perseids:
The Perseids go on silently year after year - Richard Jackson "Listening to Coltrane's Alabama as the Perseids Fade Out"

Planet.

Those bodies in our solar system with names based in mythology and/or history may be found in one of these two documents: Potential Titles: Allusions - Historical/Mythological People/Beings/Groups [category] or Potential Titles: Allusions - Places/Items [category]. Few of the allusions relate to the moons, planets, etc., but some could be interpreted as doing so. When the names get their own posts, I'll put them here, too.

Pleiades.

Pluto/Plutonian.

Polaris:
An ever ready synonym for Polaris - Yalie Saweda Kamara "Listening to Nina Simone Sing 'Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues'"

Pole-Star.

Protostar:
Which pressure causes metamorphoses, protostar pre-nucleosynthesis - Chet'la Sebree "An End"

Pulsar:
Two pulsars fanning light at one another - Kimberly Quiogue Andrews "Poet Ventriloquizes the Beloved"

The thin pulse of long-dead pulsars - M.C. Childs "Snow Man"

Too weak for a black hole or a pulsar - Lydia O'Donnell "Doppler Effect"

Quarter Moon:
Strewn among quarter moons - Robert Hass "Poet's Work"

Quasar:
A magnified photograph of a distant quasar - Mary Jo Bang "The Actual Occurences"

Red Dwarf:
Burgeoned by the gravity of blue stars and red dwarfs - R.B. Simon "The Galaxy that Swallowed Me from the Inside Out"

Red Star:
Tumult of red stars exultantly - Wilfrid Wilson Gibson "Rupert Brooke"

Redshift:
A bridge redshifts toward oblivion - Ann K. Schwader "Spiral Scream"

Retrograde:
Your heart's in retrograde - Kate Light "There Comes the Strangest Moment"

Rocket.

Satellite.

Saturn.

Shooting Star.

Solar.

Solar Flare:
Memories scorch us like solar flares - Michelle Koubek "The Universe Is Dying"

Solar System.

Solar Wind:
Warned how these solar winds would leave - Samiya Bashir "Second Law"

Solar wind strokes the ice-wall into light - Toby MacNutt "Perihelion"

dust carried by solar wind - Jena Osman "Mercury Rising (A Visualization)"

A solar wind too strong to ride - Ann K. Schwader "Why We Left"

Solstice

Southern Cross:
The Southern Cross shimmering like a signet of hope - Christopher Buckley "Desire"

Space.

Space Race:
Arguing about the finish line of the space race - Libby Graham "Space Worm Poem" [Strange Horizons Fund Drive 2025]

Space-Time.

Star.

Starlet:
A thousand starlets glisten in the robe of night - "The Penitent Free-Trader" [Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, no. CCCXV, v.LXVII, May 1850]

Starlight.

Starred/Ill-Starred.

Starry.

Stellar.

Stellar Cluster:
Built their sky one story and one stellar cluster at a time - Mary Alexandra Agner "Adero's Wheel"

String Theory:
Teases string theory and quantum mechanics - Kaya Skovdatter "What Beautiful Heavens These"

Sun.

Sun and Moon.

Sunlight.

Sunspot:
A sunspot, parasol-shaded, kin to the trees - Monica Ferrell "Poetry"

Canopy the swollen sky with sunspots - Edward Hirsch "In Memoriam Paul Celan"

Supernova.

Telescope.

Universe.

Vacuum.

Venus.

White Dwarf:
The remains of a white dwarf will always rot - Lydia O'Donnell "Doppler Effect"

Wormhole.

Zenith.

Zero Gravity:
Experience the ultimate in zero gravity - Duane Ackerson "Infinite Zero"

From your zero gravity chair - Elizabeth Metzger "Control Feast"

Zero gravity democracy - Vickie Vertiz "Only we make beautiful things just to destroy them"

But zero gravity condenses nothing - Gretchen Tessmer "A Jar of Condensed Milk"

Zodiac.


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somethingdarker: (Default)
Potential Titles: Art/Craft [category].

Potential Titles: Words, Punctuation, Grammar [category].


Acoustic:
Where every footstep created mocking acoustics - Mouna Ammar "Azulelos of my Grandmother's Hallway"

Honing the acoustics, heralding the instant shifts - Mary Jo Bang "The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity"

Archetype:
Between neurosis and unconscious, between archetype and Self - Emilio Villa "Poetry is" transl. by Dominic Siracusa

Armature:
This armature of shipwreck splinters - Lisa M. Bradley "Nuestra Señora de las Maravillas Lost at Sea, 1527"

Awl:
Use wax, and thread, and awl - James Johnson [From the chapter header verses in Sugar and Spice on Project Gutenberg]

Backdrop.

Backstage:
Backstage ducks preening in the wings - Julie Babcock "Jonah's Trick"

Bobbin:
The bobbins keep threading a mazy dance - "Abroad"

Brush.

Camera.

Canvas.

Cardboard.

Center Stage:
The sole reason center stage was invented - Mary Jo Bang "Madonna Overview"

Ceramic:
A tote bag full of ceramic souvenirs - Helene Achanzar "The only poem I can write"

Ceramic tributes to the moon - Ira Goga "The Kitchen, Indexed"

Found my body in ceramic pieces - jessica Care moore "She Was"

Could break their ceramic silence - Caroline Harper New "Patients Regain Song Before Speech"

Chalk.

Charcoal.

Chisel.

Clay.

Potential Titles: Cloth/Fabric [category].

Crayon:
My fingers grow past crayon outlines - Mary Karr "Disgraceland"

Dye.

Easel:
To stoop above her easel's frame - Marguerite, Countess of Blessington "The Belle of a Season"

Potential Titles: Fabric/Fiber - Ways to Work with Them [category].

Gem.

Gouache:
The sky will be a gouache of scratches - Andrea Werblin "Barrio with Sketchy Detail"

Graph Paper:
Working with a slide rule protractor and graph paper - Nicholas Christopher "1943"

Highlighter:
The world before highlighter's applied - Carol Moldaw "Meditation on the Veranda"

Ink.

Inkstone:
Righteousness in inkstone underfoot - Tania Chen "To a Dear Immortal in a Foreign Land"

Jewel.

Kiln:
Salvage logs now kilned and carved - Kimberly Blaeser "Cadastre, Apostle Islands"

In predestination's kiln - John Updike "Marine Hotel, North Berwick, Scotland, May 1998"

Knapping:
A patient art, knapped from a core of flint - A.E. Stallings "Arrowhead Hunting"

Lacquer.

Lasercut:
Replaced by lasercut urns and polished stones - Sandra J. Lindow "Tombstone Tapestries"

Lathe:
Turned on a lathe of light - Conrad Hilberry "Egg"

As the planed length time feeds to the mind's lathe - Nick Laird "The Vehicles and the Tenor"

Potter's lathe of unmaking - Jerome Ellison Murphy "Red Delicious"

The world turned on in the lathe of time - Langdon Smith "Evolution"

Loom.

Lumber:
With all the lumber of six thousand years - Robert Blair "The Grave"

The lumberjack's alphabet covers loss and leisure - Russell Brakefield "Field Recordings"

Magic Marker:
A magic marker Venus de Milo - B. K. Fischer "Week 30 (Maternity Bathing Suit)"

Manuscript:
Medieval manuscripts where everyone important grows a halo - Jenny Browne "Late Fermata"

Heaved lava over carved stone and manuscript - R.B. Lemberg "Ranra's Unbalancing"

Illuminates the manuscript of the heart - Campbell McGrath "The Everglades"

Potential Titles: Metals [category].

