Potential Titles: First

[somethingdarker]

My first memory was of that time - Anne Carly Abad "Rehearsal for When He Wakes"

Commander of first and final allegiance - Rasha Abdulhadi "The Obstacle Bargainer's Lorica"

First the gates then the bargain - Samuel Ace "I hear a dog who is always in my death"

First the ghost boats - Samuel Ace "I hear a dog who is always in my death"

First, we sent away the trees - Duane Ackerson "Exiling the Earth"

Used to catching her image first in puddles - Duane and Cathy Ackerson "Moon Mirror"

When the first scream blooms - Jeff William Acosta "Call Out My Name"

The first letter of every alphabet - Carl Adamshick "Our flag"

The first liquid the place of beginning life - Linda Addison "Evolving"

At the first familiar flaming revelation - Daisy Aldan "Stones: Avesbury"

The first time he followed her beyond the grey lands - Mike Allen "Chagall's Lamp"

Foregrounding first in the fey realms - Mike Allen "Kandinsky's Garden"

When did he first discover this gift for equilibrium? - Mike Allen "Mondrian's War"

And first there came a bitter laughter - William Allingham "A Dream"

Names become the first steppings into ruin - Ahmad Almallah "Some Verse for the Depressed Rebel"

a replica of the first lock and key - Alise Alousi "Burnished in Future Time"

The light as it first shone on Adam - Julia Alvarez "Addison's Vision"

Made your first and failed exile - Julia Alvarez "Did I Redeem Myself?"

This neighborhood was mine first - Hala Alyan "Object Permanence"

When the first news of grief reaches them - Mouna Ammar "My North Africans"

Emerged first in a trickle then a gush - Mouna Ammar "Our Names"

The first star of evening has bidden them free - S.D. Anderson "A May Song" [Graham's Magazine v.XXXIV no.5, May 1849]

No first place to human boast - "Anthology of Jugoslav Poetry CXIII: The First Toast" transl. by J.W. Wiles

Pattern recognition was our first response to loneliness - Rae Armantrout "Upper World"

When the world first saw our face - Atticus "Love Her Wild"

In sunlight that arrives first at your window - Ruth Awad "Reasons to Live"

From the ashes of its first life - Rebecca Baggett "Chestnut"

Stripped of my first voice - Desiree C. Bailey "Woman in Dub"

As old as the first drop of mortal tears - Maurice Baring "Harvest in Russia"

Since eternity's first grumpy yawns - Devan Barlow "Dear Charles Perrault"

The first far bells commence - Djuna Barnes "Pastoral"

In the first heart-beats of my hope - Natalie Clifford Barney "Life"

On that first hill of passion - Aliki Barnstone "Jack's Defeat Creek"

the search for first green bud - Elizabeth Bartlett "summer and winter"

Must first merge with his shadow - Elizabeth Bartlett "The Test"

yellow was first word for gold - Elizabeth Bartlett "time is a palette"

the last kiss like the first - Elizabeth Bartlett "weather forecast"

Deep foundations suffer first - Charles Baudelaire "The Irreparable" transl. not credited

A font for all my first thoughts - Jason Bayani "Someday, Again"

Tastes the day's first plasma of leaf - Jan Beatty "I'll Write the Girl"

As charging seas first seen at dawn - Stephen Vincent Benet "Blood Brothers"

The first gray drops of dew - Stephen Vincent Benet "The Drug-Shop, or, Endymion in Edmonstoun"

Through sleep's first quarter - Yahya Kemal Beyath "Night" (translated by Roger Finch)

Who first would pay in rhymes instead - Robert Bloomfield "May-Day With the Muses: The Invitation"

Since first I was made of stone - "The Boatman's Hymn" transl. by Sir Samuel Ferguson

The first rest of a thirstless journey - Maxwell Bodenheim "To a Woman"

Sow the first seed of your fury - Cecil Bodker "Fury's Field" transl. by Nadia Christensen

When first you passed beneath the jungle tapestries - Arna Bontemps "The Return"

The first rain to break a dry spell - William Brewer "Dog Days"

Conquered first by bedlam - William Brewer "West Virginia"

First point of scorn - Elizabeth Bridges "Sonnets from Hafez & Other Verses 24"

