welcoming all that follow

Being the first genre, poetry embraces all other genres.

ambulance chasing

The ambulance chasing poet was always first to write about the latest disaster.

unexpected inevitable

The last line should at first be unexpected but then be inevitable.

first or last

The first line of the poem should have been the last.

experience everlasting

The first time you read the poem you knew you’d encountered an inexhaustible resource.

hear it

Poetry: Hear it, hear it first; that’s its heart.

first things

A poem establishes itself first in language and then you get what it’s about.

first where

Avant-gardists arguing over who got there first, never questioning if there was any there there (or was it like Stein’s Oakland).

first poem

Remember the excitement, even thrall, of composing your first real poem, however rudimentary: the images, the turns of phrase, the surprises of diction, pattern and word sounds, etc. In a sense every poem written since is a grasping after that first experience.

first concern

Whether the assessment is positive or negative, the critic’s first task is to make the reader care.

first sight

First sight, best sight. To describe with new eyes.

first image

An image everyone missed until this moment.

first to mine

In the course of one's reading, it's nice to think, even if it’s not true, that I’ve been first to mine this gemstone quotation.

hold your tongue

In a workshop if one person is always the first speak, then he/she sets the trajectory of the discussion. Don’t be first to speak all the time.

alpha & omega

The urpoem in the last poem.

now what

You get credit for getting there first. But then one must find a way forward.