Mortar.

Potential Titles: Musical Instruments [category].

Potential Titles: Musical Tools and Terms [category].

Needle.

Paint.

Paint Thinner:
Suggest the uses of paint thinner - James Marcus Schuyler "April"

Palette:
Using the palette we invent - Diane Ackerman "Letter to Dr. B--"

Spilling a palette of wine - Lou Barrett "Double Portrait with Wineglass"

Palette of honeyed ochre - Campbell McGrath "Joseph Brodsky in Venice (1981)"

Paper.

Parchment.

Pasteboard:
Where pasteboard federacies of Powers - Robert Graves "Whipperginny"

Pasteboard riddles and commedia deadpan - Sonya Taaffe "Muse"

Pastel.

Pen.

Pencil.

Pixel.

Plaster.

Porcelain.

Prop.

Rehearse.

Potential Titles: Rocks - Pretty Ones [category].

Sandpaper.

Sewing Machine:
Stooped over sewing machines in denim dust - Adrienne Rich "Yom Kippur 1984"

Shear.

Shuttle.

Slide Rule:
Working with a slide rule protractor and graph paper - Nicholas Christopher "1943"

Spindle.

Spinning Wheel:
Lines like spokes to a spinning wheel - Marilyn McCabe "Web"

Flax in search of a spinning wheel - Shveta Thakrar "Shadowskin"

Queen of the loom and spinning wheel - Too-qua-stee [DeWitt Clinton Duncan] "Cherokee Memories"

Spirit Gum:
Patched him together with spirit gum and spare parts - Denise Dumars "The Golem"

Spray Paint:
Spray paint odes for boarded up storefronts - Barbara Jane Reyes "Downtown Oakland Poem"

Stencil:
Stencilled on the petals of a bluebell - Helene Johnson "Trees at Night"

Built of stencils and explosive devices - Ada Limon "Fifteen Balls of Feathers"

Stitch.

Stucco:
This eerie glow of stucco sky - Meg Day "Big Sky Domestic"

A white stucco ceiling with its million spider-cracks - Tylor James "I Grew Up in a Haunted House"

Stylus:
Wrote on my heart with stylus of fire - Lola Ridge "Firehead part VIII: The Bondman 1: Mid-Afternoon"

Terracotta:
Terracotta for a lifelong love - Gerri Leen "Final Resting Place"

Thimble.

Thread.

Tile.

Trope:
A single dream trope for doubling - Mary Jo Bang "I Was Dreaming"

The habitual tropes of exclusion - Marilyn Hacker "Ghazal: The Dark Times"

Tropes purloining, graces coining - "London Lyrics: The Auctioneer's Ode to Mercury" [The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction v.13, no.365, 11 April 1829]

Severing thus the truth from trope - Coventry Patmore "The Angel in the House: Prologue"

Trowel:
One hand on the mason's trowel - John Greenleaf Whittier (uncredited) "Cobbler Keezar's Vision" [The Atlantic Monthly v.07 no.40, Feb. 1861]

Type.

Vanishing Point.

Vellum:
Sulfur match struck on vellum - Rasha Abdulhadi "Eleven Red Returns"

As vellum's dried hide insists - Mary Hickman "Eva Hesse"

An origami frog in a vellum crown - Ted Mathys "The National Interest"

Veneer:
Veneered in sudden wealth - Molly Spotted Elk [Molly Alice Nelson] "I never knew of such a place]"

Watercolor:
Sweatless as watercolour under glass - Thom Gunn "Autumn Chapter in a Novel"

Weft.

Whip-Stitch:
Whip-stitched into the lining of that question - Marisca Pichette "Are You a Good Witch"

Wire.

Woof.

Yarn.


Navigation Links:
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somethingdarker: (Default)
The limitation of this category is whether or not I recognize an allusion. Some of the Project Gutenberg poems are probably full of allusions that I just don't get.

Groups of people named for geographic areas or for whom geographical regions are named (if I recognize them as such) will be in the other allusions document.

Some overlap with Supernatural/Religious. Things that aren't consistently proper nouns may be there instead.


Asking some stick, like Aaron's, to bud - James Russell Lowell "At the Commencement Dinner, 1866, in Acknowledging a Toast to the Smith Professor"

One faithful Abdiel may fearless brave unnumbered rebel foes - "Columbia's Safety" [The Continental Monthly v.1 no.5, May 1862]

Wild as when Abel out of Eden died - Louise Imogen Guiney "On Some Old-Music"

Abraham )

Absalom )

Achilles.

Adam (Allusion).

The woes of Aeschylus resound prophetic - Kostes Palamas "The Answer" transl. by Aristides E. Phoutrides

Agamemnon )

I am the dream that Nero's mother had - George Sylvester Viereck "The Three Sphinxes" [Agrippina the Younger]

Ajax )

Aladdin )

Alcestis rises from the shades - Walter Savage Landor "[Past ruin'd Ilion]"

And stern Alecto spread about the flames of Tartarus - Kostes Palamas "A New Ode by the Old Alcaeus" transl. by Aristides E. Phoutrides

Alexander [allusion].

Like Alice through the looking-glass - Vachel Lindsay "A Doll's 'Arabian Nights'"

Allen Ginsberg )

Where Amaryllis lies in state - Oscar Wilde "Theocritus"

Amazon )

Dreamless long-dead Amen-hotep lies - Edward Thomas "Swedes"

Ammon's solar fount congeals - Benjamin West Ball "Concetto"

Ammut snapped up their hearts and swallowed - Tim Pratt "Ammut in Her Later Years"

Egypt's Amun roused from sleep - John Greenleaf Whittier "Snow-Bound"

A grapestone choked Anacreon and hushed his song - Thomas Bailey Aldrich "Wyndham Towers"

Telling the same stories Anaximander heard - Richard Jackson "Listening to Coltrane's Alabama as the Perseids Fade Out"

Andromache )

Mow through Andromeda spirals - Mike Allen "Deluge"

Prayed twice daily to Saint Anne - Chris Dombrowski "Comes to Worse"

To go see Anne Frank - Megan Fernandes "Amsterdam"

The last spark of Saint Anthony's fire - William Hodgson Ellis "Little White Crow"

And Antony with Egypt in his arms - Theodore Maynard "Sunset on the Desert"

Anubis )

Aphrodite )

Apollo.

Aquarius )

Arachne )

Archimedes )

And while about the maddened Ares raged - Kostes Palamas "A New Ode by the Old Alcaeus" transl. by Aristides E. Phoutrides

Like the giddy Argonauts we were - Cyrus Cassells "Altitude"

And Argus not omniscience - Ken Chen "Brief Lives: Io" [excerpts]

Ariadne.

Ariel [allusion].

Aristotle )

Artemis )

Arthur [allusion].

Ashtaroth )

Isaac Asimov )

Had I been another Aspasia - Richard Aldington "Hermes-of-the-Dead" [The Little Review, Mar. 1917, v.3, no.9]

Astarte )

In Astor's mansion, where the rich resort - T.W.P. "Letter Second: To Thomas Carlyle, Esquire, London" [The Knickerbocker v.22, no.1, July 1843]

Athena )

Atlas.

Die before the shears of Atropos - Julia Kavanagh "Sonnet"

Saint Augustine )

Aurelian )

Black Mercedes with the Ayn Rand vanity plate - Kevin Prufer "Bread and Cake"

Azrael.