The first impulse of the gale - Emily Bronte "The Wanderer from the Fold"

First made famous yesterday - Calef Brown "Biscuits in the Wind"

Whose tongues learn first to cry - Molly McCully Brown and Susannah Nevison "Recovery"

Waiting the zephyr's first faint kiss - Marie Hedderwick Browne "Water Lilies"

Thine oath that first did fail - Elizabeth Barrett Browning "Change on Change"

First forms of earth - Elizabeth Barrett Browning "A Drama of Exile"

Hope whisper'd her first fairy tales - Bulwer Lytton publishing as Owen Meredith "Lucile: Part I Canto I"

Where the twilights of life were first drawn - Bulwer Lytton publishing as Owen Meredith "Lucile: Part I Canto I"

See that first line before you cross it - Scott Cairns "Embalming"

Let thy first lessons from nature be won - Calder Campbell "Under the Palms" [Chambers' Edinburgh Journal no.455, 18 Sept. 1852]

The first in worlds we've never seen - Paul Carroll "Untitled [I want to write a poem the birds will understand]"

First believe in the force of opposites - Tina Chang "Revolutionary Kiss"

First light, last scent, lost country - Chen Chen "First Light"

First and deepest severance - Chen Chen "First Light"

At the first sign of breath - Ching-In Chen "South in Hundreds"

Unstrung by her heart's first sorrow - R.S. Chilton "The Little Peasant"

the name of the first was hunger - Lucille Clifton "david, musing"

Leaves of the first green of raw almonds - Alicia Cole "On an Iranian Goblet, 5,000 Years Old"

She stole my playthings first - Mary Elizabeth Coleridge "My True Love Hath My Heart and I Have His"

Invisible at first but fierce - Sharon Corcoran "Encounter"

Covering us in our first innocence - Felix Cortes "In the Beginning There was the Light"

Are first enriched through patient toil - Palmer Cox "The Brownies in the Academy"

For her first rain-drops grieves - Arthur Shearly Cripps "A Lyke-Wake Carol"

The frosts first silver Nature's hair - Arthur S. Cripps "The Seasons' Comfort"

By loves first fantasies oppresssed - Charlotte Cushman "Lines to Fitz-Greene Halleck on reading 'Forget-Me-Not' in the July Knickerbocker" [The Knickerbocker v.22 no.4, Oct. 1843]

The first buds of the chill narcissus - H.D. "Demeter"

First tasted under Apollo's lips - H.D. "Evadne"

Formed with the letters of the first lie - Jim Daniels "Lip Gloss, Belgium"

At the saints' first spring - Sir William Davenant "The Christian's Reply to the Philosopher"

Cup its first and last notes - Geffrey Davis "Not to Be Confused with 'Poem'"

The ruined grounds of the first prayer - Geffrey Davis "Prayer with Miscarriage/Grant Us the Ruined Grounds"

On the first day there was no sound - Meg Day "Portrait of My Gender as [Inaudible]"

My first ambition and my dearest aim - Luís de Camões "The Lusiad; or, The Discovery of India: Book I. Argument" transl. by William Julius Mickle

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

And leaving first is a form of loss - Asa Delaney "Colony Collapse Disorder"

The first wound was a clock - Natalie Diaz "Duned"

Dreaded that first robin so - Emily Dickinson "Book 2: Nature XIV: In Shadow"

Come strike and feed first spark - Dom "Number Cruncher: Be the Spark"

Until February's first chinook - Chris Dombrowski "Stubborn Poem"

The sound of dawn's first sacrifice - Timothy Donnelly "Globus Hystericus"

First sacrifice to the residues of commerce - Timothy Donnelly "Globus Hystericus"

The first confirmed wild hybrid - Timothy Donnelly "Hymn to Life"

Red as first love's heart - Carol Ann Duffy "The Woman Who Shopped"

The first colony of bluebirds - Joshua Effiong "3D Presentation of a Body Undergoing Catharsis in a Transterrestrial Habitat"

The first radical road out - Ansel Elkins "Autobiography of Eve"

Trained to bend and grovel from the first - J. Hal. Elliot "What Then?" [The Continental Monthly v.1 no.6, June 1862]

