⬅️ Literature · Poetry & Lyric · Relief Track reading companion
The Antidepressant Poems
Eleven poems, in the requested order, with brief excerpts, reading notes, and links to the complete texts or identified selections. The reading notes are editorial interpretations.
Collection source
This sequence matches Jerzy Gregorek’s public poetry packet. He describes reading poems aloud when overwhelmed. Translation and selection details are noted below.
Contents
- The Fish — Elizabeth Bishop
- Leaving One — Ralph Angel
- A Cat in an Empty Apartment — Wisława Szymborska
- Apples — Deborah Digges
- Michiko Nogami (1946–1982) — Jack Gilbert
- Eating Alone — Li-Young Lee
- The Potter — Peter Levitt
- Black Dog, Red Dog — Stephen Dobyns
- The Word — Mark Cox
- Death — Maurycy Szymel
- This — Czesław Miłosz
1. The Fish — Elizabeth Bishop
And I let the fish go.
Reading note: Close observation turns a battered fish from a catch into a creature with a history of survival. The speaker’s changed perception leads to release; the beauty arrives through sustained attention to an imperfect, injured world.
Read the full poem — Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation.
2. Leaving One — Ralph Angel
Come drive with me.
Reading note: Exhaustion and loneliness give way to a tentative invitation to move through the world together.
Read the poem — Gregorek packet, p. 5.
3. A Cat in an Empty Apartment — Wisława Szymborska
Dying – one doesn’t do that to a cat.
Excerpt translated by Amelia Sodhi.
Reading note: A cat registers a death through disrupted routines and an owner who fails to return. Its offended expectations make loss tender, concrete, and quietly funny. The reader understands the finality that the waiting animal cannot.
Read the full poem in English and Polish — Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre.
4. Apples — Deborah Digges
three red, one golden.
Reading note: At her father’s bedside, apples connect memory, the seasons, and the small acts of care still possible.
Read the poem — Gregorek packet, p. 7.
5. Michiko Nogami (1946–1982) — Jack Gilbert
A smokestack making the sky more visible.
Reading note: Absence makes the beloved intensely present. A remembered remark about roses lets a particular voice and sensibility remain audible inside grief. The striking image asks how loss can change what becomes visible everywhere else.
Read the full English poem — Rascunho, November 2015, p. 46, alongside a Portuguese translation.
6. Eating Alone — Li-Young Lee
And my own loneliness.
Reading note: Harvesting onions and preparing a meal bring a memory of the speaker’s father into the present. Sensory abundance and loneliness occupy the same evening. Notice how the poem lets ordinary nourishment coexist with an absence it cannot fill.
Read the full poem — Academy of American Poets. From Rose (1986).
7. The Potter — Peter Levitt
would hold the moon?
Reading note: An ordinary vessel holds reflected beauty beyond what its maker could foresee.
Read the poem — Gregorek packet, p. 10.
8. Black Dog, Red Dog — Stephen Dobyns
bottomless and sad
Reading note: A newspaper boy’s encounter with a bereaved man brings empathy into focus without resolving the suffering he witnesses.
Read the selection — Gregorek packet, pp. 11–12. The packet labels it an excerpt from Black Dog, Red Dog (1984).
9. The Word — Mark Cox
I feel homey, almost safe
Reading note: Intimacy, sleep, and an aging dog reveal tenderness that the speaker finds difficult to express directly.
Read the poem — Gregorek packet, pp. 13–14.
10. Death — Maurycy Szymel
water green with frogs and stars.
Reading note: Familiar comforts sit beside fear of mortality. Intimacy then transforms the speaker’s experience of walls, furniture, and the surrounding world. Read the closing assertion as a moment of felt conviction within the poem.
Read the full English poem — Asheville Poetry Review. The Gregorek packet credits the translation to Jerzy and Aniela Gregorek.
11. This — Czesław Miłosz
Underneath was this, which I do not attempt to name.
Reading note: The speaker questions whether his praise of existence has concealed an unnamed terror. Images of exclusion, persecution, illness, and irreversible loss bring that fear into view. Its place in this collection invites room for difficult recognition as well as consolation.
Read the full English poem — Hablar de Poesía. Look for THIS, immediately beneath the Spanish version headed Esto.
Edition & Translation Notes
- Szymborska: the excerpt here follows Amelia Sodhi’s translation. The packet prints a different English version without naming its translator.
- Miłosz: the packet prints the Polish original, To, on pp. 16–17. The journal link above supplies English. This is “This,” a different poem from “This Only.”
- The packet contains visible transcription errors; prefer the individual poetry publications linked above when comparing wording.
Vault Connections
- Literature · Poetry & Lyric — the collection’s home and return route.
- Tribe of Mentors reading record — a companion for the current Relief Track reading; the record also links back here.