On a mission to the Aztecs - Captain Owen Rutter "The Song of Tiadatha"

Start crying down the wrath of Baal - Nelson S. Bond "The Ballad of Blaster Bill" [Planet Stories summer 1941 issue]

Baba Yaga )

Bacchus/Bacchanal.

The heavy task of learning what Bach knew - Constance Fenimore Woolson "Commonplace" [Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, v.11, no.23, Feb. 1873]

Triumph erewhile of Bacon's fabled arts - Reginald Heber "The Whippiad: A Satirical Poem" [Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, no.CCCXXXIII, v.LIV, July 1843]

A fragment of the spectrum of Bahamut's shining scales - Tim Pratt "A Bestiary: Poor Bahamut"

As clearly as the ass explained to Balaam - "The Times" [The Knickerbocker v.10, no.4, October 1837]

Baldur )

As Bruce's followers shed the Baliol's blood - Delta "Lines Written in the Isle of Bute" [Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, no.CCCXXXVIII, v.LIV, Dec. 1843]

Balor )

Basho )

Some architectural details about Batman's cape - Dean Young "Sean Penn Anti-Ode" [Poetry July 2006]

Where Dante dwells with Beatrice - Sophie Jewett "The Translator to the Author" (preface to Jewett's translation of "The Pearl"

Beelzebub flaps his frozen wings - Erika L. Sanchez "The Loop"

Beethoven )

And cuckoo mingle with the thoughts of Bel - Reginald Heber "The Whippiad: A Satirical Poem" [Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, no.CCCXXXIII, v.LIV, July 1843]

All spent at Belial's shrine - Benjamin West Ball "The Penitent"

Belshazzar raised his eyes and saw - Frances E. Watkins Harper "The Jewish Grandfather's Story"

a cast net blessed by saint benedict - Amanda Gafford "Tigerlily"

Benjamin Franklin )

Covering Beowulf's greatest hits on your tin kazoo - Catherynne M. Valente "What the Dragon Said: A Love Story"

A nova's flare from out the coils of Berenice's hair - Harry Martinson "Aniara 55" transl. by Stephen Klass and Leif Sjöberg

You better believe that Big Brother is watching you - Jason P. Burnham "A Journey Through the Dystopiaverse" [Strange Horizons 9 June 2025]

William Blake )

Madame Blavatsky will instruct me in the Seven Sacred Trances - T.S. Eliot "A Cooking Egg"

The roof of Blue-Beard's palace - Vachel Lindsay "When the Mississippi Flowed in Indiana"

To Ruth the eyes of Boaz shone clear light - Victor Hugo "Boaz Asleep" transl. not credited

Worth a score of dead Boccaccios - James Russell Lowell "Fitz Adam's Story"

Even when the Bolsheviks took his home - Mike Allen "Kandinsky's Garden"

Bonaparte )

Toward the greenroom of John Wilkes Booth - Paul Gregory Nauert "Leaping Through the Centuries"

Boreal/Boreas.

Borgia )

Drink gin o'er the tombstone of Brian Boru - "The Proclamation" [Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, no.CCCXXXIX, v.LV, Jan. 1844]

Forever fixed on Brahma's airy throne - Benjamin West Ball "Elfin Land"

Drink gin o'er the tombstone of Brian Boru - "The Proclamation" [Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, no.CCCXXXIX, v.LV, Jan. 1844]

The most exquisite and maternal Brigid - Joyce Kilmer "A Blue Valentine"

John Brown )

As Bruce's followers shed the Baliol's blood - Delta "Lines Written in the Isle of Bute" [Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, no.CCCXXXVIII, v.LIV, Dec. 1843]

Like Brunhilde ringed with flaming fire - Alan Seeger "Liebestod"

Brutus )

Mummies, jackals, Buddhas, and the long stalled ride back - Roger Mitchell "Going Back"

Have come home laughing from the feast for Robert Burns - Mark Jarman "My Parents Have Come Home Laughing"

Byron )

Caesar.

Cain.

Caligula and Nero knew a godliness akin to mine - Thomas M. Disch "Ballade of the New God"

The gaunt sons of Calvin's iron breed - James Russell Lowell "Agassiz"

Calypso )

Down all the stretch of Carpetbaggers - Alexander Posey "The Fall of the Redskin"

A gin-fountain smashed by Carrie Nation - Wallace Irwin "An Inside Con to Refined Guys"

Summer nights of lightning bugs and Johnny Cash - Emerald ᏃᏈᏏ GoingSnake "Someday I'll Love--"

Cassandra )

Cassiopeia )

From which Castor and Pollux hatched - Marianne Moore "He 'Digesteth Harde Yron'"

Cato, true to parchment laws, protests with rigid hands - J.S.B. "Caesar" [Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, no.CCCLXXXII, v.LXII, Aug. 1847]

Celine who pinned the moon to a page - Michael Waters "Homo Sapiens" [Poetry, January 1988]

Cerberus )

Ceres.

And bowed the knees of servitued to Charlemagne - Robert Winkworth Norwood "His Lady of the Sonnets"

Charon.

Charybdis )

Chaucer )

Ere Cheops had builded his pyramid - Charles Mair "The Voice of the Pines"

Chicken little in a broken shell - Paul Bernstein "Day One of the Deluge"

Chiron in broken bathroom light - Beasa A. Dukes "After Watching 'Moonlight'"

Chopin )

Chronos )

State praises flow from lofty-sounding Cicero - J.S.B. "Caesar" [Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, no.CCCLXXXII, v.LXII, Aug. 1847]

Cimmerian depths of mystery and sin - Iris Tree "Streets"

And Caesar into Cincinnatus grew - Delta "Stanzas Written After the Funeral of Admiral Sir David Milne, G.C.B." [Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, no.CCCLVI, v.LVII, June 1845]

Far from Cinderella's dainty glass slippers - Cynthia Manick "A Taste of Blue"

Cincinnatus )

Circe.

Cleopatra )

In meads where blue Clitumnus shines - Rev. James Gilborne Lyons "A Welcome Sacrifice" [Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, no.428, 13 March 1852]

I'll take whatever prize sage Clotho gives - Friedrich Schiller "To the Fates"

Cole Porter never wrote a song about us - Ishmael Reed "Skin Tight"

Consult Coleridge on the Imagination - Stanley Moss "Winter Flowers"

The faith thrice broken that incurred Columbia's vengeful sword - M.E. Thropp "The City of Mexico. Written While the War Was Pending" [Graham's Magazine v.XXII no.12, Dec. 1848]

To see and understand Pierrot and Columbine - Arthur Davison Ficke "A Watteau Melody"

Columbus's doom-burdened caravels - J.C. Squire "Sonnet [There was an Indian]"

The twice-dead Confederates ghost their plots - David Wojahn "Inauguration Day, 2025"

The silence of lost Cosmonauts - Daisy Aldan "The Sky Is Moving Farther Back, Opaque"

'Twixt Goth and Cossack hounded - Israel Zangwill "For Small Mercies" [The Menorah Journal, v.1, 1915]

Coyote.

Croesus )

Cromwell )

The last age by Cumae's Sibyl sung - Virgil "Eclogues IV" (transl. not identified)

Cupid.

Mother of Stone, Cybele - Stephen Yenser "Petition on Santorini"

They raze Cygnus with worries for the next day - John Grey "Skywatching"

Daedalus.