My first love was silence - Joshua Jennifer Espinoza "My First Love"

The last and first star - Tarfia Faizullah "Red-Lipped Poem"

Worked on smaller debris first - A.M. Fals "Space in Our Relationship"

Watching the first rockets launch into the unknown - Beatriz F. Fernandez "The Time Tourist | El Turista del Tiempo"

God's first dream as her crown - Michael Field "Virgo Potens"

a game of telephone that first rang across the ocean - Mckendy Fils-Aimé "on superstitions"

Creation's first imperfect hours - "Flora: a Vision"

Of our first lost image - Gina Franco "The Same and the Other"

Will have roared first and mixed sparks with stars - Robert Frost "The Bonfire"

The first breath of dusk - Zona Gale "Alias"

The first one to an eighteen-wheeler accident - John Gallaher "In a Landscape: III"

When first the dice of gold upon the board did run - "The Game of Dice" transl. by E.M. Smith-Dampier

The lion first control - John Gay "The Council of Horses"

That beauty's power which first destroy'd - Thomas Gent "Sonnet. On Seeing a Young Lady, I Had Previously Known, Confined in a Madhouse"

just the awakening from this first dream of living - Gloria Gervitz "Migrations" [excerpt] transl. by Mark Schafer

Who catches the first crimsoning of dawn - "The Good Goddess of Poverty [A Prose Ballad, translated from the French]" [The Continental Monthly v.4 no.3, Sept. 1863]

Who receives the first smile of the rising sun - "The Good Goddess of Poverty [A Prose Ballad, translated from the French]" [The Continental Monthly v.4 no.3, Sept. 1863]

The first condition of the universe is fire - Kevin Goodan "Spot Weather Forecast"

Where first you were bound by the magic spell - Gretta "The Return to Scenes of Childhood" [Graham's Magazine v.XXXIII no.3, Sept. 1848]

The first footprint on strange worlds - John Grey "Distant People Gravitate to Distant Worlds"

Annoying when they're first to fall - Igor Gulin "Kontur" transl. by Your Language My Ear

The crocuses were first - Frances Ellen Watkins Harper "The Crocuses"

The first knowledge of sweetness - Fanny Wheeler Hart "Harry: Part 1"

The first bite is neither sweet nor bitter - Penny Harter "Just Grapefruit"

Disbelief and the first flare of sun - Ava Leavell Haymon "Festival of Lights"

First crocus in a world of winds and snows - William Ernest Henley "Hawthorn and Lavender IV"

In the first twilight of self-conscious Time - William Ernest Henley "Rhymes and Rhythms"

First sways the yielding frame - W.H. Herbert "Stanzas to a Lady"

Whom Prometheus first defied - Luisa Hewitt "Ave Atque Vale"

Some first sight of home - Mary Hickman "Helen"

When the first sleep staggers into dream - Conrad Hilberry "Waning Moon"

To their first splendor - Edward Hirsch "The Unnaming"

The first cell that learned to divide - Jane Hirshfield "Zero Plus Anything Is a World"

The first language is not our own - Linda Hogan "Map"

Your fading fire mend first - Gerard Manley Hopkins "The Candle Indoors"

The first wind of night - Richard Hughes "Tramp (The Bath Road, June)"

Burns up another set of firsts - Allison Hutchcraft "Though from Here I Can't Smell the Smoke"

At dawn's first livid beam - W.I. "The Rocky Boulders of Cornwall" [Chambers' Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, 4th series, no.689, 10 March 1877]

First, he became the bones of wistful memory - Tylor James "I Grew Up in a Haunted House"

The first time you conceived of justice - Mark Jarman "If I Were Paul"

How you understood the inheritance of first principles - Mark Jarman "If I Were Paul"

Consider the first knowledge of otherness - Mark Jarman "If I Were Paul"

Night's first timid star - Elinor Jenkins "Veronica"

When my poor heart you first beguiled - "Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ye" [A Book of Irish Verse ed. by W.B. Yeats]

First hearing the siren's song - Amaud Jamaul Johnson "Between Work"

With the ripe first fruit - Lionel Johnson "A Song of Israel"

