Potential Titles: Once

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Once immortal in the spring thaw - Rasha Abdulhadi "this bitter bud"

Alive in both worlds at once - Kim Addonizio "Wine Tasting"

Once upon a second time - Mary Alexander Agner "Crane Husband"

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

Who once had wakened their scorn - Louisa May Alcott "Clover-Blossom"

Pity the sky once - Lewis Grandison Alexander "Japanese Hokku"

Who tried to warn us once before - Mike Allen "Ascending"

To show him views from all angles at once - Mike Allen "Picasso's Rapture"

Sharpened the vision that saw from all sides at once - Mike Allen "Picasso's Rapture"

Too much beauty inhaled at once - Alise Alousi "Forgiveness is the smell of crushed flowers"

Confess myself for once deceived - "Another Peep at the Links"

That rescues us once more - Rae Armantrout "Provenance"

A chance to bloom anywhere once - Elizabeth Bartlett "The Ghost of Anne Frank"

His vigilance for once relaxed - Cora C. Bass "Washington"

The apparition that had once been Troy - Stephen Vincent Benet "The Last Vision of Helen"

Dying sugars of once growing fruit - Tara Betts "Untitled for a Reason"

Looking back only once - Rebecca G. Biber "Away, Russia"

Everything not or once alive - Lucie Brock-Broido "How Can It Be I Am No Longer I"

Gladdened once our humble sphere - Anne Bronte "Reminiscence"

Once the hills were clad in scarlet - E.W.C. "November" [The Continental Monthly v.4 no.5, Nov. 1863]

Once smelled a rose in sleep - Willa Cather "Thou Art the Pearl"

opened once and was gone - Lucille Clifton "jasper texas 1998"

Once so familiar with glory - Leonard Cohen "The Flowers that I Left in the Ground"

Once the oceans open up - Donovon Kūhiō Colleps "Our Red Road"

Once I saw Mountains angry, and ranged in battle-front - Stephen Crane "The Black Riders"

Where once I stood alone - H.D. "We Two"

Bliss is sold just once - Emily Dickinson "Book 3: Life LII"

Wandering along a waste where once a city stood - "The End of All" [Atlantic Monthly v.8 no.22, Aug. 1859]

Blood river once between you - Heid E. Erdich "Microchimerism"

That once spoke the tongue of smoke - Martin Espada "Heal the Cracks in the Bell of the World"

Ghosts that once were firs and pines - Anthony Euwer "By Scarlet Torch and Blade"

Once sought the wind - Mari Evans "Through a Glass"

Of all bells that rang once in old London - Eleanor Farjeon "The Children's Bells"

Once smeared on the mandible of a bee - RK Fauth "Playing with Bees"

Once sawdust becomes my sea - Nick Flynn "Alcoholism"

Where a haunted house once stood - Adam Ford "A House Is Not a Home!"

Relit once more her brilliant stars - "Freedom's Stars" [The Continental Monthly v.1 no.2, Feb. 1862]

The wind once blew itself untaught - Robert Frost "The Aim Was Song"

And too much world at once - Robert Frost "The Exposed Nest"

Once more before we meet elsewhere - Robert Frost "The Generations of Men"

Wrapped once more in dreams - Rose Fyleman "Smith Square, Westminster"

Once reigned supreme among bushels and pits - Deborah Garrison "Her Majesty Loses Her Touch"

Once reigned supreme among bushels and pits - Deborah Garrison "Her Majesty Loses Her Touch"

Once your exile begins - Louise Gluck "Departure"

A thing that was once wild is never tame - Theodora Goss "The Fox Wife"

Once pregnant with celestial fire - Thomas Gray "Elegy, Written in a Country Churchyard"

Once freed to mortal ears - Louise Imogen Guiney "For a Child"

And God once more seems kind - Ivor Gurney "Letters"

Earth and sky to eyes once disenchanted - G.H.H. "Night and Morning" (from The Knickerbocker, v. 23:3, March 1844)

The echoes that once passed through us - Nathalie Handal "White Trees"

The harp once loved by thine - Felicia Hemans "Dirge of the Highland Chief in 'Waverley'"

Once ambition burned my breast - Jeannette Fraser Henshall "Endie"

That once could empty out an hour - Conrad Hilberry "The Savory Wheel"

A cosmic particle seen once - Brenda Hillman "Poem for a National Seashore"

That survived once the terrors of his hoof - Ralph Hodgson "The Bull"

A wall that was once a window - Carlie Hoffman "After Morlot Avenue"