That I have seen the Dagda's throne - C.S. Lewis "Spirits in Bondage part III: The Escape: XXVIII. Ballade Mystique"

Every heart sets up its separate Dagon - G.H.H. "Night and Morning" (from The Knickerbocker, v. 23:3, March 1844)

Dali )

The immemorial deeds of Danaan gods - A.E. "The Child of Destiny"

Danaë )

Daniel )

Dante [allusion].

Daphne )

having flung d'artagnan clear to luna's tepid stone - Andy Miller "All Those Bleached Bones"

Darwin )

David [Allusion, biblical].

The afternoon glows to me the old romance of David and Dora - D.H. Lawrence "Dreams Old and Nascent" [David Copperfield and Dora Spenlow]

Beyond the Skill of Doctor Dee - "Mundus Foppensis" [PG lists 'Dubious author: John Evelyn"]

Demeter )

Demosthenes )

Diana )

Dickens )

Emily Dickinson )

Zeus.


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somethingdarker: (Default)
Some of these don't fit the other categories while others could fit multiple categories (like critter). This also includes things that are borderline on being animals (like protozoa) for the same reason I've been putting mushrooms in the Plants category post and things that are probably mostly associated with one type of animal (like cub or flock) here. Dinosaurs are here because I don't want to put them in either Birds or Reptiles.


Abalone:
Within a crescendo of abalone light - Joy Harjo "Nine Lives"

The child with hair of ash and abalone - R.B. Lemberg "Long Shadow"

Alewive:
Catch alewives in their hands - Elinor Wylie "Atavism"

Amoeba:
Next in order to the amoeba - Muriel Rukeyser "The Conjugation of the Paramecium"

amoebas in your motherboards - upfromsumdirt (Ron Davis) "Spaceshp For Sale"

Amphibians [category].

Anemone/Sea Anemone.

Animal.

Animalcules:
Dodged Miro's famished halo of animalcules - Mike Allen "Carrington's Ferry"

Arachnoid:
The larval signs, the nets, the arachnoid - Giorgiomaria Cornelio "La consegna delle braci [The Distribution of Embers]" transl. by Moira Egan

Bacteria.

Barnacle.

Barracuda:
Barracuda in the blood - Ada Limon "Fin"

Barracudas hang in the water and watch - Alison Swan "Sand Key"

Bass:
Gave up their bass and speckled trout - Palmer Cox "The Brownies Fishing"

Beast.

Behemoth:
Entering the negative space of a corporate behemoth - David Henderson "Blues Franchise"

Bird [category]

Boll-Weevil:
Boll-weevil's coming, and the winter's cold - Jean Toomer "November Cotton Flower" [Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Negro Poets, ed. by Countee Cullen, 1927]

Brachiosaur:
Brachiosauruses by the bleachers - Haley Bossé "When the Time Comes to Split the Gym"

Bream:
Making a room bubble like a shoal of bream - Marianne Chan "The Lives of Saints"

Steered north for bream and bank martin - Jennifer Elise Foerster "American History"

Carnivore:
Place me above the carnivorous sea - Samuel A. Adeyemi "Atlantic"

Puzzles crowd your path like carnivorous plants - Sarah Getty "Presbyopia"

Near the bright lights and carnivorous shadows - Walter Léon Hess "Feline Philosophy by Thomas Cat: Twenty-Fourth Caterwaul"

Carnivores in their own essential food chain - Achy Obejas "Dancing in Paradise"

Carp.

Caterpillar:
Does the butterfly remember what the caterpillar did? - Danske Dandridge "Wings"

Centipede:
Writhe and bleed beneath the tread of the centipede - Joseph Rodman Drake "The Culprit Fay"

That loathsome centipede, Remorse - Henry S. Leigh "An Allegory Written in Deep Dejection"

Clam:
Every sober clam below her - John Greenleaf Whittier "Voyage of the Jettie"

With spoons of clam-shell - John Greenleaf Whittier "Snow-Bound"

My ears clams with mouths full of sand - Jake Adam York "Letter Written in Black Water and Pearl"

Cod:
Eat cod liver oil and oatmeal - Lou Barrett "Oliver Hill Hotel: 1932"

A liquor I mix'd with my cod-liver oil - Henry S. Leigh "Songs of the Sick Room No. 1: Cod Liver Oil"

Conch:
Dark scarf from the spiral of the conch - Dorsey Craft "The Pirate Anne Bonny Wishes Walt Whitman a Happy Birthday"

Who contains the echo in its conch - R.B. Lemberg "Long Shadow"

In the conch shell of darkness - Lola Ridge "Firehead part I: He 3: The Light"

Coral.

Cowrie:
Cowrie shells, tea leaves, coins - Jacqueline Johnson "Oracle"

Crab.

Crawfish:
Staring at the door of the crawfish's burrow - Edgar Lee Masters "Theodore the Poet"

Creature.

Critter:
Fluorescent critters drawing ribbons in the air - Anne Carly Abad "Where the Waves Meet"

Cub:
Seek out the cubs in the tiger's cave - Li Shang-yin "Poem for My Little Boy" transl. by Burton Watson

Contrails tracing messages to bear-cubs and insects - Bogi Takács "A Self-Contained Riot of Lights"

Cuttlefish:
As the crab does the cuttlefish - Mary Jo Bang "The Novel in Three Chapters"

Cuttlefish in this unnatural forest - Paul Cameron Brown "Slaughterhouse"

Cutworm:
The cutworm crawls in the almond-flower - Stephen Vincent Benet "The Last Vision of Helen"

Cyanobacteria:
Cyanobacteria tattoos feathering my metal skin - Wren Douglas "Fursonas Are Not Enough, I Need to Be a Moss-Coated Mech"

Daddy-Long-Legs:
Flung-out blue jays and limping Daddy long legs - Deema K. Shehabi "Gate of Freedom"

Dinosaur.

Dragonfish:
Rockstrewn caves where dragonfish evolve - Audre Lorde "Afterimages"

Earthworm:
Every earthworm's bristle & every seraph's six wings - Airea D. Matthews "Nevertheless: An Ecstatic Ode"

Eel.

Extraterrestrial:
how to explain brazil to an extraterrestrial - Angélica Freitas "microwave" [Poetry Jan. 2016] transl. by Tiffany Higgins

Fauna:
Fauna from a distant sun - Pablo Neruda "Ode to a Stamp Album" transl. by Margaret Sayers Peden

Fire Fish:
Did fire fish tumble under his blades? - Janet Kauffman "No Answering at this Time"

Fish

Flock

Flying Fish:
The time of the flying fish - Kaneko Misuzu "Whale Memorial" transl. by Sally Ito and Michiko Tsuboi

Fossil.

Germ.

Ghost Crab:
Prowling the wetlands for ghost crabs - Timothy Donnelly "Hymn to Life"

Glowworm.

Goldfish:
The crystal pond where gold-fish play - Mrs. Elizabeth Dimond "Thoughts on Creation"

Gold fish far above the black arches - John Gould Fletcher "Green Symphony"

Third cousin to the gold-fish - Adolf Wolff "The Babe"

Herbivore:
While burning herbivores strolled across a lean horizon - Bruce Boston "Surreal People"

Herd.

Hermit Crab:
Hermit crabs in shells just the size for sleep - Dorsey Craft "The Pirate Anne Bonny Becomes Our Mother"

A hermit crab seeing nobler shells - Adrienne Rich "Seven Skins"

The hermit crab who keeps me company - Cynthia Zarin "Orbit"

Herring:
Fed wild dogs overripe apples and herring - Ruth Awad "The Years of Water and Light" [Poetry Oct. 2019]

Hybrid.