The hopes and buds that gladdened first - J. Beauchamp Jones "An Hour Among the Dead" [Graham's Magazine v.XXXIV no.2, Feb. 1849]

The first hour in a life without clocks - Saeed Jones "Postapocalyptic Heartbeat"

Toward that natural first absurdity - June Jordan "On a New Year's Eve"

The first winter after their exodus - Fady Joudah "Things You've Never Seen"

How many moons since we first woke up - Kirun Kapur "Rajat Jayanti"

The first mercy of diving - Tobi Kassim "A Blind Spot, Awash"

The largest quadrant shall be named first - Janet Kauffman "Such Winds"

Love at first remembrance - Rupi Kaur "Milk and Honey"

a bridge you will never need to cross first - Sarah Kay "In the House With No Doors"

Upon my heart lies his first token - Fanny Kemble "The Death-Song"

After the first flush of blooms - Tala Khanmalek "Louise"

With Earth's first Clay - Omar Khayyam "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam" transl. by Edward Fitzgerald (First Edition)

The first to fill in its spaces - Amy King "You Make the Culture"

Life's first, irreplaceable lover - Galway Kinnell "December Day in Honolulu"

The first tabernacle to Hope - Herbert Knowles "Lines Written in Richmond Churchyard, Yorkshire"

Bury my dreams first thing in the morning - E.J. Koh "This Birthday"

For the first month of life, I was unnamed - Julia Kolchinsky "Naming"

Leaving first is a form of loss - Leah Komar "Colony Collapse Disorder"

Telling me which foot to put down first - Yusef Komunyakaa "Thanks"

Within the first order of wonders - Ted Kooser "Gyroscope"

Marked the first of seven - Archibald Lampman "Alcyone"

To the year's first altar step - Archibald Lampman "April"

Fall into the wind toward the first day - Deborah Landau "Flesh"

Who greeted them first was my tears - Rickey Laurentiis "Tall Lyric for Palestine (Or, The Harder Thinking)"

First portal to the gates of morn - Emily Lawless "Afterword"

Wounded pride first taught her how to hate - Miss Mary L. Lawson "The Haunted Heart" [Graham's Magazine v.XXI no.3, Sept. 1842]

Offer the first fruits of the clustered bowers - Emma Lazarus "The New Year"

Smaller than the egg of your first life - Jason Lee "The Wash of Moments"

Hell's first wild useless word - Eugene Lee-Hamilton "On Signorelli's Fresco of the Binding of the Lost"

The first kiss carries history - Joseph O. Legaspi "The Kisser's Handbook"

Compendium of first person rations - Hailey Leithauser "Memoirs"

First memories of light - R.B. Lemberg "Ranra's Unbalancing"

To hold the clue that I caught first - C.S. Lewis writing as Clive Hamilton "Dymer. Canto I"

The first of the next daylight - J. Patrick Lewis "the activist"

The first of our million dancing years - Vachel Lindsay "The Celestial Circus"

Smell the first summer rose - Myra Cohn Livingston "Cricket Never Does: Summer"

The first word I say is listen - Patricia Lockwood "The Hypno-Domme Speaks, and Speaks and Speaks"

First of all my trust deceived - Thomas Lodge "Cupid Plague Thee for Thy Treason"

Drought my first language - Casandra Lopez "The Hottest June"

Where the wind first taught the trees - Sidney Royse Lysaght "The World's End"

Where grief is their first portion - George MacDonald "Within and Without"

Where the first primroses grow - Isabel Ecclestone Mackay "The Secret"

Who first trailed the goblin streams - Percy MacKaye "The Real Germany"

Spice of the first warm wind - Dorothea Mackellar "Spring on the Plains"

First deserve and then desire - Anthony Madrid "Maxims 2"

Only first step on the way - Maikof (Apollon Maykov) "A Little Picture: After the Proclamation of the 19th Feb., 1861, Freeing the Serfs" transl. by John Pollen

When the lights first appeared in the sky - Meep Matsushima "The Believers"

The first foundations of the world - Theodore Maynard "The Ascetic"

The first half of the ghost - Shane McCrae "In the Event Of"

The language that left us first - E. Ethelbert Miller "The Ear is an Organ Made for Love"

Before my life's first gleam - R. Monckton Milnes "Unspoken Dialogue"

