Communication poems

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Paradise Lost: Book VIII (1674)

At a Certain Age by Deborah Cummins: American Life in Poetry #138 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 200

You've surely heard it said that the old ought to move over to make room for the young. But in the best of all possible worlds, people who love their work should be able to do it as long as they wish. Those forced to retire, well, they're a sorry lot. Here the Chicago poet, Deborah Cummins, shows a man trying to adjust to life after work.

At a Certain Age

The Truant Dove, From Pilpay

© Charlotte Turner Smith

A MOUNTAIN stream, its channel deep

Beneath a rock's rough base had torn;

Bread Soup: An Old Icelandic Recipe by Bill Holm: American Life in Poetry #90 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet

© Ted Kooser

Anyone can write a poem that nobody can understand, but poetry is a means of communication, and this column specializes in poems that communicate. What comes more naturally to us than to instruct someone in how to do something? Here the Minnesota poet and essayist Bill Holm, who is of Icelandic parentage, shows us how to make something delicious to eat.

The Rival Curates

© William Schwenck Gilbert

List while the poet trolls
Of MR. CLAYTON HOOPER,
Who had a cure of souls
At Spiffton-extra-Sooper.

Shakuntala Act II

© Kalidasa

ACT II

SCENE A PLAIN, with royal pavilions on the skirt of the forest.

The Heroic Enthusiasts - Part The First =Fifth Dialogue.=

© Giordano Bruno

CIC. Now show me how I may be able for myself to consider the conditions
of these enthusiasts, through that which appears in the order of the
warfare here described.

The Unhappy Lot Of Mr. Knott

© James Russell Lowell

My worthy friend, A. Gordon Knott,
From business snug withdrawn,
Was much contented with a lot
That would contain a Tudor cot
'Twixt twelve feet square of garden-plot,
And twelve feet more of lawn.

Aurora Leigh: Book Niinth

© Elizabeth Barrett Browning

An active kind of curse. I stood there cursed,
Confounded. I had seized and caught the sense
Of the letter, with its twenty stinging snakes,
In a moment's sweep of eyesight, and I stood
Dazed.-"Ah! not married."

Just a Love Letter

© Henry Cuyler Bunner

NEW YORK, July 20, 1883.
DEAR GIRL:
The town goes on as though
It thought you still were in it;

Sordello: Book the Sixth

© Robert Browning

The thought of Eglamor's least like a thought,

And yet a false one, was, "Man shrinks to nought

Jubilate Agno: Fragment B, Part 2

© Christopher Smart

LET PETER rejoice with the MOON FISH who keeps up the life in the waters by night.

Let Andrew rejoice with the Whale, who is array'd in beauteous blue and is a combination of bulk and activity.

The Ring And The Book - Chapter XI - Guido

© Robert Browning

YOU ARE the Cardinal Acciaiuoli, and you,

Abate Panciatichitwo good Tuscan names:

Insolent Storm Strikes At The Skull

© Sylvia Plath

Insolent storm strikes at the skull,
assaults the sleeping citadel,
knocking the warden to his knees
in impotence, to sue for peace,

Ations

If we meet and I say, "Hi,"
That's a salutation.
If you ask me how I feel,
That's a consideration.

Four Quartets 4: Little Gidding

IMidwinter spring is its own season
Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,
Suspended in time, between pole and tropic.
When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire,

A Little Language

I know a little language of my cat, though Dante says
that animals have no need of speech and Nature
abhors the superfluous. My cat is fluent. He
converses when he wants with me. To speak

The Test of Fantasy

© Joanne Kyger

It unfolds and ripples like a banner, downward. All the stories
come folding out. The smells and flowers begin to come back, as
the tapestry is brightly colored and brocaded. Rabbits and violets.

Against Lawn by Grace Bauer: American Life in Poetry #50 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006

© Ted Kooser

a reminder to avoid too much taming
of what, even here, wants to be wild.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Reprinted from the literary journal, Lake Effect, Volume 8, Spring 2004 by permission of the author. Copyright © 2004 by Grace Bauer, whose new book, Beholding Eye, is forthcoming from Wordtech Communications in 2006. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.