Inchworm:
Made a library for inchworms - Stephen Kuusisto "Letter to Borges from London"

Insects [category]

Invertebrate:
Made to it an invertebrate overture - Aditi Machado "then"

Jellyfish:
A jellyfish swam in a tropical sea - Grant Allen "The First Idealist"

Synthetic wind of pulsing jellyfish - Tony Hoagland "Better than Expected"

The shore was shocked with jellyfish - Raymond McDaniel "Assault to Abjury"

Koi:
A school of koi pausing at the surface - Katie Ford "Koi"

Lake Trout:
Lake trout and rainbows below us - Keith Taylor "The Numbers at Kitch-iti-kipi"

Lamprey:
As uninvited as the sea lamprey - Adrian Matejka "Central Avenue Beach"

A forest of lances and lampreys - Pablo Neruda "Death" transl. by Jack Schmitt

Larva:
larvae ravening the bitter vine - Amy Beeder "My Poisonous Cousin the Pipevine Swallowtail"

The larval signs, the nets, the arachnoid - Giorgiomaria Cornelio "La consegna delle braci [The Distribution of Embers]" transl. by Moira Egan

The gold larvae may be clues - Janet Kauffman "No Answering at this Time"

The cicada's larva reveals narrow secrets - J. Michael Martinez "[Untitled]"

Leech:
The velvet howl of a holding leech - Mary Jo Bang "Origin of the Impulse to Speak"

Prosperous leeches settling to their fare - Stephen Vincent Benet "Lunch at a City Club"

Cobra-poison none may leech - Rudyard Kipling "The Outsong: Kaa"

A spirit so riddled with leeches - Erika L. Sanchez "Quincenera"

Leviathan.

Lifeform:
No lifeforms exploded from your soil - Lydia O'Donnell "Doppler Effect"

Limpet:
Tide pools that cradle the ribbed limpet and the rockbound star - Vijay Seshadri "Road Trip"

Lobster:
An intelligent lobster or well-inform'd crab - Henry S. Leigh "The Gift of the Gab"

The lobster cracking loose from its exoskeleton - Samantha Thornhill "38. Shedding the Old"

In the lobster-infested ruins of old Atlantis - Catherynne M. Valente "Aquaman and the Duality of Self/Other, America, 1985"

Mackerel:
How trout and mackerel plunged from the sky - William Archila "The decade the country became known throughout the world"

Mackerel that school by millions - Conrad Hilberry "Schooled in the Open Sea"

Mammals [category]

Marlin:
Whispered queries marlin-sharp - Lisa M. Bradley "Nuestra Señora de las Maravillas Lost at Sea, 1527"

Medusa.

Microbe.

Minnow.

Mollusk.

Moray:
Morays have teeth made for rending - Sara S. Messenger "Your Subcutaneous Mermaid"

Mussel:
Mussel of critical habit - francine j. harris "Oregon Trail, Missouri"

examining mussel shells, millennia in their hands - David Maduli "alameda point"

Shoals of mossy rocks and mussel shells - Alexander Posey "Song of the Oktahutche"

Nautilus:
I have seen the thin nautilus trimming her sail - F.B.C. "The Quadrupeds' Pic-Nic"

A curse inside nautilus - Hoa Nguyen "Oxbow Lake"

Iris of tumbled nautilus - Francis Brett Young "Five Degrees South"

Octopus:
Fair sister of anemone and octopus - Daisy Aldan "Everywhere in Constancy, He Is Intoning, Look! Look!"

The octopus's footprints moonlit - Donovon Kūhiō Colleps "Our Red Road"

Learning why one envies the octopus for its ink - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Day I Saw Barack Obama Reading Derek Walcott's Collected Poems"

Pushing octopus and urchin toward the sun - Caroline Harper New "Fieldnotes on Juniper"

Orb Spider:
Where the orb spider continues to spin a hole - Ada Limon "The Spider Web"

Oyster.

Paleontology:
Paleontological remnants of the future - Lorraine Schein "The Garden of Time"

Paramecium:
The conjugation of the paramecium - Muriel Rukeyser "The Conjugation of the Paramecium"

Parasite.

Perch:
Scared the river eels and perches - John Greenleaf Whittier "Voyage of the Jettie"

Pest:
To bear the torture from those pests of air - Palmer Cox "The Brownies Fishing"

That he would rid the world of every pest - Euripedes "Hercules Distracted" transl. by Michael Wodhull

A land of pebbles and pests - Camisha L. Jones "Haunted"

Pet:
Pocket pet of witches - Flower Conroy "Frog"

Caged as a prisoner, kissed as a pet - William Gibson "To a Canary Bird" [Graham's Magazine v.XL no.4, April 1852]

The petted passion and the shallow dream - George Santayana "The Poetic Medium"

Pickerel:
The gray pickerel from his reedy shoals - Edmund Clarence Stedman "The Freshet: A Connecticut Idyl"

Pike:
A field of spears, a lake of pikes, a sky of hawks, a hundred winters - Robert MacFarlane and Jackie Morris "gorse"

Pilot Fish:
Bad luck drawn away like pilot fish following his wake - Mike Allen "The Journey to Kailash"

Pollinator:
The garden song calls the pollinators - Kimberly Blaeser "I was built by inherited hungers. This is not a poem that names them."

Predator.

Prey.

Protozoa:
A shore strewn with protozoa bracken - Kevin Killian "Deep Red"

Pterodactyl:
As famous as the pterodactyl or the dodo - Alison Hawthorne Deming "Science"

Reptiles [category].

Rock Trout:
Forded the river for rock trout - Jennifer Elise Foerster "Sixteen Shadows 14"

Salmon:
Salmon race up into the freshet - Robinson Jeffers "Salmon-Fishing"

A pleasant salmon in the unchainable sea - Eochadh O'Hosey (or Hussey) 17th century "O'Hussey's Ode to the Maguire" transl. by James Clarence Mangan

The water where the silver salmon play - Robert W. Service "The Rhyme of the Remittance Man"

Sardines:
The plural pavilion of sardines - Pablo Neruda "Migration" transl. by Jack Schmitt

Saurian:
Where saurians with mastodons had played - William Stephen Pryer "Old Ragnor's Cliffs"

Scorpion.

Sea Anemone.

Sea Horse:
The woman riding a stampede of seahorses - Ama Codjoe "Come One, Come All! Step Right Up! Welcome to the World of Wonders!"

The herds of the dread sea horse to view - Mary Howitt "The Northern Seas"

Fossil of a seahorse entombed - Luisa A. Igloria "To unravel a torment you must begin somewhere"

Sea-horses glisten in summer - "The Sea-God's Address to Bran" transl. by Kuno Meyer

Sea Lamprey:
As uninvited as the sea lamprey - Adrian Matejka "Central Avenue Beach"

Sea-Sponge:
The simplicity implicit in sea-sponges - Timothy Donnelly "To His Own Device"

Sea Urchin:
The friendship of a sea urchin - Pablo Neruda "A Dog Has Died" transl. by William O'Daly

Pushing octopus and urchin toward the sun - Caroline Harper New "Fieldnotes on Juniper"

Sea Violet:
The sea-violet fragile as agate - H.D. "Sea Violet"

Shark.