When first the white-thorn blows - John Milton "Lycidas"

Stealing first one breath and then the next - Jim Moore "The Need Is So Great"

The migrations through the first universes - Pablo Neruda "Guatemala" transl. by Jack Schmitt

Purple bird of the first abyss - Pablo Neruda "Loves: Terusa (I)" transl. by Alastair Reid

Oregano's first cousin - Pablo Neruda "Midday XXXIV" transl. by Stephen Tapscott

The first music of the river - Pablo Neruda "Stones from the Sky: XIX" transl. by James Nolan

The atmosphere quivers with the first word uttered - Pablo Neruda "The Word" transl. by Alastair Reid

First prey of Satan's rage - John Henry Newman "James and John"

The evening's first radiance of planets - Aimee Nezhukumatathil "Naming the Heartbeats"

Wanting the oracle to tell me first - Hoa Nguyen "Revenge Poem"

The first flux of tidal sleep - Robert Nichols "A Faun's Holiday"

Under the first urge of the wind - Robert Nichols "A Faun's Holiday"

All implied and folded in the first - Alfred Noyes "Darwin III: The Testimony of the Rocks"

In whose hand the first fire shone - Alfred Noyes "Farabi and Avicenna"

Naked agony that first woke the soul - Alfred Noyes "Goethe I: The Discoverer"

The first wild matins of the thrush - Alfred Noyes "Goethe II: The Prophet"

The first to find a dead volcano - Alfred Noyes "Jean Guettard IV: At Paris"

Or the sun which was the first - Mary Oliver "Of Love"

Like the first fair water - Mary Oliver "There you were, and it was like spring"

Building the first house of song - Gregory Orr "The City of Poetry"

First step to ruin was a love of dice - James Parkerson "The Convict's Farewell: with Advice to Criminals, before and after Trial"

They first tax the nation and then pawn the land - James Parkerson "A Poem to the Memory of our late lamented Queen Caroline of England"

Carry the first cupfuls of night - Walter Pavlich "Road with Five Waterfalls"

The first gleam of Truth's morning - H. Perceval "Callirhoe"

Not the first piece of gentleness - Carl Phillips "Barbarian"

And at first look easy - Carl Phillips "Island"

We betray ourselves first - Carl Phillips "The Messenger"

Mist is the first thing to go - Carl Phillips "The Strong by Their Stillness"

At first mistake for gratitude - Carl Phillips "Tell Me a Story"

Only if refracted first - Carl Phillips "Torn Sash"

The first syllable of one heart's confusion - Robert Pinsky "First Things to Hand: 4. Jar of Pens"

First the goat, then the sheep - Drew Pisarra "Sonnet 11PM"

Got my first orchid at fifty - Cherise Pollard "Nodes of Growth"

The first roses of the year - Alexander Pope "Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady"

Not the first instinct of flame - Lynn Powell "Kind of Blue"

The first hint of my own violence - Sina Queyras "Years"

Where spring's first violets perished - Edward S. Rand "Fallen" [The Continental Monthly March 1862]

Her first time seeing something forbidden - M. Regan "The Hollow"

The night's first dream - Adrienne Rich "Darklight"

By the first swift sun-ray slain - Edgell Rickword "Yegor"

Gods of the first dark surmise - Lola Ridge "Easter Morning"

The first stammering upon the waters - Lola Ridge "Firehead part I: He 3: The Light"

Stalking the first star - Lola Ridge "Jaguar"

Where flint first met steel - Alberto Rios "The Border: A Double Sonnet"

Whom first Cincinnatus did doom - Mrs. A. Ritson "Classical Enigmas"

The first violets will bud unseen - Christina Rossetti "Dream Love"

The breath of a first kiss - Ellen Rowland "The Way the Sky Might Taste"

Sleep is the first and last and best of all - Carl Sandburg "Work Gangs"

a student first of ingratitude - Sam Sax "Pedagogy"

The hold of our first fiery nest - Teresa J. Scollon "Poem to My Brothers and Sisters"

The first key flip in an apartment - Chet'la Sebree "An End"

The first my thought, the other my desire - William Shakespeare "Sonnet XLV"

