Men poems
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The Bracelet of Grass
© William Vaughn Moody
The opal heart of afternoon
Was clouding on to throbs of storm,
Writing in the Afterlife
© Billy Collins
I imagined the atmosphere would be clear,
shot with pristine light,
not this sulphurous haze,
the air ionized as before a thunderstorm.
Study in Orange and White
© Billy Collins
I knew that James Whistler was part of the Paris scene,
but I was still surprised when I found the painting
of his mother at the Musée d'Orsay
among all the colored dots and mobile brushstrokes
of the French Impressionists.
Caliban upon Setebos
© Robert Browning
'Thinketh He made it, with the sun to match,
But not the stars; the stars came otherwise;
Only made clouds, winds, meteors, such as that:
Also this isle, what lives and grows thereon,
And snaky sea which rounds and ends the same.
Sunday: New Guinea
© Ishmael Reed
The bugle sounds the measured call to prayers,
The band starts bravely with a clarion hymn,
From every side, singly, in groups, in pairs,
Each to his kind of service comes to worship Him.
Leave the Hand In
© John Ashbery
Furthermore, Mr. Tuttle used to have to run in the streets.
Now, each time friendship happens, they’re fully booked.
Essay on Psychiatrists
© Robert Pinsky
It's crazy to think one could describe them—
Calling on reason, fantasy, memory, eyes and ears—
As though they were all alike any more
Epilogue To Tancred And Sigismunda
© James Thomson
Cramm'd to the throat with wholesome moral stuff,
Alas! poor audience! you have had enough.
Was ever hapless heroine of a play
In such a piteous plight as ours to-day?
The Vision Of Piers Plowman - Part 15
© William Langland
Ac after my wakynge it was wonder longe
Er I koude kyndely knowe what was Dowel.
from The Lady of the Lake: Boat Song
© Sir Walter Scott
Hail to the Chief who in triumph advances!
Honored and blessed be the ever-green Pine!
Die Drei Reiche Der Natur
© Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
Ich trink, und trinkend faellt mir bei,
Warum Naturreich dreifach sei.
Three Teenage Girls: 1956 by Steve Orlen: American Life in Poetry #160 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureat
© Ted Kooser
I've mentioned how important close observation is in composing a vivid poem. In this scene by Arizona poet, Steve Orlen, the details not only help us to see the girls clearly, but the last detail is loaded with suggestion. The poem closes with the car door shutting, and we readers are shut out of what will happen, though we can guess.
Three Teenage Girls: 1956
Three teenage girls in tight red sleeveless blouses and black Capri pants
And colorful headscarves secured in a knot to their chins
Are walking down the hill, chatting, laughing,
Cupping their cigarettes against the light rain,
The closest to the road with her left thumb stuck out
Not looking at the cars going past.
To The Reader
© John Bunyan
The title page will show, if there thou look,
Who are the proper subjects of this book.
They're boys and girls of all sorts and degrees,
Song of Myself
© Walt Whitman
Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.
The Answering Machine
© Linda Pastan
I call and hear your voice
on the answering machine
weeks after your death,
a fledgling ghost still longing
for human messages.
Idem the Same: A Valentine to Sherwood Anderson
© Gertrude Stein
I knew too that through them I knew too that he was through, I knew too that he threw them. I knew too that they were through, I knew too I knew too, I knew I knew them.
The Times
© Charles Churchill
The time hath been, a boyish, blushing time,
When modesty was scarcely held a crime;