What would the world be, once bereft - Gerard Manley Hopkins "Inversnaid"

Once bereft of wet and wildness - Gerard Manley Hopkins "Inversnaid"

Once drunk with blood - Percy Adams Hutchison "The Swordless Christ"

we stand in many doorways at once - fahima ife "post-acid"

Hold once more their shattered fragrance - Fay Inchfawn "On All Soul's Eve"

Once lay at the breast of the moon - Scharmel Iris "Three Apples" [The Little Review Nov. 1914 (v.1, no.8)]

Moving in several directions at once - Mark Irwin "Nike of Samothrace"

That once grew into our nerves and veins - Robinson Jeffers "The Truce and the Peace"

Broke at once the vital chain - Samuel Johnson "On the Death of Mr. Robert Levet"

Who once has lost an Eden - Annie Fellows Johnston "Felipa, Wife of Columbus"

Once was held by mystic sway - Joshua Henry Jones "To a Skull"

Once our skulls shut up their nasty talk - Mary Karr "Country Fair"

These dark days be once gone by - Fanny Kemble "An Invocation"

The mountain-tops, where once Hope stood - Fanny Kemble "A Retrospect"

When once my sail is shadowed - Fanny Kemble "To the Wissahiccon"

Be mistaken for someone you once loved - Vandana Khanna "The Goddess Calls a Truce"

Buried the names you once were called - Vandana Khanna "Goddess Out of Favor"

Told by Homer once - Joyce Kilmer "Age Comes A-Wooing"

Once our genes were our own - David C. Kopaska-Merkel "Excess Baggage"

Once they got good at keeping warm - David C. Kopaska-Merkel "The Last Time, We Trust"

That resemble what might once have been - David C. Kopaska-Merkel and Mike Allen "Rattlebox"

Once again with everything - Dorothea Lasky "The Miscarriage"

With jewels of passion once broken through - D.H. Lawrence "Obsequial Ode"

Floors where reverent feet once trod - Emma Lazarus "In the Jewish Synogogue at Newport"

The empty spaces you once filled - Aimee Le "Poem Written by Aimee's Imaginary Roommate, Charles"

Churn and buttermilk at once - Aimee Le "So the Love Story Started"

No returning to the future you once inhabited - Mary Soon Lee "Advice for Time Travelers"

That Jove once prevailed upon Juno - Henry S. Leigh "The Olympic Ball"

Perusing these words once or twice - Henry S. Leigh "Songs of the Sick Room No.2: Night and Morning"

You only get to savor it once - Anne Liberton "Dad's Recipe for Never-Keeping"

Song sparrows that tremble all at once - Ada Limon "It's the Season I Often Mistake"

Once more escaped its chain - Vachel Lindsay "John L. Sullivan, the Strong Boy of Boston"

We once tended the oracles - Cecilia Llompart "Omens"

His children once beggars rise into guerrillas - W.J. Lofton "The Lord is American"

Raze the world once and raise it twice - P. H. Low "Ode"

And waits to be made free once more - Amy Lowell "The Coal Picker"

Which once had quenched my bitter thirst - Maria White Lowell "The Alpine Sheep"

Except a burning learned just once - Canisia Lubrin "In the Middle of the Burning"

Chateaus where mammoth Queens once ruled - Ed Lynskey "Mrs. Lincoln's Terror of Moths"

The ends of paths that once were endless - Sidney Royse Lysaght "Youth"

In such a place, love met me once - Jeannette Marks "The Railroad Station"

Like a jaguar that once drank rain - David Tomas Martinez "The Only Mexican"

A path a harp once followed - J. Michael Martinez "Death to Paint Us"

Once grim with sacrificial fires - John Masefield "The Daffodil Fields"

All four seasons at once - John McCarthy "Pickup Truck"

A moon once married to the sea - Lo Kwa Mei-en "Pinocchia, you must not stop for a friend"

The castles that were once your pride - Adam Mickiewicz "The Ruins of Balaclava" transl. by Edna Worthley Underwood

A gate that once was there - Edna St Vincent Millay "The Little Ghost"

What was once lost now leaps before you - Rajiv Mohabir "Why Whales Are Back in New York City"

By running up the staircase once again - Harold Monro "Journey"

The vows that once were said - Harriet Monroe "Shadows"

Giving Trouble the once over - Kamilah Aisha Moon "Fibroids"

Could once my heart-strings madly thrill - George P. Morris "I Never Have Been False to Thee" [Graham's Magazine v.XIX no.5, Nov. 1841]