Shellfish:
Nostalgic crab and other shellfish with blue entrails - Yaxkin Melchy Ramos "Capybara Hot Springs" transl. by Marcelo Hernandez Castillo

Shrimp:
The shrimp's crooked smile - Mahogany L. Browne "If Love is For the Fishes"

Silkworm.

Slug:
Searches for slugs of amethyst - Kiki Petrosino "The Cottage"

As sluggish waters in duress - Lola Ridge "Still Water (To D.L.)"

Snail.

Species.

Speckled Trout:
Gave up their bass and speckled trout - Palmer Cox "The Brownies Fishing"

Spider.

Sponge:
The simplicity implicit in sea-sponges - Timothy Donnelly "To His Own Device"

A sponge of living light - Richard Le Gallienne "Tree-Worship"

Squid:
Black ice and squid ink - Mary Karr "Descending Theology: The Resurrection"

Starfish:
The starfish with its five blunt fingers - Heather McHugh "The Matter Over"

Tide pools that cradle the ribbed limpet and the rockbound star - Vijay Seshadri "Road Trip"

Starfish stiffened by the sun - William Carlos Williams "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower" [excerpt]

Like a starfish pulled from the fog - Cynthia Zarin "Three Poems: Letter in Fog"

Stone Fish:
Watching out for the camouflaged stone fish - Tennessee Reed "Fantasy"

Sturgeon:
And followed wherever the sturgeon led - Joseph Rodman Drake "The Culprit Fay"

Watches the new spirits arriving in the belly of the sturgeon - Margaret Noodin "Sometimes" transl. by the author

From the cold Caspian to the Volga thus the sturgeons pour - T.W.P. "Letter Second: To Thomas Carlyle, Esquire, London" [The Knickerbocker v.22, no.1, July 1843]

Caught sturgeon in the reed-filled Caspian - Juliana Spahr "December 2, 2002"

Sunfish:
Painted turtles, pumpkinseed or green sunfish - Janet Kauffman "Wanting Ice"

Swarm.

Swordfish:
The fights of the quarrelsome swordfish and shark - F.B.C. "The Quadrupeds' Pic-Nic"

Swordfish armed with hard arguments - Pablo Neruda "To Those at Odds" transl. by Alastair Reid

T-Rex:
Saw a T-Rex fight a comet and lose - Catherynne M. Valente "What the Dragon Said: A Love Story"

Tarantula:
Wasps and scorpions and tarantulas - Lisa M. Bradley "Una Cancion de Keys"

Silver-like thread the tarantula weaves - Ida Lee "The Forest King's Lament"

Triceratops:
Herds of triceratops lunge up on their hind legs - Kaveh Akbar "The Perfect Poem"

Trilobite:
Trilobites and shells embedded underfoot - Terry Blackhawk "At the National Gallery of Art: Memorial View"

Mortared with the shells of trilobites - Adrienne Rich "Two Arts"

The doomed trilobites neglect to make out their wills - Steven Utley "Seven Silurian Scenes"

As trilobites filled up my hand - Amy Ludwig VanDerwater "Fossil"

Trout.

Vermin.

Vertebrate:
Convergent evolution among vertebrates - M. Frost "Pterosaur" [Strange Horizons 22 Sept. 2025]

Viral/Virus.

Water-Beast:
The water beasts roaring in the night - Ben Hecht "Moods"

Tarnishing the homes where water-beasts are born - Nancy Mercado "2020 A Year to Forget"

Worm.


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somethingdarker: (Default)
Potential Titles: Art/Craft: Tools and Materials [category].


Act.

Aesthetic:
Make emptiness an acquired aesthetic - Stephanie Heit "Dear Murderer"

Sent round his cards for aesthetics and tea - Henry S. Leigh "The Compact"

Allegory:
allegory writing me into a fold of stillness - Tajudeen Muadh "In a Goverment Class, I Discuss My Home"

Anthology:
An anthology of sunsets layered upon each other - R.B. Lemberg "The Rotten Leaf Cantata"

Arabesque:
The sad wind spinning arabesques - John Gould Fletcher "Irradiations"

Broken arabesques upon the sullen crimson of the sky - Nora May French "Along the Track"

Rose and gold arabesqued with the song of birds - Amy Lowell "Azure and Gold"

Whose twisted arabesques suggest no single form - Ann K. Schwader "The Night of Her Return"

Flashing arabesques against the sun - George Soule "Winter's Pride"

Art.

Author.

Ballet.

Baroque:
With lovely baroque convolutions of thought - Lee Ann Brown "Sustain Petal"

Such clockish & baroque motions - David Hornibrook "Signs"

At once Baroque and Paleolithic - Caroline Harper New "The Archaeology Magazine"

Wallowing in an orgy of Baroque facades and Victorian gingerbread - Samantha Pious "Interior Castle" [Strange Horizons 3 March 2025]

Book.

Bricolage:
a bricolage of place & memory - upfromsumdirt (Ron Davis) "Blueprint For An African American Space Station"

Broadcast:
Each broadcast and jingle tricking me - Nickole Brown "Prayer to be Still and Know"

Brutalist:
What's visible from inside a Brutalist building - Ari Banias "Curriculum"

Fraudulent windows in a Brutalist structure - Maureen N. McLane "They Were Not Kidding in the Fourteenth Century"

Cabaret:
Cabarets and songs, and deadening wine - Alice Dunbar-Nelson "Sonnet [I had no thought of violets of late]" [Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Negro Poets, ed. by Countee Cullen, 1927]

Elephants in cabaret dresses reddish & cadmium blue - Juan Felipe Herrera "Saturday Night at the Buddhist Cinema"

Death becomes an empty cabaret - Langston Hughes "Sport"

Confiscated our cabaret licenses - David Wojahn "Another Epistle to Frank O'Hara"

Calligraphy.

Carpentry:
Clever carpenters who follow the times - "The Ch'u Tz'u: Encountering Sorrow" transl. by Burton Watson

And down with it the carpenter unto the beasts below - "The Dwarf and the Oak Tree: A Vision of 1850" [Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, no.CCCXIV, v.LXVII, Apr. 1850]

Death too is a carpenter - Mary Oliver "Pilot Snake"

Cartoon:
The cartoon version of movement - Hoa Nguyen "Overseas Vietnamese"

Carve.

Caryatid:
Like vast Caryatids upholding the age - Bulwer Lytton publishing as Owen Meredith "Lucile: Part I Canto II"

Celadon:
Warn each other in teal or celadon - Brenda Hillman "Species Prepare to Exist After Money"

lit by translucent jade and celadon lamps - Raina J. León "making life on a palette"

Ceramic:
A tote bag full of ceramic souvenirs - Helene Achanzar "The only poem I can write"

Ceramic tributes to the moon - Ira Goga "The Kitchen, Indexed"

Found my body in ceramic pieces - jessica Care moore "She Was"

Could break their ceramic silence - Caroline Harper New "Patients Regain Song Before Speech"

Charcoal.

Chiaroscuro:
Watch the chiaroscuro movie of my mind - Mary Jo Bang "Our Evening Is Over Us"

A war trots out of your chiaroscuro head - Carolina Ebeid "Wearing a Mask, Speaking into the Camera"

Choreography:
A minimal choreography of absence - Monica de la Torre "Pause the Document"

Precarious choreography of bicycles - Safia Elhillo "Amsterdam"

How much choreographed relief a kingdom tolerates - K. Iver "Sleeping Beauty"

Cinema.