The glad, first herald of triumphant dawn - Francis Sherman "In Memorabilia Mortis"

The first right past Saturn - Sue William Silverman "If the Girl Says the End Is Near"

The cool fragrance of the first lilac - May Sinclair "The Dark Night (XVIII)"

After the first disappointment - Hope Anita Smith "Give Me an 'M'"

First generation brick - Patricia Smith "It Had the Beat Inevitable"

Was first betrothed to death - "The Source of Poetic Inspiration" transl. by Whitley Stokes

The first rough draft of history or legend - A.E. Stallings "Eurydice's Footnote"

Others, shadows of the first - Edmund Clarence Stedman "The Ordeal by Fire"

The first hundred flakes of snow - Wallace Stevens "Man Carrying Thing"

First of the village sounds was heard - Alfred B. Street "The Smithy" [The Knickerbocker Feb. 1844]

First rapture of our wild, estranging blood - Muriel Stuart "The Father"

Deadheading flowers after their first blooming - Keith Taylor "The Gleaners"

First flicker drumming on a dead ash - Keith Taylor "Marginalia for a Natural History"

The first to admit gaps in his knowledge - Keith Taylor "The Sickness That Comes from the Longing for Home"

The first of insects to have earth and sun - Edward Thomas "The Brook"

The clay first broke my heart - Edward Thomas "Wind and Mist"

The first sounds that the earth heard - Edward Thring "Borth Lyrics: V. The Sea.--Safety"

The foe that first beheld thy towers - M.E. Thropp "The City of Mexico. Written While the War Was Pending" [Graham's Magazine v.XXII no.12, Dec. 1848]

A ship of travel we must board upon our first breath - Emma Trelles "The Function of a Wing"

Their first fealty sworn to beauty - Richard Chenevix Trench "On an Early Death"

The first wedge nostalgia drives into our dreaming - Chase Twichell "The Blade of Nostalgia"

The first shadows are supple ones - Chase Twichell "The Blade of Nostalgia"

The first lightspray of detonated creation - Catherynne M. Valente "Mouse Koan"

Older than the first burst of stars exploding the darkness - Georgiana Valoyce-Sanchez "There Is a Fire"

Their ceremony of first cuts - R.A. Villanueva "Annus Mirabilis"

In sad decay are first to fall, and fade away - D.R.W. "Lines to the Memory of Thomas Tyrie, a Young Edinburgh Poet of Great Promise" [Chambers' Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, 4th series, no.691, 24 March 1877]

First to embody for the listening ear - E.G.W. "To a Lady" [Chambers' Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, 5th series, no.145-v.III, 9 Oct. 1886]

The first wave was an accident - The Cyborg Jillian Weise "Goodbyes"

They will be first, brave against the day - John Moncure Wettarau "The Early Ones"

The first young twigs that burst in green - Edith Wharton "Spring Song"

First of a long line of towering ships - Edith Wharton "With the Tide"

When the zebra finches felt the first pinch of climate change - Amie Whittemore "Future History of Earth's Birds"

The birds with the biggest eyes sing first - Amie Whittemore "Future History of Earth's Birds"

A premonition of the first sweet bite - Jessica P. Wick "Sap and Superstition"

The first time we drowned in history - Tanaya Winder "Becoming a Ghost"

That first warm rain that melts the heart of earth - Humbert Wolfe "Balder's Song"

Swift darkness is spring's first hour - Jay Wright "The Healing Improvisation of Hair"

Submit to its first fall - Jay Wright "Imule"

Only the first case of identity theft - Assétou Xango "Eve"

Makes no good first impression - Jane Yolen "Little House in the Wood"

Go back before the first hydrogen - Hal Y. Zhang "Majorana, Back Again"

Not the first to be beguiled - Rachel Zucker "Long Lines to Stave Off Suicide"


Ushers the firstborn of the radiant year - Sri Aurobindo Ghose "The Island Grave"

Firstborn into a hurricane - Yona Harvey "Hurricane"


Cull time's sweet first-fruits - John Keats "Endymion, Book I [A thing of beauty is a joy for ever]"


Headfirst dive into stillness - Achy Obejas "Slow"


hurling herself teeth-first at the windows - Jennifer L. Knox "How old is Maggie?"


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