Life poems

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How Are You Doing? by Rick Snyder: American Life in Poetry #103 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-

© Ted Kooser

One of the ways a poet makes art from his or her experience is through the use of unique, specific and particular detail. This poem by Rick Snyder thrives on such details. It's not just baseball caps, it's Tasmanian Devil caps; it's not just music on the intercom, it's James Taylor. And Snyder's poem also caught my interest with the humor of its flat, sardonic tone.

How Are You Doing?

To a Clergyman on the Death of His Lady

© Phillis Wheatley

Where contemplation finds her sacred spring,

Where heav'nly music makes the arches ring,

God

© Gavrila Romanovich Derzhavin

O Thou, who's infinite in space,

Alive in ever-moving matter,

Botany Bay Eclogues 04 - John, Samuel & Richard

© Robert Southey

'Tis a calm pleasant evening, the light fades away,
And the Sun going down has done watch for the day.
To my mind we live wonderous well when transported,
It is but to work and we must be supported.
Fill the cann, Dick! success here to Botany Bay!

Hymn To The Naiads

© Mark Akenside

ARGUMENT. The Nymphs, who preside over springs and rivulets, are addressed at day-break, in honor of their several functions, and of the relations which they bear to the natural and to the moral world. Their origin is deduced from the first allegorical deities, or powers of nature; according to the doctrine of the old mythological poets, concerning the generation of the gods and the rise of things. They are then successively considered, as giving motion to the air and exciting summer-breezes; as nourishing and beautifying the vegetable creation; as contributing to the fullness of navigable rivers, and consequently to the maintenance of commerce; and by that means, to the maritime part of military power. Next is represented their favourable influence upon health, when assisted by rural exercise: which introduces their connection with the art of physic, and the happy effects of mineral medicinal springs. Lastly, they are celebrated for the friendship which the Muses bear them, and for the true inspiration which temperance only can receive: in opposition to the enthusiasm of the more licentious poets.

--

Sonnet II

© Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa

If that apparent part of life's delight

Our tingled flesh-sense circumscribes were seen

Our Theist Conclusion

© James Baker

If we would walk through the trees,

Would we still believe

The Hero

© John Greenleaf Whittier

"O for a knight like Bayard,
Without reproach or fear;
My light glove on his casque of steel,
My love-knot on his spear!

Hamlet As Told On The Street

© Sheldon Allan Silverstein

Well, that was the end of our sweet prince,
He died in confusion and nobodys seen him since.
And the moral of the story is bells do get out of tune
And you can find shit in a silver spoon
And an old mans revenge can be a young mans ruin
Oh and never look too close at what your mamma is doin.

A Dead Sea-Gull

© Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

LACK-LUSTRE eye, and idle wing,
And smirchèd breast that skims no more,
White as the foam itself, the wave--
Hast thou not even a grave
Upon the dreary shore,
Forlorn, forsaken thing?

Wallpapering by Sue Ellen Thompson: American Life in Poetry #109 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004

© Ted Kooser

One big test of the endurance of any relationship is taking on a joint improvement project. Here Sue Ellen Thompson offers an account of one such trial by fire. Wallpapering

My parents argued over wallpaper. Would stripes
make the room look larger? He
would measure, cut, and paste; she'd swipe
the flaws out with her brush. Once it was properly

Matinee by Patrick Phillips: American Life in Poetry #124 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006

© Ted Kooser

Here is a lovely poem about survival by Patrick Phillips of New York. People sometimes ask me "What are poems for?" and "Matinee" is an example of the kind of writing that serves its readers, that shows us a way of carrying on. Matinee

After the biopsy,
after the bone scan,
after the consult and the crying,

On the Paroo

© Henry Kendall

AS WHEN the strong stream of a wintering sea

Rolls round our coast, with bodeful breaks of storm,

Battle Of Hastings - I

© Thomas Chatterton

From Chatelet hys launce Erle Egward drew,
And hit Wallerie on the dexter cheek;
Peerc'd to his braine, and cut his tongue in two.
There, knyght, quod he, let that thy actions speak --

If I Were Fair

IF only I were fair,

Or had some charm to bind

Sydney Exhibition Cantata

A gracious morning on the hills of wet
And wind and mist her glittering feet has set;
The life and heat of light have chased away
Australia's dark, mysterious yesterday.
A great, glad glory now flows down and shines
On gold-green lands where waved funereal pines.

The Princess (part 7)

'If you be, what I think you, some sweet dream,
I would but ask you to fulfil yourself:
But if you be that Ida whom I knew,
I ask you nothing: only, if a dream,
Sweet dream, be perfect. I shall die tonight.
Stoop down and seem to kiss me ere I die.'