Collage:
Time affords us chaos and collage - Jennifer Elise Foerster "Hokkolen g"

A festival of collaged laughter - Major Jackson "Spain"

A collage of lost evenings - Maggie Nelson "For Lily on Her 25th Birthday"

Comedy.

Comics:
Selling stolen comics for eight bucks and change - Sophie Fink "The Dogs Don't Forgive Us"

Commedia:
Pasteboard riddles and commedia deadpan - Sonya Taaffe "Muse"

Concrete Poetry:
Sketch a Jackson Pollock splatter of concrete poetry - Regie Cabico "A Carpapalooza: An American Anthem"

Contre-Dance:
Maddened nations at their contre-dance - Thomas Aird "The Old Soldier" [Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine no.CCCCXXXVI, v.LXXI, Feb. 1852]

Craft.

Create/Creation.

Critic/Critique.

Cubism:
A giant cubist mosaic of their prophet - Michelle Wirth "Campus"

Curate:
curated with loving precision - Davian Aw "Those Who Tell the Stories"

Some curated notion of now - Mary Jo Bang "The Actual Occurences"

Dadaism:
Rebrand & rewrite their Dadaist daydreams - Andre F. Peltier "The Love Theme from Switchblade Sisters"

Daguerreotype:
An auburn molt of daguerreotypes - T.J. Anderson III "Ancestors Are Calling"

Dance.

Depression Glass:
Tulips and pink depression glass - Megan Fernandes "Amsterdam"

Design.

Doodle:
Idle doodles and arbitrary scratches - Gregory Orr "Eden and After: To Write"

Drama.

Draw/Drew.

Elegy.

Emboss.

Embroider.

Engrave.

Entertain.

Epic.

Essay.

Etch.

Existentialism:
Existentialism is imposed upon me - Jie Cohen "Venus Limbs"

Expressionism:
A flowing expressionist relief of mythic proportions - Bruce Boston & Robert Frazier "A Compass for the Mutant Rain Forest"

Potential Titles: Fabric/Fiber - Ways to Work with Them [category].

Fairy Tale.

Farce:
Kaleidoscopic hints, to be worked up in farce or tragedy - Thomas Bailey Aldrich (uncredited) "An Idyl" [The Atlantic Monthly v.07 no.39, Jan. 1861]

Because only I knew how to end the farce - Walter Léon Hess "Feline Philosophy by Thomas Cat: Ninth Caterwaul"

Figurine:
Museum of monkey figurines and butterflies - J. Mae Barizo "Diorama"

Film/Filmy.

Fresco:
In painted frescoes shown - Charles Baudelaire "The Evil Monk" transl. not credited

A spackled fresco of sky - Carolyn Forche "Blue Hour"

Give subtle grace to frescoed ceilings - Bree Wernicke "A Tour of the Blue Palace"

Frescos flake away as sleet holds us in its teeth - Dean Young "Bronzed" [Poetry April 2005]

Frieze:
The frozen music of a frieze - Maurice Baring "Phedre"

Ganymede fleeing on a temple frieze - Dan Chiasson "Tackle Football"

Drenched stars' ancient frieze - Jennifer Elise Foerster "Tuccenen N"

Crosshatched with a lacquer frieze of ink - Sonya Taaffe "The Gambler"

Genre:
That choosing genres is a luxury - K. Iver "Short Film Starring My Beloved's Red Bronco"

Ghostwrite:
Ghostwriting the low-tide mark - Cynthia Zarin "Orbit"

Graffiti.

Haiku:
As sharp and as multilayered as Basho's haiku - Keith Taylor "What's Needed Now"

Hologram/Holographic:
holographic hagiographies remember our heroes - Davian Aw "Those Who Tell the Stories"

Holographic moth wings that shine like chalk drawings - Wren Douglas "Fursonas Are Not Enough, I Need to Be a Moss-Coated Mech"

Transmute into an hologram of grace - Joshua Effiong "3D Presentation of a Body Undergoing Catharsis in a Transterrestrial Habitat"

Her eyes are the doors to a holographic universe - Tiffany Higgins "Medusa on Sansom and Pine" [Poetry Nov. 2013]

Illustrate:
To illustrate the rain - Billy Collins "A History of Weather"

Inscribe.

Journalism:
Telling journalists they are looking into it - Poupeh Missaghi "Symptoms that May Be Signs of Some Things"

Lapidary:
The valley's light lapidary in the canyon creases - Chris Dombrowski "Vespers Beginning as Sheep Tallow in the Hands of a Priest"

This lapidary of broken things - Richard Scott "Peridot"

Limn:
Lightning limned into a hellish door - C. Edgar Bolen "Lycanthropus"

Limned on the mind's retina - E.O.H. "Dreams" [Graham's Magazine v.XXXIII no.4, Oct. 1848]

Limned in his blood across your clearing skies - T.M. Kettle "Parnell"

Pencils of fire limn visions of soul-large desire - T.M. Kettle "Sowing (Written in 1899)"

Literary:
Literary values before the days of YouTube - Elaine Equi "Cats, Now and Forever"

Literature:
The rage for apocalyptic literature - John Kinsella "Reptile in Roof Space"

Either chemistry or literature, a catalyst or a metaphor - Brandon O'Brien "lagahoo culture (Part II)"

Mason/Masonry.

Masterpiece:
Confusion now hath made his masterpiece - Shakespeare "Macbeth"

Played the makings of a masterpiece off-key - Emily Ruth Verona "A Shiva"

Media:
Mix media on slow water - Janet Kauffman "Keratella Offshore"

A commodifying media and its monopolizing imagination - upfromsumdirt [aka Ron Davis] "The Hero with the African Face"

Melodrama:
Discover melodrama in the windows - Kay Gabriel "Like, Comma, Like"

Mime:
And builds a stage to mime its listless tragedy - Robin Flower "La Vie Cerebrale"

November sky mimes heaven - Claire Millikin "Elegy for Sage Smith"

To mime with sorrow for a mask - Lola Ridge "Firehead part IV: The Stone 1: The Magdalene"

Model.

Montage:
As dusky birds brushed blues into a montage - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Whistle"

Morris Dance:
Your morrice-dance on moonlit nights - Jane Barlow "The End of Elfintown: II. The Council"

A walk across a montage of darkness - Semaj Brown "Remember Re mem ber ing"

A morrice chime of jostled bells - Don Marquis "Chant of the Changing Hours"

Mosaic.

Motown:
The motown long plays for the comeback of Osiris - Ishmael Reed "I Am a Cowboy in the Boat of Ra"

Movie.

Mummery:
Dead mummers of forgotten fantasies - Geoffrey Dearmer "Reality"

This revel of quick-cued mumming - Thomas Hardy "According to the Mighty Working"

Mural:
Gems of the East her mural crown adorn - Anna Laetitia Barbauld "Eighteen Hundred and Eleven"

The penciled-in figure on the painted-over mural of time - Vijay Seshadri "The Descent of Man"

Musical Instruments [category].

Musical Tools and Terms [category].

Musical Works [category].

Narrative.

Neoclassical:
Lit the air around those neoclassic nights - Yusef Komunyakaa "Daytime Begins with a Line by Anna Akhmatova"

Newsreel:
Newsreels captured the death of a star - Caitriona O'Reilly "The Airship Era"

Novel:
You're Iowa in the novel about Chicago - Jaswinder Bolina "Portrait of the Minor Character"

Child thieves out of a Dickens novel - Theodora Goss "Goldilocks and the Bear"

Divert yourself with 19th century Russian novels - Dean Young "So the Grasses Grow" [Poetry April 2005]

Oratory:
Had oratory for its own defence - Aldous Huxley "Formal Verses II: [Ah, those were days of silent happiness!]"

