Best Opening Lines, A to G (to be continued)

Poems must start with terror in mind. The best poems grab you by the throat and don't let go. One line. Two perhaps. But the deal is they move the poem forward before they finish you off.

O.K., we're going to eliminate the most obvious choices (Shakespeare, et.al.) and count the best opening lines of poetry that we know about. No obvious classics allowed, except where they may interdict. These are some of the poems RBP admires.


Ammons

All afternoon
the tree shadows, accelerating

Bukowski

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out

Cafavy

So much I gazed on beauty,
that my vision is replete with it.

Davies

When I had money, money, O!
I knew no joy till I went poor

Eliot

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky

Ferlinghetti

Away above a harborful
of caulkless houses

Gluck

There is always something to be made of pain.

(to be continued)


TS