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About this Poem 

“In Particular” was published in The Book of Repulsive Women (Guido Bruno, 1915). 

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In Particular

What loin-cloth, what rag of wrong
Unpriced?
What turn of body, what of lust
Undiced?
So we’ve worshipped you a little
More than Christ.

This poem is in the public domain. 

This poem is in the public domain. 

Djuna Barnes

Djuna Barnes

Djuna Barnes was born in Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York on June 12, 1892. She was an American novelist, poet, playwright, journalist, and visual artist, as well as an important figure in the Modernist movement. Her works include The Book of Repulsive Women (1915), Ladies Almanack (1928), and Nightwood (1937). Barnes died in New York City on June 18, 1982.

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poem
Call of the Night
Djuna Barnes
1911

Dark, and the wind-blurred pines,
           With a glimmer of light between.
Then I, entombed for an hourless night
           With the world of things unseen.

Mist, the dust of flowers,
           Leagues, heavy with promise of snow,
And a beckoning road ‘twixt vale and hill,

poem
Serenade
Djuna Barnes
2017

Three paces down the shore, low sounds the lute,
The better that my longing you may know;
I’m not asking you to come,
But—can’t you go?

Three words, “I love you,” and the whole is said—
The greatness of it throbs from sun to sun;
I’m not asking you to walk,
But—can’t you run?

poem
The Dreamer
Djuna Barnes 
The night comes down, in ever-darkening shapes that seem—
To grope, with eerie fingers for the window—then—
To rest to sleep, enfolding me, as in a dream
            Faith—might I awaken!
 
And drips the rain with seeming sad, insistent beat.
Shivering across the pane, drooping tear-wise,
And softly patters by,
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