Each ridge practicing an oration of scale and crest - Major Jackson "Double View of the Adirondacks as Reflected Over Lake Champlain from Waterfront Park"

Smoke screens of oratory - Kim Unsong "Expand Territory"

Of frangipani and dark oratory roses - Claire Millikin "Superhero Costume, Attic, Tifton, Georgia"

Origami.

Paint.

Pantomime:
Some ethereal pantomime - John W. Forney "Time's Changes"

Mere pantomimes of rites they'd practiced - Harry Martinson "Aniara 92" transl. by Stephen Klass and Leif Sjöberg

A small part of the pantomime - Wallace Stevens "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"

Playing a pantomime to spectres in the stalls - Iris Tree "[I think myself the fool of tragedy]"

Papier-Mache:
The next house made of papier-mache - Anthony Butts "The Landscape for Growth"

A hilltop made of papier mache - Neil Gaiman "House"

Sleep's faded papier-mache - Wallace Stevens "Not Ideas About the Thing but the Thing Itself"

A museum erected out of paper-mache - Brad Walrond "Calculus I, II, III"

Parody:
Make a parody of paradise - Russell W. Davenport "Five Sonnets III"

Pasquinade:
Scrawls undeterred his bitter pasquinade - Herman Melville "Clarel" [excerpt - Epilogue]

Patchwork.

Pentameter:
Lost and missed in minor-key pentameter - Debra Allbery "Sidereal"

Pentimento:
The geometric outline a pentimento - Mary Jo Bang "Origin of the Impulse to Speak"

Perform.

Photo/Photograph.

Pirouette.

Play.

Podcast:
In podcast and electronic ink - Fady Joudah "[...]"

Poetry/Poem.

Polaroid:
Faded polaroids stacked in a keepsake box - Tylor James "I Grew Up in a Haunted House"

Police Procedural:
Gives birth to another police procedural - Peter Twal "This Sunday in Ordinary Time"

Polychrome:
Large stars with polychrome needles - Amy Lowell "Vintage"

Porcelain.

Portrait.

Post-Modernist:
Falling up the vertebrae of post-modernist architecture - Semaj Brown "Almost Majnun"

Pottery.

Prestidigitation:
Caught no hint of prestidigitation - Robert Graves "The Lord Chamberlain Tells of a Famous Meeting"

Print.

Puppet.

Pyrotechnic:
As pyrotechnic stars fall on already fragile dreams - Ian Goh "Firework"

Quatrain:
Pure quatrain in a poet's heart - Waitman Barbe "The Fly Leaf"

Realism:
Realism hastening down that leaden street - Paul Cameron Brown "The Gathering of Dead Wood"

Recite/Recital.

Refurbish:
Plague of old refurbished buildings - Salik Shah "Field Notes"

Rhetoric.

Rococo:
A rococo footbridge hard at work holding up some dumb illusion - Brian Tierney "Catering"

Saga:
A saga of cities ancient and buried - Giosue Carducci "Sermione" transl. by Frank Sewall

To sing me sagas of your late delights - Dorothy Parker "A Certain Lady"

Until your mood wearied of saga - Vita Sackville-West "Irruption"

Sarabande:
A sarabande the wind mowed on the mead - Hart Crane "Repose of Rivers"

Satire:
Swift with satire as with sally - Harry Graham "The Last Horsed 'Bus"

The satyrizing Muse has themes sufficient - "The Whore"

Script.

Sculpture.

Scumble:
With smoke still scumbling the air - R.T. Smith "Still Life: From the Notebook of Ambrose Bierce, 1862"

Shadow Puppet:
Some perverse shadow puppet flailing - Sally Wen Mao "Willow, Stop Weeping"

Showstopper:
The canvas for another sunset showstopper - Teri Ellen Cross Davis "Migraines have their say"

Sketch.

Slapstick:
Nonlinear slapstick meets slasher flick - Chen Chen "I Invite My Parents to a Dinner Party"

speed into tomorrow's slapstick - Kaie Kellough "if who"

Thought it was slapstick throughout - Eunsong Kim "On Endings & Longing"

A heart's slapstick hiccup - Hailey Leithauser "We Few Born beneath a Bitter Star"

Smith:
Who is the smith or athena of this? - Brian Blanchfield "Learning"

Spells of women and smiths and wizards - "The Deer's Cry" transl. by Kuno Meyer

As the smith the glowing anvil strikes - Euripedes "Hercules Distracted" transl. by Michael Wodhull

smith my silence to an iron gate - Avi Silver "Passing Diamonds"

Snapshot:
Snapshots of all the people who've gotten lost - Jeffrey McDaniel "Compulsively Allergic to the Truth"

The ones that are snapshots of fear - Chase Twichell "The Blade of Nostalgia"

Softshoe:
A tattered flag's ragtime softshoe these lines will never do - L. Lamar Wilson "Lauren Oya Olamina Explains Earthseed to Ernest Hemingway"

Sonnet.

Soundtrack:
How it needs a good soundtrack - Hala Alyan "Object Permanence"

Stained Glass:
Arrange the facets of stained glass into story - N. Scott Momaday "The Dragon of Saint-Bertrand-De-Comminges"

Statue.

Steampunk:
Daft, round-the-world steampunk wagers - Caitriona O'Reilly "The Airship Era"

Stencil:
Stencilled on the petals of a bluebell - Helene Johnson "Trees at Night"

Built of stencils and explosive devices - Ada Limon "Fifteen Balls of Feathers"

Still Life.

Story.

Storybook:
Eke out a living on storybook memories - Paul Cameron Brown "Vertigo"

The world remained a storybook - Caitriona O'Reilly "The Airship Era"

A spill of storybook umber - Kiki Petrosino "Approaching the Smith Family Graveyard"

The happiest ending that can come out of a storybook - Dimitri Reyes "Speakers"

Surrealism.

Tailor.

Tap-Dance:
Tap-dancing in the hell writers make for themselves - Theodora Goss "The Red Shoes"

Tap-dancing up a crystal stair - Hailey Leithauser "The Old Woman Gets Drunk with the Moon"

Tapestry.

Television/TV.

Theater.

Tragedy/Tragic.

Two-Step:
Two-step with beloved ghosts - Angel Nafis "When I Realize I'm Wearing My Girlfriend's Ex-Girlfriend's Panties"

Vaudeville:
A post-tribulationist vaudeville act of God - Sandra McPherson "Driving in Circles with the Blind"

Ventriloquism:
A ventriloquist of the night - Shannan Mann "In Hell"

Flesh, pulse and shadow's ventriloquisms - Claire Millikin "Rock, Paper, Scissors"

Yearning to ring around a ventriloquist's echo - Soham Patel "Ultra Orator Spell"

Video:
Still playing in videos past her presence - Amy King "Ancient Sunlight"

Permanent footprints in a video landscape - Ann K. Schwader "Minions of the Moon"

still the tint of video game to your voice - upfromsumdirt (Ron Davis) "The Second Stop Is Jupiter"

Watercolor:
That watercolor done in greens - Timothy Donnelly "Globus Hystericus"

Sweatless as watercolour under glass - Thom Gunn "Autumn Chapter in a Novel"

Weave/Wove.

Whittle.

Write.


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