Solidifies what once was vapor - Ali-Shir Nava'i "Love Song of Nava'i (2)" transl. by Dennis Daly

Put flags where my life ventured once - J. Alan Nelson "Flags and Maps"

Once again the heart distills them - Pablo Neruda "Ode to the Dictionary" transl. by Margaret Sayers Peden

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

That once cupped an ocean in its peak - Caroline Harper New "Fieldnotes on Juniper"

And only once is the journey made - Sarah Noble-Ives "On the Shining Way"

Double and nothing all at once - Naomi Shihab Nye "My Uncle's Favorite Coffee Shop"

Once felt is always - Joyce Carol Oates "Five Confessions: III. Pain"

Once by your music thrilled - Margaret Fuller Ossoli "To Miss R. B."

capable of being two places at once - Ugonna-Ora Owoh "Syndrome"

Once loyal to a cruel master - Carl Phillips "That Part in the Music"

Once with fish and once with wine - D.A. Powell "The Miracle of Giving"

Where sacred fires once burned - E.J. Pratt "The Hidden Scar"

But once the sacred summons rings - Alexander Pushkin "The Poet" transl. by John Pollen

Only dust departs and remains at once - Yousif M. Qasmiyeh "The bomb shelter"

Once stole from underneath my mother's dream - Yousif M. Qasmiyeh "Is it distance or is it a far god?"

Where the land that was once gone is ours now back - m.s. RedCherries "this is what kafka really meant when he wished to be a red indian"

In a lonely wood I wandered once - John Rollin Ridge aka Yellow Bird "An Indian's Grave"

That once have tasted the fairy banquet's bliss - T.W. Rolleston "The Spell-Struck"

When once the dregs are emptied - George Santayana "The Bottles and the Wine"

All pleasure lost in cursing once - Friedrich Schiller "The Hypochondriacal Pluto"

Remnants of the heavens we both once were - Elizabeth Schmuhl "Premonitions: #40"

This suspicion once wove Atlantis through us - Ann K. Schwader "To Theia"

The celestial swan that once dreamed itself a person - Kaya Skovdatter "What Beautiful Heavens These"

Float once more on sheer survival - R.T. Smith "Hardware Sparrows"

This bird once shook the forest - Lyz Soto "Today I Am Full of Birds"

A foam-white arm that beckoned once - George Sterling "Duandon"

Once mirror to the mountain - George Sterling "The First Born"

Echo of a music once supreme - George Sterling "The Tides of Change"

Once sighted over seas of blood - George Sterling "To the Goddess Liberty"

Decades of dry winds that whisper once - Blaize Kelly Strothers "The West Is Dead"

Whisper once into the heart of the agave - Blaize Kelly Strothers "The West Is Dead"

An aging pin that juggler sun once threw - May Swenson "Sleeping Overnight on the Shore"

Who once saved me a sunflower to pluck - Sonya Taaffe "The Chymical Marriage"

Used to make such riot once - Rabindranath Tagore "Spring that in My Courtyard"

Not once caring about honor - Keith Taylor "Let Them Be Left"

That once was singing gold - Sara Teasdale "Let It Be Forgotten"

A silent place that once rang loud - Edward Thomas "The Chalk-Pit"

These dogs once hunted polar bears - Matthew Thorburn "How We Found Our Way"

A wisp of straw once coiled about their shoots - Henry David Thoreau "Sic Vita"

Spectral Joy once murdered in a rage - Iris Tree "[I could explain]"

Once, you handed me half a heart - Ali Trotta "The Devil You Know"

The white sun all at once lost in the west - Ts'ao Chih "Presented to Piao, the Prince of Pai-ma" transl. by Burton Watson

they once offered asylum to the Sun - upfromsumdirt (Ron Davis) "This Kiln Isn't For Everyone"

Wall flowers that once were flame - William Carlos Williams "Postlude"

As the thrush once waited for childhood's end - Humbert Wolfe "THE WOODCUTTERS OF HÜTTELDORF"

What ravens were unto a prophet once - Adolf Wolff "The Artists"

Memories once yours are now mine - J. Deery Wray "Eidetic"

What stars once telegraphed to the river - Jake Adam York "Letter Written in Black Water and Pearl"

Once could be charmed with our salads - "You'll Come to Our Ball" [Mirror of Literature v.13 issue 358, Feb. 1829. Credited to London Magazine]

Do not weep but once - Kevin Young "Eulogy"


The secret shape of once-seen, sweet and oft-dreamed loveliness - John Freeman "Shadows"


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